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So, yeah, Nate came back. Well, not Nate. That's not his name. Joel? That's not right, either, but who cares. The important thing is that yet another attempt to force this story just a *little* out of its Easy-Bake cliche box was thwarted.
I actually took a bit of time until I got Joel; I thought the next thing to do was to go to the thief town and try to free Joel's master, but an encounter with a locked, guarded gate and a cave switch puzzle that seems solvable but didn't respond to any of my pushes or spells disproved that. I then tried poking around the mountain pass to the next area, not wholly expecting to mke any progress - I thought that we were skipping ahead in the story. I *did* like that you had to fumble about with your own spells to solve the puzzles and fail to trigger Joel showing up - you weren't given any cutscene prodding. Inside, also, the maze was created from actual honest-to-goodness environmental obstacles and puzzles, instead of the usual which-branch-of-the-maze-leads-to-the-treasure-chest-and-which-leads-me-to-the-next-level guesswork.
One thing - the encounter rate is hideous. I discovered that while poking about the overworld during my "what do I do?" phase for any towns or dungeons I possibly missed. It's literally every three or four steps. Every handheld-RPG designer nowadays needs to play FF1 as a prerequisite for employment. Between Lunar: Dragon Song's lack of enemy targeting during combat and this, they're inventing level-one bonehead mistakes that didn't even *exist* in the level-one NES era.
Anyhow, across the pass, and I'm in some tree town - Biliby or something. There's a large building nearby that residents *think* is called "the Lighthouse". And, gee, a large party was spotted heading in its direction recently. What're the odds that we'll get there a *second* too late for the lighting party?
I actually took a bit of time until I got Joel; I thought the next thing to do was to go to the thief town and try to free Joel's master, but an encounter with a locked, guarded gate and a cave switch puzzle that seems solvable but didn't respond to any of my pushes or spells disproved that. I then tried poking around the mountain pass to the next area, not wholly expecting to mke any progress - I thought that we were skipping ahead in the story. I *did* like that you had to fumble about with your own spells to solve the puzzles and fail to trigger Joel showing up - you weren't given any cutscene prodding. Inside, also, the maze was created from actual honest-to-goodness environmental obstacles and puzzles, instead of the usual which-branch-of-the-maze-leads-to-the-treasure-chest-and-which-leads-me-to-the-next-level guesswork.
One thing - the encounter rate is hideous. I discovered that while poking about the overworld during my "what do I do?" phase for any towns or dungeons I possibly missed. It's literally every three or four steps. Every handheld-RPG designer nowadays needs to play FF1 as a prerequisite for employment. Between Lunar: Dragon Song's lack of enemy targeting during combat and this, they're inventing level-one bonehead mistakes that didn't even *exist* in the level-one NES era.
Anyhow, across the pass, and I'm in some tree town - Biliby or something. There's a large building nearby that residents *think* is called "the Lighthouse". And, gee, a large party was spotted heading in its direction recently. What're the odds that we'll get there a *second* too late for the lighting party?
