Last time, I traveled up and down the west coast, kicking abundant amounts of ass (including the ass of Nancos, which was easier to kick than I remembered... partly because she didn't have a chance to use her orb and change to different classes.)
Afterward, I went back to Nalles Geso and picked up some Radioactive Kitty Ears, since I actually had enough money to afford them by this point. Strangely enough, they can be used outside battle (as their lighter coloration here -- rather than dark gray -- would indicate) to make one of your characters auto-berserk in the next battle you get into. Only one, though -- the game will not let you berserk more than one of your characters at a time for some reason.
They can also be equipped, but if I remember right they're cursed and have some weird effects (maybe they cause whoever's wearing them to go berserk too?) so I'm going to avoid doing that.
But now, it's finally time...
...to get high. Drink the Frog Juice and immediately the screen starts flashing all kinds of weird colors, and then...
...you end up here, in a neon green hallucination-world where everything is pretty messed up.
There's a vampire selling items, including the Wazzu Sword that you can only get here (since Wazzu Swords are made by Blurbys and there aren't any Blurbys in this game, what with it being set on Earth and all.) It's insanely expensive though -- 4000 konju! -- so I didn't end up getting one.
You can also stumble across earlier bosses as random encounters. Sometimes more than one at a time, as in this screenshot of the stupidly-named Homo Hydras. Which are
really easy to beat at this point in the game, by the way -- only takes one turn to knock out one of them with just regular attacks, and sometimes not even with all four characters having to hit it.
You can also run into Tuham Yigro again, also as a random encounter. Puts up more of a fight than the hydras, but still pretty easy at this point.
Ghugribu and Moglozhu show up here, too. As long as you have attacks that can hurt them they're not too hard.
Lots of weird NPCs here. Like this talking statue, which does absolutely nothing besides tell you it's a talking statue.
And these fish, who just yell "KARP" at you over and over.
And then there's this, which is sort of the "boss" of the area but is actually completely optional.
And not all that hard, either. Though it helped that Enduo used Barrier, causing any spread-targeted attack to get bounced back at the dragon instead of hurting anyone else.
And finally, you find the l33t Dancing Monkey, who knocks you out with a smack on the head, ending the hallucination. You come out of Frog Juice-land right where you were standing when you first entered.
Now that the Frog Juice detour is over, it's time to head back to the southern continent and move forward in the game's actual plot. As you can see there's two caves down here -- the one up above is only reachable via sail barge at the moment, but it's also completely unimportant and there's nothing to do there but fight randomly-encountered Zos (little blobs of various colors) and get a single treasure chest which, if I'm remembering right, contains a near-useless item.
The cave further south, on the other hand, is a volcanic passage through to the other side of the continent.
It's full of all kinds of new enemies, including these -- Lava Kuarudos. I stumbled across Aqua Kuarudos earlier, but I didn't take any screenshots of them so this is the first appearance of any Kuarudo in this playthrough. Basically, Kuarudos are weird little elemental creatures (there are a few others besides the water and fire ones, of course), and like some other enemies in this game they're very hard to damage since they're only vulnerable to certain types of attacks. In the case of Lava Kuarudos, water magic does a really good chunk of damage.
And off on the other side, beyond that cave, is the next town...
...which is Arrrghltan, a jungle village where the rare and mysterious
creatures known as Arrrghlpoots are revered by the natives. And for good reason, since they're 12 feet long, shrug off bullets, and can fire an energy beam from their eyes (well, eye... they only have one) that can easily kill an ordinary human.
Also in this town: a bit of a history lesson, mixed in with some mythology (because whenever you go back 2000 years or more that's bound to happen.) Some of the townsfolk explain that Nebozu used to rule the world, but was defeated by J'daahi Bunprego (hmm, where have we heard
that name before...?) and imprisoned on the moon.
They also claim that the moon used to be wrapped up in the tail of a gigantic Arrrghlpoot and that it went rolling off into orbit when a giant earthquake scared the Arrrghlpoot enough that it loosened its grip on the big rock one day. This part of the story is, of course, not actually true. XD
Oh, and there's also ninjas around here, apparently. They attack in massive groups and are so fast they pretty much always get at least one free hit in before you can counterattack.
Ah, apparently the cave north of Arrrghltan is where some ninjas live. That explains the random ninjas showing up down in a jungle-y area of Central America, I guess.
This legend, just like the one about him fighting Ma-Du Nebozu 2000 years ago and sealing him on the moon, was also based on a true event. The mountain in question was Mt. Goribo from earlier in the game, of course.
There's Arrrghlpoot statues all over this town. Also, back when I made this I still spelled "Arrrghlpoot" with an
excessive amount of extra letters, as you can see from the screenshot here. XD
CHIEF HADADA
KADEELAC MOMOM'BOZUBAH. What a name. And his middle name is basically "Cadillac" pronounced with an accent, for some bizarre reason. XD
Upon being informed that Nebozu has returned, Chief Cadillac here is (understandably) freaked out and stops just short of
praying to Bunprego to save everyone.
I'm sure Robert is not the only one who's tripped over this guy's name.
North of the town is the Cave of Arrrghl, where there's a temple devoted to the Arrrghlpoots (the abundance of Arrrghlpoot statues make it pretty obvious.) This guy wouldn't let you in before talking to Chief Cadillac, but now he does.
Shiny
gold Arrrghlpoot statues in here. Also a healing spot, which you may need since the caves behind here are pretty long and full of lava. After flipping a switch on the right side of the temple, a rock in the back moves out of the way, revealing the passage into the deeper regions of the caves.
And immediately there is a
lava swastika. At least it's the vertical Hindu/Buddhist/etc. type rather than a slanted Nazi-style one.
Wandering around in here, I stumble across an Arrrghlpoot as a random encounter for the first time. It didn't use its Arrrghlbeam attack on me, but it was still a good bit tougher than most random enemies.
And then there's this cave, which is abundant in treasure chests and also
skulls. There's so many piled up there that they actually block your path. And when you try to walk up through the only empty passage...
...you're ambushed by a miniboss battle with Master Yego. There are a couple other Yego enemies running around in this area ("Yego-San" appeared first in the desert areas around Raizone, and in this cave there's also the red fire-elemental version "Roas Yego") but this guy is, of course, the toughest of them all.
And in this room there's randomly a talking skull, for some odd reason.
Nope, it's not another orb-energy thingie, it's...
...a fake, set up as an ambush by these Red Alligutos who jump out to attack as soon as you approach it. I think this is the only time I've seen Red Alligutos around... and I don't recall ever seeing
regular Alligutos, so they might not even be in the game.
Well... there is a huge pit on either side of the platform, Jakarjo. XD
This time it's the real thing -- as you can tell by the background music, oddly enough. In the previous room the pitch of the song was just slightly different than normal and sounded a bit "off" if you paid close attention.
And unlike the orb-energy underneath the ruins in the desert, this time Bunprego does appear to help you infuse the energy into your orbs. He also talks a bit about his past, the battle with Nebozu, and so on, mentioning that he's reverted into his current cute-fluffy-bunny form due to a lack of training.
Bunprego wasn't able to scout out this room due to a barrier, but it turns out it's guarded by the queen of the Lava Kuarudos, who previously appeared in another room full of fake healing tiles (they actually teleported you out of the cave if you stepped on them) warning you that not everything is as it appears.
Now, she's just angry that you've been trespassing in her caves, and of course she attacks. She's basically a leveled-up version of the regular Lava Kuarudos -- lots of fire attacks (and also one earth-based spell, oddly enough) and she's immune to physical blows and most other forms of attack, but super weak against water. Joguo's Wave spell was doing
160 damage every turn, so after a while...
...she explodes, after making this weird sound.
And holy humping buffaloes of doom! It's...
...made of LEGOs!
And it's an airship! Well, that's useful. It is, thankfully, not
actually made of LEGO bricks. XD
After the airship takes off, you're transported into its cockpit, where there are a lot of robots roaming around. Fortunately they're not like the ones back in Sannak that attacked you, and some of them give you some information about the airship.
Others... not so much.
And now you know what that second cave opening up in the mountains was for -- the airship had to have
some way to get back out to the surface, after all.
For some odd reason I randomly decided to land at the Zo Cave first, even though it's small and mostly pointless (at least at this point in the game.)
Yep... that's all that's there. A bunch of multi-colored Arrrghlpoot statues (in the colors of the five Orbs, to be specific) and a treasure chest, other than that just a sandy cave with some pools of water strewn about.
This area, on the other hand, is a bit more significant...
...it's home to a bunch of dragons, some of which speak (broken) English and others you need a Psychic in your team to communicate with.
Dragons
loving cheese seems to be a consistent pattern with the textboxes around here -- there's at least four who talk about cheese spread across the map.
Inside these caves, there's big ol' piles of bling, which seem to be the only part of the Standard Fantasy Dragon Stereotype that applies to these guys.
There's also this random enemy, which was named after the way my mom mispronounced the word "futon" back around the time I was making this game. When defeated, it drops a Zwoobah Fruit which raises all of your stats by a little bit.
And this chest, which is red for some odd reason, contains a set of gold chains reminiscent of Mr. T's. It's also guarded by those purple monstrosities, the first Yenrab you'll encounter in the game. They're basically Barney, as their name indicates when the letters are rearranged. You'll be seeing a lot more of them later.
On the other side of that cave, there's...
another freaking orb. Wonder who that one's for...?
Just make sure to save the wondering about the Red Orb's owner for after beating the gigantic spider that shows up to attack you as soon as you pick up the orb. The Omega Ikker isn't all that hard, surprisingly enough -- I thought I remembered it being much more of a pain when playing through the game before.
Here's the first (and only?) time the Uggy Barfoo symbols on various maps are actually acknowledged in-game.
And... yep, there they go about cheese again.
Oh, and I completely forgot to visit this area last time, but... to the left of the Arrrghlpoot Temple is the ninja clan's cave, where they sell ninja equipment (Enduo can change classes to become a ninja now that he's gotten the last orb-energy upgrade.)
There's also the Ninja Master's chamber, which nobody but ninjas is allowed to enter. Since it's impossible to set up an all-ninja party in the game, it's impossible to ever go in here.
Flying around in the airship, it's finally possible to reach this island off in the southeast... yep, it's the island that Mejuai mentioned wanting to visit waaaaay back at the start of the game. And that humongous tree on the map isn't just for decoration, as you'll see later on when I can actually get there.
For now, however, this Kuarudo is blocking my path and won't let me go through unless I bring her the Ajrien Crystal hidden away on the northern continent. Guess it's almost time to go to Canada.
But first, a trip back to Wafterville. Now that Enduo is a Psychic, we can communicate with the ghosts and figure out what the heck happened here. It turns out that the ghosts are being held here by some mysterious force, generated by some object that fell into the inn during the meteor shower that destroyed the town years ago.
Speaking of the inn, the boulder that was blocking its doorway before has moved out of the way now.
And inside, there's a weird fog...
...and upstairs, a lot more weirdness: some statues, suits of armor, and a crystal ball just sitting there in the middle.
And of course, if you approach the crystal, the "suits of armor" reveal themselves to actually be robots.
Yep, robots in a ghost town in the middle of Redneck-Land.
And here they randomly use the correct robot face graphic, rather than the "dark knight with creepy glowing red eyes" one from the previous textbox.
The result of the two robots fusing together is this thing, an optional boss that can be nearly unbeatable if you don't bring the right classes into the fight. Being made of Kirbium, which is the second-strongest metal in the 40 Nherbis, the Kirbium Guardian is basically immune to physical attacks. Kirbium is also extremely heat-resistant, so fire's no good either. And, as Joguo the wizard found out in this fight... water, darkness, and light spells are all equally useless, doing no damage at all.
Fortunately, between Enduo's psychic attacks, Robert's Megabooger, and Jakarjo's electricity-based summon spells I've got plenty of ways to actually damage the thing, and the fight turns out to be not so hard after all.
It also drops some Kirbium Armor, which unfortunately nobody in my team can equip with their current classes. Which is really odd, as Kirbium is a very
light metal and it doesn't make much sense for someone who can equip heavy-ass Iron Armor to not be able to equip Kirbum Armor.
After breaking the crystal ball, the ghosts from around town suddenly appear in the inn, no longer tied down to their previous locations.
And here's a somewhat odd sequence where the nun informs everyone that even though she's not sure where everyone will go after death, she knows one of them
isn't going to heaven...
...because apparently, "all dogs go to Hell." This is followed by a bright light and shiny noise during which all the human ghosts (and the cat) vanish, leaving the dog behind for a few seconds before some spooky noises play and the "dark flames" attack animation shows up, focused on the dog (which also disappears.)
I think I must have been going for a reverse of how Earthbound had dogs and cats set up -- all the cats just had "Meow" textboxes while the dogs had a lot to say, while in this game the cats get real textboxes (well, most of them -- ghost-kitty here just meows) and the dogs just go "DUH!" if you read their mind. Still, the spoof on "All Dogs Go To Heaven" here is a little unexpected.
Anyway... that seems like a decent spot to leave off, right after the end of one of the game's many sidequests. Next time: more sidequests, and then we're off to Canadia!
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