What if Massacre Princess was real? Let's Play Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage Until It Breaks or I Do

[Timrod]

“Aidyn Chronicles is a 45-hour game that should’ve been 20” - Ryan

Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage is the last game released by H2O Interactive, a developer whose entire portfolio up to this game’s release in March of 2001 consisted of two Tetris games released just a few years prior. It was H2O’s ambitious attempt at making a more traditional RPG for the Nintendo 64. Did it succeed? Given that it had a 5/10 review score on release and that you’ve probably never heard of it, no. It’s mostly notable for being one of the few games that was “enhanced” by the N64 Expansion Pak, but didn’t actually require it.

For some background, I first learned about this game in 2004 or so. I was friends with a couple of people from the GameFAQs forums, and we’d talk daily on voice calls (screensharing didn’t exist yet) about what we were playing. One of my friends at the time was a guy named Ryan, who was playing through a bunch of N64 games he had rented from the video store years earlier but never had the opportunity to finish. One of those games was Aidyn Chronicles.

From the way he described it, I wanted to see it for myself, so I loaded up Project64 (which at the time was so bad that it couldn’t properly run Mario 64) and gave it a try. I got through three of the game’s six acts, at which point I believe my savestate got corrupted due to a random crash. Aidyn Chronicles is very crash-prone even on original hardware, which is exactly why I’m not using my original hardware to play it.

“There are cycle-accurate N64 emulators out there these days. Don’t use them. If you’re going to play it, you should probably play it at two or three times speed and turn the music off. It was made by developers who didn’t understand music is supposed to have notes.” - Ryan

I thought about LPing this game on several occasions, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I looked up Ryan’s Youtube channel (Aquatakat - YouTube) for unrelated reasons and realized he was streaming now (he streams at https://twitch.tv/aquatakat) that I got back in touch with him after some 15 years. I found out that he’s gotten several people to stream the game to completion (including one who did it on original hardware) and finally decided to do it myself.

How will you be LPing this?

I will be taking Ryan’s advice. I’m using a cycle-accurate emulator, but most battles are going to be shamelessly fast-forwarded. I plan on using savestates only as a backup - the game lets you save pretty much anywhere, but I don’t want to potentially lose a save given how unstable this game is. I could play on original hardware but won’t because my N64 controllers are in varying degrees of bad shape.

That isn’t to say I won’t be breaking the hell out of the game.

Will this be a 100% LP?

No. There’s a lot of optional dialog in this game that happens when you have certain combinations of party members, and as far as I’m aware this game’s script hasn’t been dumped anywhere. Outside of the people who speedrun it and a couple of people who made guides for it on GameFAQs, I don’t think anyone knows or cares that this game exists.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome to Virtual Hydlide 64 Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. It is not a good game, but we will be playing it anyway.

: The first thing we need to do is name our character. The default name is Alaron, so that’s what I’ll go with.

: He looks more like a “Fuckface” or a “Dipshit”.

: Or a “Disappointment”.

: You know your game is quality when it opens with the first two panels of Loss over seven years before Loss was even a thing.

: This guy has definitely been on an episode of To Catch a Predator.

: I was going to say he looks like his day job is an evil clown.

: The strategy guide says the chef’s name is Gabrion, which I think is also in the manual.

: “I’m a cook, not a ranger! Alaron! Alaron! Alaron!!!”

: What is it with these late 90s-early 00s WRPGs and referencing Star Trek?

: Meet our protagonist. Alaron is this game’s Johnny Garland. He is an idiot.

: “Yes, all that happened yesterday. But…”

: This is Abrecan. Abrecan is an all-but-mandatory party member and is this game’s equivalent of Eve from Mother 1.

: “I don’t know, Sir Abrecan!”

: “He’s run off again, hasn’t he?”

: “I don’t know, Sir Abrecan!”

: “Who can depend on this squire!”

: “Sir, I often depend on him.”

: For what? He doesn’t look like he’d be very good as a soup pot.

: “Naturally… but you’re a cook.. not a knight of the realm.”

: One more Star Trek reference and I’m pulling this LP over and turning around.

: It’s hard to see, but Abrecan’s sword has a glow on it.

: “Arrogant squire! Do you know how many swords he’s ruined? And now he disappears into thin air!!!”

: “Alaron! Come out, immediately!”

: “Alaron! Alaron! Alaron!!! Anything strange with him lately? Nothing odd in the kitchen? Any strangers coming around?”

: “Not that I’ve noticed. No, sir.”

: “Then why should he run away?! Where do you think he is?”

: I’d say about to be murdered by goblins.

: They’re probably trying to figure out how he welds his hair on.

: “And send someone into the library. Have a maid check the observatory. And another should look by the pool…”

: “And question the magicians.”

: “But Sir Abrecan…”

: “Just find him!”

: This is Rheda. Rheda is a possible party member, but most people don’t use her because of limited party slots and because there’s a better option.

: “Complain? About what, mistress Rheda?”

: I like her.

: “Hmmm. Not with Abrecan, not with Bowden, not with Godric or Rheda.. of course! He’s been in his room all along!”

: “Prince Sheridan!”

: “The forest? Why on earth would he go there?”

: “Alone?”

: The game has official portraits for each character, but I won’t use them.

: “Kendall? He must be out here somewhere… Kendall? It’s me.. Alaron…”

: “I spoke to your wife.. she’s worried. She hasn’t seen you all morning. Come on out, Kendall. Come out here now! Did you hear me? Hello?”

: We now have control of Alaron. Let’s take a look at how this game’s mechanics work.

: Alaron starts with some basic gear and an alternate melee weapon. The club is technically better than his short sword, but Alaron’s skill in clubs is lower.

: We can see that Alaron is taking a -3 penalty to Dexterity. This is due to his armor and shield.

: Dexterity is the most important stat because it how often your character’s turn comes up. It’s also one of the major determining factors for hitting in melee.

: Each character also has a pool of skills they can learn. Alaron has a few useless ones; Troubador and Stealth both do nothing.

: They’re the benign sort of useless. There are two spells (that I know of) which crash the game if you use them.

: You may have noticed a chest in the bottom-left corner of that last screenshot. Let’s open it.

: Healing Potions are the only way to heal outside of the Healer skill, which uses herbs for a chance to restore HP or stat damage.

: We take maybe two steps before running into a cutscene trigger.

: “Goblins roam the wood and trouble there has been…”

: Did they glue those beards on?

: “Yes, so have I heard! What is it? Alaron?”

: They have to keep lookout in case the village idiot shows up.

: “How be you this day, pup?”

: “Well are you?”

: “I am happy and I am well.”

: The writing wasn’t this game’s strong suit, was it?

: This game doesn’t have a strong suit. There’s this whole community who are really into it and have made hard mode mods and stuff, but it’s not a good game.

: I’m going to cut this absolutely riveting conversation a bit short. The Mirari warn Alaron that there are goblins around.

: Alaron demonstrates that he doesn’t know where the next town over is.

: The Mirari then try to sell Alaron some magic spice to placate the king, but Alaron doesn’t have enough money because again, he is a dipshit.

: Continuing on, we reach a clearing in the forest.

: We get into a battle here. Battles are fixed and only spawn once, except for a couple of designated grinding spots and if you camp on the world map.

: Each character in the fight has a circle that they can move in. If you come close enough to an enemy, you can attack them.

: This game handles stats and skills in a kind of bizarre fashion. Leveling up stats and skills costs EXP, but you need a trainer in order to spend it on skills or spells.

: The Prima guide has a map of this area with all the treasure chests in it. H2O followed the Turok 2 school of map design where everything is a maze made of exactly three textures.

: If we go straight ahead, we get a cutscene where Alaron sees a ghost and wonders if it’s Kendall. The ghost is hard to see even if you’re playing in full screen.

: Right behind the ghost is an ambiguous brown lump. This is Kendall’s hat.

: Stealth is a useless stat, so we throw this on Alaron to make him look even dumber than he already does.

: Don’t ask me what any of the armor stats in this game do. I have no idea, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

: Turning the corner brings us to this thing, which looks like it was ripped out of Perfect Dark. This is a teleporter. They work like the cauldrons in Banjo-Kazooie, where each one is linked to one other teleporter.

: There’s three chests down here we want to get for later. We’re going to need some seed money.

: The non-descript yellow thing is in fact a pile of gold.

: We can see a goblin off in the distance. This leads to Gwernia, but we don’t want to go there yet because it will initiate a cutscene.

: Instead, we go down here, toward THE BROWN ZONE.

: One of the little rock outcroppings has more gold on it.

: Welcome to THE BROWN ZONE.

: Did Ohio’s tourism board sponsor this game?

: “He’s a bold one to be wandering alone!”

: “Good day, Mirari. I’m happy to see friendly faces here.”

: “Gotzone and Zurene being happy to meet you here. And we are surprised to see you, pup.”

: “Alaron, is it not? Why so far from the castle? You know of the trouble in these woods. Is this another one of your impulsive adventures? Or are you lost?”

: “Lost? I know this forest like a book.”

: Does he even know what a book is?

: “Then you know there are spirits and strange creatures here. You might be startled at any moment. We Mirari are protected by our magic, but you…”

: I just want to chime in here for a second to say this is a bold-faced lie. Alaron does not know any spells.

: Oh no..

: Does this mean we’re here to kill Chaos?

: Has anyone done an LP of Stranger of Paradise? That’s probably a much better game than this is.

: “Indeed.. but the forces against us grow stronger every day… more and more, we hear reports of monsters.”

: “And the goblins! It will take much more than few spells (sic) to match them nowadays.”

: It’s because he’s the only squire.

: “Not according to Sir Abrecan. He tells me you are learning well, but not as quickly as he would like.”

: This whole conversation is really weird if you think about it. Alaron apparently has no idea who these people are, but they’re intricately familiar with the inner workings of the castle.

: “With all due respect, Sir Abrecan is never happy with anyone.”

: “Sir Abrecan rarely misjudges any of the King’s squires. If he finds you lacking, there must be cause.”

: “He just doesn’t like orphans.”

: I’m going to cut this conversation short because it doesn’t really get any more interesting or tell us anything we don’t already know.

: The Brown Zone has some chests in it and eventually leads to this hut.

: There’s a little pond behind the hut that has an herb patch nearby. This will also be seed capital for something we’ll do later.

: I grab the remaining chests on the map (all gold and healing potions) and keep going.

: “A goblin!”

: If you didn’t run into the goblins by the teleporter, you run into them here.

: The goblins tell us, in far too many lines, that they’ve taken over the forest and killed Kendall. I seriously cut like 20 lines of dialog here.

: We get into a fight with four goblin poisoners. This fight is entirely scripted.

: This is the best squire they’ve got? The guy who goes down after taking one hit?

: I hope you’re ready for some absolutely riveting dialogue.

: “Where am I?”

: “Safe and sound.. and well-hidden! I found you in the woods. What you were doing there I can’t guess.”

: “It wasn’t easy dragging you back to my hut, you know.”

: This dialogue was written with the expectation that you encounter the goblins near Kendall’s hat and not past Oriana’s house.

: It’s much funnier if you realize she was probably watching the goblins kick Alaron’s ass from her front porch and then dragged him the ten steps inside.

: “You’re her! You’re the witch!”

: “Which witch?”

: “What am I doing here?! What are you up to?!”

: “Your fears make you the fool, boy.”

: This whole “Witch is actually a healer” thing was an overused fantasy cliche probably twenty years before this game released.

: “I know about you. We’ve all heard the stories..”

: “But you.. you gather herbs! And this room.. it’s full of spices and flowers. They say…”

: For her fried chicken recipe, I bet.

: “All healers grow flowers. I also collect herbs. How else can wounds be stopped? Shall I quit collecting herbs for people?”

: “No…”

: “Oh? Then shall I send you back outside? Believe me, you’ve slept helplessly for hours. If evil was my intention, I’ve had several opportunities.”

: “But, lady…”

: “Oriana.”

: “What’s Oriana?”

: “My name is Oriana.”

: “That’s one of the old names.”

: “I think it suits me. We still don’t know who you are.”

: “Me? I’m Alaron. Thank you for helping me.”

: “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all.. young…”

: "Alaron!’

: Some absolutely riveting dialog right here. There’s a Reddit page for this game and someone on there sent an email to one of the writers for this game, who said it was one of their favorite things they’ve ever written.

: “All right, all right. I’ll try to remember. Now what were you doing in the clearing?”

: “I was walking.. I remember that. I went from the castle.. I ran into the forest.. I saw the hat..”

: “A hat?”

: Metal Gear?!

: “What woman?!”

: “There were goblins.. and something hit me… I’m feeling dizzy…”

: “Where are you?”

: “Who are you?”

: “A friend…”

: I’m going to cut it, but just imagine this goblin and the weird eye creature saying “KILL” in all caps between every line.

: “I’m looking for someone.”

: “Pay no attention to them. They’re perfectly harmless. They’re just trying to show they like you..”

: “You say you’re looking for someone?”

: “Yes. A friend.”

: “You’re sure? One of the village farmers? You think he left his house? You think maybe he came this way? Be honest, squire. Since when do farmers leave their homes? Are you sure that’s what you’re looking for?”

: Don’t they.. have to leave their homes? To take care of the animals and plant the crops?

: I think the writer has farmers confused with shut-ins. Easy mistake to make, happens all the time.

: “Tell me what you want here, squire. You can trust us… why chase after farmers while your own dreams sparkle just within reach?”

: “I have to help him.”

: “Forget the farmer. He’s unimportant. But you..”

: It is fucking uncanny how much this entire exchange is like something out of Massacre Princess.

: “Where’s my friend?!”

: “Stay here. With us…”

: Her monster form even looks like the Massacre Princess.

: METEOR STRIIIIIIIIII-

: “One moment we were talking and the next…”

: “I watched your face. You saw outside this place.”

: “You mean a dream?”

: “More a vision. Did it frighten you?”

: “A little.”

: “Well, it frightened me. You were awake the whole time.”

: “You’re sure that’s what it was?”

: He’s beyond help alright.

: "Did the attacking goblins cast an enchantment on you? Or something worse?

: “We fought, I lost. That’s all there was to it.”

: “Maybe you should go back to the King. The wizards at the castle might be able to do something.”

: This is the developers outright admitting that they know their level design sucks. The forest is probably twice as large as it needed to be.

: Oriana then offers to train Alaron in a number of skills and spells. Let me review what each one does.

: Healer gives you a chance of healing using only herbs rather than a potion. It’s useless because of a game-breaking design oversight that we’ll probably see next update.

: Wizard boosts spells somehow (I’m not really sure how) and serves as a gate mechanic for getting higher level spells. It’s the core skill for magic the way Warrior is for martials.

: Sword and Thrown are both weapon skills, which can be learned in combat rather than from a trainer.

: Finally, we have Air Shield (gives 1 point of protection per spell level) and Strength (adds 2 points of strength per spell level). Most guides will tell you to buy Air Shield here, so I do.

: You don’t want to buy Strength here because we can get it for free later.

: The game highlights the route out of the forest for us. If you haven’t picked up everything yet, you can do it now.

: On the way out, we bump into another cutscene in which the Mirari are weirdly secretive about Oriana. This conversation is actually a tutorial for the teleporter we saw earlier.

: Following the lights takes us out of the forest.

: At this point, I start speeding up combat and let me explain why. See how the second rat in that screenshot is behind the first one and not trying to attack Alaron?

: This game has really bad pathfinding. The enemy AI is programmed to target the weakest character first, and what happens is that the enemies will get stuck on each other. When this happens, the game stops for a minute to try to pathfind around it before giving up and ending its turn.

: The rats can potentially get two turns each to Alaron’s one, and this can make for a lot of waiting for the game to give up on pathfinding.

: There’s not much else here, just a path and a single bag of gold in a corner.

: We cross a bridge and then get into another short cutscene.

: “He knows I was gone?”

: I’m also going to skip this cutscene because it tells us nothing we didn’t already know.

: From here, we continue down the path fighting the occasional giant rat.

: A minute or so later, we run into this house. This is Kendall’s house, but his wife isn’t home right now.

: North of the house is a random lady standing in a field surrounded by giant rats. The giant rats don’t seem to bother her, which means this lady is probably levels of magnitude stronger than Alaron is.

: This chest has more herbs and spices in it, which makes me wonder if the healing potions aren’t just fried chicken.

: At the end of the path is the bridge to Gwernia. There’s going to be a long sequence once we go to the castle, so we’ll do that next update.

: To the left, there’s an L-shaped house that has some stuff we want.

: You have to search the barrels, which you can’t see while in the same room as them.

: Curing potions are stronger versions of the regular healing potion. Inferno flasks are bombs, and stealth potions are vendor trash.

: To the left of the town square is another house we can visit.

: This house has a working ladder, which is odd because most things in the environment can’t be interacted with outside of bags of gold and treasure chests.

: This box has an area map and 50 gold in it. Let’s move on to the castle, because it’s time to start breaking the game.

: The castle has a long road leading up to it, and Alaron moves at a really slow pace.

: “We were just ready to set out again. Weren’t we, Sir Abrecan?”

: “Set out?”

: Metal Gear?!

: “The king is beside himself.”

: “The farmers say there are goblins in the forest. Is it true? And monsters? We’ve heard all kinds of rumors.”

: I’m going to skip the rest of this cutscene because it’s Alaron recounting the story about the goblins a third time in under half an hour.

: It’s also really awkward because Sheridan just kinda sits there listening in.

: Now we can go into the castle, which is a maze.

: Inside the castle, the compass is replaced with a minimap. The minimap is useless.

: If we head outside, we can meet Alaron’s friend Brenna, who is definitely not at all heavily inspired/ripped off from Imoen in Baldur’s Gate.

: She doesn’t have anything interesting to say, probably because she’s Imoen from Baldur’s Gate.

: The castle is obnoxiously large and has a lot of empty rooms in it. This was that era where devs would make things huge just to show that they could do it.

: I didn’t screencap it, but you can go all the way to the roof. Is there anything up there? Nope!

: There’s one room on the second floor where you can find a Dispel Necro scroll. It looks like every other room in the castle, so good luck finding it.

: By following the carpet, we can eventually reach the throne room.

: “Yes, sir.”

: “Alaron.. you are a good and loyal squire, but the world can be dangerous, as you have discovered. After consulting with my advisors, I have decided that this poison, however slow it may be, is beyond the skills of Gwernia’s healers.”

: “You must journey to Erromon. You will find a Mirari healer there. Their king has long been a friend and ally to this land. I have written a letter to tell him who you are and why you need his aid.”

: If you’re an idiot medieval failson and your king has just given you a quest like this, he’s trying to kill you.

: “Thank you, sir.”

: “The road to Erromon is easily followed, but you should have companions on this trip. Therefore I have ordered Sir Abrecan to be at your disposal..”

: “However.. the goblins have been rising in the forests and I cannot spare more than two companions at this time.”

: “You may take your friend Brenna. She is quite resourceful in her own way and seems to be able to move well in difficult places.”

: This part’s a lie. We’re actually forced to take Brenna. She’s useful for a few things early on, but most people kill her off eventually.

: Have I mentioned this game has permadeath? If any of your party members hit 0 HP, they permanently die.

: “And Master Bowden has agreed to let you take his apprentice, Rheda… she is quite involved these days with her own experiments, but she may be persuaded to seek more exotic herbs and ingredients along the road. I am sure she will be a great spellcaster one day.”

: Rheda is an okay fourth party member. She’s one of the only mages in the game, but has to jump through a lot more hoops to do damage than the martials do.

: “He is a bit strange, but he could prove useful and his knowledge will help you immensely. Everyone else must stay here at the castle, I’m afraid. I need to discover all I can about the goblins.”

: We’re taking Godric instead. Godric is the source of an infinite money/potions farm that can give you a pretty big boost early on.

: Godric starts with the alchemy skill, and has enough points in it to make curing potions. The shops in Gwernia buy curing potions for more than the cost of the ingredients.

: “And do not hesitate to seek the advice of your teachers and friends. Be sure to see Trahern as he will have some equipment for you, I’m sure.”

: “Yes, sir.”

: “You are too generous, your majesty.”

: “On the contrary, Sir Abrecan. I am quite sorry to see this boy go. Now.. there are a few more obligations you should attend to on your way.”

: “As you leave Gwernia, be sure to pay your respects to Gabrion for the attentions he has shown you over the years. Be sure to visit the farms. Find Kendall’s family and tell them what has happened. Use all your sensitivities as you give them this news.”

: “I will be sure to do that, sir.”

: “I fear that this is as much as I can help you. As you know, I had always hoped that you would finish your training and one day be pledged as a knight.”

: “I have decided that should you succeed on this quest, you will be made knight.”

: “Your majesty!”

: “Make HIM a knight?!”

: “Thank you, sir!”

: “Now you are TOO generous, sir! TOO GENEROUS BY FAR!!!”

: The cutscene kind of bugs out after this. This is a camera glitch that happens even on original hardware, and yes I actually did check that.

: Next time, we’ll leverage a complicated chain of potion arbitrage to become rich. We’ll also recruit our party, escape from the castle, and do some side stuff.

[Fefnir]

Every once in a while I think about how I’m only aware of a few RPGs on the N64, and so far it’s not surprising this wasn’t one of them. I can’t really say much for the gameplay thus far, but the dialogue is trying so hard to be conversational and it’s already coming across as grating.

[Timrod]

You’ll see it in the next update I’m working on. The combat is actually surprisingly deep, but also bug-ridden as hell. I saw a partial log by a speedrunner about crashes and there are a dozen known ways to crash the game in combat alone. In fact, we could do one by the next update: if you have the Strength spell from Oriana and use it to equip a weapon you normally wouldn’t have the stats for, the game will crash.

If you want a good N64 RPG, I would highly recommend Hybrid Heaven. It’s a game about wrestling aliens where you learn new moves by having enemies use them on you. I’ll probably LP that one next, I just wanted to get Aidyn out of the way because they really do not make games as broken as Aidyn Chronicles anymore.

[Timrod]

Summary

: On the way out, we get another cutscene with Abrecan.

: “It is the knightly roll. It names all knights in Gwernia.”

: “There are so many, sir.”

: “Many must serve, squire.”

: Do they recast that thing every time someone becomes a knight? No wonder this kingdom is so small.

: “But it is also something more, sir.”

: “That is correct. Every town in the Kingdom has a list like this. To have your name on the roll is more than an honor. It is an induction into a world both smaller and bigger.”

: I can only imagine how prohibitively expensive that would be in a medieval setting.

: “It is a smaller world because you become part of a select [sic].. it is larger because you also take on the burden of knighthood and all the honor, valor, and truth that entails.”

: The burden of knighthood being the debt you go into buying your own armor and weapon.

: “Mark this list well. Take it to heart. And understand that if you ever give me reason to doubt yourself or your abilities, you will never see your name here. I will see to that personally.”

: What he’s saying is that Alaron will never be a knight.

: “Act well, and I will be your truest sponsor.”

: “Thank you, sir.”

: The game makes it incredibly easy to find Rheda and Abrecan. Rheda is one room to the right of the throne room.

: Abrecan is one room to the left. We’ll take him since we’re here anyway.

: “You mean about the quest?”

: “But I must ask you.”

: “Very well. Let’s get it over with.”

: “Brave and gallant Sir Abrecan..”

: “You make a good beginning. Go on.”

: “I know you are a great warrior. Maybe the best the kingdom has ever known. You’ve also been my most patient teacher and I know that with you I might succeed. So I’ll ask my question.. will you join me on this quest?”

: “I am a soldier, first and last. I will join you as l have promised the king. He is my sworn obligation… and anyway, over the years I have grown quite attached to you and I’d like to see you survive this adventure.”

: “I promise we’ll come back in one piece. Free of this goblin poison. That is my pledge to you, on my honor as a knight.”

: “When do we leave?”

: “As soon as possible. The goblins are rising and we won’t want to stay away too long.”

: Abrecan is a strong early-game physical character whose only real weaknesses are his lack of access to skills and that he falls off later in terms of scaling.

: Godric is significantly harder to find. We need to head back outside and follow the carpet.

: This door leads to the wizard’s keep, which is where Godric is.

: The wizard’s keep is a small, circular room with a staircase in the corner. The note on the stairs is from Godric.

: Most game designers would make the stairs lead directly to the lab, but we have to go through a pointless room to get there.

: Godric is supposed to be the comic relief character. The joke is that he’s senile. He’s a more annoying, less likeable version of Ford Cruller.

: To recruit Godric, you need to talk to him once and then leave and come back.

: The basement has a bunch of rooms full of locked chests that we can’t pick. If I remember right, these chests are end-game stuff you’re intended to come back for much later.

: One side room has a bag with 9 spice and 200 gold in it. This will get us a jump start on breaking the economy.

: We recruit Godric, and now we can BEAR WITNESS to his skills.

: Godric starts kind of sucky, but eventually can level up throwing. He specializes in damage magic as opposed to the buffing/debuffing that Rheda has.

: Mechanic is a useless skill, and let me show you how useless.

: It lets you make armor out of common item drops. In this case, we can turn beast hides (which drop off giant rats) into armor of the same name. Is it good?

: Of course it isn’t! It’s got the same stats as the leather armor Alaron starts with (and which you can buy in Gwernia) but with an extra point of dexterity penalty.

: His real talent is in Alchemist. Godric can create a ton of potions, including the curing potion I mentioned earlier. They’re super cheap and very efficient for healing.

: If we try to leave the castle, we run into Brenna again. She demands we take her with us.

: She also gives us an axe we have no use for and a set of scale armor no one will ever use.

: Brenna is our only source of the Thief skill this early on. Thief increases damage if you attack an enemy from behind and allows you to pick locks.

: By the way, you might notice that little orange circle under Brenna’s portrait. That means she’s a diurnal character, and gets bonuses to hit during the day.

: Godric is a little different. He’s nocturnal, which means he might get hit bonuses at night - the whole thing is kind of half-baked. As far as anyone knows, he doesn’t take penalties during the day.

: Even though we’ve “left” the castle, there’s a sidequest we can only do after we have a full party but before leaving Gwernia.

: To do that, we head to the bottom-left corner of the castle. This is the training room, and it’s where Trahern (the head of the Gwernian knights) hangs out.

: That’s a beard, alright. I wonder if it hurt to have that welded on.

: “How are you, Trahern? Wait until you hear where I’ve been.”

: “Lad, I have heard. Up and down the forest, isn’t it? Playing patticakes with the goblins?”

: It seriously seems like all anyone wants to talk about around here is goblins. I’m going to cut parts out of this conversation.

: “Once the old king, Ramsay that is, rousted them out good. That being the Battle of Lonely Mountain. That was in the dark season of eight hundred and ninety-five. That being where our present king, Phelan, came of age.”

: This is the kind of story Yama would tell to his grandkids. They hated it.

: “Oh, it was glorious. Phelan defeated the hobgoblin Griktikal in one-on-one combat. That kept them quiet for a while.”

: “So what brought them back?”

: “Who knows why goblins do anything, lad? Every twenty years or so they’re in your face with that stinking breath.”

: “You mean the attack on my village?”

: The game mentioned it earlier when Alaron was talking to the Mirari in the forest, but he’s the sole survivor of his village and adopted by the king.

: “I warned Phelan then that something was up.”

: “Maybe it was, but it had nothing to do with me.”

: Anyway, the point of this is that Trahern wants us to find his sword. Doing so requires us to go to a pointless area near where Godric was.

: If we go up the stairs instead of down, we wind up on the roof.

: The roof is a big, pointless, empty loop with a door on the other side from where the stairs are.

: This brings us to Bowden’s room. Bowden is Rheda’s mentor.

: Bowden hates Trahern, and so he stole Trahern’s sword and locked it in a chest in the basement not far from Godric’s lab.

: The locked chest is down here, just to the right of the lab.

: There’s a portal down here. I don’t know what this one connects to.

: Trahern gives us his sword. It’s useful throughout the game, because you can give it to Abrecan and then give it to Brenna later if you decide to keep her.

: It has the same stats as Abrecan’s starting sword except for the fact that it has 55 base hit compared to his broadsword’s 40. We throw his broadsword on Alaron.

: Finally, we make a stop at the castle’s barracks, which has six chests in it. We can open five of them, and there’s a chance they drop equipment.

: Picking locks drains Brenna’s HP because this is a well-designed game.

: Let’s break this game’s economy like a twig. Money becomes a non-issue after the second town anyway.

: Near the castle is a ramp that leads up to two shops. The one we want is the alchemy shop, which is in the house there.

: This shop sells all the basic alchemy ingredients. What we need are gemstones, so we spend our initial seed capital on a bunch of them.

: At Alchemist 3, you can make restore potions using two gemstones and two spices. It’s funny that they think there’s a cure for stupidity.

: Restore potions cost around 110 gold to make and sell for over ten times that. Turn on the turbo button and in a couple of minutes you’ve broken the game’s economy.

: While we’re here, we might as well max out on healing potions and curing potions since everything in this game costs HP for some stupid reason.

: Well, everything but alchemy for some reason.

: After making a bunch of curing potions and loading back up on ingredients, we still have more gold than we can ever conceivably use.

: Down the hill from the shop is the inn. There’s a sidequest here that is in no way a ripoff of an early sidequest from Baldur’s Gate 1.

: The innkeeper has a bat problem in his cellar. This is an easy fight, so let’s do it.

: As soon as we take the stairs behind the innkeeper, we wind up in combat with two giant bats. These wouldn’t be a challenge for Alaron alone, and definitely aren’t for a full party with Abrecan in it.

: This is where we really start seeing Alaron’s shortcomings. Abrecan and Brenna get two or three turns before he gets one.

: Once the bats are dead, we can go through this crack in the wall.

: Going through the crack starts a fight with a single goblin.

: Brenna stabs the goblin in the back and Abrecan follows up to kill it before it hits anyone.

: The goblin drops Iden Scale, which is the same armor Abrecan starts with. It has a higher dexterity penalty than Alaron’s armor, so this will probably get sold.

: There’s a pile of stealth potions here we can take and sell for a considerable amount of money.

: The cave has an exit that comes out behind the shop area.

: Our reward is 100 gold, 1500 EXP for Alaron, and a free night at the inn.

: We leave Gwernia over the bridge, but there’s a hidden scene if you take a left instead of heading right back to the forest.

: There’s a beach over here with nothing important on it. See that ramp in the background?

: Before we go to the camp, I want to show this off. If you take a right from the ramp, you run into what looks like another giant rat fight.

: This is how Aidyn Chronicles handles having more than four enemies on screen. Any extra enemies are pictured in the smaller portraits underneath the four active ones.

: This is why you want to play this game at 2x or 3x speed. The enemy reinforcements will usually spawn in on the other side of the map.

: It takes Abrecan something like six turns to get in position, and then another few to kill the remaining rats that don’t run away.

: I get Brenna’s strength up to 9 and save the remaining EXP for some training. Brenna has a very limited weapon selection by default due to her low strength score.

: I get Alaron a point of dexterity, which will be the primary focus for him until he hits around 25-30 and can both take turns and hit consistently.

: Up here is the camp we just saw. There’s a chest here we want to open, but..

: If Brenna screws this up, we lose the chest. You want to save before attempting this.

: The Chaos Sword is a weird bit of game design. I’m pretty sure we can only get it now, but it’s not useful in any way until much later in the game.

: It takes 25 strength (Abrecan has 20) and has less than half the base hit of Abrecan’s starting sword. Even if you rush Abrecan to 25 strength, he’s never going to hit with it.

: I spent 200 gold out of our infinite stockpile to get Warrior for Brenna. I was wrong about one thing earlier - you only need a trainer to learn new skills, not to level them.

: The reason the gold isn’t infinite in that shot is because I did this part before doing the alchemy farm.

: Now that we’ve cleared out Gwernia, it’s time to head to Erromon. To do this, we need to go back through the woods where we started the game.

: As soon as we get past Kendall’s house, a cutscene starts.

: “Different?”

: Metal Gear?!

: “Look at the woods. See anything?”

: “Yeah. I see a lot of uhhhhh… trees.”

: Please tell me we’re sending this guy to his death now that we have infinite money.

: That’s the best part. We don’t have to kill Godric because he’ll happily leave the party any time we ask him. Rheda won’t do that if you take her.

: “I wonder if this was the best path to Erromon.”

: “The path is fine. Besides, you can’t become a knight by staying at home in Gwernia.”

: skcus… gnitirw.. siht…

: It was cute when the eight-year-old girl did it in Persona, but this is annoying.

: I saw that episode of The Simpsons when it first aired. That was right around the time the show turned to shit.

: The ghost looks like a discount version of Raziel and I hate it.

: “Are you a spirit for bad? Or a spirit for good? Answer me!”

: The ghost turns around and peaces out.

: “Wait! Spirit?!”

: “Not much of a conversationalist, was he?”

: “Do you see him, Abrecan?”

: The elevator vibrated with motion.

: And you said the writer for this thought this was the best thing he’d ever written?

: “I don’t like it. Let’s get out of here.”

: “All right, Brenna.”

: “It’s not all right! He looked like a ghost! We should get to the village. It isn’t safe out here in the woods.”

: We reach the bridge from Gwernia’s outskirts to the woods. The logical thing to do would be to cross it, but we’re not doing that just yet.

: If you look to the right, there’s a vaguely rock-shaped polygon that appears to be partially unrendered on one side. We can walk down that.

: Doing so brings us to the River of Clipping Issues.

: We get in a fight with a single wolf, which Abrecan and Brenna kill before it does anything.

: The reason Godric and Brenna are at less than max HP is because I fought some minor side battles and got them both a level up.

: I get Brenna to 10 strength, and now you’re going to see how badly the models in this game are scaled.

: At the top of the River of Clipping Issues is a burnt-out village. There are two items in here, and we need one of them to keep Brenna viable.

: We get into a fight, and you can see that Brenna is now effortlessly wielding a sword roughly half the size of her body in a single hand.

: I gave her a saber from the weapon shop in Gwernia. It’s identical to Alaron’s starting sword, but has 5 more base hit.

: One of the houses has a chest in it.

: This gets us a ring which has Spell Battery, one of the most pointless stats in the game. Spell Battery is effectively an extra HP bar for casting spells. Yes, spells cost HP to cast.

: There are just two problems with that. The first is that you can camp almost anywhere to restore HP (on top of our massive potion stacks), and the second is that Spell Battery recovers REALLY slowly. You get 5 points per night camping and only get it fully restored if you sleep at an inn.

: Behind that house is what we really came here for.

: This is the only rope in the game. Rope is an accessory that increases the thief skill by 2, which saves us tens of thousands of EXP.

: For reference, upgrading Brenna’s thief skill from 3 to 4 is over 20,000 EXP. The rope sets it to 5, which is good enough for most of the game.

: Once you’ve left Gwernia, wolves spawn along the road to the forest, so I go back and farm them for EXP.

: There’s one last thing I want to do in this area, which is heading west from where we got the chaos sword.

: This takes us to a different part of the forest with minotaurs in it. Minotaurs can and will kick our ass right now.

: To the side is a waterfall with a ramp running above it.

: Is there anything behind the waterfall?

: No.

: This game sucks.

: At the top of the waterfall, there’s an ogre. Ogres would normally demolish the party at this level - they can potentially twoshot Brenna or Godric.

: That is, they would demolish the party if this game had working pathfinding. Instead, they line up and get cut down one by one.

: We get 3600 EXP, which is enough to pump Brenna’s warrior to 3 and Alaron’s dexterity to 18. Brenna is now a better melee fighter than Alaron is.

: Behind the ogres is a chest with 1,000 gold and boots of adamant, which add 2 protection and do not have a dexterity penalty.

: At this point, I turn around and go back to Oriana’s house. There is a very long (50+ textboxes) conversation about nothing.

: At some point, she got home invaded by a sorcerer carrying a legendary necromancy staff.

: She then gives us a lore justification for why Alaron is the only person who can learn every spell in the game.

: Oriana gives us a letter to take to the two Mirari we met earlier, and a scroll that teaches the Strength spell for free.

: Trust me, be glad I’m not transcribing the whole thing. Half of it is her screaming at Alaron to find her tea.

: To get to Erromon, all we have to do is go southwest from Oriana’s house.

: The road there is long and empty, apart from the occasional enemy encounter.

: We run into a group of goblin scouts, which are the first ranged enemy you’re likely to encounter.

: They don’t hit particularly hard, but are pretty accurate and can take two or three turns in a row.

: A bit further down the road, we run into another new enemy type: bears.

: Bears are giant blobs of HP that do a lot of damage.. assuming they can land a hit.

: Fortunately, they suffer the same pathfinding issues the ogres did.

: This is how that bear encounter in the Pathfinder thread would’ve gone, only they’d be on fire and screaming.

: We’re a little low on HP for Brenna and Abrecan, so let’s camp. Camping is the primary means of restoring HP, and it sucks.

: There’s a 50% chance you get this screen, which restores around 30% HP to the party. The other half of the time, you get into a fight instead. The fight is always level-scaled, and so you can use this to grind EXP.

: Another 5 minutes down the road, we run into this guy standing at an intersection.

: I hope you’re ready for more witty and endearing dialog.

: “Sorry to startle you.”

: “Are you a monster? You’re a monster, aren’t you?”

: “I assure you I’m not a monster. My name is Alaron. I’m a squire of King Phelan.”

: “I don’t know.. there’s a lot of strange monsters running around lately, goblins and minotaurs and.. worse. How do I know you aren’t some hideous shapechanger preparing to gobble me up?”

: This is that one scene from Borat a full five years before Borat was a thing.

: “Wouldn’t I have gobbled you by now if that was the case?”

: I don’t think even the most hardcore fujoshi would want to see Alaron gobbling anyone.

: “Maybe you just ate.”

: “Please, sir-”

: “Listen you little.. er, good sir. I have a letter from the King that I must deliver to Erromon. The King wouldn’t trust a monster to do that, would he?”

: “I guess not..”

: “Then that’s settled. Now.. how do I get to Erromon?”"

: “First I go this way.”

: This is the kind of thing they’d put into a 90s point-and-click with some dipshit doing an annoying voice.

: “LIKE THIS!”

: This is what happens when you do Frank wrong. There is a fine line between Frank and terrible writing, and these people have long since crossed it.

: Right past the signs is the point where the game takes a nosedive. There are a bunch of enemies here we don’t want to fight because they will demolish the party.

: This first group isn’t too bad. There are two flavors of bandit: regular bandits and bandit woodsmen, who have bows.

: About two steps down from that first group is a bandit boss, which might as well be an insurmountable obstacle for this party. Bandit bosses have access to Tap Stamina, which is a lifesteal spell.

: They also hit EXTREMELY hard for this point in the game and if you’re really unlucky can stack a shield spell on themselves to make it impossible to hit them.

: The last obstacle before Erromon is this hobgoblin. These things are effectively the same as bandit bosses.

: I’m going to have to spend several hours grinding on fast forward soon, because the next boss fight has six of these in it.

: Finally, we reach Erromon. The first building up ahead is the inn.

: Before we go anywhere, we’re going to use our stockpile of cash to buy new armor from that building on the left.

: The merchant here has dragon leather armor, which has more protection than leather and more importantly has zero dexterity penalty. These sell for 11,000 gold each, which you wouldn’t have unless you did the Godric glitch.

: You can also buy spices here, which I do because I’m going to need a few more rounds of Godric cash to buy some more stuff.

: This shop has a ramp in the back that leads to the underground tunnels.

: The tunnels are a maze, but in the middle are these two shops. The one on the right sells spices and gemstones for the same price as Gwernia’s shop does.

: She also sells Sapphire Gems, and I should talk about those for a second. Sapphire Gems are believed to be a dummied-out item that existed in an earlier version of the game.

: According to one guide on GameFAQs, the developers originally intended for there to be an item called a Life Gem that could revive dead party members. The guide author claims to have emailed H2O about it, and was told that they dummied it out because they coded it so poorly that using a Life Gem actually killed a party member off the next time you went to the world map and crashed the game.

: This guy next to her is also very useful.

: He sells a bunch of accessories that increase armor value - mirari cloaks, plate gauntlets, and mercenary belts.

: He also sells belts of life, which you’re not intended to buy this early in the game. They cost nearly 24,000 gold each, and can only be equipped by diurnal characters.

: Necromancy resist is huge for the upcoming boss fight, since it helps mitigate the damage done by the lifedrain spell.

: If we go past the inn, there are even more shops. We want the one on the far left for now.

: This shop sells the same boots we found behind the ogres. They’re prohibitively expensive without Godric, but we can easily afford three more.

: Brenna and Godric have gone from having around 4 protection to 13. How much of a difference does that make? Let’s take a look.

: If you backtrack from the inn, there’s a ladder that leads up to a fight that would normally be incredibly difficult.

: We have a bandit boss, two wolves, and two normal bandits. One bandit boss was enough to bring the entire party to its knees before, but this time we wipe the encounter without much of a problem.

: I get Brenna up to 16 strength and a few more levels in sword to help her hit more consistently. Abrecan hits warrior 5, and Alaron hits warrior 4.

: We’ll do one last thing before I end the update, and that is going into one of the other shops in that row of three.

: If we go into the middle door, we get a cutscene.

: “After all the walking? Something Mirari. Something you can only get in Erromon.”

: “I need… uhhhhh. Is this the shop or the inn?”

: “The inn.”

: “Huh.”

: “Abrecan? What is it?”

: “The shopkeeper? I’ve never seen him before. You?”

: “I know him. Look again. Are you sure you don’t recognize anything about him?”

: “Let’s see who he is..”

: “I hope so. We’re new to Erromon.”

: This guy is Becan. He’s a potential party member who can replace Abrecan or Godric, but starts weaker than Abrecan does. He uses hafted weapons instead of swords, and is one of the few people (other than Alaron) who can do so.

: He also looks kind of like the guy from the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas. I just watched five episodes of that with Ryan recently while we were on a voice call.

: Becan has a weapon shop we can only access this one time. We don’t really need anything from it since most of it is either stuff we already have or stuff we can’t use.

: What I’m going to do is grind a bunch of money with Godric to buy some more stuff from the shops in the tunnel before replacing him with Becan. Next update, we’ll meet King Txomin and get bodied by the king of the hobgoblins.

[Timrod]

Summary

: After another few minutes of Godric looping, I buy a set of equipment for Becan as well as the Light and Shielding wands, which are 10,000 gold each.

: Wands are accessories that let you cast a specific spell - in this case, we get Starlight Shield, which is a better version of the Air Shield spell. In theory, we can only do this ten times before running out of charges.

: Of course, that would assume that any of the programmers at H2O knew what they were doing. The game doesn’t save wand charges, so you can save and reload to refill your wand.

: Now that we’ve got everything, it’s time to pick up Becan.

: “You’re not Mirari.”

: “Absolutely correct. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

: “How did you get here?”

: “How’d you?”

: “I came on the road.”

: “Well, what do you know? I came the same way. And what were you looking for in my shop today? Spice? I’m out of it. I do have some healing potions. A few restoratives…”

: “How do you know I’m from Gwernia?”

: “You’re wearing Phelan’s colors.”

: “You’re right. I do wear Phelan’s colors. So tell me, shopkeeper.. what else do you know about the knighthood?”

: “Then you know Phelan well! And Ramsay? Did you know him? Master Bowden?”

: “Does he still think he knows everything?”

: “YOU DO KNOW BOWDEN!!!”

: “Of course I know him. And the yard boy, Gabrion. And little Abrecan..”

: “Abrecan?!”

: “You know little Abrecan?”

: “LITTLE Abrecan?”

: Metal Gear!? A security camera!?

: “He was little when I knew him.”

: “I can’t picture him as ever being little. Who are you?”

: “My name is Becan.”

: “BATTLE OF LONELY MOUNTAIN!!!”

: “You know that?”

: I cut this off a bit, but Becan will join us if we replace Abrecan or Godric. I thought about taking him.. but we’re going to hold off for now.

: The reason is that I forgot something: unlike Rheda (who sucks), Godric gets a pretty major power spike right around this point in the game.

: Before we can get it, I need to grind Godric to level 5 wizard. This takes 36,000 EXP. We could camp grind, but there’s a slightly faster way.

: If we head to the far end of Erromon, past some broken geometry, we wind up on the path to the goblin camp.

: On the way there, we run into a cave bear. Cave bears are regular bears scaled to like 1.5x size with slightly better stats.

: At the end of the path is a goblin tent. Going in that tent respawns the bear outside. The bear is worth 1200 EXP. I spend a bit running back and forth on fast forward.

: Cave bears also hit pretty hard, which is why I made that huge stack of curing potions.

: Brenna gets thief 4, which lets her hit about as hard as Abrecan can if she attacks the enemy from behind.

: Alaron reaches 20 dexterity and warrior 5. He still doesn’t hit nearly as hard as Abrecan does, but he hits far more consistently than he did before and takes turns far more often.

: Abrecan gets warrior 6 and shield 4. Combine this with the shield wand, and he’s a dedicated tank.

: And finally, Godric gets wizard 5. It’s time for him to start powerspiking.

: Behind the house with the tunnel entrance in it, there’s a ladder we can take to get to a chest we want to open.

: This chest is absolute bullshit if you don’t know how it works.

: If you open this chest, there’s a good chance you get somewhere between 10 and 20 spices or gemstones and some gold. It’s also possible to get only gold.

: What isn’t at all obvious is that this chest has a 1 in 20 chance of dropping one of the best pieces of caster equipment in the game. The only way you could know this is there is if you either randomly found it or read the Prima guide.

: There is one other chest like this one in the game, but that one also has a 1/20 chance of dropping the item we want.

: We have a special place in Hell for people that do this shit. It’s designed to keep them away from game development.

: They did this to sell guides when the internet was widely accessible?

: The witch ring boosts wizard by 2. This is important because skills can only be trained to a maximum of 10, but actually scale to 15.

: We go back to the trader underground who sells the spices and gemstones, and ask her for training.

: She can train the fireball spell up to a maximum level of 8. Godric is the only character it’s useful on.

: If you feel like backtracking, you can get Godric’s wizard level even higher for free. Let’s do that because I have nothing better to do.

: If we go back to the crossroads, there’s a third road that goes to Talewok. Talewok is the third major town, but we can’t get there until after finishing Erromon.

: The reason I didn’t do this earlier is because there are some fights on the way that would’ve been too hard without the new armor and grinding, like this group of three cave bears.

: Or this one down the road, which is four regular bandits, two wolves, and a bandit boss.

: What we’re looking for is this lake, which takes probably 10 minutes to reach from Erromon on fast-forward.

: South of it is another group of ogres.

: This group has an ogre boss, which is a regular ogre with better stats and a throwing weapon.

: Thanks to our stockpile of potions, we survive the fight.

: The ogres are guarding this hole, which has the item we’re looking for inside.

: The wizard hat is the other 1/20 drop from the witch ring chest. This one is a guaranteed drop. The wizard hat provides 15 spell battery and adds 1 level of wizard.

: Now let’s head back to Erromon. Surely nothing bad will happen.

: This is why I’m not playing on real hardware. I also hadn’t saved since getting the witch ring.

: One reload later, we arrive back at Erromon near the king’s house.

: I will skip all of the dialogue here because it’s Alaron retelling the story of how he got bodied by goblins.

: Txomin offers to introduce Alaron to Cradawgh if we can kill the goblin king. This is much easier said than done.

: The mountains are a maze, because this game subscribes to the early Shin Megami Tensei school of getting people to grind by forcing them to get lost in mazes.

: What we want to do is head up as much as possible and skip the caves.

: Here we get introduced to the two flavors of goblin sergeant. There are two types - one has a bow and is barely different from a goblin scout, the other has a shield and way more HP.

: Goblin Sergeants have a chance to drop dragon leather armor.

: The main camp is patrolled by small armies of goblins and wolves. These are nothing now that we’ve grinded.

: At this point, because we’re overleveled, we start to see Brenna outscale Abrecan for damage.

: The reason has to do with the thief skill. The thief skill adds a bonus to hit (one person on GameFAQs claims it’s 10% per level) that applies all the time, but then adds a damage bonus when attacking from behind.

: This is why you want to replace Abrecan with Becan. Abrecan can’t learn thief, but Becan can, and so Becan will rapidly outscale Abrecan even with the same stats.

: The main area has some tents we can go in for EXP.

: One of them is full of wolves for some reason, including the dire wolf, which is a regular wolf scaled to 1.5x and given extra stats.

: The goblins must be hosting a furry con.

: The main encampment has a bridge that takes us to where the boss is.

: The game absolutely hurls encounters at you, some of which seem to respawn if you enter one of the goblin tents.

: By the end, we start running into goblin poisoners. They’re effectively goblin sergeants (the kind with the shield) who use throwing weapons that do minimal damage and poison on hit. Poison is a laughable status effect.

: The first bridge leads to two more bridges, which takes us directly to the boss room.

: Kitarak doesn’t attack unless we talk to him, so we’re free to loot the chest behind him first.

: The treasure is an acid wand, which.. I don’t think it does very much.

: That’s not what they all say. Most of them don’t say anything, they just try to kill you and hope you hear it at some point before you die.

: Kitarak is identical to a regular hobgoblin, except that he has a unique scissor-sword thing.

: How would you even hit with that thing? Those blades will shatter the second they hit anything harder than air.

: It looks like the pair of garden shears I got my wife for Christmas last year.

: We’ve grinded so much that Kitarak is a pushover. Abrecan and Alaron both get multiple turns before he’s able to shield himself.

: Godric’s fireball spell is useful if the AI decides to cluster, but in this case they didn’t.

: Kitarak drops his sword, which casts the lifesteal spell on hit. This goes on Brenna, and I shuffle equipment a bit.

: All the experience from the goblin camp let Abrecan hit warrior 7 and 25 strength, which is enough to let him use the chaos sword.

: Alaron then gets Trahern’s sword. My plan is that as soon as we’re done with Erromon, I’m going to go back to Gwernia and get him trained in thief.

: Speaking of which, have an early look at a piece I have Salty Vanilla working on. The chad Brenna vs. the virgin Alaron.

: Abrecan is at warrior 7 (and 25 strength) by this point, so I can probably use the chaos sword on him.

: We now get to walk all the way back to Erromon. Have I mentioned that more goblins spawn outside once Kitarak is dead?

: Several minutes of running (and one glitch that let me fall halfway down the mountain) later, we’re back where we started.

: A couple groups of goblins spawn near the entrance to Erromon, but Brenna takes them out pretty effectively. That’s 39 damage from a side hit, not a backstab.

: “Pleased we are with your courageous efforts and with your success.”

: “Thank you, Txomin. It was not an easy fight, but I’ve chased out the goblins. Their leader Kitarak is destroyed. They will not trouble you any longer.”

: “Still, they seem stronger. The next time we meet them they may be even more powerful.”

: This sounds dumb because all the goblins are dead, but it’s actually a reference to something I need to go all the way back to Kitarak’s tent for once we pick up Becan.

: “You must keep watch on the stronghold, sir. And if you see them rising again, don’t hesitate to act.”

: “Excellent! Eternal devotion and gratitude have you, young Alaron..”

: “Young Alaron…? This seems a bit flattering to me!”

: “Brenna, don’t interrupt the King!”

: “Watch out, Alaron. He’s being far too nice!”

: “Now tired you must be from fierce combat you have faced. Accept please the hospitality of my subjects at our inn, the Izaka. After a restful night, ready I’m sure you’ll be with your journey to continue.”

: I feel like at this point I’d tell Brenna to jam the pruning shears into him.

: “Your pardon, sir. I still need a healer. Before we sought out the goblins, you had agreed to help us find Master Cradawgh…”

: I’m going to summarize the rest.

: Txomin doesn’t know where Cradawgh is.

: Brenna reminds Txomin that Alaron asked for no pickles.

: Alaron threatens to settle in Erromon, which causes Txomin to point him to Talewok.

: We then meet these two guys from the forest, who tell us to find Gotzone and Zurene. The game gives you intricate directions on how to get to their house.

: We’re not going to do that just yet, because from what I understand there’s a possibility that if you haven’t picked up Becan by the time you leave Erromon that he disappears entirely, so I make sure to take him.

: I also want to make sure the teleporter works. As it turns out, I had its location wrong - it’s in the northernmost part of the tunnels.

: The game never gives you any indication that the teleporter is active, and I need to make sure this is active to save us a long walk near the end of the game.

: The teleporter works, so I take a quick trip to the shop in Gwernia to get thief on Alaron and Becan.

: I also took a trip back to the end of the goblin camp because there’s a sidequest there you can only do if you have Becan with you. We can’t do that because the game thinks we already did it.

: Because I needed to use the tunnels anyway, I took the backdoor to Gotzone and Zurene’s house. I’m going to cut about half of this conversation out because the developers did not know how to use flags.

: What happens is that you talk to them and the game behaves as if you haven’t already killed Kitarak. Once that dialog plays, you get the intended dialog.

: “Who is this sister, Zurene?”

: “Yeraza is the matriarch of all Mirari. While Txomin plays the King, she leads the kingdom, does its thinking, soothes disputes, and well instructs our Council. Al things come through her great wisdom.”

: Txomin’s dad probably sent him on a quest halfway across the world and was very disappointed when he came back.

: Can she help me?

: “Yeraza’s favor will go far indeed.”

: “You think she knows a healer?”

: “Yeraza sees what must be seen. You must meet her tonight before leaving Erromon.”

: There’s a tunnel entrance in the back of their house we can use to go right to the next cutscene.

: “Magnifica, guests we bring you, a humanboy.. flushed out goblin horde did he!”

: “Your magnificence, it is a great honor to be brought before you.”

: “So it is. Use your chance wisely. Plenty of food there is for every hungry mouth, humangirl..”

: “Take all you can fit in your pouch. Go on! Hungry you must be!”

: I don’t think food can fix a waist that’s maybe a third of your shoulder length. Where does she keep her internal organs?

: She’s like a mummy and keeps them in a canopic jar.

: “Just smell that! You won’t smell cooking like that outside of Erromon! Just roots and herbs and berries, isn’t it? But they seem to work magic with the stuff!”

: “Much braving this pup does for us, magnifica. And telling us he was of our pretty Txomin..”

: I think that might be a typo and they meant “petty”, or maybe Txomin is hot for a three foot tall green guy. Who knows?

: " Txomin! Hah! Searching are you not, pup, for the master namer? Want you not Cradawgh? Move closer. I would know a little more of you.."

: Isn’t that a medieval way of asking for sex?

: She’s stuck in a hick town full of little green guys.

: Like you?

: Very funny. You’re two inches taller than me.

: “Yeraza may be a curious one. But she alone may tell you of things you need be knowing.”

: “What’s this, humanboy? There be a burning in the air about you. An alien warmth you carry on you!”

: “You do carry much that tells of this human magic also.. and speaks its power through names.”

: “Oh no, magnifica! I’m no magician.”

: “What? Do not tell us this. Do you not weave spells, use charms and summon fire against the goblin foe?”

: That was mostly Godric. I don’t use magic because it’s less efficient than having warrior and thief and scoring 50 damage backstabs.

: “Why do you look so pale, magnifica?”

: “Say, Gotzone… what be this creature you have brought into our midst?”

: I’m going to cut a lot of this out because it’s Yeraza talking about how the Mirari were protected by a dragon who taught them magic and then died. Alaron also retells the “I got bodied by a goblin” story for the seventh time.

: She reiterates that we need go to Talewok and gives Alaron a magic tree branch we’ll use once we’re done with the Talewok area.

: Next time, we’ll go to Talewok before turning right around and going back up Mount Goblin to kill chaos. Speaking of which…

: There’s a sidequest of sorts in the goblin camp, but you have to have Becan with you to do it. The game thinks we’ve already done it.

: The sidequest involves going straight from the bridge leading to Kitarak’s tent instead of going down the ramp.

: There are more goblins inside who die without much of a problem.

: The reason I wanted to get these chests is because once you go to Talewok, this area gets taken over by chaos enemies and the chests refill.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Now that we’re done with Erromon, we’re going into a long string of cutscenes because this is a well-designed game with no pacing issues whatsoever.

: I forgot something back in the castle at the end of the last update. Those end-game chests in the room with the teleporter? We can open those now because Brenna is at thief 7 (which boosts to 9 with the rope).

: The Persuasion wand charms enemies, but it requires 25 intelligence to use and that’s not really an investment I want to make on any of our characters. Godric could use it.

: The other has the Mace of Glory, which is one of the best weapons in the game.

: We’re not going to find anything better for a long time, so I start leveling Hafted on Alaron so he can use it. Becan can’t use it because he’s nocturnal.

: If you try to walk to Talewok from Gwernia, you run into these guys near Kendall’s house. These are Chaos Warriors, and they’re end-game enemies who have a chance of dropping a very good shield.

: Chaos Warriors have a ton of HP and have an incredibly bloated armor stat. Brenna is the only person who can consistently hit them because I was trying to hold off raising thief on Alaron and Becan.

: They come with a small army of Chaos Scouts, which are ranged attackers that cast haste on everything.

: I immediately train thief to ensure Alaron and Becan can continue to hit.

: We get one Chaos Shield, which is the best shield in the game. It not only adds 8 protection, but also adds 8 defense (which reduces damage taken) with zero dex penalty.

: Back on the road to Talewok, there’s a bridge not far from that hole we went into last update to get the wizard hat. We want to head to that raised area behind it.

: We get ambushed by some harpies, who cast the lifedrain spell but other than that are total pushovers at this point. Alaron can oneshot them with the Mace of Glory if he gets behind them.

: At the top of the raised area is this cave it looks like we shouldn’t be able to get into.

: There are a few new enemies in here. Gorgons are a non-threat because they’re slow and we can wipe them in a couple of hits.

: We also find some large scorpions. Not giant, just large. They’re similarly non-threatening at this point.

: There’s some other crap treasure in here, but the reason I came in is for this scroll. Mirror is this game’s equivalent of Reflect in Final Fantasy.

: After an uninteresting cutscene I’m not even going to bother to show, we arrive at Talewok. If you try to come here before finishing Erromon, the gate is locked.

: Talewok has a lot of stuff in it, including a new grind spot that introduces a new mechanic.

: The area isn’t big at all, and the wizard’s school is over to the right. This is part of a long, annoying questline.

: If we go to the entrance, we can find Godric again. This is helpful in case you need more potions - at this point, we have over 200,000 gold plus all the crap the goblins dropped to sell.

: The guard won’t let us in until we talk to a guy at the inn. This is pure busy work.

: This guy will tell us about how thirsty he is for Ardra, and will then give us a pass to get into the wizard school.

: This is part of a plotline that does not get explained very well.

: I remember when I played this the first time that Ryan told me to watch out for the door whore when I got to this part, and I’ve referred to any NPC who blocks shit as a door whore since.

: “The greatest school of wizardry anywhere on this entire plane!!! Are you prepared to pay the price of admission here?”

: “The price? What nonsense! Anyone can see you represent a king. Why should we pay anything? Stand your ground and demand your entrance!”

: This is how college admissions should work. There’s a dipshit at the front door and if you beat the shit out of him you can go in and take classes.

: “Come, come now.. step up, then! And speak truly!”

: “I’ll go first, Alaron. Let’s see what happens. Great Warden.. I’ll tell you this. I have no need of magic and my Name is secret.”

: I kinda glossed over this, but most humans in this game (apart from Godric) use what’s called naming magic, which is done by invoking their true name.

: So they’re demons, then?

: The idea is that there’s a ceremony for casters where they get a true name, and people who can’t or don’t use magic (like Abrecan and Becan) don’t know theirs, so it’s considered a secret.

: “Truly spoken! Go right inside.”

: “That it does. Go right inside.”

: “See you in there, lad.”

: It’s weird that Brenna has one given that she doesn’t start with wizard. She can learn it, but right now her only utility is backstabbing people for 70 damage.

: “Thank you, miss. You may certainly go right in. Oh! Just one thing.”

: “Yes?”

: “Some of the resident wizards like to speak openly about certain wizardly affairs, and some of the guests like to pick up information. So.. as a little precaution, nothing serious, some of the words in there, words you may hear, have protective spells cast upon them.”

: “Repeat one of those words without permission and.. well, miss. I’m afraid that word would sear your tongue down to nothing but ash. Comprende?”

: I don’t know what this writing is and I don’t like it.

: Finally, Alaron steps up. None of these options work.

: “If you’re going to lie to me, boy, at least make it half convincing. I can smell the magic on you. Now answer truly or stop wasting my time!”

: “I.. I don’t know. I cast spells that’s true, but I swear I do not know my true name.”

: “How strange…”

: “I don’t understand it either. I wish I did.”

: “You wish? Well… that should count for something. Do you have the courage to seek real answers?”

: “I know that I do.”

: The wizard school is huge and empty like Gwernia’s castle is. There are a bunch of magic trainers here, but we don’t give a shit because there are exactly two good spells in the game.

: We have to show this doorwhore our magic stick to go see Ardra. Her door is the one right behind Alaron.

: Holy crap, it’s a Guy Fieri wizard dress.

: Imagine the power. Conjuring racks of ribs at a whim.

: I’m skipping around 10 lines of Ardra speaking gibberish.

: “Yes, your.. your.. worshipfulness.”

: He’s a manchild for sure.

: “Honored Mother, I am but a humble squire. What title would be appropriate?”

: “Appropriate? Indeed, for one so young standing here before me, what is appropriate? My gatekeeper says you have a relic?”

: “I do, great wizard.”

: “The Mirari magic stick.”

: “Would you like…”

: “No no, child. Yeraza bid you to keep it close. Did she not? I know why you are here, but these are difficult times… Cradawgh’s isle is far and hard to reach.. and that is all I wish to say on that matter until I know more.”

: It also kind of makes no sense that Ardra apparently knew Alaron was coming and didn’t think to tell her door whore to fuck off. I’m going to skip some more dialog.

: “Dryads, Honored Mother? Enchanted creatures?”

: “Enchanted? Yes, I suppose one might say that. Nonetheless, in that forest there is a grove where Amaranth roots are found. Gather me some of these roots, man-child, and bring them hither. Then I will cure you, certainly.”

: The guide on GameFAQs claims that talking to Ardra the first time is what makes the chaos enemies spawn in Erromon. The guide is wrong.

: What we’re about to do is one of the worst parts of the game. The first time I played this, I assumed it was some kind of practical joke on the part of the developers.

: The dryad forest is directly behind the wizard school. It is not at all hard to find, but the game gives you a cutscene (that I will not show) that confirms you’re going the right way.

: The dryad forest has a respawning encounter with wolves in front of it. This is where the game goes from merely difficult due to being jank to outright bullshit if you don’t have a guide.

: These are “spirit wolves”. They are part of a class of enemies that possess a mechanic that is never explained anywhere in the game or the manual.

: Spirit wolves can only be hit by magic weapons. The game gives you no indication of this at any point. If you attack them with a non-magic weapon, you get the same “Spirit Wolf evades the attack” message you would if your attack missed.

: Does the game ever list which weapons are magic? Fuck no it doesn’t! For reference, there are only three magic weapons we could even have up to this point, and two of them are missable. Those are Trahern’s sword, the Chaos Sword, and Warfang.

: There’s a merchant in Talewok who sells Heartseeker Bows, which are also magic.

: The dryad forest is a small maze that we need to get to the end of to meet Pandara.

: Pandara isn’t particularly hard to find even without a map - she’s in one of the two Team Fortress 2 logos in the middle of the map.

: I’m going to transcribe most of her dialog even though it’s completely pointless, because I honestly forgot this part of the game existed and.. well, you’ll see.

: “Great Queen, I need you help. Do you like humans?”

: “Some of them. They are not easy to get to know.. they’re far too busy to enter the forest and when they do come here they die so quickly!”

: Yes, clearly the problem with humans is there’s not enough of them. Who the fuck wrote this crap?

: “Can you sense that I am poisoned?”

: “Oh, that. I know about it. You’ve been to Ardra. Now you’re here to find the cure. If you humans used your heads you’d have more herbs and forests of you (sic) own. Instead you just go on and on with trade and war.”

: Hold on a second. Blue skin, keeps complaining about the state of nature, name is one letter off from “Pandora”. Did these people write Avatar a full.. when did that come out again? 2012?

: My phone says 2009.

: Personally, I can’t wait for Aidyn Chronicles: The Way of Water and Aidyn Chronicles: Fire and Ash. I’m sure they’ll be announced any day now.

: Ignoring the fact that half of these are METAL GEAR?!, we’ll skip most of it and go to the last option.

: “Where can I find the herb amaranth?”

: California and Mexico, mostly.

: “The flower is everywhere. I will order some to grow and blossom but finding it will take some skill…”

: She tells Alaron to look in the north-eastern corner of the forest. Let’s do that.

: We’re here. Can you spot what we’re looking for?

: If you said “that flower that looks like a random background object and blends in with the drab-colored scenery”, you’re right.

: If we try to leave, a fairy will stop us and warp us to Pandara. This is the point at which the developers play their practical joke.

: “And were you successful?”

: “Thank you for the amaranth and… and…”

: “And what?”

: “Just thank you.”

: “I… I…”

: I thought you were a GEP gun.

: “You are almost a knight. You must have nobler sentiments than these. Do you have no Troubadour skill? Have you been taught nothing?”

: Yes.

: Yes.

: Yes.

: Yes.

: The only thing he’s learned is how to get slightly less steamrolled by goblins.

: “Uhhh… let me try… oh lovely Pandara. How much do I admire thee? Let me count the ways. One.. you look terrific. Two, you know a lot about the woods. Three…”

: “Just look on me in all my radiance.. and breathe this in and savor it! Become inspired! Feel your true emotions and desires!”

: “Next send this feeling back to me in rhymes so sweet their rhythm will enchant my soul and win me over to your honeyed words. This is the tender strategy.”

: The chicken tender strategy.

: He really is a lot like Tommy DeVito, isn’t he? Probably throws a football just like him.

: “Okay.. well.. you’re.. a very nice person.”

: “Uhhhhh…”

: “No! Nothing more! I must be off and find some rippling brook or birdsong to relieve this strain! You murder verse! You’re not fair-spoken!”

: Murderverse sounds like a setting for another indie animation that will flame out before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

: At this point, a couple of trainers open up in the dryad forest who will train troubadour up to 10. You might think we’d need to do this, but you’re wrong. It’s actually completely random.

: This can take one try, or it can take half an hour of mashing through dialog (or if you’re smart, using save states).

: “O Queen, please let me look on you… although your beauty dims my eye and all the forest here around us.. if only you could see yourself as I do you would know how much this vision means.”

: “For all at once I am alive. My heart is new…”

: I got it on the second attempt with Alaron at 1 troubadour. I wasn’t even using the gloves that give +2 to it.

: “That’s very good!”

: Counterpoint: No it isn’t.

: “Thanks! And every blossom in my soul I now send to you. Come and stoop and gather up these hopeful flowers for they are sweet and rich with fragrance. And in taking all my happiness you make me even happier still.”

: You know that scene at the start of Parasite Eve where Eve melts everyone in the opera house? That’s how I feel right now.

: Pandara takes Alaron to her secret grove, so I’ll skip a bit of this.

: “What an aura of magic surrounds you! You must get better at playing an instrument, though. But for me, your charm outshines all else..”

: “Magic? But I’m just a squire. I don’t have much magical ability.”

: “Wildling?”

: Metal Gear?!

: “A special type of magical self. A wildling cannot be held to the Mundane Plane. You are free to learn all four schools of magic!”

: We’re also free to ignore them, because there are maybe two good spells in the game and one of them exists solely to cheese bosses with range.

: “Pandara, no one can learn the spells of all four schools. It’s unheard of.”

: So yes, she has just told Alaron that he is in fact a Very Special Boy and will save the world from chaos. Jack Garland did that without being a Very Special Boy.

: And now I hope you’re ready, because this conversation is about to take a turn.

: “You’re so beautiful, I wish you could always be near me.”

: This is how you get Ah! My Goddess. Do you want Ah! My Goddess? No you don’t. I don’t even know how it got 45 volumes when it was rehashing itself maybe three years in.

: “Alaron, the warmth of your words would melt the coldest heart..”

: The best kind of man is one you can clip through.

: “Pandara?”

: “Now I give you a special amulet. There! You have its magic. But.. you can use its powers only once. It will let you communicate directly to me so I can help you. Which I would like to do!”

: Alaron can travel through time, but only once! Truly, this is the Jolteon of Let’s Plays.

: What does she see in him? He’s the least fuckable man alive.

: Yeah so that’s enough of that. I hope it was just as awkward for you to read as it was for me to transcribe.

: We then need to go back to Ardra with the flower. I’m going to skip most of this because I think you, like me, have probably had enough of this game’s dialog for one lifetime.

: Ardra sends Alaron on a vision quest where he meets Master Willem from Bloodborne and a Chaos Trooper (the crab-like thing the camera never really lets you see).

: The door whore enters the Chaos Dimension for some reason.

: Then Oriana shows up and begs Ardra to heal Alaron.

: She tells us that she can’t do anything and we need to find Cradawgh.

: She also confirms that Alaron is a Very Special Boy who is effectively NieR from NieR - Alaron is the replicant and the ghost we’ve been seeing is his soul.

: Now that we’re done with the awkward cutscenes, let’s ignore Port Saiid and instead go get a weapon for Becan. We’ll probably fight some chaos enemies on the way.

: By the way, if you want to crash the game, one of the trainers in the wizard school teaches Immolation. It’s meant to be a damage-over-time spell but all it does is crash the game.

: What we want to do is head over this bridge, which leads to the second half of the game.

: Not far from the bridge is another crossroads. We could head to Port Saiid, but let’s head to Terminor (the path ahead) instead. Terminor won’t open until after we’ve done a few other areas.

: Almost immediately, we get ambushed by Chaos Troopers. These are supposed to be the next tier up from the Chaos Warriors we fought at the start of the update.

: On one hand, they’re a lot easier to hit because they lack shields. They also can’t use shield spells. Instead, they get a spell that drops rocks people and can kill Brenna in two hits.

: Chaos Troopers have a chance of dropping a magic axe that Becan can use. This is the preferred option, because the other magic axe sucks.

: The Blood Axe does more damage than what Becan had before, but has slightly less accuracy. Accuracy shouldn’t be as much of a problem now that he has thief.

: At least now we have something that can hit ghosts, which is important because we’re about to enter an area that is nothing but ghosts. I still want to keep going down the road to Terminor, though.

: The road ends here. This is Darkling Bog, home to a dungeon called Shamsuk’s Tower that isn’t available until much later in the game. I don’t think I ever got that far the first time I played.

: Ryan told me last night he wants to get a wood carving that reads “Shamsuk Deez Nuts”. Guess what I’m going to title the update where I do Shamsuk’s Tower.

: The only reason I bothered to come out here is to show this off. This is mostly if you’re building Alaron as a wizard for some reason.

: The hill is guarded by a troll, which is effectively a stronger ogre that can take half of Abrecan’s HP in one hit and can potentially oneshot Brenna.

: Wall of Bones is a single-target spell that stops a target from moving. It’s a necromancy spell, so only Alaron can learn it permanently. You can use this to cheese bosses, but I never got it to work on my first run.

: The other axe we could get is really deep into Darkling Bog. It sucks because it gives -5 to dexterity, has a damage rating of 4, and is less accurate than the Blood Axe.

: With that done, we can head to Port Saiid. The path is, as always, long and empty.

: Near the end is this guy, who we can talk to for a sidequest.

: The gist of it is that there’s a big idiot guarding the bridge to Port Saiid.

: And here is said idiot.

: This is Arturo. Arturo is effectively a second Abrecan - he starts with a maxed strength stat, more HP than Abrecan has, and some decent weapon skills. Like Abrecan, he can’t learn thief and therefore has little use outside of being very tanky.

: He also starts with a really low dexterity, so if you plan on using him for some reason you’d have to grind that up.

: And this is Keelin. Keelin is what the game kind of expects you to replace Brenna with in the likely event that Brenna has died before this point. I’ve actually had Brenna die off-screen a few times.

: Keelin starts with nearly double Brenna’s max HP and has better skill access (she can use bows, Brenna can’t). The downside is she starts without warrior and can’t use shields. The bow access isn’t as much of an upside as you’d think because bows don’t get bonus damage from thief as far as I know.

: The other, non-mechanical downside is that she is VERY horny for Alaron and has a couple of extra cutscenes if you have both her and Brenna where they fight over Alaron.

: But he’s such a special boy, how can she not want him?

: “Beg to report, miss. Port Saiid has criminals enough.”

: “I’m sure you can’t mean me!”

: “Miss, I saw this episode clearly.”

: “You saw nothing. A mangy band of merchants.. without enough manners to let a lady pass! You’re not like that. Are you?”

: “Well…”

: “Of course you’re not! You’re a gentleman! A protector of the realm! Now… won’t you please step aside and let me cross?”

: “Beg to report, miss. I’d like to.. I was at my post. You lingering on the slope. The merchants passed. You took those beads and everything else you could get your hands on.”

: That’s the best she can do? Stealing some beads? Is she going to be the “assassin who only kills bad people” type?

: She’s dumb enough to want Alaron.

: “My goodness! What an imagination!”

: “I don’t imagine! I saw you with my own eyes.”

: “Oh? But our eyes play tricks!”

: “My eyes are fine.”

: “Why.. two, miss. Same as you.”

: “That’s right. And how many people crossed just now with the merchants? Huh? Twenty? Thirty?”

: “Beg to report, miss, that… that…”

: “That what? Are you all seeing and all powerful?”

: “I don’t see how anyone can honestly track more than forty people.. eighty hands.. is that not so? With two teensy weensy little eyes. Do you?”

: “I… I… I…”

: “Please. Stop wasting my time with apologies. I have a fondness for guards and I’ll overlook your incompetence.. but don’t let it happen again! Now if you’ll excuse me!”

: We then get a dialog puzzle where we can recruit Arturo. We’re not going to because we’d ultimately be trading Abrecan for a slightly different Abrecan.

: Port Saiid is about as far as I got the first time I played this game. It has a grind spot, and I’m probably going to use it to up Brenna’s HP somewhat.

: Right before the gate is a group of chaos enemies. Chaos Sorcerers are really annoying to fight because they can cast shield spells that give them something like 80% damage resistance.

: This would also be our first encounter with Chaos Warriors if we hadn’t fought them outside Gwernia. They’re a lot less annoying now that Alaron and Becan have thief leveled.

: Chaos Sorcerers drop robes, which are technically better than the dragon leather we’ve been wearing but cost 2 max HP to equip and have a small dex penalty.

: Port Saiid has a lot of trainers in it, but we’re going to skip most of them because we don’t really need them. Let’s head into that first building on the right.

: This building is a shop, but it has a hidden basement accessed by hitting A on this stack of boxes.

: The bandit down here can train thief up to 8. My initial plan had been to wait to train thief until we got here to save on EXP, since training with a trainer costs slightly less EXP.

: Right where Alaron is looking is a hidden chest we’re going to want to pick up.

: The chest has Tinker’s Gloves, which increase Mechanic by 2. These are useful for disarming trapped chests, which we’re going to run into a lot.

: Now I’m going to show you the part that almost made me quit the game the first time. When I played the first time, I didn’t know how thief worked.

: This house has a wand hidden in the fireplace for some reason.

: If you pick up the wand, you get ambushed outside by a wraith. Wraiths are like Spirit Wolves - they’re immune to non-magic weapons.

: This fight is inescapable and the wraith has a pretty high evasion rate (high enough that warrior is not enough to hit it and you need the bonus hit from thief).

: Good thing we picked up that blood axe. When I did this on my first run, I only had Warfang and the Chaos Sword and couldn’t hit this thing because no one had thief.

: My party at this point was Alaron, Becan, Arturo and Keelin.

: Fortunately, our party is well equipped and we send it to.. Hell, I guess.

: I hope it likes singing and having daddy issues.

: There’s a big building near the wraith house that has a boat captain in it. I’m going to paraphrase.

: Basically, the lighthouse is out and also occupied by evil and we need to re-light it for him to take us to Cradawgh. This is another thing that is absolute bullshit without a guide.

: To re-light the lighthouse, we need a magic scroll. Can you see where the scroll is on this screen, which is right next to the building with the hidden bandit trainer?

: Trick question, you need to walk around a very hard to spot corner to a hidden path.

: This is Shamsuk (Deez Nuts)'s journal. I’m not going to transcribe it.

: The journal is basically “I know there’s a very special boy somewhere who is going to kill chaos, but my friends Bowden and Ardra won’t help!”

: The reason I’m not transcribing it is because it’s meant to be part of a sequel hook. Rabisat is the “chaos mistress” and was intended to be the final boss of a sequel that never came to fruition for a very good reason.

: You don’t get to make a second game until your first one isn’t trash.

: This is the lighthouse scroll, which we need to re-light the lighthouse. We’ll do that next update.

: This bag has Shamsuk’s Amulet in it, which is best-in-slot if you’re a caster because most of the amulets in this game are a joke.

: I imagine it’s probably a locket that opens up to reveal that one side reads “Shamsuk” and the other side reads “Deez Nuts”.

: Next time we’ll re-light the lighthouse and visit Chaos Island, home to the dungeon that made me quit the game the first time.

[Timrod]

You know, there was a point where I thought I was going to kill Brenna off for Keelin, but I think I’m going to keep her in the party.

[Timrod]

Summary

: The lighthouse is another 10-minute (on fast forward) walk down a boring, empty path.

: This group of ogres respawns if you need to grind, but it’s better and faster to use the ghost wolves in Talewok. Not that grinding will help you since nothing in this game scales well.

: Six groups of ogres, a group of wolves (regular ones, not the ghost kind) and a group of bandits later, we’re at the lighthouse.

: The door is trapped, which is annoying because Brenna has 7 points in mechanic and can’t consistently disarm it. Several savestates later..

: We get a group of generic bandits we could’ve wiped the floor with hours ago. The only difference is that these bandits are using Dragon Fangs.

: Dragon Fangs are one of two magical throwing weapons, and are generally kind of garbage.

: There’s a unique shield down here, but we’re not going to bother because it’s objectively worse than the Chaos Shield.

: If you do go down the ladder, you get an early introduction to a new enemy type: wyverns. Wyverns are effectively stronger bats, but they have a variant called the Dracovern that can hit for like 30 to 40 damage.

: I use the experience to get Brenna up to around 60 HP, which will be important in a few minutes. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but HP is derived like this: Stamina + Endurance + Level.

: Stamina and Endurance both give 1 max HP per point, with the only difference being that you can cast using your Stamina pool and not your Endurance/Level HP pool.

: It’s possible to overflow your stamina value using a buff spell you can get as early as Erromon, which gives your character negative HP.

: Alaron spouts some gibberish and the lighthouse re-lights. I’m going to skip that dialogue since it might as well be ten text boxes of someone randomly pressing buttons on a keyboard.

: If we head back to Port Saiid, the captain isn’t in his house anymore. We need to head down to the docks for some lengthy cutscenes.

: Before we get there, we run into this guy. This is Farris, and he’s a temporary party member we’ll run into later.

: “Let’s hope it didn’t wear you out.”

: “I don’t think I know you.”

: “Few claim to know how this began or where it goes or who will..”

: I feel like I need to use this shot on social media at some point. It’s up there along with the Tetsugoro Kusabi “The internet, huh? Fuck the internet.”

: “Excuse me. I’ll explain. There walked upon the portside bow.. a boy who wondered why and how…”

: Again, feel like I could get some mileage out of this on social media somewhere. Maybe the next time I see people posting their FF14 OCs on my timeline.

: “Don’t I? So he searched high and he searched low… to find the answers he should know..”

: “Alaron, quick. Make the sign of warding.”

: I’m picturing Alaron making a cross with his fingers and shouting “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!”

: “No… let’s hear the rest.”

: “There’s a good knight. But where on land, or air, or sea, exists the key to set him free?”

: “You don’t know that much about me.”

: “We do not know, we only guess. Your life may be an awful mess. If you’re the one without a name, prepare yourself for deadly games.”

: Okay this is boring now. I’m bored. Let’s move on.

: The captain demands we pay him 400 gold to go to Cradawgh’s Isle. We’ll do that because we have no choice.

: If you’re playing this on console, make a save before you move forward on the dock. We’re going to be stuck at sea without access to shops for a while, and there are enemies on Chaos Island that can crash the game.

: Ten seconds into the boat trip, we fight two gryphons. Gryphons are glass cannon types who could potentially kill Brenna in one hit if I hadn’t upped her HP.

: This, for instance, would’ve instakilled her had I not gotten her HP up.

: A storm arrives, and Alaron thankfully tied the branch to the helm so we should be safe.

: The joke’s going to be that he doesn’t know what a helm is, isn’t it.

: Oh, it absolutely is.

: The boat crashes on a mysterious island.

: And now the captain tells us to fuck off while he fixes the boat. Welcome to Chaos Island.

: This island is full of chaos enemies, and by that I mean there are probably 20 enemy encounters within a ten-second walk of this screen.

: Here we run into Chaos Stormers, which are identical to Chaos Troopers except that they have a weaker multi-target spell and drop a different weapon.

: The Chaos Maul is a lot like the Chaos Sword - it has a really low base hit rate (30%) but has one of the highest damage ratings in the game at 7. Is it better than the Blood Axe? Not really.

: This island is full of “dracoverns”, which are wyverns that do roughly double the damage of a standard wyvern.

: If you look out to sea, you can see a little island with a portal on it. We need to activate that portal.

: Here, we run into our first Chaos Slayer. Chaos Slayers are giant blobs of HP who can cast shields and haste their entire group, which makes them faster than our party.

: The little island is covered in encounters, most of which are wyvern or dracovern spam.

: There’s a chest on the back side of the island, and this is what we came for.

: This wand is useful if you want to kill a superboss that’s on this island. Let me show that off.

: The superboss is up these stairs, which also lead to the dungeon.

: The red guy here is the Chaos Marquis. He is a superboss brought down by a laughably easy exploit. First, let me show you how this fight normally goes.

: He starts by stacking Clumsiness, a debuff that reduces hit rate by a lot.

: Even Brenna can barely hurt him and she now has 28 dexterity and 29 strength.

: The Marquis then instakills people one by one. As far as I understand it, the way you’re meant to kill him is to stack debuffs on him until he starts taking real damage. But we don’t need to do that.

: Off-screen, I do one fight to get Alaron’s intelligence to 20, the minimum for equipping the wand. From here, we just cast it.

: This is part of what I think is a bug - if the final enemy alive in a fight has Wall of Bones cast on them, the game treats it as if they died.

: We find 6,000 gold and the Marquis Amulet. What does the Marquis Amulet do, you ask? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING.

: The “Control Marquis” spell is meant to instantly win a fight against a Chaos Marquis. There is one other Chaos Marquis in the game. The amulet spell has maybe a 5% chance of hitting it at maxed-out wizard with two witch rings and a wizard hat equipped.

: And the best part? You can Wall of Bones that one too!

: Have a rough copy of a pic Salty Vanilla is working on featuring Brenna tossing the Marquis’s useless amulet into the sea.

: Welcome to the dungeon. This is the part where the game starts turning to shit.

: Starts turning to shit?

: Okay, goes from the fun kind of bad game to the un-fun kind.

: This dungeon has fixed camera angles and is filled to the brim with chaos enemies. If you leave the dungeon, ALL OF THE ENEMIES RESPAWN.

: The first room has a door hidden in a wall we need to take to progress.

: This room crashed the game the first time I entered - the game threw me into combat with one of the caster groups and the game froze because they had too many spell effects going on at once.

: Assuming you get past the two caster groups without the game crashing, there’s a chaos slayer waiting in ambush. These fights are back to back and most likely you won’t have a chance to save in between.

: This room. This room is what made me drop this game the first time I played, and is where a lot of people will probably drop the game. This room is BULLSHIT.

: The big skull on the wall that’s maybe 20 steps away is our goal. It took me over an hour of savestate abuse to get through this room.

: Each of those four braches on either side of the main path has an enemy group in it. The first two are groups of chaos warriors we can steamroll effortlessly.

: This is where shit gets painful. This group of two chaos troopers and two chaos stormers is broken as all hell.

: For some reason, this particular group is scripted to spam their spells, which have a much higher hit rate and a much lower failure rate than normal.

: There’s a pretty good chance (I’d say it’s well over half) that these enemies kill Alaron before you ever get a turn, even with the entire party at max dexterity.

: I think it took me around 12 retries before I got through this fight, even though we’re definitely overleveled for this part of the game.

: Assuming you get that fight down, you get to fight not one but TWO groups of two Chaos Spellcasters and two Chaos Sorcerers.

: That screenshot up above is the game softlocking because the enemies used one too many spells at once. I had this happen on three different recording attempts.

: Here’s another softlock that happened almost immediately after starting the fight. I have no idea how anyone at H2O looked at this and said “This is okay. We can release this.”

: I’m guessing certification requirements were also a lot more lax back then, because this is the kind of thing that would make a game fail cert today. My guess is that Nintendo didn’t give a shit because the N64 was already a dead console by the time this released.

: We’ve battled through over an hour of game-crashing bullshit that should’ve taken maybe 10 minutes to get through. Now what? We can’t get past the gate.

: You go down all the side halls. They’re all empty except for some useless spices and gemstones. How do you make progress?

: Turn off the game and send death threats to the developers.

: Play something better?

: You missed a key somewhere, didn’t you?

: The answer is that going up to this specific wall reveals a lever we can flip to open the gate.

: Clearly, if we’ve been fighting shit that can crash the game, this room must have a boss that can delete your save file or brick the N64. Nope!

: It’s full of goblins. These are the same enemies we fought in Erromon, without any stat boosts.

: The way out is this ramp hidden in the floor.

: This leads us to another big empty room with a couple of goblins in it.

: And here’s our way out. This is the other half of the portal we saw outside. If you didn’t activate that other portal, you have to walk all the way back and I think the enemies in that one room all respawn.

: We can then walk back to the boat, where the captain is sitting in the middle of the ocean.

: Normally I’d skip the cutscene that happens here, but I suffered through over an hour of reloading savestates in that godawful dungeon and I need you to understand my pain.

: “Yes! YOU!!! YOU YOU YOU!!!”

: “What is it, Captain?”

: “What is it!!! What are you, mate?! In love with land?!”

: “I thought…”

: “You thought WRONG!! The mast is good! And jsut look at them sails! We are roaring and ready to go! So move your tail and get on board. I CAN’T WAIT ALL DAY!”

: “You mean now?”

: “RIGHT NOW!!! Goodbye to Port! Goodbye to roads and roofs! We are sailing for the Wizard’s Isle!”

: “…And I’ve never been happier to be at sea! It’s onto the Namer’s Isle for us! 'Course, I’ve no idea where we are..”

: “Don’t worry, Captain. Any place is better than here.”

: “Magic’s not my dufflebag, lad, but I like the cut of your jib!”

: “Uh.. Captain?”

: What if I told you this cutscene goes on for another like, 40 lines?

: “OH FUCK, THAT’S NOT THE HELM! THAT’S THE FUCKING STERN! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”

: And then everybody died.

: Unfortunately, we’re on Cradawgh’s island. There is nothing here but a cutscene.

: I’m going to post a lot of screenshots of this because I want you to see what H2O’s idea of cutscene direction was.

: “And Alaron.. they have someone…”

: This isn’t me making the game look bad, by the way. There’s no camera motion at all during these cutscenes - it makes jump cuts and then stops.

: “Cradawgh?”

: Metal Gear!?

: “There are too many to fight.”

: "But what are they? Why are they here?’

: We get into a fight with one of each chaos enemy we’ve run into so far. It does not last long because they’re incapable of nuking Alaron to death and aren’t likely to crash the game.

: “Are you Cradawgh?”

: “I’ve waited… since Ardra sent the jester… waited for you… the one whose existence was foretold… the nameless one.. again a nameless one.. again!”

: “Don’t talk! I have to save you!”

: “no time.. child.. I am destined.. for the earth now.. save your strength…”

: “No! I won’t let you die!”

: “I do not fear the end… so long as I may be buried in the dark earth of Talewok… ah, Talewok.. my forsaken home…”

: “Your fate now rests in the hands of creatures whose wisdom goes beyond.. this mere.. humanity.. the Jundar.. see Zaratas.. find.. the… desert.. but beware…”

: Pochangarat is the massacre princess from the cutscene at the start of the game. I’m going to skip the rest of this and just say that Cradawgh dies after taking what I assume is like six hours to bleed out.

: On the boat ride back to Port Saiid, we get scenes with our party members.

: “What’s that got to do with it?”

: “You were surprised I was the one to save Ramsay’s life, surprised I was a ‘hero’. But I never told you how I came to be on that hill in time to save the King.”

: “You see, just moments before, the unit I was with was attacked by a large force of goblins. The attack startled us all. We were young and we panicked a little. We tried to retreat and in a few seconds I found myself separated from my unit and lost in the woods.”

: This sounds like a Vietnam story with “VC” changed to “goblins”.

: His facial expression does not at all match what he’s saying. He looks like my dad does when he tries to explain sports to his dog.

: There’s no rule that says a dog can’t play football. It’s a contract provision with the player’s association instead.

: “My first impulse was to give up. I thought I should either hurl myself uselessly against the horde of goblins, or slink back into the woods and run away.”

: “I do not know what gave me strength that day, but instead of giving up, I found my way back to Ramsay to somehow redeem myself.”

: “I found him just as he was about to be bushwhacked by that goblin. We only fail when we lose hope, boy.”

: “How else do you answer death? By failing to achieve a goal?”

: “You’re right.”

: “Now you are thinking like a true knight.”

: “He was very brave.”

: “He was. Those minions love fighting.”

: This dialog makes no sense, so let’s cut the rest of it.

: We wind up back in Port Saiid with Farris still standing there. Our goal is to head back to Talewok, then to Terminor.

: On the way to Talewok, Alaron and Brenna have a chat about romance. This scene becomes a lot more painful if you have Keelin in the party with Brenna.

: Finally, we have a scene with Abrecan as we approach Arturo’s bridge. This is one of the last scenes we’ll have with him because I’m going to dump him in Terminor.

: “And I was surprised by those creatures on the island.”

: “We did our best.”

: “But some escaped. The enemy that escapes today returns tomorrow.”

: “We were outnumbered.”

: No you weren’t! There were four enemies!

: “No doubt that wizard would say the same.”

: “Even Cradawgh could not fight Rabisat single-handed.”

: “But that’s our situation.. or do you see allies lining up to join us?”

: “We have our friends.”

: “That’s no way to think.”

: “The Mirari, Bowden, Ardra…”

: “Let me lay down the law for you…”

: There are people who would call Abrecan an example of toxic masculinity, and.. yeah he probably is. He gets worse.

: The road back to Talewok is another 10 minutes of nothing.

: Ardra tells us to go to Terminor and find the innkeeper there, who is one of the glitchiest NPCs in the game. There’s a chance he simply never shows up.

: You can then have a funeral for Cradawgh if you go to his house, which is behind the inn. I’m not going to bother transcribing it.

: We then have a conversation with Abrecan where he tells Alaron not to get involved with women.

: Also Becan is hungry. I don’t know why the game absolutely bombards you with cutscenes here.

: I’m going to end the update here, because Terminor is a giant mess of cutscenes involving a plot point that kinda comes out of nowhere.

: Next update: Sham-suk Deez Nuts.

[Fefnir]

Blockquote
“I’ve noticed the ladies put their confidence in you.”
“Do they?”

If nothing else, I’m glad Alaron can be at least a little self-aware.

[Timrod]

: Here’s a piece from Salty Vanilla showing the proper use for the Marquis Amulet. I almost asked them to do an alt where the amulet gets replaced with an Aidyn Chronicles cartridge but I felt like that might be a bit much.

: Salty is looking for commission work, so if you’re interested, you can reach them on Discord at _saltyvanilla.