Emptyeye

Not much has happened since my last entry. Having successfully discovered the cave that allowed me to progress, I went through it, and discovered something that previous dungeons lacked: new equipment! Primarily, a Force Sword with enough power (I can do close to 500 damage on particularly weak enemies) that it made me abandon the dual-Royal Needler strategy, since the rest of my party has enough power that it doesn’t really matter. I also obtained a Force Claw for Mieu, which made her even stronger as well.

Exploring the rest of the cave and re-emerging on the other side, I found I was on the other side of a cave that was previous blocked in the first generation, and I ended up back in a village in the first generation. Next time, I’ll explore a little more, and try to find Lena’s daughter.

-EE

At last! Pandemonium Progress!

This update actually covers two sessions of me wandering around looking for what the heck to do next. At the end of the first session, I was actually closer to my goal than I had realized, having stopped at the cyborg town in Aridia. Yet I went back to the fourth continent to try and see if I could get to Techna, which I still couldn’t despite wandering all around and trying to get a land bridge to appear a la the end of the first generation.

At this point, I should point out that poking around Phantasy Star.Net spoiled the fact that Landen wasn’t just a town, but a continent. Looking at my Monitor, there were no other new continents available that I hadn’t been to.

Then I realized that there was about half of the very first continent that I couldn’t access in the first generation, and since my path to said continent was still blocked by a lackey of Lune, that meant there had to be a second cave to get there. Sure enough, wandering around Aridia some more revealed, to the north, what was probably the one cave on the continent I hadn’t been to, and I can at last make some progress. The enemies in said cave are a bit stronger, but nothing I can’t handle thanks in part to dual Royal Needlers (And in part to my probably being really overleveled because of my wandering to this point). Also, I bought a Cannon for Wren, which helps his damage output slightly.

Next time, I’ll report on what’s on the other side of the cave.

-EE

As with Part Ten, I am currently, if not “stuck” per se, in “wander around the world I’ve uncovered so far, trying to find a cave that will let me in” mode.

My attempt to get to Techna was foiled by the fact that the bridge that was supposed to be there when I went down the Cape Dragon’s Spine…simply wasn’t there. What this meant was that I was effectively being railroaded into doing what the game wanted me to do. This, in itself, isn’t a bad thing–games as new as Final Fantasy XIII have mostly linear plots in that regard (Even the highly-beloved Final Fantasy VI doesn’t really open up until the second half of the game, and when it does open up, I’d argue, it literally loses the plot [SDA administrator Breakdown noted this in a tongue-in-cheek manner during Classic Games Done Quick, noting "By the time I got to Kefka's Tower, I had forgotten why I was supposed to want to kill him."].).

My main issue in this case is the fact that, possibly due to my not paying attention, I don’t really know where Landel is (No hints please). Bringing Thea (Who continued to gain levels at an alarming rate until about level 23; Ayn, by comparison, is at level 19, while Wren and Mieu are in the low 30s.) back to Lyle just earned me some accolades, a “Use the TwinsRuby”, and no more direction as to where Landel actually was. As I said, this is going to involve a lot of wandering the world, auto-battling foes (Outside of the area near where Techna is, almost nothing can survive even a single Royal Needler attack; nothing I’ve encountered so far is capable of surviving two, to say nothing of the offensive power of the rest of the group. Plus, I’ve bought some new armor which, among other things, makes Thea marginally less frail than she was, although her defense still lags way behind the rest of the group’s. Fortunately, she also gets attacked very rarely.), and hoping I find the cave I need.

Wish me luck.

-EE

Double Royal Needler all the way across enemy groups! So intense!

Armed with two totally broken (For this point in the game) weapons in the form of dual-wielded Royal Needlers, plus Ayn’s companions’ weaponry, breaking into the castle was pretty easy. The hardest part was navigating the dungeon, and I even managed to get pretty lucky there once I took into account exactly what I had seen on the ground floor, plus what I presumed Phantasy Star III’s dungeon philosophy was (In short, “take the longest, most roundabout path, it will likely lead somewhere good”). In short order, I had located and rescued Lyle’s daughter, Thea (Who was decidedly not a sassy black woman like I think of when I hear the name “Thea”, but that’s another story). Thea, besides starting off incredibly weak (18HP/15TP), was the first character who could use slicers, which is a development I would have been a whole lot more excited about if I didn’t have Ayn already wrecking house. Slicers are, I’m guessing, what the English translation of Phantasy Star II called “Slashers”, basically boomerangs capable of attacking entire rows of enemies at once. Again, this would be a lot cooler if I didn’t have two stronger group-targeting weapons (To be fair, how the Royal Needler decides its groups is a bit different than how the slicers do it).

Nonetheless, Thea quickly became a bit less frail as I leveled her up from level 1 to level 14 in no time at all. One interesting thing that I noted is that I’m already doing damage equal to (In Thea and Wren’s cases) or greater than (In Ayn’s case when you factor in the group damage, plus Mieu’s individual attacks) the endgame of Phantasy Star II, and I still have at least an entire generation to go.

At this point, I’m supposed to bring Thea back to Lyle, her father. But screw that, I’m going to Techna to learn about Satellite (And see if they have any awesome new weapons) first.

-EE

Besides non-obvious paths for where to go next, another thing that old-school adventure and RPG games are known for is the triggers to advance coming down to “talk to a random person in a town”. In this case, coming to the new, nearly deserted village (Except for some new weaponry), the gate to the castle was closed. I also learned about an island called Techna, where I could learn about Satellite (Much like the Save Maia quest, this seems to be the second generation’s “Oh yeah THAT’S my overarching goal….” quest.). Walking across this new land to another village (With more new weapons, making me feel kind of stupid that I had bought more weapons at the previous town), I learned that in the village I had come from, a girl was being held in the castle against her will.

Wait a second.

I also talked to a guy who said he had opened the castle doors, but couldn’t save the princess.

Hey, remember that castle with the close gate?

Yep, it was open, but I only did a little bit of exploring before returning to Hazetak. This was where I bought the Royal Needler for a stupid amount of money (Seriously, I don’t think Sega expected you to be able to afford it at this juncture). Now, the Royal Needler does about 100 damage on enemies, can hit groups…and, unlike swords, is a one-handed weapon.

Naturally, this meant it was time to purchase a second one. Ayn can now wreck pretty much everything single-handedly, and with the new weapons that Mieu (Two Ceramic Claws, if I recall correctly) and Wren (A Laconia Shot..interesting that Laconia was the legendary metal in the original Phantasy Star, and here I’m getting equipment made from it in Generation Two out of three), wield, they can clean up what Ayn can’t finish off on his own.

Something that I finally found in the passage to the fourth area (Where the two new villages were) was some new equipment, and more specifically, some new armor. I did find a Laser Shot as well, but that was quickly obsoleted by the Laconia Shot I bought on the other side. I’ve barely bothered upgrading armor, preferring instead to upgrade my weapons and take a “Either enemies will die in one round or I’ll die in 3″ approach to combat. With 2 Royal Needlers, somehow I think I’ll be okay.

-EE

I’m making progress again!

One thing about old RPGs of all sorts is that the method for advancement can range from “not obvious” to “outright counter-intuitive”. The first Lufia, for instance, has a point where you have to backtrack to a village you have no real reason to backtrack to, and I can’t remember if the game ever informs you of this fact.

How does this relate to Phantasy Star III? Well, I knew that the villagers had retreated “far to the west”, which sent me to a cave immediately to the left of where I acquired Wren in the first generation. Sadly, I couldn’t get in there, and trying to explore the rest of Aridia netted me no further progress. Going all the way back to the beginning of the game was not an option, as someone acting on the orders of someone named “Lune” blocked my way. Finally, out of options, I went back into the cave I had acquired Wren in…where a person told me my family was waiting for me.

Brilliant.

Navigating my way back through the maze (How did my family, who ran from the cyborgs, survive this enemy-infested cave? And make no mistake, there were a multitude of enemies in said cave.) and talking to Lyle, I learned his daughter was kidnapped and taken to the east. More exploration revealed a cave near the east that I hadn’t explored, and the Dragon Tear I got from Lyle let me into the cave. And that was as far as I got.

My wandering around for the entirety of the second generation to this point got me enough Meseta to afford a Royal Needler. Essentially, Ayn can now consistently do 100 damage to any enemy, not just defensively weak ones. And he can hit multiple enemies at a time. It’s pretty amazing, since most enemies right now don’t even have 100HP.

Next time: Hopefully, actual progress!
-EE

I’ll be honest, I haven’t made a whole lot of progress in this game of late. Ayn, Mieu and Wren are quite a bit stronger than they were, and I know what my next goals are–essentially “Go west, acquire the Twin Ruby and the Power Topaz (I think that’s what it was called), in some order”–but not so sure exactly how to go about it (No hints please).

So I’m going to take this post to make an observation about the challenge philosophy in this game. my cousin has noted on my Facebook page that one of the things he didn’t like about the game was its high encounter rate. And it occurred to me that if you want your non-boss encounters (Random or not) in your RPG to be anything more than nuisances, you have two basic ways of going about it.

The first is something like an early Wizardry game, or NetHack. Essentially, no matter how strong you are, the game’s mechanics work such that any individual encounter can potentially be your last–whether because all the enemies use powerful spells, inflict debilitating status effects, or just hit really hard, an enemy encounter is an event to be feared.

The second philosophy is something much closer to what Phantasy Star III does. In this philosophy, none of the individual random encounters are capable of hurting you much at all. But the dungeons are long enough, the encounter rate is high enough, and/or your resources are limited enough, that the tiny bit of damage each individual encounter does to you begins to add up until you finally die from their sheer quantity–in other words, a kind of death-by-a-thousand-cuts mentality. In the case of Phantasy Star III in particular, it’s the high encounter rate that can eventually wear down and wipe out your party.

Certain particularly sadistic games find ways to combine these. Phantasy Star II had long dungeons (Longer than Phantasy Star III’s, easily–even if you knew where you were going in them), a high encounter rate, limited resources, plus it occasionally threw in an “oh crap” monster formation that you prayed you could run from, because you were going to die if you couldn’t (“Blasters”. Anyone who’s played the game just nodded and shuddered at the memory).

In any event, it seems to be that when people complain about the encounter rate in RPGs–especially those that have random encounters–they’re complaining about the second philosophy. Or, more accurately, they’re complaining about bad implementations of the second philosophy (Many post-16-bit RPGs have lots of random encounters that can be won while taking no damage whatever. There’s a difference between chip damage and zero damage, and some games fail to recognize that). I feel like Phantasy Star III executes the “lots of easy random encounters that slowly wear you down” philosophy about as well as it can be done.

What do you think of RPG battle philosophies? Do you prefer one over the other?
-EE

The cyborgs are coming! The cyborgs are coming!

In the end, I chose to marry the object of Rhys’s affection from the start of the game, Maia. Was there ever really any doubt?

Doing so got me an offspring named Ayn, who looks a lot like a palette-swapped Lyle. He also has some magical capabilities–in fact, is magical power is stronger than even Mieu’s. This is pretty nice, as it means I can put all his power into Gires and get some cheap healing of the entire party.

Speaking of the party (And of the plot), it seems cyborgs are running riot on the landscape. Now-King Lyle has asked for our help in combating them, and Rhys tells Mieu and Wren (Both of whom retained their equipment and levels. Ayn also inherited the equipment Rhys was wearing at the end of the previous generation) to help me out.

Here, from a plot-meets-gameplay perspective, was the weakest part of the game to date. Essentially, I’ve gone town-hopping, ultimately ending up back in Cille, where there are no more people and the castle has been overrun by monsters (No cyborgs, oddly. Just spiders and something called a “Blink” which is physically weak, but can Gires the entirety of the enemy party). Agoe, the Orakian town near Shusoran (Now-Probably-Dead-King Lyle’s town), claims that no one is sure who’s behind the cyborgs…which means there is a 99% chance that Agoe is behind the cyborgs.

The plot now is kind of confusing, in that people seem to think the Orakians are behind the cyborgs. Basically, I now seem to be aligned with the Layans, even though Ayn is half-and-half by blood. Also, the people who were routed from Shusoran and Agoe ran off to Aridia…where the only village I currently know of is populated entirely by cyborgs. That, I’m sure, ended very well.

I’ll keep going to see if this ever sorts itself out.

-EE

For some reason, the world of Phantasy Star III loves its fountains to lead to dungeons that connect to castles. I don’t get it either.

It’s probably a testament to how unpopular the game is (Or how unpopular I am) that I wasn’t called out on not knowing who Lena was. It turns out that she’s the lady who helps you escape the dungeon at the start of the game. Whoops! Still, why you’d shout “It’s her!” upon seeing her (And not “Hey, it’s the lady who helped me out earlier!”, given that you’re already looking for another “her”) confused me.

The fountain dungeon in the town of Cille was the most difficult dungeon yet. It wasn’t necessarily the most complicated–there were eight possible entrances, but you could tell fairly quickly that most of them wouldn’t really get you anywhere–but the passages were long, and the enemies the most difficult yet. It took me probably four or five trips into the dungeon part to make it all the way through. And this was before the castle portion of the dungeon. This marked the first time I wanted to just get to what I saw as the endpoint of the maze–the enemies were hitting hard, and I was beginning to run out of healing items. I did come across one person who noted that the Layans were insulted that I would try to marry their princess–a fact I had gathered by the fact that I was still being attacked by monsters in the castle. More on this particular plot point a bit later.

After navigating my way through the castle, it was time for a boss fight, against King Cille. It was difficult, with his ability to Zan my entire party for respectable damage, but after I quickly eliminated his Dryad guards, he went down before my party did. Then I had a decision to make. It was time to marry someone, and finish off generation one!

I had both in-character and out-of-character concerns here. I’ll tackle the out-of-character ones first. The game actually breaks off at two points–you can marry one of two people at the end of the first generation, and you make a similar choice at the end of the second generation, for a total of four possible third generations. And I’ve been told that while all four third generations are pretty similar (To the point that it’s really only worth playing through the game once, despite the fact that Sega advertised four endings depending on the path you ended up in on the game’s release), that is decidedly not true of the two possible second generations. If I picked well, or picked poorly, it could completely change my gaming experience for the next several hours.

In-character, I had my choice of two ladies, neither of whom were all that compelling. Maia, my supposed lady-love, has had her entire role to this point be to say “I hope someday we’ll find out who I am and where I came from!” (Answer: She’s a Layan princess. To the game’s credit, unlike today’s games, where there would be a giant cutscene where the main characters [and her] would act all shocked about this, it’s brought up a bit more subtlely. Yes, they mention it, but without a lot of fanfare. Indeed, the game doesn’t even remind you that Maia didn’t know this fact about her lineage at all at this point.), and to be kidnapped. Essentially, she was a living MacGuffin, a trophy for me to chase down. My other option, Lena, did help me escape the dungeon at the beginning of the game, which was nice and all. But as a party member, she was a much, much weaker version of Rhys, with no magic capabilities, and not a lot of fighting ability either (Admittedly, my setting her up with a dual-wielding-knife setup, which was actually a solid choice in Phantasy Star II, may have had something to do with this). Her best role in battle amounted to being a fifth target, and she wasn’t even particularly good at that. Further, there was nothing in the English script of the game to suggest that she was so much as a platonic friend of Rhys, let alone someone he would want to marry for any other reason than “He’ll get more kingdoms.”

Eventually, I made my decision as to who to marry. Who did I pick?

…You’ll have to wait for Part Nine to find out.

-EE

Oh what do you know! Lyle turned out to be a Layan the whole time! Whoever would have predicted that?!

Yes indeed, it turned out that Lyle was the prince of the Layans. And of course I had to fight him. Yet even with this, frankly, predictable turn coming, the game managed to defy my expectations. After Rhys (By himself) bested Lyle in combat, Lyle rejoined my party as though nothing had happened after saying “Hmm, looks like you’re stronger than I thought.” Bizarre, and frankly a pleasant surprise.

I also get the feeling that I saw the game dip into Phantasy Star II-level translation for the first time here. Near the end of the Layan castle, Rhys exclaimed “It’s her!” “Her” did not refer to Maia, though, but apparently a girl I’ve never seen before called Lena. From what I can tell, Lena is Rhys’s Layan counterpart. The only issue here is that she starts off at about the same strength Rhys was at at the start of the game–which would be great if Rhys weren’t about 17 levels higher than that.

In any event, the next step, now that I had a full party (And drums on the overworld music!), was to use Lyle and Lena’s moon fragments to reactivate the Satellite Control System in Aridia. Luckily, I knew exactly where that was given my exploration of the tower, so that was no problem. The village I went to after that contained equipment far, far beyond my realm of affordability (Mid-five digits Meseta on average, when the most I had ever carried on me at any one time was about 2500). No doubt that this will be some sort of true endgame town. For now, though, I’ll keep going, since I think I’m near the end of the first generation (Maia is getting mentioned again with increasing frequency).

-EE