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indigozealLast time, in the shock of the century, a Mystic Ark title was holding up progress until I solved a board game puzzle.
Well, at least it's colorful. Your job is to get each animal playing piece to its appropriate home. You have the option to move one animal per turn; the selected animal will move one space ahead in the direction it's facing. If its path is blocked by the edge of the board, another piece, or another animal's home, it'll turn in the direction to its right instead. You got 16 moves to solve the puzzle, and I needed every one.
As exasperated as I am to see the return of board game malarky, this was actually pretty good. It's a unique premise(to my knowledge) that involves thought nad not guesswork, and it took me about ten minutes to puzzle it out.
"I know. Grin was saying that he had made some of his magnificent honey tea. Why don't you treat yourself to some?"
Jack says that he still needs time to make the flute (you didn't have time all that while I was solving your board game?), so he tells Remeer to go bother Grin for some honey tea.
So is our mission this time just to sit down and relax a while?
"[Reddy] said he lost something important to him!"
No, of course not.
"I forgot my special treasure up in the tree! But I'm scared of the black dog, so I can't go get it!"
Oh, daisies. Could you be more specific? There are only like 10,000 trees around here.
"There's an egg that looks like it's keeping the hands of the clock from moving."
It takes me a while to realize that I'm supposed to infuse the Ark of Courage into Reddy. I make a thorough check of the forest, which reveals nothing, except that I can't push that box to climb up in that larger tree like I did earlier. I come back to ask Reddy for better directions, but that's not happening. I check the pixies' cuckoo clock in a click-on-everything-with-everything mindset, though, and discover...that the cuckoo clock has laid an egg in the interim.
"Is that an egg?! I've been wanting one for the longest time! Give it here!"
There's nothing immediately apparent that I can do with an egg, though. I give it to Jack, but he just takes it with no reward. Screw that. I reload.
"It just has to be around here..."
When I remember about the whole "infusing people with Arks & fairies" thing and do so with Reddy, it prompts him to accompany me outside. Reddy retrieves whatever his treasure was, and that's that, oddly.
"My treasure was a slingshot! With a slingshot, you can make nuts falls from trees and get those spiders."
We learn later, though, that Reddy's treasure was a slingshot. From the description, it sounds like a combat upgrade. I think the game was hinting to me that I should have climbed up in the tree earlier so I could have retrieved the slingshot, because I didn't get anything in return here, and that description is suspiciously leading. I tried climbing the tree multiple times previously, though, and I couldn't find anything.
"The silver flute's ready, huh? Now to find that black dog!"
That reminds me; should I have been calling the "black dog" the "Barghest" all this time? It's sometimes referred to as the 黒犬獣 - literally "black dog beast," but that's a suspicious agglomeration of kanji. It looks like it's meant to represent a more specific concept.
Anyhow, Jack finally finishes the flute. Boss battle time! If there is a battle. I wonder how this title is gonna handle boss battles, anyhow. Let's save before we see.
"It's the black dog!"
...Or the game could just cut to the boss without giving me a chance to save. That could happen, too.
"All right! I'll draw his attention!"
The Fairy of Courage lives up to his name for once and distracts the dog while Remeer plays the flute.
And once Remeer blows the whistle, Romus is instantly defeated. Or at least shrunk down from the huge canine he was before. (You can't see it very well, but that's what's happening in the second pic above.) He then runs off.
(I do wonder what happened to the dog, though. Jack mentioned after handing the flute over how much he missed his dog.)
And after that...
Sometimes the game's idea of using 2-D drawn art in a 3-D polygon landscape works to create a pop-up storybook feel, and sometimes it looks like it does here. Particularly coming as the climax to this chapter, it looks really cheap.
He does go through a number of facial expressions, though.
"Now that I'm an Ark, I can wield fire! So when you want some fire, just call me with a card!"
Anyhow, our fairy friend is now an Ark of Courage. As we all know from Angelique, courage is the element borne by fire, and so Oscar Jr. here informs us that as an Ark of Courage, he can now ignite fires.
We'll still need cards to summon him, though. Bastard.
Off he goes. Remy is engulfed in light and returned to theshrine theatre.
Not so fast, though. I think there's one more thing to do in Fairy Village.
Hmmm. I thought that lighting a fire here would unfreeze the basement, thawing the roots of the Trent, who'd been complaining of water issues. Instead, it just lights a little fire beneath the pot, and you're given three options to tend the fire: throw more wood on, shovel out some ash, or...well, I didn't see the third one, since I went right for the "put more wood on" option. This just made the fire sputter out, though, which is actually accurate. Unless you've tinkered with a wood stove, you'd never believe how tough it can be to set allegedly flammable material on fire.
In other pixie-hollow adventures, I learn that I can actually drink Grin's tea this time, and it turns out to be a health restorative. Not that I've lost any health so far, though.
"This world is protected by the Golden Bird. Everything will be all right now."
"Bird"? What are you talking about?
One more place to check in on:
"My dog came back! This is thanks to you, isn't it!?"
"His real name is Pero!"
"Stay!"
"Come!"
WHO'S A GOOD BOY WHO'S A GOOD BOY
(or girl; it's never actually specified)
OK, now it's time to go back to the theatre. Let's try to find the next portal.
I find another goddamn Lights Out game instead. Amazingly, I get it on my first try. It wasn't this iteration of the game, though; it was the first iteration, requiring only four flips instead of seven. This photo is from GameFAQs. I didn't get a photo of my own game, I'm sorry. Lights Out induces mental trauma.
"The boy seems to have found his courage. He might be ready to meet the doctor now. But to do so, he must summon that courage and find the secret entrance within the wall. But I wonder if he can find the exact place where he can put his fire to use?"
Fingertips's diary reveals that he's been keeping tabs on us. Creep. The diary seems to be this game's version of the fireplace in the shrine.
Despite SFT's warnings previously about Arks eventually leaving after being summoned, he Ark of Courage actually stays with me for quite a long time while I figure this out this latest riddle. Turns out that the correct place is this unobtrusive candle stand here. The lit candles set fire to the nearby tapestry to reveal...
AHHHHHHH
Yes, leap into the giant skull. Clearly, this is a proper place for a child to go.
(You know, the entrance to the first world was created by a monster punching a hole in the theatre wall. The entrance to the second world was created when a pretty tapestry was burned up to reveal a skull beneath. Is the theatre going to be like Room 302 from Silent Hill 4, gradually deteriorating over the course of the game?)
Thus begins Chapter 2, "Dr. Monstrorum's Strange Laboratory."
"Ho ho... Since you've come this far, I surmise you've saved the pixies from the Barghest? What courage!"
SFT reappears with an ambiguous greeting. He also introduces a friend.
"I see...so this child was the one who ruined my sweet little Barghest, was he? I'll have to pay you back handsomely for that."
We meet the eponymous scissor-clawed Professor right away, and we learn several things: this is his lab; he uses it to create "terrible monsters"; and the Barghest was one of his creations. As he notes above, he's aware that Remy's the one responsible for undoing his work, and he's not happy about it (so the people in Maboroshi Gekijou are aware of what goes on in other worlds, unlike the SFAM game - or maybe SFT's just been snitching). Oh, and SFT's backing him. Obviously. (He gave the doctor this lab.)
"...Unfortunately, my latest creation is not yet complete. What a pity."
[SFT, offscreen:] "Allow me to prepare a different amusement for you. I'll leave the rest to you, Doctor."
There's no other word for it: SFT sics the mad vivisectionist on the preteen protagonist. I wonder what this game was rated in Japan.
The Doctor isn't interested in revenge yet, though. Instead, he wants us to help to assemble the monster he will presumably use to attempt to kill us.
"Wha' ish it, Dokter?"
To this end, he summons his Igor, Pickay, who speaks with an allegedly comedic lisp.
OK, I have to pause for a second. The "pixies" from the first world looked kind of weird & unpixielike, but at least they were friendly, and the world overall was colorful. Here, it looks like we're gonna be stuck in a dungeon world with grotesque creepos. I appreciate Yamada's involvement here, but the character design is proving more a liability than an asset at this point.
"Pickay's made a noo FRIEND! YAAAY!"
Included mainly for the face shot of Remy. (Certainly it's not for the dialogue.)
"You two go into the basement and get his body from cold storage."
Here's the monster. Wait, is that a spring? Are we building a park employee from Illbleed? Also, I think its teeth are in its head.
"Mix the blue & red chemicals/Mix the red & green chemicals/Mix the blue & green chemicals"
The professor tends to his work. Incidentally, if you search the nearby shelves, you can fool with mixing chemicals to produce new compounds. You're then prompted to either drink or save your results. I tried saving the potion I made (because drinking it: ha ha, no), but it evaporated instantly when I tried.
The basement is accessed via a rusty freight elevator which, upon activation, prompts a knowing nod to the typical Resident Evil between-room cutscene transition: the camera closes in on a slow shot of the door closing and the platform sinking surrounded by blackness, etc. And below...?
.
Well, at least it's colorful. Your job is to get each animal playing piece to its appropriate home. You have the option to move one animal per turn; the selected animal will move one space ahead in the direction it's facing. If its path is blocked by the edge of the board, another piece, or another animal's home, it'll turn in the direction to its right instead. You got 16 moves to solve the puzzle, and I needed every one.
As exasperated as I am to see the return of board game malarky, this was actually pretty good. It's a unique premise(to my knowledge) that involves thought nad not guesswork, and it took me about ten minutes to puzzle it out.
"I know. Grin was saying that he had made some of his magnificent honey tea. Why don't you treat yourself to some?"
Jack says that he still needs time to make the flute (you didn't have time all that while I was solving your board game?), so he tells Remeer to go bother Grin for some honey tea.
So is our mission this time just to sit down and relax a while?
"[Reddy] said he lost something important to him!"
No, of course not.
"I forgot my special treasure up in the tree! But I'm scared of the black dog, so I can't go get it!"
Oh, daisies. Could you be more specific? There are only like 10,000 trees around here.
"There's an egg that looks like it's keeping the hands of the clock from moving."
It takes me a while to realize that I'm supposed to infuse the Ark of Courage into Reddy. I make a thorough check of the forest, which reveals nothing, except that I can't push that box to climb up in that larger tree like I did earlier. I come back to ask Reddy for better directions, but that's not happening. I check the pixies' cuckoo clock in a click-on-everything-with-everything mindset, though, and discover...that the cuckoo clock has laid an egg in the interim.
"Is that an egg?! I've been wanting one for the longest time! Give it here!"
There's nothing immediately apparent that I can do with an egg, though. I give it to Jack, but he just takes it with no reward. Screw that. I reload.
"It just has to be around here..."
When I remember about the whole "infusing people with Arks & fairies" thing and do so with Reddy, it prompts him to accompany me outside. Reddy retrieves whatever his treasure was, and that's that, oddly.
"My treasure was a slingshot! With a slingshot, you can make nuts falls from trees and get those spiders."
We learn later, though, that Reddy's treasure was a slingshot. From the description, it sounds like a combat upgrade. I think the game was hinting to me that I should have climbed up in the tree earlier so I could have retrieved the slingshot, because I didn't get anything in return here, and that description is suspiciously leading. I tried climbing the tree multiple times previously, though, and I couldn't find anything.
"The silver flute's ready, huh? Now to find that black dog!"
That reminds me; should I have been calling the "black dog" the "Barghest" all this time? It's sometimes referred to as the 黒犬獣 - literally "black dog beast," but that's a suspicious agglomeration of kanji. It looks like it's meant to represent a more specific concept.
Anyhow, Jack finally finishes the flute. Boss battle time! If there is a battle. I wonder how this title is gonna handle boss battles, anyhow. Let's save before we see.
"It's the black dog!"
...Or the game could just cut to the boss without giving me a chance to save. That could happen, too.
"All right! I'll draw his attention!"
The Fairy of Courage lives up to his name for once and distracts the dog while Remeer plays the flute.
And once Remeer blows the whistle, Romus is instantly defeated. Or at least shrunk down from the huge canine he was before. (You can't see it very well, but that's what's happening in the second pic above.) He then runs off.
(I do wonder what happened to the dog, though. Jack mentioned after handing the flute over how much he missed his dog.)
And after that...
Sometimes the game's idea of using 2-D drawn art in a 3-D polygon landscape works to create a pop-up storybook feel, and sometimes it looks like it does here. Particularly coming as the climax to this chapter, it looks really cheap.
He does go through a number of facial expressions, though.
"Now that I'm an Ark, I can wield fire! So when you want some fire, just call me with a card!"
Anyhow, our fairy friend is now an Ark of Courage. As we all know from Angelique, courage is the element borne by fire, and so Oscar Jr. here informs us that as an Ark of Courage, he can now ignite fires.
We'll still need cards to summon him, though. Bastard.
Off he goes. Remy is engulfed in light and returned to the
Not so fast, though. I think there's one more thing to do in Fairy Village.
Hmmm. I thought that lighting a fire here would unfreeze the basement, thawing the roots of the Trent, who'd been complaining of water issues. Instead, it just lights a little fire beneath the pot, and you're given three options to tend the fire: throw more wood on, shovel out some ash, or...well, I didn't see the third one, since I went right for the "put more wood on" option. This just made the fire sputter out, though, which is actually accurate. Unless you've tinkered with a wood stove, you'd never believe how tough it can be to set allegedly flammable material on fire.
In other pixie-hollow adventures, I learn that I can actually drink Grin's tea this time, and it turns out to be a health restorative. Not that I've lost any health so far, though.
"This world is protected by the Golden Bird. Everything will be all right now."
"Bird"? What are you talking about?
One more place to check in on:
"My dog came back! This is thanks to you, isn't it!?"
"His real name is Pero!"
"Stay!"
"Come!"
WHO'S A GOOD BOY WHO'S A GOOD BOY
(or girl; it's never actually specified)
OK, now it's time to go back to the theatre. Let's try to find the next portal.
I find another goddamn Lights Out game instead. Amazingly, I get it on my first try. It wasn't this iteration of the game, though; it was the first iteration, requiring only four flips instead of seven. This photo is from GameFAQs. I didn't get a photo of my own game, I'm sorry. Lights Out induces mental trauma.
"The boy seems to have found his courage. He might be ready to meet the doctor now. But to do so, he must summon that courage and find the secret entrance within the wall. But I wonder if he can find the exact place where he can put his fire to use?"
Fingertips's diary reveals that he's been keeping tabs on us. Creep. The diary seems to be this game's version of the fireplace in the shrine.
Despite SFT's warnings previously about Arks eventually leaving after being summoned, he Ark of Courage actually stays with me for quite a long time while I figure this out this latest riddle. Turns out that the correct place is this unobtrusive candle stand here. The lit candles set fire to the nearby tapestry to reveal...
AHHHHHHH
Yes, leap into the giant skull. Clearly, this is a proper place for a child to go.
(You know, the entrance to the first world was created by a monster punching a hole in the theatre wall. The entrance to the second world was created when a pretty tapestry was burned up to reveal a skull beneath. Is the theatre going to be like Room 302 from Silent Hill 4, gradually deteriorating over the course of the game?)
Thus begins Chapter 2, "Dr. Monstrorum's Strange Laboratory."
"Ho ho... Since you've come this far, I surmise you've saved the pixies from the Barghest? What courage!"
SFT reappears with an ambiguous greeting. He also introduces a friend.
"I see...so this child was the one who ruined my sweet little Barghest, was he? I'll have to pay you back handsomely for that."
We meet the eponymous scissor-clawed Professor right away, and we learn several things: this is his lab; he uses it to create "terrible monsters"; and the Barghest was one of his creations. As he notes above, he's aware that Remy's the one responsible for undoing his work, and he's not happy about it (so the people in Maboroshi Gekijou are aware of what goes on in other worlds, unlike the SFAM game - or maybe SFT's just been snitching). Oh, and SFT's backing him. Obviously. (He gave the doctor this lab.)
"...Unfortunately, my latest creation is not yet complete. What a pity."
[SFT, offscreen:] "Allow me to prepare a different amusement for you. I'll leave the rest to you, Doctor."
There's no other word for it: SFT sics the mad vivisectionist on the preteen protagonist. I wonder what this game was rated in Japan.
The Doctor isn't interested in revenge yet, though. Instead, he wants us to help to assemble the monster he will presumably use to attempt to kill us.
"Wha' ish it, Dokter?"
To this end, he summons his Igor, Pickay, who speaks with an allegedly comedic lisp.
OK, I have to pause for a second. The "pixies" from the first world looked kind of weird & unpixielike, but at least they were friendly, and the world overall was colorful. Here, it looks like we're gonna be stuck in a dungeon world with grotesque creepos. I appreciate Yamada's involvement here, but the character design is proving more a liability than an asset at this point.
"Pickay's made a noo FRIEND! YAAAY!"
Included mainly for the face shot of Remy. (Certainly it's not for the dialogue.)
"You two go into the basement and get his body from cold storage."
Here's the monster. Wait, is that a spring? Are we building a park employee from Illbleed? Also, I think its teeth are in its head.
"Mix the blue & red chemicals/Mix the red & green chemicals/Mix the blue & green chemicals"
The professor tends to his work. Incidentally, if you search the nearby shelves, you can fool with mixing chemicals to produce new compounds. You're then prompted to either drink or save your results. I tried saving the potion I made (because drinking it: ha ha, no), but it evaporated instantly when I tried.
The basement is accessed via a rusty freight elevator which, upon activation, prompts a knowing nod to the typical Resident Evil between-room cutscene transition: the camera closes in on a slow shot of the door closing and the platform sinking surrounded by blackness, etc. And below...?
.
