Okay... So, here's the deal. I've been playing Shining Force a lot lately. Just ask my roommates, who I think are now officially sick of the battle music.
I entered Chapter 3. I ended up in Bustoke, and solved everyone's problems with serious violence, properly applied. I also got a new archer, PLUS my awesome werewolf dude I've heard so much about. I have promoted a bunch of my team members, which is pretty cool. I might very well post what they all look like some time. But for now, I need to briefly discuss something with you guys. I knew the Runefaust dudes were after a secret weapon.
Last night I decided to play some Shining Force, because I had recently decided to move past the fight I've been grinding for a while and see what was waiting for me. Part of the reason for my over preparation was the veritable host of horror stories and warnings I had received about the fight I was coming up to, in which I am forced to face The Marionette. I have been dreading this fight, to some degree. However, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Hell yeah I am. We begin here. The spirit of this lake has been summoned by the Orb of Light, which I've just received after defeating the monsters of the Cave of Darkness. What a naming scheme. She tells me a bit about Darksol's plans, and insists that I have to stop him. I concur. Then I head upstairs to talk to Otrant, who someone has recently referred to as a "He" and I take issue with that. Mainly because of the purple lipstick.
Just saying. So I'm officially the Chosen One or whatever, and now we're going to be known as the Shining Force to everyone, not just the few people in this story who aren't trying to kill me. Otrant tells me I have to cross the sea, and I know just how to do it. The only boat around belongs to the mayor of the last town, whose son, as I find out upon arriving, has gone missing. I have a hunch as to where he is. As I come to the circus tent, I have to take a second. This may be about to go horribly wrong.
Into the breach! The tent is housing one of the big players for the bad guys, who sics her "pets" on me. These mostly include a lot of puppets and Dire Clowns, and other unsavory such things, including this one. The man himself, the Marionette.
Seriously, look at that. He has potentially unlimited MP, and Freeze 3 to throw at me, which I am certain is going to hurt BADLY. The fight went pretty well at first, though. I was mopping the floor with the puppets and things, minus one bit where I screwed up, and lost Anri, my second mage. Damn. Then I got up to Marionette. He had a good chunk of hit points, but my first hit on him went pretty well, and everybody moved in. I had to be careful, because my main character has been getting pretty badass lately, doing the most damage in the party, and having some of the highest health in the party. But if I screw up and he goes down, it's all over for me.
However, after losing not one, not two, not even three, but four party members total, I managed to take down Marionette. On my first try! I was pretty pleased with myself here. Marionette was less so.
He explodes, like baddies usually do, and I picked up all the neat items lying around in chests for me. Heading back to the mayor, he's incredibly grateful for his son being alive.
Awesome. I was kind of excited to jump on the boat and see where it goes. BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, CAN YOU GAME?!
Of course you can't-OH FUCK BLUE FIRE.
...Well. On the plus side, I managed to get that screenshot right before the ship disappeared under the water. Luckily, a nearby man was able to give me some good advice.
Or rather, advice that basically amounted to "DAYUMN. You're screwed." The mayor really wasn't much help though. He basically said, alright, well go to Shade Abbey and talk to my nephew. He can probably help you. People have been mentioning Shade Abbey a lot in the game, so I knew I would eventually end up there, but I didn't think they were going to play it up to be... you know, a good thing. When I got there though, things were immediately weird.
So if I remembered the list of characters correctly, this was one of the guys who would be joining my party. Also, he had a character portrait, so that basically confirmed it. The thing about Shade Abbey is that everything is VERY CLEARLY WRONG.
That's just one example. Check out all of those dug up graves. There was even a zombie in one of the rooms with the Abbot. The bitch is, I couldn't seem to do anything about whatever was up. I knew it was going to get all explained, but then when I went inside the chapel finally, I noticed every character from around the building was now following me, and when I tried to talk to them, they said the exact same thing that they said when they had been outside as well. It all sorta came together in my head after that.
OH SHIT. Luckily, as I was completely surrounded by undead, the game made the mistake of letting my mage go first.
This fight was fun, though. Darksol had showed up for just a second to taunt me, right before I beat his minions senseless. AGAIN. After that, I got one of the bird guys on my team. On the way out I got the other one. The first one had been stone, apparently, which does raise the question of why he was able to yell out some Admiral Akbar shit at me.
After that, I reached the end of Chapter 2, which seemed like a good place to stop since it was late last night. I thought these little bubbles of NEXT CHAPTER ON SHINING FORCE! dialogue were funny, so I put them in the same picture for your convenience.
This chapter was a lot of fun, and stuff feels like it's rolling along a bit more now! I'll do a bit more later on, because I have some characters up for promotion now and I'm in a new spot. Keep playing!
A Game Haiku or two to bring us into chapter 3:
I have been chosen To defeat Runefaust's armies Let the fight begin!
They have a weapon To stop me from saving Rune. Let's see them try, then.
Okay. I know this isn't really what we want to be doing, I realize this isn't related to The Project, and I realize most of my posts have been off topic lately. But this 40th post is kind of just to keep us active, and because I think you guys should see this, as it's really awesome.
Enjoy.
On an actually related note, I'll be home for the weekend. We might get some stuff done in that time.
EDIT: Youtube is stupid, so it won't fit the video to the page. Either right click and hit Show All to be able to see the full screen window, or just click it to go to the Youtube page.
Hullo, Zuul Arcade. We haven't forgotten you, honest! But we have all been busy, what with school, work, being lazy, a BIG convention (that we might have stuff about later on) and all the other stuff that keeps us away for too long.
So on one hand, I mostly just wanted to make a post because there hasn't been one in a little while. So the thing I wanted to bring to your attention was a rather neat post made by the always-excellent Wil Wheaton in which he talks about the games of his youth a bit.
Of course, this is all just a thinly-veiled excuse to wish a very Happy Birthday to our friend and ALWAYS enthusiastic Zuul Arcade author, Sean.
What? No! Not Irish-born womanizing former-mechanic-turned-Nazi-killing-sabotage-artist of the resistance in Nazi-occupied WWII France from the game Saboteur, Sean Devlin! I meant OUR Sean!
...So, yeah, to make sense of that, I'll just point out that Devlin was the first video game character named Sean I found, and even though I've never heard of or played the game, the character seems appropriately badass.
In all seriousness, Sean is a great guy who is always trying to do awesome things for the rest of us, and even though we always call him a dick for it, I can only hope he knows just how much we really do appreciate it all. And since I can't go up to visit and hang out, here's your present.
