Last time, I beat several major bosses (two of which using the cheap-ass methods of "just summon Karp over and over" and "knock her out with rapid-fire berserk attacks before she can switch forms") and found both of the keys that will let me move forward with the game's plot.
The keys open up the "Chamber of Ajrien," which contains the Ajrien Crystal that the Kuarudo on the southeast island told me to bring back there. We've fought three different elemental Kuarudo queens at this point in the game, so I think you can probably guess what happens after that... XD
But first...
...I'll need to actually go
get the Ajrien Crystal, which means backtracking through that obnoxious spiral room in the Path of Wind. After what seemed like an hour of walking and random-encounter fighting, I escape from that place and go through the relatively peaceful (and non-irritating) middle cave system, ending up in the Chamber of Ajrien shown above.
The crystal animates as if hopping around in place, for some bizarre reason. I'm really not sure why, and I can't remember if it was intentional or not. But anyway, we've got the shiny thing now.
There's a graphical glitch in this spot where the tree should go behind the house, but there's a missing piece of tree so you're visible through it. Whoops.
Also, after
finally managing to beat a Chicken Lizard (normally they run away, so the only reliable way to catch them in time is to make Enduo a ninja, equip him with the Speed Bagel to make him automatically hasted, and then use his Zwoobah Slash super move to make sure you finish off the critter in one shot), I now have a membership card to the Slutzenhoez Club.
So... yep, I'm going back to visit one of the most embarrassing parts of this game. I actually can't remember off the top of my head just how bad it is -- it might not be as awful as I'm remembering, or maybe I'm mixing it up with a scene from another game I made back then... not sure which.
But first, like any sane person, I decide to visit the Ninja's Tower rather than going directly to the Slutzenhoez Club. Because who needs strippers/hookers anyway when you have freaking
ninjas? XD
Yep, Ninja's Tower Casino is now finally open to the public. I'm not sure what random event triggered it opening, but I'm suspecting it might have opened up after I visited Arrrghltan and the cave where the ninjas lived back behind there. They actually mention the Cave of Arrrghl's ninja clan in here, so I'm guessing that's probably it.
As it is a casino, there are random little casino games -- a "spin the wheel" sort of thing and also slot machines upstairs.
I'm fairly sure "shibou" meant something like "blubber" in Japanese? I can't remember for sure, though, it's been a while since I made this.
...because of the "Earl of Sandwich." Who wasn't actually
named Earl, he was
an earl, but... eh. Close enough. XD
Dragons and ninjas. Yep. Dragons and item shops do not often go together, however -- but they do here!
This guy still needs more training, obviously.
Several ninjas on this floor explain the slot machine's possibilities. Bugs are apparently worth
something to these guys, as you at least win a little bit of money if you get three...
...not so for Evil Potatoes. All you win with Evil Potatoes is the "Curse" status effect, which is pretty nasty to have and can only be cured by the Holy Rice item (or a stay at the inn.)
This guy's luck is terrible, apparently. His girlfriend standing next to him comments that he
always gets the Evil Potato. Maybe he should get his curse from the last one cured before trying again? Might help with your luck a bit, dude... XD
Well, at least it's better than the Evil Potato.
Yep, the spin-the-wheel game can have some nasty results too. I remember there being one where a horde of ninjas jumps out and ambushes you, in addition to the poison dart mentioned here.
Hmmmmm... I
wonder what might have happened...
Even ninjas have to follow alcohol regulations.
And now it's time to move on to the Slutzenhoez Club. The fat guy blocking the door is gone now that we have a Membership Card, so it's possible to come inside. Also, I think this girl's text box (and the name "Slutzenhoez" itself) is the only time in the game that the word "slut" is not written as "shlut," as if the person speaking spontaneously develops a lisp that kicks in only for that word.
Apparently there's two (maybe three?) tables populated by non-slutty people, but the rest...
Well, okay. She doesn't sound particularly slutty either, at first glance.
And... yeah. This guy refuses entry to the upper floor unless you bring a "shlut" with you. And after that's happened, you can go back and talk to any of the "shluts" present in the room, which will teleport you to this guy (now moved aside) and let you go up the stairs. Though apparently the shluts will only participate in shluttiness with one person at a time, so you get a choice box that pops up and lets you pick one of your party members.
Well, one of your
male party members, anyway. And I'm assuming only the human party members are eligible, but I'm not 100% sure, as I don't think I ever tried to bring Bunneh here.
Though you do get a choice-box including every male (human) member of the party, choosing Enduo results in this text-box. It seems that even in a 99.99999% fictional game made shortly after high school, I (or a character closely based on me) am not the sort of person who'd be interested in random-stranger sex, especially not in some sketchy club where there's probably not all that much privacy. Yeesh.
Joguo and Jakarjo, on the other hand, are apparently fine with this (I didn't test it with Robert this time, as Julia was in the fourth slot of my party at the time.)
And you get this goofy scene where Joguo/Jakarjo(/maybe Robert?) and whichever of the girls go to the bed and... just kind of stand there (walking in place, under the covers) while bumping and "mouse squeak" sounds play. Squeaky mattress? Eventually a healing/magic sound plays, the screen blacks out, and the "inn healing" jingle plays... except you don't actually get healed.
So... much like real-life random-stranger-humping, the Slutzenhoez Club is ultimately pointless, and you're much better off spending your time in ninja-themed casinos, especially if they are run by real ninjas and you can win actual ninja equipment at their wheel-spin game.
(Also, I think it might get hit by meteors and be completely wiped off the map in the second half of the game, but we're not quite there yet. XD)
Now, back to the southeast island where the plot-relevant events continue. The Kuarudo queen here demands the Ajrien Crystal, which leads to a choice-box that's a bit more meaningful than the Slutzenhoez Club's version. If you say no, you immediately fight her...
...just like the others. She's weak to fire, so having Jakarjo be a Wizard here was a good decision. Everyone but Joguo contributes to the damage here, though, and eventually (she has a pretty ridiculous amount of HP it seems) she is defeated.
But if you choose to
give her the crystal without a fight (yes, the game lets you do this!), then...
...well, first of all, Jakarjo senses a disturbance in the force. But she doesn't attack you, that's good, right...?
Maybe not. Not only does she have the Ajrien Crystal, but she won't let you pass through this area into the jungle area beyond... so you have to fight her either way.
The difference is, of course, that since she has the Ajrien Crystal she's used it to power up, and in this battle is labeled as "AjrienChiquila" rather than just Chiquila. Her resistances to some attacks seem to increase in this form, and there's another difference I'll mention later.
During the fight I somehow managed to poison her! Actually, I think she poisoned herself by using Toxic Mist or something when Julia had a barrier up, but I wasn't aware it was even possible to poison her so it's still kind of funny how that happened.
Speaking of barriers...
...if you have one active when she attempts to blast you with the Ajrien Crystal's power,
that gets reflected back on her too, and does 200+ damage (which is not as much as the 500+ it does to you, but still not a bad chunk of damage considering that even Jakarjo's Fire Bomb only does 300-some.)
Eventually, Chiquila is defeated...
...but the Ajrien Crystal, which she dropped after the battle, is immediately destroyed by the surge of energy released when she explodes. Whoops.
This item is completely useless -- Summoners and Trainers can use it in battle, but it just causes nasty status effects to your own characters. Yep, this is basically the "cursed item" version of the summon-a-random-critter items.
Speaking of which, I think I completely forgot to go back to Arrrghltan and get the item that lets you summon an Arrrghlpoot in battle, which might be a good thing to go back and get before too much longer.
After beating Chiquila (Ajrien or otherwise), you gain access to a pretty big jungle wilderness area behind that little shrine at the entrance. The enemies here are the toughest so far, including the super annoying
self-destructing, warp-speed-fast ants which are fully capable of knocking off half of your entire party's HP before you have a chance to hit them once. Thankfully, hitting them once tends to kill them right away.
These carnivorous plant things aren't as bad as the ants, but they
are named after the Pokémon species Victreebel's Japanese name, which is "Utsuboto" or something like that if I remember right.
After a couple maps of jungle, you come across this enormous thing, which is in fact a gigantic, ancient tree. Specifically, that huge tree that was visible on the world map.
This is the Great Tree of Arkusazzo, which is not quite the same as the tree of the same name that exists in my current
Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game/story ideas -- there's no demon named Arkusazzo sealed inside of it, first of all. And it's not in Joguo's backyard, obviously. But yeah... this is the second version of the Tree of Arkusazzo, the original being from some random drawings in the high school years where it was home to a being named Arkusazzo, which basically was like my current character Arkusazzo except she had shorter hair, no hair-bun-things (think Sailor Moon but pointy instead of spherical), and with three random floating Zo blobs that always followed her around.
Yeah, some of my character/place/etc. ideas change pretty drastically from one version of something to another. XD
There's humans in here! Weird. Anyway, these guys give you various random bits of information about the tree and other things related to it. Apparently there's other guardians similar to Bunprego, but I don't recall if the game ever goes into that detail at any point after this. I guess looking back this
could be interpreted as a reference to the Guardians of the Barfoo, but I didn't actually make them up until
years after this game was made, so that wasn't really the intent at the time. What the intent was, I can't remember now.
There's a lot of really, really odd items found in chests here -- the food items are all Italian in origin, despite this being a small tropical island somewhere off the coast of Central America or something.
As you get higher up, the fog gets thicker. You're probably inside a cloud at this point.
And here's the top floor, where a dragon is guarding a tiny little room.
...which it turns out is an
ancient teleportation machine which can send you to the moon. Well, that's handy considering we're hunting down an evil moron from the moon in this game! But yeah... since I accidentally broke the Ajrien Crystal, I guess that means I'll need to find the other crystal, which is conveniently located in this very tree.
Just a few floors down from the top, actually. This angel-ish looking NPC is guarding it, or guarding the path that leads up to it anyway. And in order to get it....
...you have to fight her. She doesn't seem to actually have a
name, as "Su-Nearujin" is just the name of the crystal with the Japanese "-jin" suffix that alien species and elemental gods and such tend to have.
Oh, and she can summon critters. Including
Arrrghlpoots, as shown above! She's not as bad as the Kuarudo queens were, but still takes a bit of effort considering that some attacks (ki blasts in particular) won't work on her.
And randomly, she drops a magical healing taco when defeated. This is the upgrade to the "Life Biscuit" commonly found throughout the game, and restores someone to life with 25% HP rather than just a single point.
And at the end of the tree's random side branch, there's another randomly-dancing crystal sprite, which of course is the Su-Nearu Crystal. Unlike the Ajrien Crystal, it can't be used in battle to generate a huge explosion (as seen in the AjrienChiquila battle), but it still works to power the transporter.
Speaking of the transporter... we'll be activating it next time. Going to the moon, also known as the land of Barney-monsters and blue-haired elves and cheese-dragons!
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