00:00:01.42 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her) and I am in the den gaming yet again with my friend Daniel (he/him) to talk about Shining Force 3, this time Scenario 3. We're finally back at it, folks. It took a minute, but we are here. Daniel, how are you doing today? 00:00:19.85 Daniel I'm doing well. It's a good day here finally. It's nice outside. The sun's shining. My kid's going out with my wife and going to do some chopping. So it's going to be a good day I think. 00:00:31.03 Jala Very cool. I feel like I got hit by a bus because of my allergies, but we had ah a whole long preamble about that in the green room. So yeah, if my voice is a little weird today, that would be why it is the allergies. I did take medicine, but, um, you know, it is what it is. So, ah Daniel, at this time, you are not doing a anything on the internet, but you will be, hopefully sometime soon, doing some streaming. 00:00:54.36 Daniel No, not yet. 00:00:58.61 Jala So, I wanted to let folks know, first off, I am streaming again. Surprising everyone, including me. I'm streaming again. I'm back on the wagon doing that. And right now... yeah Right now, as of the time that we are recording slash sharing this, I am doing some streams on Friday afternoon. And I may in the future do some stuff on Saturday in the morning sometime for my folks across the pond who cannot ah come on that late on a Friday because for them it's like almost midnight. when I'm streaming on Friday night. So anyway, that is the thing. I don't want to specify what all I'm doing because by the time this episode comes out, ah we might be doing something different. So anyway, you will see the schedule up on my Twitch. It's twitch.tv/jalachan because I am Jala-chan in all the places. And Daniel, I will be featuring you on there as soon as you are back up and running as one of my recommended folks. So that is a thing that y'all can check out. You can find him there as well. You are dragons of Saturn. 00:02:04.07 Daniel Currently, yeah. It might change, but I think I'm going to keep that for now. 00:02:08.97 Jala Gotcha, gotcha. So otherwise, you can find me on the Ko-fi. It's ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia and kick us few bucks to keep the lights on and keep us churning out content for y'all. Otherwise, let's get into this thing because it's very long. So we are now on Scenario 3, Bulzome Rising. And I'll go ahead and kick us off with the beginning of chapter one. We're not gonna do, as you know, we talked about all the details of how this game plays and everything in the first of these episodes before we started talking about Scenario 1. And we covered Scenario 2, just got right into the spoilers. We're back in spoiler territory here, y'all. So um this is at the end of the game. So if you haven't already listened to those other episodes, they are in the show notes. Go listen to those. Go play the game. ah And otherwise, we'll get into it. So chapter one is recapturing the Imperial Capital. The game begins shortly after Julian and company leave Medion's team from Scenario 2. Medion's team is like off doing their own adventure as you played or listened to on the last episode. On the flagship, Donheart and Gracia talk to Bresby, which is the advisor who requested your aid. And Kate, which is his attendant. And among other things, they discuss the growing bond of friendship between Synbios and Medion. And everybody makes comments about this in the game so much that I ship it so hard. Yeah. 00:03:38.86 Daniel They make good partners. They would be fantastic together. 00:03:40.21 Jala Yeah, I know. It's so so so much the thing. So I ship it. I'm sure everybody else does too. I'm sure there's fanfics. I don't know. I've never actually looked for Shunning Force fanfics for this. But um anyway, Gracia senses approaching evil. And sure enough, Bulzome monks appear and you have your very first battle on the decks of the flagship. 00:04:02.51 Daniel It's pretty simple, straightforward. 00:04:04.48 Jala Very simple, straightforward battle against guys. If Stella died in Scenario 2, you will have Edmund in your team. But my Stella survived, so I did not have Edmund. 00:04:18.23 Daniel Yeah, me either. I have yet to experience that fun. It sounds like a good idea, but it's not really easy because I have a hard time killing her. She's so innocent. 00:04:29.53 Jala Yeah, well for various reasons, ah one of which we'll talk about whenever we get to that part in the story here. 00:04:36.16 Daniel It's a pretty straightforward battle, though. I just sent Kate and Julian up the front, the left-hand side there. had Gracie in the back being able to cast aura and um yeah, it's pretty easy for me. I didn't have any issues with it. Really. Did you have any trouble? 00:04:51.02 Daniel No, not at all. This is pretty... 00:04:53.66 Jala pretty 'starter battle' kind of stuff. But like, it's nice to do your starter battle and already be like promoted because in the first couple of scenarios, you start out as level one because, you know, you're Synbios and Medion and you're just starting your adventure. But Julian, by this point, should be like promoted. All your guys should be like, you know promoted level whatever, something three or something. Three or four, something like that when you start this. So that's what's so fun is that Gracie already has like aura and things like that, that he, or that they can use to, you know, save everybody. 00:05:27.18 Daniel Yeah, this this ain't a level one basic team here anymore. 00:05:30.51 Jala ohh ah So yeah, smooth like butter for me. I think I had zero notes on that. So ah the rest of the voyage is uneventful. Bresby docks the ship in a small port town close to the capital rather than the capital itself in order to avoid notice. So like Bresby came to you saying, help, we need help. This gigantic mushroom looking guy is in the sky floating and coming to attack Destonia. It's called the Walkuray. 00:05:56.33 Jala I don't know what to do. Somebody please help us. And that's why Julian and company are going that way is to basically go save Destonia from the encroaching Bulzome Vandal ship that is coming in this guy's. 00:06:10.41 Daniel And there's a large debate on whether it's Valkyrie or Valkyrie. The pronunciation is wild across the translation discord. People are very upset that it's not Valkyrie and all this. It's a huge debate there. 00:06:25.06 Jala Well, and the thing is, is that with Shining Force, so many things are named after things that like, say, for example, ah it's the translation team and everybody and like even in the official materials, they say Don Hort, but he's very clearly a Don Quixote. He is "Don (Quixote) Heart". He's Donheart. That's what he is. So I call him Donheart because that's what he is for that reason. And, um you know, like say with the Walkuray, Valkyrie or whatever you want to call it. Same thing there. like it I type Valkyrie or whatever, but like I say it as, you know. 00:07:02.47 Daniel On the official materials on the game cards, it's written as Walkuray and that's the official printed materials. You can argue against it. And some of the cards are terribly named. They have the people who did them did not pay enough attention to the source material. So there's things that like Goliath isn't even anywhere remotely close to his, his actual name in and the cards. 00:07:25.49 Jala Well, and some of that might also be some of these people maybe didn't study English or anything. And like, they're just, you know, and then also it's a German word anyway. So like, I don't know if they're looking at German writing or what, like what are they looking at when they're trying to write this out? You know, they just know what it is in Kana. So, you know, whatever, whatever. I'm calling it the Valkyrie. You can call it whatever you want. It's a big mushroom in the sky. Yeah. So anyway, so Bresby docks the ship in this small little port town to avoid notice. So that way people in Destonia aren't like, hey, who are those people? And, you know, also the Valkyrie and all of the things won't notice this little ship just going off to the side. Upon leaving the ship, the group is attacked on the docks by a reserve troop placed there by Goliath, High Priest Goliath, who is coming and invading Destonia. 00:08:20.02 Daniel Yeah, this battle on Insane, it was really difficult. I actually had to retreat a bunch of times. Part of the problem is that I wanted to break open all the barrels and open the chest and stuff. So was oh yes, go over here. And every time I tried to do that, I would lose somebody or something would happen and I'd be like, oh, this is, I'm not strong enough. Three hitting these guys and they're still not dead is kind of terrifying. So I leveled up a bunch here. I got to level six with everyone and on Insane, the game is definitely not balanced. And you can tell a lot in this scenario that it's nowhere near as balanced as the rest of the difficulty settings. So that was a lot of fun. Pretty straightforward for you though on Normal. 00:09:00.11 Jala Oh, yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Still can be a little bit tricky, but especially if you're trying to get all the barrels in the boxes and stuff like that. um But, you know, it was fairly straightforward and just kind of, OK, one and done out, you know, early battle stuff, you know. 00:09:15.90 Daniel Yeah, they mostly come down to you, so it's pretty easy to lure them out, I think. 00:09:19.62 Jala Right, right. It's just kind of like the same tactics that you use when you're first engaging with these folks just to make sure, like... Because with me anyway, like anytime I play a new map, I'm always like... Or I see new enemies, I'm like, okay, let me put somebody out there and see how much damage this guy does, you know, before I put like...Everyone out there, like let me just see before I send in the troops. you know like I don't know if they're going to like to wipe us or what. so you know Do I have to be do i to play really defensively or aggressively? It just depends on that first guy you know coming up. 00:09:54.05 Daniel And the AI behind them too, because some of the AI is like, hurry up and wait. And some of the AI is like, I'm going to come eat you now. 00:10:00.64 Jala Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you just kind of have to see what's going on with the scenario. I feel too like that insane difficulty being ah imbalanced, that's probably something that if they had continued making Shining Forces, then they would eventually um be able to adjust that better. Because isn't this the first Shining Force game that has like a difficulty setting in it? 00:10:22.49 Daniel I don't recall. I haven't played the other ones enough to know better. 00:10:24.25 Jala Shining Force 1 doesn't, Shining Force 2 doesn't, I don't know about Shining Force CD because of my sob story about Shining Force CD ah so I don't know about Gaiden if that one does 00:10:35.27 Daniel I think it's the first one with the difficulty slider. 00:10:38.47 Daniel Again, that was all kinds of broken. Some of that has been fixed, as I mentioned previously. So they are working on it. on the translation team side of things, they're currently fixing some of the icons in battle. You know how if you have the ninjas in Scenario 1, they sometimes have the two icons for their there's but um their friendship, the overlap. Yeah, so like that kind of stuff's being working on, but the difficulty is just it's just way out there. Insane is just very hard. And magic helps. Magic really kicks ah the enemy's butt, but physical characters are not not nearly as powerful as they should be. 00:11:15.37 Jala See, that does, just off the bat, sound pretty imbalanced. But I think this is, if they had continued doing Shining Forces that have difficulty, they would eventually fine-tune that. But this one, I think, is the first one. And then, that's a new thing in addition to putting Shining Force in a whole different engine and a bunch of other things. So they were already doing a bunch of firsts with this game. 00:11:37.54 Daniel Yeah, this is already way left field compared to the series. 00:11:40.69 Jala Right, right. So after this fight, though, the team heads to the church to meet Scholar, who, in addition to being the priest, is also the leader of a resistance movement against the Destonian aristocracy. He was once the advisor to Emperor Dominant, along with Grantack, who is your advisor in Medion's quest, and Bresby, who is the owl guy who has come to get Julian and company. And He informs the group that the Valkyrie, an ancient flying Vandal ship, is heading for Destonia Castle. However, Gracia is aware that there is a staff that controls the construct which Goliath has to have in his possession. So if Gracia can use their Innovator magic on it, they can disable the Valkyrie. So there is a chance for them to at least get it to go away or at least stop advancing. 00:12:31.05 Daniel Yes. Hey, put a pause on that for a few seconds here. 00:12:34.25 Jala Yep, yep. So on the way to the castle, the Force is harried by a group of Pegasus knights, masked monks, minotaurs, and lizard men. And the Valkyrie rises over the hill and fires lasers at the Force as well. So this is a very cool, intimidating-feeling battle because you're like, oh, there's some guys. Okay, cool. There's a bunch of rocks, though. Why are those rocks on the battlefield? Oh, woof. There's a thing over there and Julian and company then hear a mysterious voice that tells them that they need to hide behind the boulders which are likely going to be destroyed over time by the Valkyrie and in the dugouts to avoid the blasts some mysterious voice that we're going to hear a lot of because then we'll find our secret stalker eventually so this is battle 1 also ruins 1 so oh sorry battle 3 and ruins 1 yep 00:13:22.28 Daniel Yeah, battle 3. 00:13:26.44 Daniel Yeah, life bringing Potion in there. There's some tricky movement inside. I think you have to send somebody with a movement of six to reach the far section unless you plan on going around with Donheart because he can follow the thief and catch up to the thief. 00:13:40.06 Jala I think I did with Donheart, if I'm not mistaken. 00:13:42.74 Daniel Yeah, that's the only two ways i know to get through that ruins. 00:13:44.74 Daniel It took me a few tries to get that down, actually. 00:13:46.80 Jala Donheart is like a staple of me throwing him into every ruins I ever find because he's got such a high movement. It's like, okay, he's going in Who else? Yeah. 00:13:54.36 Daniel There's only a couple situations where he's bad, like, say, sand, where he can't handle sand or mountains or forests. 00:14:00.48 Jala Right. Well, there's not a forest in the ruins, so I think you know it's just the sand usually. 00:14:02.77 Daniel I don't think there's Yeah, that would be a really cool trick to find a way to have a ruin set at a forest inside. I think that would be fun. 00:14:10.26 Jala I know I will it would be cool and it would be doable because some of the ruins are in forests, you know, to just be like, oh, it's dilapidated enough. But then why would you need something to unlock it if it's dilapidated enough to have trees in it? But whatever. Anyway, so how did how did this battle go for you? 00:14:23.47 Daniel Yeah. It was pretty straightforward i just kept people behind the uh behind the rocks for the most part um later on in the area when you get to the point where you can actually go in there into the ruins i think i i had most people outside still so they were huddled up around a couple rocks there and then once we finished the ruins i was able to just kind of plow straight forward and it wasn't too much of a challenge but again I'm slightly higher level than I should be at this point because, again, I power level. So yeah, I don't think I had to retreat more than twice for this one just because the first time I... No, didn't retreat. I had to reset because I messed up the ruins twice. So other than that, yeah, it was straightforward for me. 00:15:06.53 Jala Yeah. Gotcha. So for me, like, so for what I do when I'm about to go into the ruins, since I'm playing on an emulator, i am saving right before anybody opens the ruins. So that way I can just restart to that one point and just get back to that. And then if I messed it up, I 00:15:22.10 Daniel That is smart. 00:15:23.27 Jala Yeah, that's how I usually get around that problem, so I don't have to redo the whole battle. But when I had the people in the ruins trying to chase down the thief, some of the boulders started to get destroyed at that point. um So I had people in dugouts. And also what I was finding difficult is because I like to level all my people evenly. So it's not like, oh, well, these people didn't get leveled and these other people are level like two or three above them, this other set. So I'll just level the lower level people on the next fight. Like I don't do that. I i make sure everybody gets their rounds in the same fight. So they're about the same level every time. And yeah, 00:15:57.85 Daniel I tried that, but it never works out evenly for me. 00:15:59.80 Jala It's hard. It's hard to do. And then what I was finding is that a lot of people with the lesser movement range, especially my ding-dang healers that I needed up front, they could not get to, you know, like it's Isabella especially, holy crap, like she needs so much more movement because she could not she could not get up there in time to do what she needed to do. 00:16:20.69 Daniel She's pretty easy though because of the healer bug. Because you can gain 10 XP for every action. So every turn, even if you're only missing one health on someone, you should be using an item or healing on every turn. And eventually that that outstrips the other XP. 00:16:35.34 Jala Sure, but since I was one and done on all of these battles, she was slow. She was slow. If wasn't on a time limit and I could sit there and mess with it some more, maybe. But like yeah we are going through. We're going find a way to make it work. So after this, this battle, which is very cool, like visually and just like as an idea, like because you saw that key art from Shining Force Scenario 1 where it's Synbios and everybody attacking the Valkyrie, right? 00:17:05.18 Daniel Yeah, that's my background art on my computer. 00:17:05.54 Jala Yeah, it's super cool. It's got this cool art and it never happened. It never happened. 00:17:11.97 Daniel Never. They never see it. 00:17:13.56 Jala You never see it. They don't ever see it. Not even once because they come in later, after. 00:17:18.42 Daniel At the very end, they still don't see it. 00:17:24.17 Jala Well, anyway, so High Priest Goliath threatens Prince Majesty and General Steel with the Valkyrie's might after he finished this battle. and Just as it seems that Majesty is going to surrender, Julian's army arrives and Goliath is forced to focus on this new threat. The team meets the owner of the voice that they heard in the last battle. Her name is Jane, sister to Death Helen, who possesses both light and dark within her. She advises the team and then disappears for the time being. She does this a lot. This is her thing. And Gracia is troubled by her, but the force focuses on fighting their way to the staff powering the Valkyrie because they have priorities. who Like maybe don't reminisce about the weirdo that just kind of popped in and popped out. Just we got a mission. We got to go do this thing. Let's get her get her done. you know So. 00:18:14.56 Daniel That was pretty interesting, but focus. Again, this fight was super straightforward for me. ah just hit along the cliff edge. Anytime a guy tried to come down from the sides because there's a couple spots where they can pop down, I just focused on them. and I think I said a couple people up the left, couple people up the right. Straightforward for me. Very easy fight compared to what we've been dealing with so far. 00:18:35.25 Jala Yeah, just like the last fight, the Valkyrie is sending out beams, so you need to hide behind stuff. And again, this is ah another one of those sections where Isabella, was like, Isabella, you need one more movement. One more movement, girl! You know, so that was irritating me, but you know i I could have leveled her if I wanted to. It just would have taken more time than I cared to throw in. So there's also items you can get eventually that that'll help with that that movement range, so you know that's no longer a problem at a point. Eventually I just gave up and I let her just get hit by the Valkyrie. I'm like, whatever, it's fine. It's fine. So that's what you get for not having one more movement. 00:19:11.46 Daniel That's what you get. 00:19:15.34 Jala Gotta hustle, hustle. Anyway, Gracia uses their Shining ability on the staff and then disables it. So for me, like this, this was fine. 00:19:25.47 Jala I split my party up, and which this will send you. I split my party up into two teams and had them half on one side and half on the other, which is part of why Isabella was irritating me because Gracia was on one side and she was on the other to heal the other team. And I'm like, you are just not quite far enough in to do what you need to do. You're one square off lady. So yeah, it is. 00:19:45.13 Daniel Also with that disability, when he disables the Walkuray, that's temporary so you've got to be quick at that point. 00:19:51.50 Jala Yep. And then you have to go and like tag team up there on Goliath and everything. yeah At that point. But some after you defeat him, then Jane reappears again and asks you to allow her to take Goliath to be healed as she assisted you in disabling the Valkyrie. She's like, hey, we didn't make a deal before the battle, but I did help you out. So why don't you let me just take your enemy that tried to murder you and all of Destonia and go heal him? Because that sounds like a good idea. 00:20:24.83 Daniel Yeah, it's a great idea. Let's just let our enemies live. What help what could be the the worst thing that could happen out of that? 00:20:30.18 Jala Right. Well, and here's the thing. They do a trick here because if you allow her to take Goliath, it opens up the way for Rollie to join you later. And if you don't let her take Goliath, then you end up having like ah one less party member later in in this section. 00:20:47.35 Daniel Oh, I've never had that experience yet either. Because i always let her take Goliath. I'm like, yeah, no, I want you to take him. 00:20:55.48 Jala Yeah, if you don't, it like if you if you tell her no, she's like, what did you tell to me? will not help you out later so much. I will still help you out, but not dot extra. 00:21:03.56 Daniel I'm kind of like Goku in that regard. Take my enemy back and let them heal. I'll fight him again a second time. Yeah. 00:21:14.78 Jala Right, right. Well, I mean, like, at this point, you're trained to be like, they're all gonna just come back anyway, because what happened in Synbios and Medion's quests, every single time you beat one of these guys, it's like, don't worry, you know, like, you we've defeated them, guys, and then it's like, somebody shows up and takes them away and heals them every time. Every time. 00:21:33.61 Daniel I'm not dead yet. 00:21:35.35 Jala I'm not dead. I'm getting better. 00:21:37.03 Daniel Also, it was me, Dio. 00:21:39.61 Jala Yeah, exactly. Valkyrie at this point, because you have disabled it, it ends up returning to the north to the Bulzom Temple as it has been discharged of its duty. So off goes the big mushroom cloud. 00:21:51.97 Jala Okay, bye. So... 00:21:54.62 Daniel Yeah, bye, Felicia. 00:21:57.53 Jala Prince Majesty and General Steel come out of the castle to greet Bresby and Julian's force. Majesty is happy to let them in and help them along their way to Saraband. But Steel twists everything around and makes it seem as if Julian is at fault as a mercenary and a rogue. And Bresby's loyalties are suspect for bringing this guy here. And Majesty, who is very weak-willed, allows Steele to do what he pleases. And Bresby and Isabella are both kicked out because Bresby had come to get you. And Isabella was one of his people in attendance. Anyway, they are kicked out and there's also a possible trial to come later when the Emperor returns. So you're kicked out, but also we'll find you again and put you on a trial, I guess. 00:22:47.79 Daniel Yeah, I really hate Steel. 00:22:49.64 Jala Bresby of course is relieved of his duties as Majesty's advisor like you suck as an advisor because you brought these guys here and they're dirty or whatever these they're dirty and they yeah they're terrible they saved us how dare and so right and then that's the end of the chapter. That's chapter one. 00:22:59.89 Daniel These guys who saved your life. Yeah, okay. They're bad. 00:23:15.80 Jala I have to say this about Bresby and we'll talk more about it later. Bresby is my favorite advisor. He's such a goober. He's a goober. 00:23:25.52 Daniel He's a little bit of a hentai, too. 00:23:28.81 Jala Yeah, he's a weird little gooby dude. But like, then again, everybody else on the team is also horny. So... they're thirsty - you know that part I'm talking about where they're all just like having a whole discussion about people they're hot for whatever. It's a thing. so 00:23:46.10 Daniel There's some good conversation in the headquarters, though. 00:23:49.39 Jala Mm hmm. So anyway, moving right on to chapter two, the betrayal of Mageron/Majesty. This one starts in HQ, as usually happens. Bresby is shell shocked. He's arguing with Donheart, who explains that although he originally left the empire in order to fight for the Republican dream, he became disillusioned when human greed and power plays wrecked the ideal there as well. But since following Gracia, he has seen a new path for himself and wants to watch over the world from a distance without ties to either political force. So he wants to be like the Galm doll. I want to be over there. Bresby realizes that he's turned a blind eye to many terrible situations in the empire, hoping that he could bring about change by advising and teaching the prince, but that ended poorly. So he decides that his path now lies with Gracia as well. Eventually, everyone else also agrees to follow Gracia. And Father Scholar comes in advising that Steele is coming to town with troops likely to seize Gracia. And he can lead the force out of town down a dangerous path. It might be dangerous, but not as dangerous as the entire Imperial Army. So Julian is urged to make his preparations and head to the church ASAP. 00:25:11.01 Daniel Not that there would be a lot of preparation at this point. what Do you have a couple of items so far? 00:25:15.26 Jala Yeah, not a whole lot. 00:25:15.87 Daniel You're not going with Blacksmith. All that stuff's kind of later for this scenario so far. 00:25:21.81 Jala Getting more healing items, I guess, is really the big thing. So you go to the church. Scholar tells you that when the gods raised the land out of the ocean, fissures formed all over, including underground and a network of caves exists under the church that will lead the forest to the coast without ever encountering general Steel. So I like the fact that it's giving you some world building here. And telling you, this is once upon a time, let me tell you the story of the gods. You know? And like, this is why there's some caves down here. Just in case you're wondering why there's caves under the church. And I appreciate this so much because on my stream, I'm playing Resident Evil 6. And in the beginning of Resident Evil 6, you're Leon and Helena. And you are going. And you're somewhere in New England. You're on a college campus. And then it gets overrun with zombies. And then you go down into the sewers and go to a church. You know, like go through underneath the town to a church. And then you go to this church and then you go under the church and there is a hidden lab. And then underneath the hidden lab, there is a medieval crypt slash mine, mine with mine carts and shit. But there's a crypt under there, like three levels down. 00:26:47.11 Daniel Where did this come from? 00:26:48.46 Jala Yeah. And I'm like, in the US in new England, Okay. Then again, they also had in Resident Evil 5, they absolutely had Indiana Jones Temple of Doom shit going on, but it's in Africa. Like, okay, why not? Whatever. So I appreciate this, the point. I appreciate that they are telling you this is why this is here. 00:27:12.91 Daniel There's actual reasons for things in Shining Force World. 00:27:15.05 Jala Right, right. They actually explain it. So anyway, so they are trying to get to the coast without encountering General or Steel because he has the entire Imperial Army on his ass. So ah Cyclops is a dude who is there who wants to join your force to lead you through. It's mentioned that he can talk to dragons because he's Dragonkin. He's a half dragon man. 00:27:35.20 Daniel Yeah, he's pretty awesome. 00:27:37.42 Jala And also, if he defeats a dragon in battle, you have the option of recruiting him, kind of like how you do with puppets in Scenario 2, at the very end of Scenario 2, when you get Puppets. But Puppets is a beastmaster, so it's only for beasts. And then dragons is only Cyclops. So to get to the coast, you have to go through dangerous places, starting with a water-filled cave where hermit crabs, skeletons, ghouls, and killer fish come after you. And the boss is a giant skeleton pirate, because of course it's a giant skeleton pirate. 00:28:10.94 Daniel This fight took me like two days. I fought and I fought and I fought and I think I got to like level 9 or 10 here. Because I needed to. Because the fish hit you so hard. 00:28:22.87 Jala They do at this point in the game. 00:28:23.72 Daniel So hard. 00:28:24.91 Jala Kate was my MVP. 00:28:25.56 Daniel Kate is really powerful here because she has the range and they're all floating. So that means that she has the combat advantage. But yeah, this this was an intense fight. This was difficult. um I eventually ended up, I thought there was a ruins or something to explore at the end. I kept forgetting that all of that stuff that you see in the back is close to you and there's nothing you can do to get in there. So that was part of my trepidation. i was like, okay, so I'm near the end. I can finally push guys to that. And then I get there and I go, oh, I'm just going to reset because this is too much trouble to Fandango. But yeah, Donheart died here for me because I sacrificed him to the to the big pirate guy. Because I was like, okay, well, let's draw him off and lure him into the corner where the chest is, which was good because then I got to kill all the other things in the other areas and defeat all the spawns that were popping up. So it was helpful, but yeah, it was a bit of a sacrifice play for me. 00:29:20.92 Jala Yeah, I threw, I think, was it Donheart that I had? I think it was Donheart that I had also sent off in that corner to get that chest. And then I had him pop over to distract the skeleton too, but I don't remember if he died or not. He does get hit real hard by that skeleton guy though. 00:29:36.18 Daniel Yeah, that skeleton hits hard. but distracting him like that meant that you could stab him in the back pretty good. 00:29:41.73 Jala And I also use Julian as bait a lot. so I throw Julian up front and I'm like, they're going to go for him. And they always do without fail. Like, it's so funny because the AI will pick a guy and they like, sometimes it's the same guy. And sometimes I'm like, why are you going after that one? That's weird. 00:29:59.78 Daniel The priority, I think, is generally actually magic users first and then Julian. I think there's a couple of priority things in there that I can't remember the specifics behind it, but we looked at it before. And it's, yeah, there's priority levels for every character. And some of the monsters are like, oh, yeah, we focus specifically on priests. We're going to take out your healing regardless of what you do. If you put one near us, we're going to focus on that over Julian, which is very, very aggravating. 00:30:22.24 Jala Right. Right. Yeah. It is when like you're expecting the pole to be the same, but like, and this, I think it's, some it's just Scenario 3. That's like that, isn't it? Because in the earlier ones, they will, without a doubt, at least for me, they've always will go to Medion or they'll go to Synbios. They will. 00:30:38.62 Daniel 90% of the earlier editions they have. 00:30:40.83 Jala It's mostly. Yeah. 00:30:42.16 Daniel But I think in Scenario 1, somewhere in the Heroes test, that changes again. And in the final couple of levels, again, priests are much more juicy as a target. 00:30:52.37 Jala Right. Well, then again, at that point, I'm not using Synbios as bait. yeah I'm trying to level up whoever is the lowest level and I'm throwing them front. So yeah, this one was a little tricky. I think I did have to restart it, but I don't remember what I did that I needed to restart it, but like I restarted it for some reason. 00:31:10.01 Daniel The bridges collapse, and if you don't remember which order the bridges collapse, your characters get trapped. 00:31:12.15 Jala Oh, right, right. That's probably why I had to restart it. so yeah Once you defeat that boss, he fires into the air and brings down a boulder to crush himself, but also block your path to the safer of the two routes that you could have taken. He's like, I'm going down and I'm not going to let you go through the easy place. You've got another battle ahead of you. so ah This one is you. 00:31:32.81 Daniel Yeah, he goes into a bit of a he goes into a bit of a rage there, which is ridiculous, but it's plot-driven. 00:31:35.64 Jala It's plot driven, but it's also probably the goofiest, most slapstick thing in the entire game. That this guy is just like, I'm just going to smash myself with a boulder. What? So this forces you to go to the dragon graveyard, which much like an elephant graveyard, dragons come here to die. And ah Cyclops tells you that the place is haunted with the vengeful spirits of dragons whose graves were disturbed by thieves seeking dragon scales, which are valuable. 00:32:09.42 Daniel In every game world. I don't think this is a game world where dragon scales aren't. They always hold lots of value if people want them. 00:32:17.39 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So right about then Jane shows up again. And if you let Goliath escape earlier, she will tell you she has one friend in the world, the My Little Pony, whose name is Rollie, who she sends to join you. She's not a My Little Pony. She's a unicorn, but she's My Little Pony. So she then tells you that Cyclops can't talk to dragons here because the Bulzome sect has brainwashed them and is making them attack anyone outside the sect. So Cyclops tries to talk to a dragon anyway, nearly gets roasted by dragon fire and is pushed out of danger by Donheart. So before Jane leaves, she giggles and flirts with Julian because this is the one place where like everybody's just sitting there in the dragon graveyard, which is haunted, like talking about how they want to bone down. I don't know. And so she's like, we'll see each other again soon, right? Teehee, giggle. And you're like, all right. Weird, little weird. And okay. 00:33:14.70 Daniel yeah You're not stalking us at all. No. 00:33:17.17 Jala Yeah. So Donheart observes, hey, Julian, I think she likes you. And then Kate gets mad because she likes Julian. And she's like, Julian's not interested in her. And then Donheart says, you too, Kate. And then Bresby out of nowhere is like, oh, youth. But then adds, but at my age, nobody wants the Bresby. 00:33:37.17 Daniel No. Nobody touchy-touchy the owl. 00:33:40.45 Jala yeah So it's like, wow, y'all. I mean, you are just so casual about this, about this situation. 00:33:45.82 Daniel You can tell this is marketing towards teens. 00:33:48.28 Jala Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is like all super weird team talks. So they are they continue to be horny throughout the rest of this game. It's like it started with everybody just being horny for Medion, right? Like you saw little hints of that in Scenario 1. Then you heard a lot of it in Scenario 2. And then now in this one, it's like, no, we all ready at all times. So... 00:34:09.71 Daniel Everyone has aged up four years and the hormones are raging. 00:34:13.02 Jala Right, right. So, yes, now we're in battle six, the dragon graveyard. There's hermit crabs, bloodborne, killer fish, ghouls, green dragons, and a white dragon. But the white dragon is Thousand, a named critter. Do not kill him. Have Cyclops talk to him, and he will join you. If you do kill him, he will be able to join, but not controllable. He'll be like add, like how Cyclops has the other dragons that will follow. 00:34:42.65 Daniel And not nearly as effective or good that way. 00:34:45.00 Jala Right, right. So this is at the point where your guys should all be around level 9 or 10 if you're just playing on normal and not grinding. So... 00:34:52.77 Daniel Yeah, we were closer to 12 on my team. 00:34:56.34 Jala That's not too much worse. 00:34:56.34 Daniel I think the healers... 00:34:57.62 Jala I would have expected at least 14 from you, sir. 00:35:00.68 Daniel Well, my healers were But... 00:35:01.12 Jala Yeah. Okay. Okay. There you go. So yeah, there's also a ruins here. Uh, there's a lucky cookie and a healing rain in there. So, uh, to get in there, I use Donheart, Kate and Brigit. I had Donheart go through the right hand door and Brigit and Kate go through the center door. And then Donheart made it in time to attack, uh, to get one of the items. And then Kate finished the thief off and got the other item. And then Brigit was needed to open the doors for Kate. So Kate could, you know, get to the stuff. 00:35:31.34 Daniel Great minds think alike. I did the same thing except my thief didn't die. 00:35:35.06 Jala No. Well, that's because you were on insane mode. So the hit point difference is probably. 00:35:38.70 Daniel Yeah. Higher, higher defense, higher HP. Yeah. 00:35:41.25 Jala Yep. Yep. So, so yeah. Otherwise this fight is okay. Cause like by this point you're already aware of what to do with the killer fish and stuff. This, this wasn't hard for me on normal. um I was trying to get Cyclops over to, to get to the dragons and stuff, but anyway. 00:35:57.82 Daniel Yeah, there's a section there where the stones are in the middle. You can wait there for things. 00:36:01.26 Daniel And so if you wanted to just wait there and do the runes, I found that to be the easiest part. So I just waited there with all my team and then got Cyclops up close to the front to get ready to go there. Just maneuvered everybody out, pulled a couple of people from the edges so that I didn't have to deal with those adds later. 00:36:16.59 Jala Yep. Yep. That's what I was doing too. I was mostly using Cyclops on the edges to pull them. But yeah, then after the battle, Thousand tells you about the village in the hills where the people worship him as a deity and Julian and his team go there and all the villagers have gone to the sacred dragon cave to look at the sacred dragon relic at the urging of the elder. And when you go there, you hear the Elder tell them that the sacred dragon is leaving on his foretold mission, but would be back. So this is, again, this is Thousand. so you know, you are now having him in your team. You have like a holy god dragon on your team, or you have a holy god dragon minion, depending upon whether or not you killed him. 00:36:55.10 Daniel yeah were stealing their baby. He's going to come with us and he's going to come back. He's gonna be so much more cool. 00:37:01.86 Jala Yeah, well, I love Thousand. Like, I don't have him in my end team because right now I'm at the end game. I'm at the very, very end of the game trying to wrap up. Because spoilers, as you know from the title of this, this is part one. We're going to be having a part two talking about the rest of the endgame of this game and then kind of doing a discussion about how it was to play all of these games. 00:37:23.77 Daniel And a recap of all the things, yeah. 00:37:25.51 Jala Right, kind of recap and some other little fun, fun chit-chat at the end here. or So um we're not talking about the end-to-end of this game yet. We're almost there. We're getting there. But um Thousand, I love Thousand. He's not on my end team for certain reasons. We'll get into it when we get there. But um he is wonderful for most of the game. He's one of my favorite characters. I love the fact that one of his supers is to just sit on people. 00:37:48.30 Daniel Gigaton Press. It's one of the best ones. I like his breath geyser too. It's actually really cool. 00:37:54.96 Jala Oh yeah, it is very cool. 00:37:56.72 Jala He's just adorable. I think he's great. And he's got the biggest badunkadunk. 00:38:00.76 Daniel I'm a thicc boy. 00:38:02.67 Jala Yeah, he's very thick. So the town has a blacksmith. This is the first one in this scenario. And there's a secret passage in the blacksmith shop that leads to a chest where you can get a Goddess Tear. There's also two small mithrils in the walls of the cliff, one under the blacksmith shop and the other across from the weapon shop. So there's some little secret items you can get in town. I'm sure there were in the other towns. I just didn't write notes for those yet. 00:38:27.34 Daniel yeah I don't know if you have all the money you need to get everything made, but I did because of all the power leveling. 00:38:30.54 Jala No, I didn't at this point. um Okay. Of course you did. Yeah, of course you did. 00:38:35.10 Daniel So everybody had as much stuff as I could give out. 00:38:36.17 Jala I think I was... Yeah, I think I had, like, enough to get most everybody everything that I wanted, but, like, I think it was a little short, but it's fine. Like, my battles have not been so difficult at this point, you know? So I don't need it. 00:38:49.17 Daniel Yeah, i needed all the mithril weapons. It was crazy. 00:38:53.23 Jala Right. So after you take care of all your business, you leave town heading for your final obstacle to get out of Imperial territory, which is the Barrier Forest. As you come across this, you find that a lion man is being accosted by some border guards. He's sneaking through the outpost or so ah trying to meet up with Julian's army to join it. And the soldiers attack him. So this is outside of Foothill Village heading for Fort Defenda. This is battle number seven. You've got metal gunners, Imperial Knights, Destonia soldiers, and a Black Knight who is your boss that drops a Dark Matter. So...The main thing you need to know here is you need to get to Leon, the lion guy, before the soldiers kill him. i Send everybody out as far as you can until Donheart triggers the enemies saying, it's the Julian army! at which point Leon will attack the enemies and try to survive rather than just running away. um Depending upon, at least for me on normal mode and depending upon, like I imagine it on insane mode, you have to be careful with how you do that because um once he starts attacking, then that means he's going to stand his ground, which means that he could get himself slaughtered if you're not careful. 00:40:05.80 Daniel Yeah, it's two hits for him to die. 00:40:07.38 Jala Yeah. So I split Julian, Kate and Gracia off to go take out the metal gunner and soldiers over by Leon so that I could get him to join me before dying. And then the rest of the force I sent on to the main area. So that's how I handled this and it worked just fine on normal. 00:40:21.99 Daniel Yeah, on Insane I tried a couple different strategies. I tried what you have done. That was my first attempt that failed really hard because Leon died right away. And then I found the best strategy was just to send everybody off to the left, as far left as they could go, and then up through the trees. So go around to go straight towards Leon, and then once you get enough guys over there, they distract some of the attacks and pull some of that off, and then you can heal. And if you have everybody bunched up, then aura becomes really good. and yeah it was really And then once you've gotten Leon, and you work your way back across and then up to the boss. So not a super crazy tactic, but I had to. On insane, everything's a two-hit kill. Everything is a two-hit kill. If you get hit twice, that character dies. 00:41:08.01 Jala Right, right. And that's the thing is that you have to get some distraction in there because your settings on insane are as they are. 00:41:16.82 Daniel It's not nearly as bad as the Irene fight, but it's definitely up there for silliness. 00:41:21.17 Jala Right. So if you Egress out of this battle after Leon has joined you, it resets to him, not having you join, you're not, not having joined you again. So like, you will still have to go back to get him again. So like, don't think that you can get him and then Egress out. That is not a thing. 00:41:36.71 Daniel No, that does not work. that that was That was early on in the gameplay. We tried that once, and was like, oh, yeah, right. That doesn't... 00:41:44.28 Jala I think everyone probably does because I did too. I was like, okay, I got him. Now let me reset it. And then that way I can level him up and do blah, blah, blah. And then no. So yeah, after you make it well, so, so, so after I split my team up and I had most everybody on one side and then the, the one small team getting Leon, they got Leon and then they just kind of like slid over to, you know, join the rest of the group. And I didn't really have a big problem with this section. It worked, it worked pretty fine. 00:42:08.89 Daniel Yeah, this is this is not nearly as bad as the next fight. 00:42:11.60 Jala After you make your way to Fort Defenda, General Defenda, whose name is the name of the fort. So, okay, cool. And of course this is supposed to be defender, fort defender, general defender, because everybody has a name that's a word, exchanges words with Bresby. He doesn't want to fight you, but he has to obey the emperor in order to protect his family. So Leon tells you that you will need to perform a pincher attack coming in from the front and right simultaneously. This is one of those situations where, like, this is one of those enemies that he's not a bad dude, but his family. I mean, you've got to let him, you have to understand his reasoning here. So Fort Defenda, the enemy's here before the gate is broken so like you have the gate to the fort you have the guys outside the fort and you have um cannon that are placed that are trying to attack you as well and then you have to have some people go from the front and then some people come from the side doing that pincher attack so you can take over a cannon to take out the other cannons. And before the gate is broken, because the whole point is you need to break the gate so you can get inside so you can take it down. 00:43:35.65 Daniel Yeah, Defenda doesn't come out unless you break the gate. 00:43:37.96 Jala Right. So ah the enemies before the gate is broken are Destonia soldiers and Imperial knights. And again, there's multiple cannons. Julian leads half of the force in the front. Donheart takes the other half around the side to take control of those cannons. Kate and Brigit can reach the Destonia soldier on the left side for one turn apiece to injure him so that Donheart's group can take him out with a single bombardment with cannon fire. That was obviously what I did. 00:44:04.00 Daniel Yeah, I took out the lower guy would like that. um You can also run up and grab the second cannon on that side. So I did it on insane. I'm sure you probably did it on normal too. And once you have the two cannons, it becomes easier to control the whole field. 00:44:16.20 Jala So that's exactly what I did. 00:44:19.89 Daniel But the enemy the enemies here are very aggressive. If you set your guys too far forward on the ground in the front, then you can get swamped pretty easily. This is the first time you actually have that experience of, oh, they're actually coming at me. And they're all coming at me now. 00:44:34.93 Jala Right, exactly. And also it's important to note that the gate cannot be ah like just destroyed by your guys. You have to use the cannons. So after you do that, the enemies after the gate is broken include metal gunners, Destonia soldiers, imperial knights, and of course, General Defenda who drops a Shiva Sword. 00:44:55.40 Daniel Not a bad fight once you get the that door open. It's pretty simple and straightforward from there. 00:45:00.28 Jala But they also keep coming. Like all the little adds keep coming. So like you have to, you know, you can't dawdle or anything like that. You need to like take them down as soon as you can. And um like you can't, if you try to take out all of the little guys, all the adds on the sides before you take out Defenda, that's hard to do because they keep coming. 00:45:18.39 Daniel Yeah, I think I actually even left one of the cannon guys up on the one side and focused more on popping the door. Because, yeah, that became a lot more higher priority for me. 00:45:27.23 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. but being able to assess and like shift your priorities when when the scenario changes a little bit is super important in this game. 00:45:34.23 Daniel And I think I had to retreat twice in this battle just because I'd screwed up up the... Yeah, I screwed up and... Oh, no, I got killed twice here. i had to reset because I wasn't losing half my gold at that point. No thanks. 00:45:47.89 Jala Then you don't have to actually lose your gold and stuff. Like if you are doing, um, from an emulator or anything, by the end of the game, you have so much ridiculous amounts of gold because they expect you to have wiped a lot by the end of this thing. So anyway, this is the end of the chapter and everything, when you beat Defenda and then kind of shuffle on out of Imperial territory at this point. Do you have any other comments about this? I like this fight. It's cool. It's a fun, different thing to do that you haven't had to do in Shining Force before. 00:46:23.72 Daniel It's very interesting. One of my tactics is that once I finally start getting guys towards that first cannon, have to block that door. If you leave someone in front of that door, that really makes that whole section much easier because guys will continue to spawn there. Even if you move a guy away from the door afterwards, if you stay they stay there, i think you have to stay there for two rounds or three rounds, but once they've been there for a while, then you can move them out and that stops the spawn. But if you don't do that and you just let them spawn and spawn and spawn, you get overrun there. And then that becomes really difficult to deal with having the two cannons on the go. And also some of the barrels, I think, at the top, um have items. So you can go after those as well if you if you have enough free guys and you've taken over that area. 00:47:07.70 Jala Right. And I think you're right. There are some barrels that have stuff, but um at least there's one. 00:47:11.80 Daniel It's like healing drops or something. There might be a Mithril. There might be a Mithril. 00:47:16.31 Jala I don't remember, but there's definitely at least one item up there that you want to get. 00:47:17.56 Daniel Yeah. 00:47:20.90 Jala So yeah, then we move on to Chapter 3, Landing Ashore in Aspinia. 00:47:28.61 Jala Julian and team leave Fort Defenda for the neutral territory, only to find an Imperial fleet waiting for them. Prince Majesty, General Steele, and their entourage appear and tell Julian that the emperor had a letter delivered and wants Julian's army to bring Lady Melinda, Emperor Dominant's second wife, Medion and Isabella's mother, to Medion in Aspinia. 00:48:09.74 Jala They inform Julian that the emperor was rescued by Medion and is marching on Aspia, capital of Aspinia. So he's attacking the capital of the Republic 00:48:20.40 Daniel Yeah, he's returning to where he wants to own everything again. 00:48:23.17 Jala Yes. So, well, not again, he's constantly wanted to this entire time, but he's finally acting on it again. yeah 00:48:30.03 Daniel i meant that, yes. 00:48:30.67 Jala So... yeah Majesty and Steel do not want to wait for Julian's answer, telling him that Lady Melinda must not be needed anymore. So whatever Julian wants to do has nothing to do with them. 00:48:41.11 Jala So they just kind of throw her out and then head back to Destonia because their primary interest is in handling the Empire while Dominant is away. Steel threatens Gracia that he will get the godchild next time! 00:48:52.50 Jala and then they sail away. So... 00:48:54.67 Daniel Well, well. 00:48:56.88 Jala Honesty, the Pegasus Knight, is accompanying Melinda. So they come with Julian to HQ to tell their story. When Honesty was given the letter by Dominic and told to deliver it to Majesty, she was suspicious of the contents and brought the letter to General Rogan, who was, as you will remember, trapped in the Seagate's prison. So Honesty is, again, she's a character who you saw in Medion's story and she's back here and Rogan anyway read this letter and then forged a replacement letter having Honesty take that to Majesty. 00:49:29.44 Jala So Melinda going with Julian was a plan hatched by Rogan. So if you were 00:49:34.60 Daniel Which is very good foresight. 00:49:36.20 Jala Yeah, it is. And it's great because they tell you why Rogan's able to forge this letter. 00:49:37.07 Daniel Yeah. 00:49:40.38 Jala And they're like, Rogan was worshipping him, basically, worshipping the Emperor so much. 00:49:40.66 Daniel Mm-hmm. 00:49:44.22 Jala And he just observed everything that the Emperor did and just was like always all up in his business. And so he got so good at everything, he can even forge the Emperor's writing. That's not a creepy level of obsession. 00:49:56.27 Jala But I mean, like there's multiple characters, multiple characters in here like that. 00:49:57.07 Daniel Oh, yeah. ah That's beyond creepy, actually. It's a little bit too obsessed, but that's good. It worked out in our favor. 00:50:04.81 Jala That's like Single White Female shit, right? So, yeah, if you were able to get the key in Scenario 1 from fear, then ah Rogan joins Medion. 00:50:16.61 Jala But in my game, as I had the default Scenario 1 data, I did not have the key to rescue Rogan. So for me, Rogan died on the Seagate. So I am sad. There's so many instances of I'm like, in this game, at first, when I had to, to you know, go start Scenario 2 with the default data, I'm like, oh, it'll be okay. 00:50:34.95 Jala And I forgot how much in Scenario 3 changes depending on Scenario 1. 00:50:39.96 Daniel Yeah, it's quite a few things. 00:50:40.49 Jala And I was like, oh man, man, this sucks that my data got wiped. 00:50:47.29 Daniel Yeah, it would have been much better to have your data. That would have been much better. But this is the play. 00:50:51.80 Jala So you had Rogan. 00:50:53.43 Daniel Yeah, I had Rogan for a lot of the game. 00:50:54.41 Jala Yeah. So what was it like? what Did Rogan tell you this or was Honesty still talking in like, oh, Rogan's not with you. 00:51:00.24 Daniel He's not in the plot point yet. He's not there physically yet. 00:51:01.66 Jala Okay. and Okay. 00:51:03.41 Daniel He comes in later. 00:51:04.52 Jala Okay. So Julian and team then decide to go to Aspia to stop Medion and Synbios' battle because they know that inevitably if Medion is going to Aspia, then the two armies are going to have to fight. And they're besties, right? They're besties and kissing the homies goodnight. So they will escort Lady Melinda to Medion, but first a stop to the town of Guarder for a bunch of hidden goodies and a blacksmith is in store. 00:51:31.54 Jala So we decide to go to Guarder first to restock. And you learn that that used to be an important part of the trade routes as it's an island, but the introduction of steam power by Garvin and the creation of Saraband, the floating city that could go anywhere, ended up leading to its decline. 00:51:48.03 Daniel Mm-hmm. 00:51:49.86 Jala So it's like a backwater at this point a declining kind of area so 00:51:55.48 Daniel Yeah, and there's a test map somewhere in the game files that actually contains this map, but a bunch of crazy things are going on and lots of weird effects. So that was pretty impressive to see recently too. 00:52:08.55 Jala A test map so I guess they were going to add another battle in here in Guarder. 00:52:12.69 Daniel ah No, it was an NPC or a town walking around test map, but the they had Unoma was bouncing around and there was some pigs walking around and some other characters that you don't actually see in the game. And one character, I think, was they had some special effects, like a cloud or something was going around on them. It was there was some weird it was neat, interesting effects that they were doing. And so stuff that they cut. They cut a lot of that stuff right out of the game. They like, no, this is too much beyond. It's cool that we can do these things, but we'll just leave it in here as a demo. We have to dig in the files to find it, but it's pretty cool. 00:52:43.59 Jala Wow. That is cool. You don't see Unoma very much. 00:52:51.53 Daniel Yeah, and there was some other interesting characters. There was a hybrid pig character that you don't see. 00:52:58.22 Jala cool so yeah Guarder yeah you just go around you restock there's a blacksmith so um if you didn't have enough money like I didn't the last time you saw a blacksmith you could then blacksmith it up here ah before you go into the next battle which is a good idea because the next battle is boy it's a battle. Battle number nine has earth golems, wing knights, Baersol soldiers, megaloaders, green dragon, and mass monk. And your battlefield is made up of a series of small islands connected by bridges and covered with forest, limiting movement for most of your force. And the three golems throw boulders down the bridges constantly, so you have to time your movement according to them. And like...where they're going because there's basically they go between two different bridges and they will walk back and forth and throw a boulder down them so there is a one turn where they're not throwing a boulder down one bridge so you can rush up before it comes back and yeah 00:53:57.22 Daniel Yeah. Utilize the science really well there. i also, i like your note here. i did not pay attention to that or notice that, so I was very cautious with Isabella here. 00:54:07.24 Jala ah Yeah, so I'll get there in a sec. But yeah, once you take down the first golem who's throwing rocks straight down towards your party, you can kind of whittle down the others and it's not so hard. But that getting that first golem is kind of the trick to this battle. But also, don't worry about Melinda. Melinda is on the map with you. She's following Isabella, but the rocks don't harm her and the enemies don't attack her. So um I found that out because at first I was like, man, Isabella and her slow damn movement...Can't get across here. Oh, well, we're just going to deal with it. I'll have to heal everybody. And then Melinda wasn't hurt at all. It wasn't a thing. 00:54:43.39 Daniel yeah I don't even actually know if she has a hitbox I mean they think she has HP and stuff but I don't think she has any kind of but I didn't realize that until after the fight was done 00:54:52.81 Jala Yeah. I found out pretty quick when I was trying to get Isabella across with her slow ass movement because I still hadn't gotten anything or gotten her to the level where she got more movement range. So um I was still grumpy about that. So how did you get take down that first golem here? 00:55:11.63 Daniel I swarmed him. I just pushed as many people, a Thousand and all of them just flew over the water and I pretty much rushed him as best I could and took him down on a couple turns and then I was patient about the second one because you have to kind of go around through the trees and that takes a lot of extra movement. Thousand was a key player here. He did a lot of heavy lifting in this fight. 00:55:34.56 Jala So did you go straight up like that first bridge? You didn't go around the side, you went straight up the one? 00:55:41.27 Daniel Yeah, Thousand flew around the side, and yeah, I just did as much around as I could, and then all my guys are ranged, as you know, so as much ranged attacks as I could get on them before having to close the gap. 00:55:41.94 Jala Okay, I did the opposite. I circled around the side immediately. And of course, Kate, Kate MVP, always in my, you know, somewhere in my party killing things. Kate was over there and I forget who all, I think I had Brigit over there, but she doesn't have a very good movement. So, you know, it took her a while to get where she needed to. Several people, it was hard for them to move around, but I also had Thousand and anybody who could fly or anybody who could, you know, have a higher movement range in the trees was over on that side. And then I took out that golem right there, you know, that's right at that side first. And then I got the other golem on the other side up the straightaway. So I kind of did a little flip-flop. So after this, this battle leads you into battle 10, but you can egress back to town to restock or do whatever you need accordingly. I always do. I'll go ahead and restock it. 00:56:50.94 Daniel I'm pretty sure I lost somebody in that battle, so I had to go back and bring them back. 00:56:54.65 Jala Yeah. I don't think I lost anybody. Um, because of my, my tactic. Uh, I went around. 00:56:59.12 Daniel I think it was Rollie, actually, because I think I was too brave with her. i think I put her too far forward at the be at the boss at the end, and I think she got stomped. 00:57:07.68 Jala I think the hardest trouble that I had was, there are some archers on the right hand side over on a little Island and I want to take everybody out. So I went over there. You don't need to, but I did like, yeah, yeah. 00:57:17.30 Daniel Yeah, that's voluntary. I'm insane. I avoided that because I was like, nope, I don't. 00:57:21.82 Jala Yeah. Oh yeah. You don't need to, also you're grinding, but for me, I'm not grinding. So if I'm just going straight through, I need to kill everything on the map. 00:57:29.27 Daniel Yeah, that's true. 00:57:29.33 Jala So yeah, that's why I did that. But yeah. So then we go to a very cool, very memorable battle. The idea is cool. And like at least on normal mode, what happens, you know the consequence of your actions isn't really as big of a deal as I would have hoped. So I'll explain in a minute. 00:57:53.96 Daniel Oh, it's punishing on Insane. 00:57:56.45 Jala Oh, I'm sure it is. So this is a lighthouse battle. So you have crossed over all of these islands. You're heading towards this bridge that takes you into Aspinian territory. And you have to cross an area with a lighthouse, and get to this bridge. Now, there's already a bunch of troops that are there waiting for you because they know you're going to be crossing this way. And um the lighthouse, if it spots you... that's going to be bad for you. So ah the gate bridge is this checkpoint and it's got Baersol soldiers, which are in league with Bulzome. So a frontal assault would be a suicide. The gate controls are inside the lighthouse. So you have to go into the lighthouse to open up the gate. So you can move on. Bresby decides that he's going to wait, have everybody wait till nightfall and then hide in the shadows of the rocks in the landscape to avoid the lighthouse beams. That way they aren't spotted by the enemies. And you can take section by section starting with that lighthouse is the idea here. So it's a very memorable battle because like this is one of the first battles that I remembered 20 plus years after playing it, you know one time, you know, like I, 00:59:07.32 Daniel It is one of the best battles of the whole series. 00:59:09.81 Jala Right. It is very cool. And so every turn there is this, like, it's got the really cool music in this, this particular battle too, that the one that I love that makes me feel like, okay, I've got to get my head in the game, this is serious business, right? It's got the serious business music on that I love. And then, you know, every turn the lighthouse, the light goes around and then flashes and the whole screen goes white for a second. And then if you are caught by the folks, then you know you'll be spotted at that point so and it's kind of nerve-wracking when you're doing it and you don't know whether or not they can see you because you don't know how far out that shadow goes really. 00:59:50.34 Daniel And there's some spots where it's iffy because it's programmed to be a certain level and the trees actually cover extra distance that they don't tell you about. so you can hide behind the trees better than the rocks, which is very weird, but it works. 01:00:01.54 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately though on normal mode, if you get spotted a few more little guys come out and it's not bad. It just kind of depends upon where all of your people are placed on the map as to how hard that becomes for you. But like, for me, it wasn't a big deal to trigger it. I'm just like, Oh good. I can get some extra levels or whatever from these guys down here. 01:00:25.00 Daniel I didn't have it on Insane, but I have had it in the past. I was able to sneak through this whole every area without any trouble here. But my party's around level 17, so I'm way far ahead of where I should be level-wise. And yeah, I killed everything, got everything. And I did have to retreat twice to power up my guys because I needed some more Mithril. Found some in the map, had some from the previous that I hadn't used yet. And i was like, oh, don't really be. Yeah, I need it. I didn't want to, but I ended up building everything and then getting to the little lighthouse itself. That was pretty easy. Getting inside the lighthouse again, not too bad inside the lighthouse. I had some major troubles though. How was your experience in there? 01:01:05.09 Jala So on the outside, you have wing knights, Baersol soldiers, mega loaders, Aspia mages, and one giant armor that is guarding the lighthouse. The giant armor can be tricky. I started saving like at different points in the map itself. Like I would have a save before I started it. 01:01:23.61 Daniel That helps. 01:01:24.87 Jala And then I had one in the different, so I think I had somebody died to the giant armor and then I just reset it back to a little bit earlier. you know, doing a save scum kind of thing at that point, just to, you know, be able to redo that one part. So I didn't have any trouble with that because I had the save hygiene that I did. 01:01:43.57 Daniel It helps. 01:01:44.60 Jala And then inside the lighthouse were wing knights, Baersol soldier, mega loader, Aspia mage, and giant armor. But you're looping around. And so those mages and stuff can hit you before you can get up those stairs. Cause your people have a lower movement rate at that point. 01:02:00.63 Daniel Yeah, climbing costs a lot of movement. Except for Thousand, who doesn't care? He'll just fly up where he wants to go. 01:02:05.06 Jala yeah except you also don't want him hit with the mega loader so you have to be careful with him too so 01:02:09.92 Daniel Yeah. and you can I think you can set him up the side where the chests are and it can just pop up on the other side. 01:02:14.37 Jala yeah he can but then like you've got the armor and stuff right there and it's like that's a lot so yeah I definitely didn't do that that that looked like a trap so yeah 01:02:17.41 Daniel Yeah. It's a great idea in theory. No. I didn't do it either. ah i have in the past and that leads to him dying. um But I did actually lose Cyclops inside here. i decided, okay, it's okay. I can just park him here. He'll be fine in this one spot. He's only going to get hit once. And I forgot that it was from the mage who was going to cast a spell. And because he was alone, he took extra damage and it was enough to kill him. So I lost him there already of the near the end of this fight. But it worked out okay. We ended up getting the switch flipped and everybody got out of there quickly. and i think you get automatically out of there after you do that, right? It warps you out. Because then you have to go across the rest of the map still. 01:03:10.96 Jala Well, anyway, whatever. Right, right. Well, like when you get to the top of the map... So my way of doing this is I actually put Julian in there and I was using Julian as a bait again um to draw people's fire away from some of the other characters. And so that was helping me keep the characters who were going to be weaker but had a better movement rate to like get up there in time to actually hit stuff but without getting you know destroyed right away. And I took out the mage first and then I took out the gunner and then moved on from there. So, but, um, yeah, you like there's a three chests inside the lighthouse, so goddess tier, a large myth roll and dark matter. Also while you've got the other people on outside, they cannot cross the bridge. Even the flying people can't cross the bridge to the end of the map to try to take out the end and boss. They can't do anything until that lighthouse part is over, it's gatekept for you. So, you can't finish the fight until you open that. It has to be in that order. 01:04:10.19 Daniel Quite literally. That's required, yeah. 01:04:15.85 Jala In my playthrough, I forgot that there were troops inside the lighthouse. So there were that many troops or maybe it was because I wanted to send Julian over there to be bait. I don't remember exactly why, but it took me a while because I took ah out everybody on the outside map first. And then I was like, oh, the one guy should be good to go. Oh, I forgot. There's all this stuff in here. Okay, well, let me send some more people, but then they had to move across the map to go up there. So it took extra turns. So I had like a bunch of people just waiting by the bridge. 01:04:50.86 Daniel I did run everybody up to the low to the lighthouse itself, so all my team was there, and then all moved to the gate. 01:04:58.31 Jala Yeah, see, like I had split into two parties at one point because some of the people were heading up to the lighthouse, but then somebody was just outside of the range of the shadow and then trip the lighthouse, sending more teams. So I was like, well, I'm going to take some people, you know, my people that I need to level up and put them down below so they can take out these other forces. So there were only a few people that were up at the lighthouse and the other ones were down below. so that's why. 01:05:24.46 Daniel Yeah. it's a major pincer if you're on insane because ah they hit hard. So having those extra guys upon is really, really not fun. 01:05:32.85 Jala Yeah. So anyway, once you pop up, also Jane shows up at the top of this, doesn't she? She shows up again. 01:05:40.24 Daniel Somewhere in here, I think she shows up. 01:05:40.61 Jala Isn't it? She, well, because like you try to flip the switch or something, but then it doesn't work. And then she's just like, oh, there's a special trick to it or something. 01:05:49.34 Daniel Yeah, she shows up and helps you out with it. 01:05:53.25 Jala Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she's like literally always just watching the shadows, just staring at Julian weirdly. 01:05:58.99 Daniel She almost had like a portal or a scribe ball or something. She's just like, oh, my precious. He needs me. 01:06:03.13 Jala Yeah, yeah. So anyway, what you yeah well, once you cross the bridge and take out the remaining troops, ah then you head into another battle from there. So the stuff across the bridge wasn't a big deal to me. How was it on insane once you walked across that bridge? 01:06:21.91 Daniel It wasn't too bad. have in my notes that Cyclops died, but I think that was inside the lighthouse. Yeah, yeah, he died inside the lighthouse, and I'm pretty sure um Kate or Isabel died here as well, but it wasn't too bad other than that, so I was able to get through, and then I think we revived in the next battle. Yeah, I retreated to the next battle after that and revived people and got items again because, yeah. 01:06:45.70 Jala Yeah, yeah, because this battle leads into a third battle. Like, this is the this is the scenario where it's like consecutive battles galore. I mean, it happens all the time that there's one battle and then another battle right after that battle. And this is one where there's three in a row. So you have to Egress back to town and do your healing or whatever. you know, up your items, rearrange your inventory. For me, it's inventory management because I don't like doing a bunch of fights and then everybody's got too much stuff in their thing and then has to throw something away to pick up a new item or whatever. I don't like that. So I like to clean it, you know, and keep my inventory nice. 01:07:24.11 Daniel yeah And if you need gold, and if you have dark matter at this point, go to the blacksmith, Give the blacksmith the dark matter. Have him make a weapon for Julian. If he makes Julian the dark sword, which he should out of the dark matter, that sells for 20k gold. Or you can sell the dark matter for 400 if you just want to get rid of it. But if you're willing to spend the extra 30 seconds, get yourself a sword. Sell that at the shop and make some money. 01:07:50.85 Jala Yep. Yep. Good tip. So the next battle, battle number 11 is against Produn. So this one's got wing knights, Baersol soldiers, mega loaders, Aspia mages, mask monk, and Produn. This one, you are on the beach and you are heading up towards Baersol. And while that's happening, you've got some water on one side, which is filled with wing knights. And then you've got like mega loaders and other stuff on the other side. And you can go up the center of the beach, which is slow going, go over to the side where you've got some forest and in a little pathway. And then there's like a pincher point at the top, where there's a mountain and there's like one person can pass through and that's a choke point that they will use against you in this battle. So... 01:08:38.37 Daniel Yeah, you have to you have to be very careful with that choke point. 01:08:41.32 Jala Yeah. So narratively, once you arrive in Baersol, the force finds Stella and Produn who have been given strict orders by Bribable, aka Brutus, to stop Julian's army. When they see that Gracia the godchild is with him, however, they decide they don't want to fight him after all. When they see that Medion's mother Melinda is also with Julian, they remember their promise to aid Medion as he showed them mercy. So just about then a masked monk shows up and imprisons Stella in a magical cage that will sap her life away. Produn is forced to fight Julian and is told that if he does not finish the fight quickly, fight quickly then Stella will perish. And if Medion killed Stella in Scenario 2, there is only Produn and you will have no choice but to kill him. So your flyers are really important here because in order to get to Produn, you have to so talk to him to talk. You need to kill the mass monk who hangs in the back past the mountain range ah and Produn moves to block the way. 01:09:46.31 Daniel Yeah, and he's very easy to kill here accidentally, so 01:09:48.38 Jala Yes. Yeah, you don't want to kill Produn if you but the spared Stella in Scenario 2. ah You want to take out that monk and then he'll stop fighting stella ah fighting because Stella is free. So this is hard to do Even on normal mode, this is hard to do ah because your fliers at this point don't deal a lot of damage and that masked monk has a lot of magic. It is tough to do this. 01:10:15.00 Daniel I believe I ended up trapping Produn. He came down to attack me and I surrounded him with three guys against the mountain. He finally came through the little the crevice or through the crack and I trapped him against the mountain with two or three guys against the mountain and then was able to pursue the monk. But every turn i had to keep somebody there to heal them because Produn hits hard. 01:10:35.84 Jala Right. I had somebody up against Produn when he was up there. Like I tried to get to Produn, or I actually tried to get to the monk. I tried to prioritize hitting the monk, and Produn kind of rushed down. Cause my guys were coming around right about that time and he blocks the way. The monk was doing so much magic damage to my flying guys that I was like, they can't do much right at this point. So I had to have them back off because they were just getting their butts handed to them. And it was tricky because like I couldn't, because at this point you have more like AOEs. You don't have magic that targets a single target. So you can't just go and hit the monk easily. So that was kind of a trick. I think I ended up doing my usual and using Julian to kind of like lure Produn, you know, 01:11:21.82 Daniel yeah because he go he'll pursue Julian pretty hard. he almost killed my Julian twice, and he almost killed my Thousand, actually, as my Thousand was trying to pass. 01:11:27.99 Jala Yeah. Yeah. I had to leave and off to the side. Yeah. I had to leave Thousand off the side cause he was fine with the wing knights and stuff, but like when we got to the last two guys on the screen, it was like, no, he, he needs to be over there. But yeah, I think I used Julian to drag Produn away just enough for me to like sneak somebody in there to go finally kill that stupid monk. 01:11:48.84 Daniel Yeah, it's a bit of a slog, but it's not a bad fight. its sort It's really, really pretty. 01:11:51.45 Jala I mean, Yeah, well, and it's also like tactically it's a problem to solve, right? So, but not too many problems at the same time. It's just like you have to figure out how to game this. So after this battle, you learn that Stella can't serve in Julian's army because she is pregnant with Produn's child. And this is an absolutely ridiculous sequence because all of the men are confused, especially Produn and Bresby very awkwardly says in your womb, and when he catches the drift of the women, cause the women like Kate and Melinda are just like, Oh, I get what's going on here. And then all the men are like, what do you mean? mean What could possibly be going on? 01:12:36.54 Daniel yeah but is she bedridden? 01:12:37.97 Jala She's sick a lot. Hmm. 01:12:41.28 Daniel what happened to her? Yeah, she's bedridden because she's throwing up because she got the morning sickness. Guys, come on now. 01:12:51.17 Jala And what's very funny about this sequence, though, is that apparently Stella told the entire fucking army before Produn, who is the last to realize that he's going to be Super Himbo Papa. My dude, I know that this isn't like our world where people have sex ed, but surely you know what happens when you have sex. 01:13:18.29 Daniel Yeah, just because you're not expecting to be a father doesn't mean that you were not expecting to be a father at some point. We know what was going on behind the closed doors there. This whole conversation was very awkward. and I'm a fan of the translation, and I understand they were wanted to keep it as close to one-for-one as possible. How was the Japanese? Was the Japanese also very awkward? 01:13:39.38 Jala I actually don't know because back when I was playing this, I was in the process of studying kanji, but I didn't know enough kanji to be able to read this part easily. So unfortunately I can't tell you. I was playing it through originally in Japanese, but I didn't know enough Japanese to translate the phrasing that was on the screen. 01:13:53.34 Daniel So you were playing this through in English then. 01:14:02.01 Jala So I was doing it with a translation next to me that I got off of Shining Force Central. And then this time, of course, it's in English. 01:14:09.24 Daniel So it doesn't matter how the Japanese would have been. I want to know, actually. I'm curious, because this is just the worst. If they this was poorly translated, I want to go back and do it again myself. 01:14:15.81 Jala It's the worst. The reason why it doesn't age well for me is like in the, in this time period, it makes sense for the way the culture was at that time. But like, it's very much that weird exclusive herpaderp men, they don't know anything about taking care of children. They don't know anything about anything. Stupid men. I mean, it has that feeling in the vibe, and I'm not really here for that, you know? So, right. 01:14:45.48 Daniel mid-90s male bashing, which is not appropriate. I'm a good father. I take care of my kid, and I did a lot of the raising around here. And I feel very embarrassed for all of these men having no idea what's happening. 01:14:58.25 Jala Well, and then what's funny is that for the rest of the game, I was like, oh, it's Produn. Of course he's not. So, because i right at first, he's not that good compared to other people. And he gets better. By the end of the game, he's good. But like, I was just like, oh, of course, he doesn't even know when he's got his girl pregnant. Of course he's bad. and I'm just begrudgingly leveling him up for a long time. And now that he's better, I'm like, but you still don't know that. You're the last person to know that you have a kid on the way. You're so stupid. God. And what's hilarious is that Produn's name in Japanese is Profound. Profound stupidity maybe. It takes Bresby. BRESBY! 01:15:45.72 Daniel He's so deep that he can't get the basics. He's so advanced that he doesn't get the simple stuff. Yeah. Horny old owl man going, oh yeah, I know what happens when you do that stuff together. 01:15:59.41 Jala Yeah. Oh my God. Anyway, so moving right along though, you enter Baersol and you find it to be a paradisical place actually. ah Julian and Gracie are going to go explore and Bresby feels sad to be left out because he's really a toddler at heart. And Melinda babies him and says, oh, it's okay. I'll go ahead and I'll go to headquarters and take care of stuff so you can go run along with your little friends, Bresby. And so then Bresby goes with Julian and Gracia to look around town. 01:16:32.47 Daniel Yeah, it's a neat little place. Baersol's pretty big, actually. I was quite impressed. At this point in my playthrough, I did something with my patching, I think, or something happened, because certain, from here on out, I experienced this all the way up to the end of the game, when I open certain bookcases or click on certain um shelves that are supposed to do stuff, it prompts that it did the thing, but then it doesn't give me any of the flavor text afterwards. And this happened, I thought it was going to be an isolated incident. It turned out to be fairly common. If there's anything that gives you items, you get the items. But for when they have the thing that oh, there's a whipping candle in here, that stuff disappeared in several places. And I was like, oh, well. And I talked to the people in the in the translation project and they were like, if you provide us a save file, we can look into this more. But that's definitely a bug. It's got to be something I did when I patched it. 01:17:29.07 Jala Yuck. Well, around town, you can find several chunks of mithril power wine in the wine cellar of the mansion health bread at the table in the soldiers quarters. This is, I think, the first of these games are the first of the installments of Shining Force 3 where you can look at tables like look on blank tables and find an item on the blank table like it doesn't show anything on it but you can search it but only like certain tables do it it's only in this I think it's only in this one or primarily in this one yeah 01:17:53.26 Daniel yeah but think it's like it's only in Scenario 3. Scenario 2 doesn't let you do that. Scenario 1 doesn't really offer a lot of tables to check. There's always chairs and stuff in the way, and people. 01:18:06.52 Jala Yeah. The chairs, no tables. Story of my life. Anyway. Yeah. You get a health bread from the table in the soldiers quarters. You're stealing the bread from the soldiers. That's fucked up. 01:18:18.06 Daniel Hey, it's delicious bread. 01:18:21.48 Jala and So the map for Ruin 3 is in a chest in the weapons shop and so on. And you learn that Bribeable or Brutus has a son named Harold. And when you go to the mansion and go downstairs, you can intimidate the guards to let you into the wine cellar where Bribeable's wife and son are being held prisoner for speaking out against him. So Harold tells you that before the peace conference in Saraband back at the start of Scenario 1, a Bulzome monk came to see Bribeable behind closed doors. Harold heard him scream, but when he and his mother opened the door, Bribeable was talking with the monk normally, but his disposition had totally changed at this point. Harold believes that the monk killed his father and replaced him with an imposter, and he often offers to join the force in order to meet justice out to the imposter. So Harold, I got to say, like for somebody who's just coming up with this on the fly, like he's on the money. 01:19:14.76 Daniel Yeah, that's pretty good intuition there. He has some understanding of what's happening in the world. 01:19:19.43 Jala He's a lot better than Produn. I bet he would know that he had a baby on the way. This is going to be like my bar from now on for the rest of these characters. Would you or would you not know? 01:19:30.59 Daniel Yeah. Your spouse pregnant? Pretty easy to discern here. 01:19:36.72 Jala Yeah, you might think. So leaving Baersol the Force spots Bribable talking to Edmund, who is apparently also alive. He didn't die from being thrown into the waterfall back in Scenario 1. So nobody dies from falling into a waterfall and raging rapids in this thing. 01:19:57.73 Daniel It's amazing how few rocks are at the bottom of waterfalls now. 01:20:01.12 Jala Right, right. So, Bribable carries onward with his mission, but Edmund, some monks and soldiers remain behind to stop Julian and his team. So, here is Edmund. You are fighting him outside of Baersol. This is battle number 12. So, you've got Baersol soldiers, Pegasus knights, masked monks, minotaurs, and Edmund. I have to tell you, okay, I have it in my notes here. We'll get there. But, I had to redo this battle four times. I will talk about why I had to redo it four times later, but boy, I'm gonna remember this for a while. So, ah Ruin 3's entrance is in the mountain just past the soldiers. There was a little confusion, because there's a thing at the end of the map that looks like it's a ruins. It's it's the same little icon that is used in other scenarios as the ruins, and in this scenario ah as a ruins, but that's not the ruins. 01:20:54.08 Daniel Yeah, no, that's just the, that's just the conclusion of the map. 01:20:54.97 Jala that's the next place that you go actually yeah and I thought that was the ruins and i didn't notice the hole in the side of the mountain um so i had to redo it once i had okay well okay the first time I accidentally killed Edmund so I had to restart because I killed him the second time I forgot the person who had the map. It was Kate, but by this time I'd swapped Kate out for Harold because Harold needed levels. And so I brought Harold along and Kate had the map. Oops. And then the third time I had to stop partway because I realized that the pyramid at the end was not the ruins entrance. The entrance was way back the other place, but I had already triggered everybody and it was a big mess. And I was like, okay, 01:21:36.23 Daniel Yeah. No, let's restart that. 01:21:39.07 Jala Yeah, and then the final time I restarted because I found there were dragons in the ruins and I had to get Cyclops in there. So then I had to do that so that he could get some dragons recruited. So I still did not get one of the items that I wanted from the ruins, the one that I wanted the most. And I only got one dragon, but I was not going to redo it a fifth time or a sixth time or whatever number this was. So this ruins has one thief and two red dragons. And so you want to send Cyclops in to get the dragons. There's some unlocked chests. There's a potion and a dark matter in there. There's also locked chests, which have a chaos ring and a light of hope. I did not get that light of hope. That's the thing that heals all of your MP for everybody in your team or not all of your MP. 01:22:24.72 Jala It doesn't just regenerate some of it or does it give you full MP? 01:22:27.02 Daniel Light of Hope gives you full MP for every character. 01:22:28.82 Jala Woo yeah, that's why I wanted that. 01:22:32.43 Daniel Yeah. Super good for the last couple battles. I didn't go in the ruins. I didn't bother. I should have. I had Cyclops on my team. I didn't like this battle, so I was like, I'm just going to put Edmund to sleep every chance I get. 01:22:49.80 Jala Yes, I did that too. 01:22:50.48 Daniel And rush past him to kill the monk and move on. I like this battle. It's a really cool design, but trying to deal with that cave where it's placed and the fact that Edmund charges you, I didn't i don't want to deal with that. So I said, okay, well, I already have one Chaos Ring. I'm not making a second curse item. From Scenario 2, I carried all those over, and Donheart had those. So I kept those on him and just left that be. Didn't worry about it. I was like, yep, great. Wonderful chance for ruins. I missed out on the red dragons. That's the only chance you get to get red dragons in the whole scenario. So if you don't do that there, you missed those. And I did. And eventually my green dragons started dying because they have no hit points and no defense. But I was like, this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make for this playthrough. 01:23:37.13 Jala That's funny because I think maybe your decision on that might have also been based on the fact that I was bitching to you so much about this battle. I was messaging you and I'm like, oh my God, Daniel, you're not going to believe I had to redo it again. And I was so mad. Yeah. 01:23:54.96 Daniel You going through it four times was enough for me to go through it once. 01:23:57.79 Jala Yeah, it was like, no no, no, you just need to get to the end of this. but oh my God. I was trying to tell you the tips and have in advance so you could just know and just be like, don't do these mistakes on insane difficulty. That would be like way too much. I don't hear just this is what happened to me. 01:24:11.44 Daniel Yeah. And I had decided I wasn't having that. 01:24:13.79 Jala Right. Well, so, so the way that I did it and I got the one item that I did is I brought Honesty and had her break the barrel in front of the first lock chest and then break the top barrel near the second lock chest. So that way the thief could go get the items and everything, but I didn't because I stopped along the way to get the dragons or I tried to get the dragons and was kind of derping a bit, I guess. I had just short enough movement range that I couldn't get the thief to get that second item, unfortunately, even though I would have if I had gotten a little bit further in. So be careful with your placement of your guys. You definitely want to send somebody over to block that path from the thief, um you know, and get that other item. So if you spared Stella in Scenario 2, don't kill Edmund. Finish off the monk and he will join you. ah So if you did kill Stella, he will not join you, but you have the option to spare him. 01:25:09.18 Daniel And I did. And he left and went back to town, and I was like, oh, I'll see you next time. 01:25:14.36 Jala Mm-hmm. So, yeah. This goes directly into the last battle of Chapter 3. So, again, it's one of these chain battles. Here's multiple battles in a row. So, the Force ends up catching up with Bribeable at an ancient temple. He's there with Yasha, who informs him that Garvin had to start the invasion early doing due to being chased by Prince Medion. We also learn that there are three Yashas, which makes sense because... Yasha seems to be everywhere and you kill him, but then he's still around somewhere, but has no idea that he was killed actually. And that's because there's than one of them. 01:25:49.89 Daniel Yeah, there's a trifecta. 01:25:52.04 Jala Yeah. So ah Julian and company are spotted. It's revealed that a demon named Kudan was implanted into Bribable's body, confirming Harold's suspicion that his father has been long dead. Kudan reveals his true form, which is basically a bigger and meaner minotaur. And the fight begins. So this fight at the pyramid includes Pegasus Knights, multiple types of ninjas, masked monks, minotaurs, Yasha and Kudan. And the trick here is that the ground collapses in multiple spots on the battlefield, forcing you to go a longer way around. 01:26:28.01 Daniel I died here. the first I put Gracie in the wrong spot in the very first round, and Gracia got murdered. So that was a reset, and then ah did that a second time for the second one, and I've played this battle before, at least once before this, so you'd think I would know what I'm doing, but no. 01:26:43.14 Jala Yeah. 01:26:45.02 Daniel This battle I reset this battle three or four times because I kept dying and putting people in bad spots. So this was a good, this took me a good day and a half on its own. Because, yeah, this was a struggle. But I got through it and got some level ups, and getting that chest at the far end, that was a huge challenge. 01:27:03.46 Jala Mm hmm. It was a challenge, but it's also worth it. So like that chest where Yasha starts, it has a Ground Rod in there and that's useful. I put Rollie up there and then like the ground collapsed behind her. And so she was stuck over there, but she survived. 01:27:20.96 Daniel Wow. 01:27:21.56 Jala I don't know. I think what I did is I rushed some other people that had like long distance attacks and and rushed like um Thousand, yeah, 01:27:22.72 Daniel That's impressive. 01:27:30.17 Jala No, Honesty was over on the other side, but I think Thousand was over by Rollie. So I had Thousand go up there to kind of like pull hits. And then like the dragon that the red dragon that I just recruited, I had the red dragon go up there and kind of like distract because they like to hit the dragons. 01:27:44.72 Daniel oh yeah. They like the dragons. 01:27:48.78 Jala And Yasha has Spark 3. So it's like a big, bad thing. you want to have some, yeah, you you want to have somebody up there to distract. 01:27:52.99 Daniel Yeah, he's dangerous. 01:27:56.41 Jala Now that probably would not work with you um in insane difficulty on this, but it did on the ah level that I was playing it. And again, I split up my forces. 01:28:04.64 Daniel Yeah, in order to, I pretty much kept everyone together. I mainly rushed the left-hand side, Honesty, and Thousand came across that gap. It was okay. The ninjas tried to harass me from the back, and that didn't work out well for them because I ah took them out. But I found that at this map, because they're the two bosses, I had to kill Yasha before I could even attempt to get that chest because Yasha was just too powerful. 01:28:29.02 Jala Yeah, same. 01:28:33.84 Daniel He freezes you in place. One of his attack moves can freeze you in place, and then you can't move. And the only way to cure that is with Antidote 2. Or a--the sand, whatever. 01:28:46.24 Jala Yeah, the fairy dust. 01:28:46.44 Daniel Antidote sand. The fairy dust, that's what it's called. And that's the only ways to get rid of though that or having a high enough that you don't get trapped in it. And think your luck has to be nine or eight for that to be a thing. 01:28:57.54 Jala See, but I had Rollie and Rollie has Antidote 2. 01:29:00.55 Daniel Yeah, so that helps. But, yeah, Rollie was busy attacking guys on the other side of the that area for me. So, yeah, it was not the funnest. But we got through it. 01:29:10.58 Jala Yeah. So like, I, you know, the thing is on normal mode, you can try some risky stuff and still manage to get away with it. um it's On insane, it's not something you can do. You got to play way more conservatively for that. 01:29:23.37 Daniel Yeah, it's a bit of a harrowing experience. 01:29:27.06 Jala Yeah, see, I like to make it a challenge by splitting my team up all the time. And then having people go out there and go reach for stuff. And that's the way I challenge myself because I'm more of a chaos gamer. 01:29:38.01 Daniel On normal, that's exciting. If I was playing on normal, I would do that all the time too. 01:29:44.72 Jala It's fun to do stuff like that. But like, um you know, if I were playing it on a harder difficulty, it'd be different. And you know, like this is a game that I feel like if I wanted to go through it again, I would put up the difficulty level on it and try it on a harder difficulty level. I don't know that I want to do that anytime soon because of, you know, like going through all of it at once, like, you know, and within a fairly quick turnaround. I don't want to get burned out and be like now I hate this game. I need a little bit of variety but yeah it's something that i feel like i have in me at some point in the future because this is one of those games there's certain games like resident evil 6 i play the shit out of this i would play the shit out of um also dishonored I'll do that um and go through i was talking to people was like yeah I've never done a ghost run on dishonored but i bet you i could and i bet you that i would have fun doing it too 01:30:32.57 Daniel I haven't started Dishonored yet. I think I own a copy. I just haven't played it. 01:30:36.15 Jala It's a fun game. I like it a lot. 01:30:37.33 Daniel and I will get to it someday, just like everything else that I have on my backlog. 01:30:39.32 Jala So yeah, but um I took down Yasha before I took down Kudan, mostly because Yasha had that magic and his pain in the butt. So like I needed to take him down first. But anyway, after they are defeated, Yasha returns to Aspia to inform Dominic what happened. And then Honesty follows by air after Yasha. And then Donheart and Isabella go on ahead to smooth the way with the Republicans as Honesty is an imperial soldier. So they're like, OK, if an imperial soldier comes rushing into Republican territory looking for somebody, ah you know, how is that going to go? 01:31:14.70 Daniel Yeah, so at this moment I was like, oh no, we're losing all of our force, because I didn't realize that we were right next to Aspia. And I was like, okay, so this is going to be a problem. We're going to lose five people. And then all of a sudden it cut scenes to Aspia, and you're like, oh, no. I panicked a bit there. I was like, oh, I forgot about this. We're losing so many guys. 01:31:34.91 Jala Well, because this game trains you to think, now you're that's your next challenge, and then you're going a chain of three battles with none of them, or something. 01:31:43.19 Daniel Yeah, all of a sudden you have nine people on your force. Go ahead. Have fun. 01:31:45.81 Jala Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, uh, yeah. So, so since Honesty is trying to head up there to help persuade Medion and Synbios not to fight, uh, we've also got Donheart and Isabella. Isabella is like, I can get through to my brother more than anybody else can. Let me go, you know? And so she rides on Donheart's back and then Donheart, because in here, if they keep on saying he's the swiftest of foot, he's the fleetest of foot, he can go ahead. so, uh, he, he's the power runner, I guess. So, 01:32:13.27 Daniel Being a centaur, it makes sense. 01:32:15.06 Jala Yeah, I mean, like there's also Rollie. There's also Thousand, although Thousand with that big badunkadunk probably ain't going that fast. So, ah right. 01:32:21.05 Daniel Yeah, dragons actually don't have a sufficient high move speed even in D&D. In D&D, they're like, yeah, we're slow flyers. 01:32:28.25 Jala Well, there's Rollie. 01:32:30.03 Jala Rollie's a unicorn. My Little Pony could go. 01:32:34.35 Daniel But I don't know if she would want to support someone on her back. She's probably not used to being ridden that way. 01:32:37.58 Jala That's true. That's true. But it's a maiden. It's a maiden. It's fine. Unicorn, maiden, they go together. It's perfect. But anyway, but then again, Rollie can't talk. like ah you Like if you are Synbios or Medion and you go and you talk to Rollie or Thousand, you can't understand them. So, you know, that's the thing. 01:32:55.70 Daniel they're not your people. 01:32:57.48 Jala Yeah. So anyway, Julian and the others, along with Lady Melinda, move to follow as fast as they can. So then we go on to chapter four, Shining Force to the North. The force approaches Aspia, walking past the ruins of the ancient tank that David and company helped destroy in Scenario 2. The wrecked wall where Medion and his team invaded and find their way to Medion and Synbios facing off and preparing to fight. This is now we are now at the cusp, the point where Scenario 1 ends and Scenario 2 ends and we're finally there. We're finally there, folks. So Honesty, Donheart, and Isabella managed to stop them. And Honesty informs Dominic about Rogan's trick with the letter Dominic had sent to Majesty, request requesting Majesty to bring Melinda. So originally... What Dominant had wanted to have happen is for Majesty to bring Melinda, to use Melinda as a hostage for Medion. But instead, because of Rogan doing the forgery and everything, he had Julian's team. Julian being bros with Medion means that she's under protection. She's not used as a hostage, actually. so Dominant doesn't have that sway, that threat of, I'm going to kill your mother, you know, because Dominant, if you at some point because of Scenario 2 felt like, okay, Dominant is doing some emperor shit. He's pretty Nietzsche-esque, right? But at the same time, he still is proud. He says he's proud of Medion and he's trying to teach Medion how to be like this, this ah Machiavellian kind of ruler and everything. But he's like kind of, you know, trying to get him to see his point of view. And maybe he's actually trying to, no, he's a bad man. He's a very bad man. There's nothing nice about Dominant, not once. 01:38:31.71 Daniel He's just pursuing his own goals to, by his own means, for his own ends. And he only wants what's best for him, which reminds me of people I know. 01:38:38.39 Jala Yes, ultimately. So Julian and everybody shows up and catches up. And then everyone spends a long time trying to convince Dominate to step down from trying to conquer the Republic. And Dominate, of course, doesn't want to, but he eventually reluctantly lets go, but seems to have something else up his sleeve because of course he does. He always does. So. 01:39:00.38 Daniel I like how he's like surrounded here on all sides by people who could technically take him. And he's just like, okay, I guess I might leave. 01:39:08.47 Jala Yeah, well, that's because he knows they won't. He knows that they won't, you know, because they have morals. 01:39:11.00 Daniel They're not going to off him. They're not going to hold him hostage. They're not going to tie him up and ask for a ransom. They could. They have all the force behind them to do so. And he just uses that to his advantage. He's like, oh, man, I guess I can't steal the kingdom back today. 01:39:30.90 Jala Don't worry. There's always tomorrow. So crisis averted Synbios and Medion both agree to join Julian on the Godchild's journey. So it's funny because although this point takes a while in terms of like all the exchanges going on, it's mostly everybody going, come on, Dominant. Like here's Medion going, but dad and Benetram's like, you know, you've got to back off because logically this doesn't make sense for you to keep going Dominant and Dominant's like, I don't know about that. 01:40:04.49 Daniel Benetram's also, come on, Dad. 01:40:06.53 Jala Yeah, right. So, um but anyway, like you feel like, especially the way Scenario 1 ends, like Scenario 2, you already know that the that this ending point is coming, right? But like in Scenario 1, the first time that you see it end with this face off on the bridge and you're like, oh shit, you know, you feel like it's going to be a higher stakes, scarier kind of situation. But then by the time Julian shows up and comes, it actually like totally defuses it. And it's kind of like, it feels like they, they worked it up to be this big crescendo that it didn't end up paying off as a big crescendo. And like, That's because there's lots of other things at stake that Julian is dealing with that the other guys aren't. And I feel like the reason why this is, for the reason why they have this kind of false crescendo thing going on is because they're trying to drive home that point that Gracia makes and that the game overall is making, that there are larger things at work. There are bigger problems in the world even than this world war that's happening between these two massive political powers. The politics are one thing, but there are even bigger ethereal forces at work, massive world ending powers that are at work that are more important than this. And I like that. 01:41:22.62 Daniel and Scenario 1 ends, if you play the unpatched version, it ends here with them actually having some kind of clash. The story has been rewritten with the new translation people who are doing the fan translation. They have reworked this section of the English version to make it flow with the three games better because the North American release just tied it shut. They were like, this is the end. This is game over, done. No more plot, no more story. This resolves here, and there's no way to bridge that gap. But the translators have come through and gone, no, we don't like that. Let's patch this together a little better, make the story flow more, and has have really reworked it so that it makes a lot more sense across all three when you play them together in sync now. 01:42:06.50 Jala Right. And the next time that I go through here and play it, like when I play it on like insane difficulty or whatever difficulty, i don't know. Is there two difficulties or three? I don't even know. 01:42:14.67 Daniel Four: Normal, hard, harder, and insane. 01:42:15.33 Jala Four. Okay, great. Well, I'm going to be playing it on Insane anytime soon, but I might play it on hard, or harder mode. And when I do one of those kind of run-throughs, I'll definitely be using the fan-translated version because, I mean, there's so many quality of life updates that they did that it's way worth it. Anyway, Synbios ends up going ahead to Remotest. I love the naming conventions in this game. They just are evergreen to me. Remotest, the farthest place up in the north. It's the north pole. 01:42:49.89 Daniel Out in boonies. The boonies. Let's go way up. 01:42:52.90 Jala So, Remotest, he goes there to learn as much as he can in advance of everybody else coming there because that's where the Bulzome Temple is. And that's where the big, big final confrontation is going to happen. So, Dominant needs to be taken back to Destonia by Medion and, Medion plans to join up afterwards. He can always take a ship because he's a prince. He can just grab a ship and go fly, you know sail up that way. So he'll be faster and able to catch up because he's going by sea. And Julian remains in Aspia with Lady Melinda as she, Gracia, and Benetram try to unlock the secret of Jumesyn, which is the most nonsense. Because like, okay, so there's this legend, y'all. There's a legend that there's the one way that this Thousand Year War is going to be ended against Bulzome and the one way that the light can prevail over the darkness is because of Jumesyn. And there's this long belabored thing where they're like, I wonder what the secret of Jumesyn is. Julian, do you know? Medion, do you know? Synbios, do you know? And it's like... I'm bursting. I'm...I'm dying. I saw somebody on YouTube who was playing through this and put the name such that instead of Jumesyn, it came up The Secret of Jesus. 01:44:13.77 Jala It was the funniest shit. 01:44:15.46 Jala I was like, I don't know how you did that, but that's very good. That's very good. So everybody at this point is going like The Secret of Jesus. That they were playing the long con on getting the joke right for the for the YouTube. 01:44:25.05 Daniel Yeah. 01:44:29.84 Daniel There are others among the translation team that people like as well. 01:44:34.08 Daniel The Secret of Boobies. 01:44:35.35 Jala Yeah, there you go and so either way, everybody decides split up. They are going to all come together again at the end to go fight this battle against Bulzome. And they're all heading off in different directions. So after seeing Medion and Synbios off, you can just explore Aspia. And while wandering town, if you got both Pen and Penko in the prior scenarios, Pendolf will show up. He is the mentor of Penn and Penko and will join you in gratitude. Also, Penn and Penko are apparently courting in this point in the game. Now, I did not get Pendolf because I don't have Scenario 1 data. So I had Penko, but I didn't have Penn. So no Pendolf for me. 01:45:26.60 Daniel I got him. i didn't use him much this playthrough. He's an interesting character. He got powered up in the Heroes Test. That was about it for him. 01:45:33.94 Jala You can also pick up any items you missed from your other scenarios when you walked through here. If you didn't pick up all the stuff in the other scenarios, it'll be here for you to pick up. So yeah. 01:45:43.34 Daniel Yeah, I had nothing there. I searched there and I was like, oh, yeah, empty, empty, empty. empty Okay, I did a good job. 01:45:52.16 Jala I had stuff here to find because I didn't have Scenario 1 data. So canonically nothing got picked up. 01:45:59.27 Daniel Well, that was helpful. 01:46:00.44 Jala Sort of, except that Synbios is the one who needs all that crap because he's got the default team. 01:46:06.23 Jala We'll get there. Anyway, ah you enter the castle. You go to check on the team as they puzzle out Jumesyn. And it's Melinda who finally figures out that it's the portmanteau of the names of the three commanders of the three armies. And after that's sorted, Benetram asks Bresby to stay and guard Lady Melinda. And he says he will go with Julian as the new advisor. And when you're walking around the castle right before you get to this point...And you're talking to the servants. One of them suggests that Benetram and Melinda are sweet on each other because Benetram has been in a much improved state with her around. And when it's time to go, Melinda asked Julian to take care of Isabella, which is her daughter and Benetram. 01:46:44.57 Jala So, you know, it's pretty likely that they got a got a little bit of a thing going. 01:46:50.86 Daniel Bow chicka wow wow. 01:46:52.33 Jala So, leaving Aspia, the force heads past the Great Wall, which is left hilariously unlocked, by the way. 01:47:03.40 Daniel Yeah. How do you, why? and I know it's plot driven, but why guys, this is a very special door. You should have a guard here with locks and keys and all kinds of stuff. 01:47:14.90 Jala you would think it would at least be locked in that like Benetram as the Navigator would have the key to this or something. And he would be the only person and like, that's all they needed. They didn't have to do a battle to get through although they could have done that and swapped it out for the next battle. They could have done a battle to get the key or, you know, something. 01:47:32.57 Daniel Vagabond is right there. Vagabond could have been in charge of that. They could have had cutscene where they go into Vagabond quickly, grab talk to the priest or whatever, get a key from somebody in the town in the village. But it made so much sense to do any of that. Even have ah have a person from Vagabond meet them there go, oh, you're the Legendary Expedition. Let's get you through this gate. But no, I think they might have run out of budget. 01:47:55.70 Jala Yeah, I feel like at this point, especially since they chain in this scenario, they chain so many battles together. So with the chained battles, it feels like two different things. One, it feels like their sense of pacing is off because like they have long talky parts and then they have seven battles and then they have a long talky part and then seven. And I feel like they weren't considering the pacing. They were just trying to finish the game and get it done and, um you know, get it out there. So like some of those talkie points. Yeah, some of them could be interspersed more. Some of them couldn't. But chaining so many battles together. I think they're also trying to make it feel like more of a rush. Like Julian is rushing as fast as he can through all of this stuff because he's got a time limit. He's got to get to Aspia. He's got to get to remotest. He's got to do all these things as fast as he possibly can. So they have to hit through all these battles with no breather. But it gets fatiguing in time. So like it's better to play this scenario. I feel like in chunks, you know, so no, right. 01:48:55.33 Daniel Yeah, and you can't do it you can't sit down and do it all at once because of all the battles. It's really a slog to try and sit down and just go, oh, let's do four battles in a row. I'm not bored of this or tired of this right now, especially after some of these battles require you to reset or retry or redo. But's it's a bit of a slog. 01:49:14.15 Jala And the thing is, this scenario has 30 battles. The prior scenarios have like 28 battles. So it's not that much of a difference in terms of how many battles, but the problem is this one doesn't have the breathing room. The other two scenarios break up the battles a little bit more. 01:49:31.83 Daniel Yeah, you get 2 maximum in a lot of those. It's like, oh yeah, we have one, we have two, and then you have some deposition, exposition, or other things going on between another battle, and it's enough that it's like, okay, well, this makes sense. You have a plot point here, you have a stop in a town. This one has several points where it's three or four in a row. 01:49:52.28 Jala Right. Well, and then too, here's part of the thing. um This one, so there are filler battles and well, I say filler. They're just basically like standardized battles with not a very fancy boss. It's not like a named boss. It's just like a guy, you know, ah in, in every scenario has those, but this one feels like there's a higher volume of those in these three or four battle sets. Like you've got this next one, it's the battle in the tall grass. okay it's a battle just as soon as you pass through the wall and I understand that like you know they're trying to say it's dangerous past the wall but like okay um you go into the tall grass but it's not Pokémon there it's critters you get critters so you do in fact fight giant ants in this section so you know it's there for comedy but it's also there because that's actually what you fight-- 01:50:36.67 Daniel Oh, dang. This is how you get ants, people. I think this I think this predates that line, actually, in media. 01:50:56.21 Jala So, if you didn't kill Spirited in Scenario 1, you will see her leave the Vagabond Caravan and follow after the Force. She does not show up in this battle, however. I did not because I had the default data, but I'm sure you did. You got to see Spirited. 01:51:10.61 Daniel Yeah. I Spirited away. Hi-ho. 01:51:13.50 Jala Yeah. Haha. So yeah, here you get bats, hellhounds, giant ants, red dragon and bugbear. So you've had a red dragon here. You could have recruited this guy. So not just that one rune. 01:51:25.93 Daniel I could have recruited him here, um but I think I murdered him instead, too. No, actually, this one I got. I got this one. Yeah. I murdered him with the Cyclops. 01:51:37.23 Jala Gotcha. Cool. So there's lots of hidden items here. There's one in the statue on the hill right next to the start and in the rocks along the battlefield. There's dark matter, large and small mithril and a pretty glove. So, yeah, this is a ah yeah, it is very shiny. 01:51:49.82 Daniel Ooh, shiny. The pretty glow is very shiny. 01:51:54.31 Jala So, yeah, this is a straightforward kind of battle, but you have to note that the ants will often use poison. So you will want to use antidote or have fairy powder on you or whatnot. 01:52:12.64 Daniel Yeah, Rollie the MVP here. 01:52:16.03 Jala Rollie is very good in a lot of the game. I think I just, I was like, you know, Julian's team has a lot of weirdos in it. 01:52:22.38 Daniel It is the Special Forces team, yeah. 01:52:24.79 Jala Yeah, it's the Special Forces team that has all of like the magical creatures, like including a dragon god that you get. It's like, okay, why? Why not? Why not? Cool. 01:52:32.71 Daniel Yeah, how many humanoids on Julian's team? Like four? Yeah. 01:52:35.59 Jala Yeah, I know. Cause it's like, they're all who knows everything else. So, so yeah, anyway, after this battle, the force locates the road, they're trying to find the road. That's what they're trying to do in the tall grass. And, uh, because everything is, is overgrown. And I, mean like for flavor, I like the idea of this. I think I'm just like, I don't like all the filler battles. I'm not trying to pick on this one in particular. I think just in general, if they could have just, you know, adjusted some of the battles. 01:52:59.55 Daniel you could definitely have cut You could have definitely cut this one out. 01:53:02.69 Jala Yeah, so it could have been a cutscene and it would have been fine. 01:53:03.30 Daniel It wouldn't have suffered at all. 01:53:06.39 Jala So anyway, there's like a statue. The statue is pointing you and it says that way. And then that's when you go that way and you find the road. So um they end up finding Aural Village past another passel of critters. 01:53:13.38 Daniel Hooray! 01:53:18.27 Jala So this leads directly into another pastel of critters that you have to fight. And this is another one of those random filler battles. Bats, hellhounds, hydras, giant ants, and succubi. There's not even any items on this map. 01:53:31.55 Daniel Yeah, this is this is the one where you get Spirited. 01:53:31.90 Jala Yeah, I was going to say this is, yeah, that's the only thing notable about this is that Spirited joins up with you here if you did not kill her in Scenario 1. 01:53:35.25 Daniel The first time I played this battle, I just blitzed it, the first game, the first playthrough, and I had to reset because if you don't talk to her, she disappears. So this time around, I got to the boss and she appeared and I was like, oh no, I better go do that. So then I had to rush guys away from the boss. And I think I lost Cyclops here as well again and Couldn't get away from the succubus fast enough. 01:54:12.82 Jala Oh, man. So when you talk to her, though, you find out that once Synbios freed her of Basanda's mind control, she's been drifting, unable to trust anybody like the Republic or the Empire, and desiring to exact revenge on the Bulzome Sect. So she goes with Julian to reclaim her shattered pride. So, yeah, there's extra critters that will pop up in this, but it's not hard. But you have to make sure that you are aware that Hell Succubus has Freeze Level 3. 01:54:41.12 Daniel Yeah. Pretty shiny. It hurts a lot. 01:54:44.52 Jala Indeed. So after this, you enter Oral Village. You learn from the villagers that they were left on the north side of the Great Wall when the door was sealed. So that sucks. Could you imagine being like everybody's rushing to go to the south and then like they close the door on you? Wow. 01:55:01.23 Daniel It sounds like when I, when I read it and received that information, I thought it was kind of like, Oh, well we stayed here by choice cause it's our home, but we, 01:55:09.83 Jala Yeah, it's our keep and like their keepers holding the way. 01:55:12.12 Daniel But we would have gone south if we had more motivation. So obviously they're not afraid of the monsters. 01:55:16.37 Jala Right? They're just like, eh, whatever. 01:55:17.13 Daniel And they have a wall on the outside. So I mean, I understand that they feel protected. It's not going to save them from like a herd of minotaurs. But apparently those aren't very popular. 01:55:29.32 Jala Well, I mean, like their town's still intact. They're doing okay. It's been a thousand years and they're fine. But like they have, it's cool because like, as you're walking around town, everybody's got like legends of how the people are on the other side of the wall and stuff like that. Like they're just like conjecturing and they have no idea because they've been so removed for so long. And so, yeah. 01:55:46.71 Daniel And they marvel at the fact that you're wearing metal armor. the Metal? Oh my god, what are you doing with metal all the way up here? oh it's scary. 01:55:52.56 Jala Right. Right. Well, and then they also ask questions. They're like, so people South, like people in the South, do they do X? Do they actually, Oh, I didn't realize you would look like me. I thought that you would have evolved into some other kind of critter by this, at this point in time, because it's been so fucking long, you know? 01:56:09.73 Daniel Oh, you're only human too. Yes, of course, we're still human as well. 01:56:11.60 Jala Yeah and so there are a ton of items to grab here you get ankhs, mithril and dark matter a map for ruins number four healing items armor milk power wine coins and the Vulcanon wand ah you have to push the bookshelf in the third room of the bar to reveal a hidden passage to get back behind the bar to get to that in the cave um and there's also yeah it is it's very obvious uh and then there's also another blacksmith in town as well so 01:56:34.14 Daniel Yeah, pretty obvious, though. It's pretty obvious. I made a note here of yeah, the Great Wall is unlocked and these people have never bothered to wander down there and have a look. Seems suspicious to me. 01:56:51.25 Jala yeah I know exactly. That's part of the thing. It's kind of like that experiment where they do where they have dogs shocked if they try to leave the kennel with when the door is open. And then after a while, if you open the door, they won't go out because they'll feel like they're probably going to get shocked and they don't test it anymore. They just give up. So it feels like maybe they got attacked in the tall grass one too many times by the bugbears and the ants. And they were just like, we're not doing it anymore. 01:57:23.01 Daniel Yeah. It's safer at the village. Safety in numbers. Let's not have a The Village moment here. 01:57:28.71 Jala Right. Right. So, you go to the waterfall from which the Holy river springs and meet Onera, the keeper of the ancient secrets. She has Gracia pass a capture, basically a standing on a ruin to verify their Innovator and Innovator bloodline. And she's like, oh, just stand here and it will verify your Innovator status. And it's like, okay, they're basically doing a captcha and then tells them that their princess is in another castle. So rats. That is, they have the bloodline and harbor the Spirit, but they have not stepped into their power as a true Innovator yet. To do that, they have to have an evolution ceremony at Ark Hill where the Holy Ark touched down from the heavens. So a person who has the correct bloodline and harbors the Spirit can become either an Innovator or Vandal, depending on their disposition towards good and evil. So the Holy Ark. 01:58:26.79 Daniel Yeah, there was a lot of there's a lot of really cool reveals in this part of the game. I'm quite impressed by all the information that you receive here about Innovators and Vandals, considering that they haven't really touched on it much in this game or the other two. It's like, oh yeah, they exist and they're bad and they're good. and But this actually gives you some, oh yeah, you can become and this is the way that you can transform into these things. It gives you a much better guideline of what actually happens to become these characters, these beings. 01:58:56.56 Jala Well, it makes sense. It makes sense for it to be in this part because south of the wall, you are the people who fled and haven't had all that time to kind of marinate in it, right? But like the people north of the wall, that's where there are people who harbor the spirit. That's where ah there are vandals. There are all these other critters. that That's where the holy ark touched down. I mean, like they're in the holy land. So, I mean, like they've got all the knowledge. They have all the books. They have all the ancient techniques. technology and so on. So like they are closer to the source and it's kind of like when the people went south of the wall, it feels like that's the version of going into the dark ages. You know they don't have that knowledge anymore after they leave to go down there. 01:59:35.80 Daniel Yeah. But I just find it fantastic. I love this part of the story so much. 01:59:39.90 Jala Yeah, and like I'm just trying to explain, like I know it seems like, oh, this is a knowledge dump. Why did they wait three games for it to be here? But like it makes sense because like they've got all of their prophets and all of their ah scholars and stuff. They're waiting for the Legendary Expedition to come down, you know or come up rather, to fight Bulzome. And like they need to be there to educate the Legendary Exposition. Uh, Expedition. Legendary EXPOSITION is this podcast actually. so ah the Expedition to teach all of them what they need to know before they go fight Bulzome. So it makes sense that they are there. It makes sense that this is where you get that information. And also Shining the Holy Ark exists y'all. And it has something to do with this. I didn't play that one. 02:00:31.13 Daniel It is canon. 02:00:33.69 Jala So you played Holy Ark though. 02:00:35.31 Daniel I did. I played through the whole thing. It's a really short RPG. You should get into it. 02:00:38.51 Jala I intend to, and especially since playing through this game, a lot of the dialogue here was not in the translation ah that I had on paper, so I missed it entirely the first time I played through many years ago. So this is my first time actually seeing a lot of this information. But like with its ties, I would have played Holy Ark a long time ago had I known all of this information that is now available to me that was not there the first time I played it. Because the translation team hadn't done their thing yet. So yeah, you also learn that Benetram knows where to go north of the wall because he is the direct descendant of the Navigator, fated to lead the legendary expedition along its path. So from Shining Force Central, they say, incidentally, Conrad, Synbios' father, was a direct descendant of the warrior, the first one to battle the Vandals, destroying the Thousand Year Kingdom. Naturally Synbios has inherited this mission though neither he nor Conrad were aware of their ancestry so i don't know that was on Shining Force central this is in if you want to know where it's in the storyline summaries of yeah it's there i don't know where they got it from but it's there 02:01:43.01 Daniel Nani? What? Oh, yeah. no I totally believe it's there. I'm not doubting the fact that it's there. ah I want to know where the sources are on that. ah I'll be right back. Oh, wait. Podcast. That's really cool. I really love that. Again, more plot. 02:02:09.98 Jala What's hilarious, though, is that means that Synbios is special. Benetram is special, but Medion and Julian, they're not that special. I mean, Gracia is special. 02:02:20.32 Daniel Julian is special. He's Jane's. 02:02:24.04 Jala He's like, he's the linked character from Holy Ark coming over here. 02:02:27.84 Daniel Yeah. He's Jane's man. I think. Well, maybe Kate's man, depending on now. Jane seems to be really hot for him. 02:02:36.66 Jala Well, Jane also is a stalker and Jane is going to make sure that she gets Julian. 02:02:43.18 Daniel Yeah, it's pretty much cooked already. She will have to settle for Donheart or somebody. 02:02:51.49 Jala Something have to say about Kate. I love Kate because she is snarky as shit. I love Kate as a character because like in these games, like there's characters that I feel that they might be snarky, but then they're not snarky. And I love Kate because she is snarky the whole time. 02:03:07.46 Daniel The whole time. Yeah, it's just her personality. 02:03:10.74 Jala I love that as a character. So yeah. Anyhow, you get this this kind of info dump. You get updates about people having you know like ah capital titles, you know capital letter titles and stuff, proper titles, proper nouns. And you leave town to rush towards remotest, and the team comes up against a bunch more critters. I literally like labeled this battle, Battle Number 16 Critter Fest, because that's what it is. It's bats, hell succubi, giant ants, bugbears, hydra, and a chimera, which is your boss. That's it. I mean, like it's another there's so this is the third battle in a row that is just random critters that you're fighting, which feels frustrating. 02:03:46.97 Daniel Yeah. And again, this battle could have also been cut, I think. You could have moved the ruins to a different battle. 02:03:53.39 Jala Right, right. So um this is where ruins number four is. And here's the thing is that I know that they're trying to pad out this scenario to make it the same length as the other scenarios. But for reasons of both pacing and fatigue, they could have tightened it up. 02:04:11.61 Daniel Yeah, I think the reason they put so many battles in was because they also wanted to make it seem like it had more scope than the first two. So you have two more battles, you have a longer game. If you had had taken out those two battles, it would be on par. The two I mentioned to take out, that would put it on par with the other two. And you have a lot more exposition in this one. There's like a couple extra hours of readable dialogue in this. Especially if you're going through and talking to every person in every town and exploring every bookcase. The gameplay is already there. We have the loop. We have the idea. we have the concept. Great. But they expanded on it a little too much with these extra battles. 02:04:51.70 Jala Right, well, so something that I would say is that with since there's stuff in the demos that they never did incorporate into the game proper, they could have cut out some of these filler battles. Not all of them, like some of them need to be there because all of them have that for pacing reasons or whatever, for leveling reasons. But cut out some of them and then also inject some of those other random things that they were messing with and have more stuff go on outside of battle that is non-combat, but also really cool. You know, like they could have done some introduction of, of some kind of puzzle elements, for example, in some of these areas to get some of this information or whatever, without having it be tied to a ruin or a battle or something, you know, like give you some other, uh-huh. 02:05:32.29 Daniel Yeah, having a second having a second village that has a bunch of flying houses in it, because there is ah a photo somewhere, and we found out we're in the code that is, where they actually have this house that's flying, and there's tiles on the ground, and if you step on a tile, it changes which building comes down. So that is in the game, in code, in in the data, and it's not used anywhere. So I understand they cut that for time and they cut that for pacing, but that would have been so much more interesting to me, having a whole other town to explore, than those two battles. 02:06:05.68 Jala Right, and that that's part of what I'm saying. I mean, like, they could have been, like, that says they were innovating, right? So they were Innovators, and, you know, they did their evolution ceremony at Ark Hill, and they did all their thing, and they became a true Innovator, and they did all this stuff, but then they didn't use it. And, like, that would have been so much cooler than just trying to make it look the same as the other two, because, like, they had already advanced so much just in making these games, like, these installments of this one overarching story. But anyway, so in this battle, though, this is where Ruin 4 is. ah When you get to a certain spot on the map, the thief appears, or the thieves, rather, up appear and head inside. and this ruin has the lights off and a bunch of barricades in place. And to turn them on, you have to spend a turn investigating the brassieres that are everywhere. And there's X's on the floor where you can also see without turning the light on because they're darker than the surrounding space. So like if it's dark, you can still see about where those are. And when you stomp on those, that lowers the barricades. So you can do it without turning off or turning on the light, but like it's harder and you need high movement characters to be able to do all of that. I definitely um saved before entering this ruin and then when I went in there, spent a few turns in there trying to figure out where stuff was and then restarted from the beginning once I knew what the layout was so that I could do this a little bit better because otherwise you're not going to get it. 02:07:33.59 Daniel I should have done that. I did not. I did not get the item that's in the chest because I didn't run anyone there. But I did get the thief items because when you have Produn and he's got the arrow axe, he can reach guys, that the thieves that are trying to escape. So I was able to get those. But I tied my other characters up trying to defeat the guys in the room because I stood at the doorway and was like, I'm not sure what I should do here. And as I was trying the level, I looked up a guide and i was like, well, I've already messed this up. And the last time I saved was a while ago and now if I save, I'm going to mess this up even more. So I'd rather just proceed on here. Oh, I'm okay without the Macho. I think it's the Macho Maul in the chest. 02:08:15.92 Jala It's the White Ring, Wendigo Wand and the Macho Maul. So yeah, I think the Maul is the one in the chest. 02:08:20.68 Daniel I think the maul was the one in the chest. So it wasn't a big loss for me since, again, all of my axe users are throwing axe users. I don't carry mauls. It's a weapon in the game I've never used on any character because you can have ranged 1 to 3 instead. So having ranged 1 to 3 is so much more relevant to my play style. 02:08:42.94 Jala Well, especially at the end of the game, it's so much more useful. 02:08:45.88 Daniel Everywhere in the game, in my opinion, but yeah. 02:08:47.92 Jala Especially if you're at a higher difficulty and you are squishy. 02:08:52.48 Daniel Yeah. And again, there's no time to retrain weapons. There's literally nowhere to do that other than the hero's test. Right. So, uh, the way that, um, I did this is I hit up the North path with a couple of people, one grabbing the chest and on the right, and then the other lighting the brassiere and stepping on the plate to open the path. And then I sent someone preferably with long range weaponry through the West door to wait for the thieves. I put Kate there, I think. And then a faster mover up and into the left to hit the switch in the leftmost room. And I got two of the three items here. 02:09:26.42 Jala I missed the white ring, but I did get the other stuff. So, and that's probably because I was allocating most of my people towards like trying to get the chest and trying to get, you know, like try to figure everything else out. This battle isn't a big deal. 02:09:48.03 Daniel Yeah, it's not a very scary boss. I never had any trouble with it. 02:09:50.77 Jala Nah. So after the battle, Benetram says a Destonian warship was there, but has since vanished. It can't be Medion yet because it's too early. So Benetram says they should all stay on guard. The team heads through the mountain pass and meets Jubei, a samurai who warns them that there are two rainbloods ahead, the bishop and pawn. The Rainbloods killed many of his people and he is there seeking revenge. He says that they will be weaker as they are separated from the rest of their team and so more possible to defeat. So this is the first of your battles against the Rainbloods. You are taking them down two at a time. 02:10:27.57 Daniel Yay! It's about time we get to deal some punishment out to these scary monsters. 02:10:31.67 Jala Right. Although like, I still, I'm just like, damn Medion in that battle in that temple, you could have just taken them out when they got knocked out, but no, no, because you are such a Medion. So, here's the thing about these guys, we will sit on our favorite characters and a bunch of other things. We'll talk more about that in detail on the next episode of this, the final episode of the Shining Force three series. But, I've reevaluated the characters now that I'm seeing all of their stories, all of them fully in English and get to see all of what happens and all of the commentary. And like, Medion is really emo. He's blonde, but he's emo. So anyway, ah in this battle, though, you've got Bats, Hell succubi, Kaiser Knights, Hydras, and or the Rainblood Bishop and Pawn. And both of those are your boss characters. There are items. There's a black ring in the stump by the second cave on the right. Gungnir, which is in a chest on the first cave on the left. Goddess Tears in the central cave. And some kind of an axe, I forget which one, in the chest on the second cave on the left. So basically you're going up a cliffside and there's a bunch of holes in the cliffs that lead to these caves. And then there's more critters inside those caves. And Jube goes through one of those caves and just kind of makes a beeline so he can pop out behind the Rainbloods. And to get him, you have to rush in those caves in order to catch him in time before he kills himself. ah The easiest way is to head up the main map to the second cave on the right and head him off that way. If you time it just right, you will arrive in the same area as him before he heads up to the rainbloods. And you may be able to talk to him if you rush up to the Rainbloods too, but I'm not really sure about that. Like you could probably rush the map on normal mode anyway, not insane, but normal mode. 02:12:24.83 Daniel I had to ah had to send some guys for each because the hydras inside there can one-shot him sometimes if you don't get slow on them, so you have to slow them ah or try to deal with them or distract them. And he you can't catch up to him physically from behind. he's just his move is six, he's just a normal move, but he's ahead of you. So it's really difficult to catch him unless you go through the further cave. So I had to do a split where I sent one person over to get the one thing in the one cave and then I sent some people through the bottom cave to catch his tail and to like power him up with spells. And then I also send other people up ah ahead around to get in there ahead of him. 02:13:06.77 Jala Right. Well, those Kaiser... There's a choke point in the middle of the map before you get to that second cave, which is probably what slowed you up from getting to that second cave. Because there's a choke point with a bunch of Kaiser knights that come after you. And those guys... 02:13:18.47 Daniel That actually wasn't a problem. 02:13:19.83 Jala Well, because you're like level 20 at this point anyway. 02:13:20.97 Daniel No. I'm level 23 or 4 at this point. I'm quite as far ways ahead of where I should be level wise. 02:13:25.48 Jala So... I just for the shits and giggles, I should have recorded what my levels were on every one of these battles just to be like, okay, if you play like a normal person, if you're not grinding, if you're just playing through the game, this is about where you're at. I don't remember what level I was at this point. So that's lost to time. But there's a little bit of a choke point with the Kaiser Knights. Like you can't just send one or two people up that way for me anyway. 02:13:52.25 Daniel No, it was most of my force had to go that way. That's also why they didn't choke me up is because I have ranged characters who are all hitting guys around corners and the knights didn't come at me the way that they would have come at regular people because the knights have a chance to go, hey, there's a guy there. I'm going to go around the corner. Well, they could get to the corner and then I would kill them. Three ranged attacks will take them out. So it became a lot easier for me to focus on them since they were the focus at that point for that level. And once they were gone, then it became a bit of just, oh, maneuver this person there, maneuver that person there, follow along. And then back in the cave later on, i had a bit of trouble with the Hydra when you go to to meet up and deal with the Rainbloods. The Hydras inside there, they kind of swapped me because two of them came from the other side that I forgot about. and And they surprised Kate and they almost killed her. She had like one HP. 02:14:44.32 Jala Well, and then too, if you go through that cave and you happen to get to those Hydras and they happen to use slow on you, that's bad when the Rainbloods are after you. So. 02:14:52.00 Daniel I have a thing on one of the mods I have on is that if they can use a special effect, they do use a special effect. My guys and the bad guys. So it's not if they use slow on me, it's when they use slow on me. 02:15:05.20 Daniel So if they attack, and they both attacked Kate, so the first one did like 20 damage, the second one did like 35 damage, and she had one or one or two hit points left. 02:15:11.73 Jala Woo. Yeah. 02:15:14.29 Daniel I was like, oh, that's so brutal. But she survived, barely. 02:15:19.09 Jala So, yeah. Well, so the Rainbloods themselves were not a challenge on normal mode. I mean, not by this point because like I'd gotten all my people all caught up and they were there and I just did my usual round of using mages and Kate and everybody and doing the thing. 02:15:35.64 Daniel There were better challenges I saved right before I started fighting them, and I reset that twice, I think, because the first time I did something stupid with Julian, I put him too far out, and they both got on him and killed him. And the second time, ah think... Oh, yeah, the second time I lost most of my characters due to... Did one of them have Thanatos, or is it something else? I think the think the Bishop has Thanatos, right? So somebody used that, and I only had, like, two or three guys next to each other instead of the full five. And that wiped out, I think it was Cyclops and Thousand at the same time. And I was like, I don't want to pursue this anymore. So I'm going to start that again and be a little smarter with what I do and use some support spells. Yeah. 02:16:17.67 Jala Right. So by this point, do you have the staff or the wand or the whatever it is that gives you the Thanatos power? Because I absolutely put that on Isabella so Isabella can kill shit, fuck shit up. She had one of the wands or staves or whatever it is that happened to have a high power summon spell. So she was using some high-powered summon and was doing some major damage. Because, at you know, at this point, the way that I play and the way that I've got everything squared up, I use Isabella to attack quite a bit, actually, with magic. 02:17:06.10 Daniel Yeah, she's quite strong. 02:17:08.21 Jala Well, because Gracia is so good at healing everybody with Aura. It's like, I don't... As long as you put your people in the right place, you can handle healing with one guy. Anyway. 02:17:16.64 Daniel and Aura 4 is broken, it should cost 35 MP. 02:17:20.09 Jala Yes. Yeah, absolutely, but it doesn't. 02:17:23.29 Daniel The fact that it costs 18 MP, the bad thing with Gracia is that he can't equip anything that gives him MP regen. But if you give him a magic ring, he can use that and regain 10 MP at the chance of having it break. So he can, in two turns, he can cast it again, which is very, very broken. And a Goddess Tear. We'll give him 20 MP, so he can use it one more time then. So you load him up with those things. He has the chance to regain MP that way, and then he's just, yeah. 02:17:51.19 Jala OP. Absolutely OP. So yeah, after you finish this fight against the Rainbloods, then you proceed onward toward our kill night falls. And then the team is looking for a town, ah the town of Maya, the last way point before the hill. And this is like the, the night fell in the middle of them trying to go somewhere a lot during Medion's. And it's like once here, it's like night falls one time, except for when Bresby said, let's wait until nighttime to fight the lighthouse people. 02:18:19.07 Daniel Yeah, the legendary exposition is like, hey, so we don't fight at night. 02:18:22.35 Jala The legendary exposition, you did it. Yes. 02:18:25.61 Jala Yes. I love it. I'm so happy. You've made me so happy. Okay. So they can't find any sign of the village though at and it's nighttime, but then Kate is like, what's that sound? It sounds like bees. And everybody rushes over and they all look up and find out that the homes of Maya are floating in the sky above you. And the team heads for the walls of the ground portion of the village. Cause there's like an outline. There's a fence, but then everybody's up in the sky. And that's the end of chapter four. And we will do one more chapter, we're going to cover chapter five. And then the next time we're going to do chapters six and seven, which will wrap up Shining Force Scenario 3, and then do kind of like our overview, retrospective and kind of chit chat a little bit more about everything, everything Shining Force. But yeah, moving on to the last chapter we're covering, because like ah narratively speaking, this is a good place to end at the end of this chapter. ah Chapter five, Legacy of the Creator. So unlike most chapters, this does not kick off with a long winded story bit. Instead, the force arrives in Maya and the only thing on the ground is the church. So you visit the church and when you exit, everybody comments on how weird it is that everybody's sleeping in the sky. And after discussion, it's concluded that they are in the sky to avoid attack yeah it at night by critters. And so you're dumped into another battle because, of course, somebody mentioned it, so it's got to happen, right? 02:19:54.09 Daniel Let's avoid the critters. Oh, these critters? Yeah, let's avoid those critters. 02:19:57.91 Jala Oh, yeah, we should avoid these critters too, but here we rats. So ah now you are fighting Hell succubi, Hydras, Cerberuses, Sandworms, Blue Dragons, and a Skullfish, which is your boss character. So this is one of the filler battles that I feel is really good to be here. Like, I like this battle being here. I like that they are invading Maya and coming through the walls. 02:20:19.01 Daniel I don't feel it's a filler battle. I think that this one is very plot-driven, and it makes a lot of sense. And it is awkward. This is one of the weirdest battles in this in the game. It has slowdown. it ah You can noticeably see the frames dropping in this battle. But there are a couple of reasons for that, and we're trying to figure it out in the Translation Project team. Some people have looked at the code and gone, hey, so this is very much spaghetti. And we've looked at other parts of the game and all of those seem optimized. And this section appears to be optimized the best they could. But I think there's something to do with the fact that there's like 15 spawn points. 02:20:57.99 Jala Yes. There's a lot of spawn points. 02:20:59.70 Daniel And they just can't, the game just can't handle all of that all at once. It's very ambitious. This this fight was cool, but at the same time, it's far too ambitious for its own good. 02:21:09.51 Jala Right. So I call it a filler battle only because it's not a named boss. It's a skullfish. It's ah a fish guy, like another fish guy that you have fought before. That's the only reason I refer to it as a filler, because it doesn't have like a named boss character that you're fighting. But insofar as the plot is considered, this is important to the plot and this is important for the feeling that you're getting and like the importance of Maya being up in the sky and why they're doing what they're doing and all of that kind of stuff. And it's a very cool moment because, you know, you're searching for this town desperately before you get Ark Hill. You're trying to find it and then you find the walls and then it's overrun with critters and everybody's up in the sky. That's cool. That's fucking cool. 02:21:47.32 Daniel Yeah, that's pretty awesome metal. 02:21:47.54 Jala So yeah, so ah there are items here. There's a quick chicken and a small mithril. And otherwise there's a big group of critters that's there when you start. And it's important to hit that group with AOEs like spark as soon as you can. And as always, you want to destroy all the barrels. There is a section with some barrels on the other side of the church that for me, I sent Thousand by himself over there and he was able to handle that. um But depending upon your, your mileage may vary depending upon what settings you're going with. On insane, I'm sure you can't send one guy, but oh, you did. 02:22:19.78 Daniel I sent... I could. I did the same thing. I sent Thousand, but Thousand rides the wall. He gets on the wall next to the church and rides the wall across, rides the wall down, and then goes into where the entranceway would be, and then hits the barrel from that side and then goes back. If you don't do it that way and you pop him off to either side, he can spawn extra spawns. 02:22:42.11 Jala Oh, he did. Yeah. He spawned extra stuff and I took him out with Thousand because my my Thousand, because I love Thousand, he's one of my favorite characters. I think in the entirety of Shining Force 3 as a whole, like I love Thousand, even though he's not the best character. I love him anyway. 02:22:56.58 Daniel I think I think he's one of the coolest characters in the series. 02:22:57.41 Jala Yes, yes, he is. 02:23:00.17 Daniel In the whole series, including all the other Shining titles and all the other non-canon, side-canon Shining stuff. I think he's one of my favorite characters out of everything. 02:23:06.61 Jala Mm hmm. Well, it's so bad ass that you get this legendary God dragon on your team. I love him. So, um, so I, I have an OP Thousand at this point. And so he just went over there wrecked everybody's shit, all the stuff that spawned. He's like, it's fine. And then took out the barrels and then had him kind of mosey over to join my team at some point. And then like as he was moseying over around the backside of the church that popped a bunch of other people spawning and I'm like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I need to bring some other people over at this point because there's even more people now. ah There's lots of spawn points on this map. 02:23:42.23 Daniel Yeah, like I said, i think there's 15 spawns. If you pop them all, the game is very slow. And yeah, it's not a fun time. So i like I said, I did that, but I've I have previous knowledge of that. This was discussed in the in the translation project thing, and we knew that that was a technique you could use there. So i was like, yeah, I'm just going to ride the wall to and from and just make this as simple as possible, get that skullfish going, 02:24:07.02 Jala Right. Well, the skull for me, so because I was waiting on 1000 to do what he was going to do over on that side, um like I took out the large group of people that was right there, like all the all the critters that are there right when you start, took out those barrels went over and then the skullfish just was like ramming us like ramming speed decided that he wanted to go in there and fight me. and But I was like, but I want that dragon over there. And I want this You know, I need to take out these other guys over here because I want to get a couple more levels. Again, doing the whole mindset of since I'm not grinding these, I want to fight everything I can that shows up on the screen. So I did fight everything until, again, I had Thousand go around the the backside of the church and then popped a whole bunch more adds. And I'm like, I'm not going to fight all of those guys too. I will just go and and finish off the skullfish at this point. But basically the boss was there fighting and it's like hitting one guy. i i don't remember who he decided was his punching bag, but he was just over there hitting one guy. And um I was just healing that guy and just nobody was attacking the skullfish. We were just waiting for Thousand and, and, you know, like doing, like trying to finish off some other guys with some of the lower level people. So not a challenge really, except for the fun part of sending Thousand over there to break the barrels. 02:25:21.03 Daniel And this was a one and one-off for me. I didn't have to reload or restart this battle at all. 02:25:25.39 Jala Yeah, yeah, neither did i so ah having no way to reach the houses in the sky, the party waits through the night in HQ, which happens to be there conveniently. So they have somewhere to stay. And in the morning, as they step outside, they meet Primula, the fairy. And this is the fairy. We mentioned this before, who is in the beginning of this game. Like ah there's Gabriel, the wizard guy, the blue wizard guy with a little wizard hat who is like hey you know he's your save guy he's your Simone he's your little witch lady uh you know that kind of thing the character in the yeah recording right and Primula is there as well and she's just kind of hanging out with him so anyway she comes to join you and she says oh my god you've got armor on this must be the final battle of the Thousand year war 02:25:59.55 Daniel Record your journal. Record your journey here in this book. Yeah. Okay, cool. 02:26:15.69 Jala because she knows the sign she's around the scholars and stuff. So apparently there was a massive war going on outside of human notice while the humans were busy fighting over sovereignty. So I love that they have this here because it's like the, for a Thousand years, there's been this massive war going on and you know, it's like, Oh, there was. 02:26:34.36 Daniel Huh? War? you said? You don't say. yeah let's get into some of that now. 02:26:37.75 Jala Okay. Right, right. She says that the elder Gabriel wants to see them and then takes them to him. And ah there are two people that you see. These are the two people that you see when you start the game up. And yeah, it's ah so you have a note here about Primula, though. 02:26:55.94 Daniel Yeah, Primula is actually the alternative name for her. She was first apparently called Primrose. Because that's a flower. Primula is also a type of primrose flower. It's an offshoot or a subset of the flower itself. So, yeah. 02:27:12.56 Jala Cool. Cool. I'm going to have to look in my art book and see how they have the kana for that to see if it says Primula or if it says Primrose. I'll look at that. So there's a massive lore dump here along with a preview of the endgame, which I actually love that they put this in here. ah This is very cool. So when the force meets Gabriel, they ask where Arkhill is. And rather than tell him, tell everybody, tell Julian and everybody, the elder decides to show them and decides to raise the house up, but not just raise it up in the air. We're going to go up above the clouds. We are like above the clouds at this point, super high in the air. And it's very cool to see this happen. This is one of those things where you can tell that they definitely have done a lot, um you know, in terms of innovating with this engine and with everything that they're doing when they were working on this, because this is not something that you would have seen in either of the other scenarios at this point. Like they do some stuff. 02:28:09.71 Daniel Actually, if you if you remember the lighthouse in the first battle, in the first game, where Palsis is, remember they have the telescopes and you can look out at the different parts of the world? This almost feels similar to that level, right? It reminded me a lot of that. It's very, um oh yeah, this is kind of like when you get to see out from the mid perspective or the higher perspective of being way up high and getting a ah scope of the land, which I felt was really cool. 02:28:36.23 Jala Yeah. I mean like that's a cool part two in the first one, but like in so far as like the cut scene itself is concerned, like they're, they're doing a lot more cut scene type stuff in Scenario 3 than they were doing in the earlier scenarios. And just like the graphical load that they're putting on the screen here for this part. And then having you ah like see from like your three quarters view above, um you know, like all of the party hanging out on the top of this house and looking out past the clouds to these multiple distances, the draw distances that you're seeing. And then zooming in on like some of the place. That's very cool in this part. Yeah. So um the group and the player, of course, happen to see that Ark Hill is actually a desert. It's a flat little desert. And they also see remotest in the Temple of Bulzome, which is built into the sheer side of a cliff covered in snow. So to me, this reads as like very North Pole. It's like it's up there. It's not necessarily the North Pole, but it feels like that because it's the remotest part where people live. 02:29:39.08 Daniel That's pretty close, yeah. 02:29:42.91 Jala So, you know. And when the force is confused about Ark Hill being a flat place, Gabriel says that the first trial Gracia must undertake before the evolution ceremony is to transform the desert into a hill. So you're like, you know, at least if you're if you're me, you're like, all right, I don't know how that's going to happen, but cool, I guess. 02:30:06.26 Daniel Sounds like plot armor, it feels like plot armor. 02:30:08.89 Jala Yeah, okay, cool. So when the force asks how they're supposed to reach the Bulzome Temple when it's carved into the side of a cliff, I love this. This is fucking funny to me. Gabriel says it's in the old book and sends somebody to fetch the old book. And he tells you that the people of Maya are the keepers of the old records and technology and have preserved the old books in order to aid in the legendary expedition's quest. And after several minutes, everyone realizes that there's a problem. This guy went to go get this book and he ain't coming back. So sure enough, the book is now conveniently gone. Apparently, Bulzome monks visited Maya regularly. And the last time they came, they swiped the book without anyone realizing, oopsie. 02:30:51.17 Daniel Plot armor again. 02:30:53.46 Jala Yeah. Well, part of the point here is that Maya as a place that exists in this kind of crossroads between worlds does not judge anybody who comes in. They just can't cause a big ruckus. And so like they, they can't, 02:31:08.21 Daniel Yeah, it's like neutral, very Switzerland style. 02:31:09.65 Jala neutral yeah so this is another one of those places where you can search a desk or a flat object like ah a table and if you search Gabriel's desk in the room where all the books are then you can get a Goddess Tear 02:31:24.42 Daniel I missed that. That's cool. have to try to remember that for next time. 02:31:28.17 Jala So, yeah. So at this point, Primula also joins the force. And something I didn't mention earlier was that Primula and Donheart have this whole kind of antagonist relationship, but it's all Donheart's fault. Because Donheart's like, you? You're a little thing. What? You're not going to be able to do anything? How are you going to help us? And then Primula's like, just because I can't be like a big dumb ox like you know, she see she doesn't say that. 02:31:54.99 Daniel But she's along those lines. She's like, hey, I'll pull my weight. Don't worry. 02:31:58.68 Jala Yeah, she's like, don't worry about me, man. just I'm small, but I am mighty. Because she's a magic user. She doesn't, you know, biff people with a wand. She's a magic user. And she's a fairy, so don't question her. Anyway, so she joins the force. And Gabriel informs you that she used to live in Enrich, the town that Julian is from, and participated in that battle against the Vandal who killed Julian's father. So she was there. She actually knows Julian really well, apparently. 02:32:26.88 Daniel Yeah, go figure. 02:32:28.21 Jala Yeah, I like that they bother to put that tie in there. And that definitely makes me want to like go and play Holy Ark. And then I don't know if that battle at all happens on screen where you can see it. But like, I want to I want to see if she's there, you know, so. 02:32:41.13 Daniel I have to wonder, because I don't recall if Primula is one of the fairies in yet Holy Ark or not, or if she's the queen fairy in that. But it would be neat to figure that out, because I'm curious right now about that. 02:32:55.15 Jala Yeah, well, I mean, especially with all the ties. So heretofore, you don't really have any big ties to Holy Ark other than the fact that like Julian says he's from Einrich and Enrich is from Shining Force, holy you know, Shining the Holy Ark. But like, right. 02:33:07.08 Daniel Yeah, there's only a couple little nods to it so far. 02:33:09.29 Jala But now it's like, Infodump, actually, you need to have played that game. It's like, oh, well, cool to know, guys. 02:33:14.44 Daniel Yes. Oh, you haven't done this yet. Why haven't you done this yet? Go do this now. 02:33:18.84 Jala Right, right, right. But I love that because they are tying all the Shining games together because they are related to each other in some way, shape or form. So, so yeah, you're turned loose to explore the town at this point, which is full of what I assume are developer portraits in place of your usual vendors. There's like a lot of special and they are all Japanese people. 02:33:35.71 Daniel Yes. The NPCs are all developer team. 02:33:41.40 Jala I thought so. 02:33:42.16 Daniel Yeah. It's all been documented. It's all in the cutting room floor. 02:33:45.23 Jala Yeah. And so that's fun because like they also have very specific things that you know are supposed to be jokes, but they're jokes that are funny to the development team. And that's what they're there for. 02:33:55.18 Daniel Yeah, it's all inside jokes too. There's a lot of nods there that are like, hey, so this is funny and this is funny. and Oh, look, a Sega Saturn. 02:34:04.15 Jala Yeah. They put a Sega Saturn in one of the houses, which is very cute. I love that a lot. 02:34:08.93 Daniel With the game over, it's like, oh, that must have been Virtua Cop or Daytona. 02:34:13.71 Jala So, yeah. So ah the books and people in the village inform you of a very random assortment of things. So I'm going to just kind of spew some facts here. Maya has strict rules against keeping the technology, ah role rules about keeping the technology solely in Maya. So the tech is not allowed to leave, although one robot got out once, which I imagine is Robbie the robot from Medion's team. 02:34:38.21 Daniel I think so. Yeah. 02:34:39.63 Jala And the rule is in place because if the tech were leaked, it would be weaponized. Because, of course, humanity has been fighting over you know politics and in land for all these Thousand years while the Thousand-year war was going on. So, you know, it I love it because it makes humanity seem so nonsensical and, like, shows you how stupid the war ah over politics and shit is. And I love that so much. So, I mean, like, without directly saying it, they say it so clearly. And Bulzome fell in love with an Innovator woman 1,000 years ago, and they had a daughter. This would be Jane. And it doesn't directly say that it's Jane, but you know it's Jane because they've been telling, oh, she's got the light and the darkness inside of her like this whole time. 02:35:23.57 Daniel There are a lot of good hints if you're paying attention. 02:35:26.26 Jala you don't even have to pay attention for you to know this part by this point. But the Maya also exists to protect Ark Hill, the place where the Holy Ark first touched down when it was sent from the heavens. And of course, the Sega Saturn is cool. That's a very cool thing. I love it. So ah the hidden passage, accessible only if you broke those barrels during the preceding fight, gives you a potion, Mitra Ankh, and orichalcum. ah And other... 02:35:52.55 Daniel That's the Thanatos ankh. The Mitra Ankh is the Thanatos one. 02:35:58.74 Jala Okay. Well then this is where Isabella got then. So other items in town include a map for ruins #5, a small myth roll, fairy powder and coins. So just kind of generic stuff and a map that you need, but. I'm leaving town. The force goes to our kill and Gracia steps out into the desert alone in order for the next capture to verify, ah the innovative bloodline. So when this happens, a horde of monsters appear in the next battle begins. So this is a pain of a battle. At least it can be a pain of a battle depending upon how you play this. 02:36:46.41 Daniel hello I was so overleveled at this point. My characters were close to level 30, 32, 33 for some of them. 02:36:51.13 Jala Yeah, that's wow. 02:36:54.88 Daniel So for me, um this was not really a problem. I obliterated most of these bad guys. Some of the chimeras gave me some trouble. And the Skeleton Lord was a bit of a challenge. But yeah, it was fairly straightforward. 02:37:09.57 Jala So this battle is... Okay, so the enemies on this map are not the problem. The thing about this map is that if you go out into the desert to go catch up to Gracia, you will have... It probably isn't Infinispawn, but it feels like Infinispawn. 02:37:22.55 Daniel Oh no, it is. 02:37:23.33 Jala It is? Okay, great. Infinispawn. 02:37:25.20 Daniel This map hasn't been a spawns. The big thing here is you have to be careful of the placement of your units. There's a map available on the on the Discord that someone put together of every spot that you have to stand to prevent certain spawns and to ah not trigger other spawns. So there's like four spots where you can't stand, five spots where you have to stand. If you're planning on playing it, then you're under leveled. If you're 17, 18... seventeen eighteen You have to pay attention to that map because it really helps get you through this. Otherwise, as I was, I was double-ish the level. So I could just go through and whomp guys and they could spawn and I still was able to get to the boss and kill them fairly easy. Still a bit challenging because you can't take more than two hits, even at this point. And the game is like that. The insane mode is like that the entire time. I'm also near the very end of the scenario and where I'm at, if the guys hit you, they can hit me three times now. Before I die, but it's two hits for most of this point until you get to the end of this. 02:38:21.91 Jala So the way that you can do it, if you're playing on normal mode and you're not fucking around with looking at maps and trying to place your people on the certain spots and not touching the other certain spots and all this other shit, if you want to just go through it and not have to redo it a hundred times, ah the Cerberuses and worms will respawn in the desert and surrounding grassland. But um if you want to grind, this is a good place to do it if you want to grind. I didn't grind, but if you do, you can do it there. If not, you can follow the train tracks up the right side of the map to the ruin and traverse in the forest only. If you're in the forest, you're fine. you don't trigger anything. So the moment you step out onto the grassland, more enemies appear and they will keep appearing. And of course, Gracia can also trigger things. So like there's a certain point where um my guys went up and they got to basically where the entrance to the ruins were. And then I had Gracia kind of make a beeline across. But by then all my guys were there in the forest and ready and could take out the infinispawn guys that show up and keep making progress and everything. So like that didn't become a problem for me because ah I just went up the side on the tracks. But the ruin here, this one was a hard ruins for me. 02:39:24.16 Daniel Oh, I looked this up and followed a guide for this. Because I wanted all the items. 02:39:27.41 Jala You can tell us all about it. but So basically, it's a minecart maze. And Rollie or Donheart are your best bets for keeping up with the thief. um there's Inside the ruins, there's a potion, running pimento, dragon wand, goddess tear, and orichalcum. I got three out of five treasures, but missed out on the ones that the thieves had because I couldn't catch them because I went the wrong way or something. So you're going to educate me. 02:39:52.61 Daniel Yeah, following that guide, you have to you have to follow a guide for it. it was I don't remember exactly all the steps because I followed a guide exactly, but there's a couple of good guides. The one on Celestial Damnation, the Jumesyn guide, ah followed that. i was like, yeah, I need help with this because every time I've tried this in the past, and did try it once on my own, And I did have to reset because of that, because I went in there and I got one treasure and I was like, um, I need help. This is, I'm level 30 and I still can't do this. 02:40:22.09 Jala Right. Well, this is not about your levels so much as it is about like knowing exactly that which place to be when. 02:40:30.04 Daniel It's all timing. 02:40:30.39 Jala So, so yeah. If you can send me a link to that, I'll put it in the show notes and then I'll make sure people have access. 02:40:36.02 Daniel Yes, absolutely. 02:40:37.59 Jala So ah this goes directly into the next battle. So, so the rest of it, like the, the other stuff that you fight in that, that actual map is not a problem for me, even at and like not grinding levels. So that that's fine. So, After that happens, the big, like the basically this big round thing comes up from the middle of the desert and then it has a little hatch and everybody's like, it sounds like a good idea to go inside this Technodrome that just kind of showed up. 02:41:08.71 Daniel Hey, look, the hill is a Technodrome. 02:41:10.39 Jala Yeah, i sounds like a plan. Let's go in there. So inside our kill, the force meets a robed figure who instructs Gracia to advance alone. And when they are in the center of the room, four clay dolls appear. The test for this battle is to block the path of the dolls so they all turn towards Gracia and surround them. And if they land, if the dolls land on colored spaces, they will either ah have a helpful or harmful magical effect. And I didn't end up seeing any of these effects because I beat this really rapidly without the dolls ever touching one of the colored spaces. This was not a problem to me at all. 02:41:44.99 Daniel Yeah, my brain didn't pick up on the subtle clues as to what to do here, so I took about six or eight rounds to do this and got hit with everything. But we got it. they of the dolls got run away on me. None of them went super far across the level. But by the time I figured out exactly what I needed to do, i yeah, it took me a while to maneuver. I felt like it was quick, but yeah, I got the first doll right away, and i was like, oh, yeah, the second he's going to have to wait a whole four more turns to get back to where he needs to go. And the third doll went okay, and then the fourth doll was also out to lunch. so But once I figured out exactly what I needed to do, it became a lot easier to manage. And yeah, Gracia being able to heal Aura IV three times or four times here was very helpful, because yeah, those dolls, they don't hit super hard, but they hit everybody. 02:42:33.19 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So just, so does it just show up as like they are casting a magic spell? 02:42:34.25 Daniel Or a large portion of your force. 02:42:38.60 Jala Is that what happens? 02:42:39.28 Daniel Yeah, they just cast Freeze 3 and Spark 3. 02:42:59.83 Jala After defeating the clay doll puzzle, the priest says it's time for the ceremony and a bunch of star-like orbs appear. And this is pretty cool. This another really cool part. ah These are spores of light, which will grant Gracia the full power of a true Innovator. And so this is great because to me, the first thing I thought when I was like spores of light, Gracia is actually a Resident Evil 7 and 8 mold critter. That's what this is because that they're all mold critters in Resident Evil. So Gracia is actually a mold critter. That's very cool. 02:43:28.89 Daniel Yeah, he's a real fun guy once you get to know him 02:43:32.65 Jala Oh, man. You know, like the thing is, is that like, okay, Phil makes me facepalm all the time in the server and Juliet can do it. And certain other people have the ability to do that. I don't usually facepalm when you deliver it. Like, I don't know what it is about your delivery. That's very different, but I just kind of sigh and go, okay. 02:43:52.68 Daniel Yeah. That's because mine are subtle. 02:43:55.27 Jala Yeah. Well, it's not subtle. 02:43:57.65 Daniel No. No. 02:43:59.67 Jala No, but I think it's just because you're just so happy and joyous when you say it. It's not like with that kind of snarky, I'm going to make sure that she facepalms is not that kind of thing. So yeah, I mean, like you're happy with a joke. 02:44:09.39 Daniel I'm out for the joke because I like the joke. that's That's why I... 02:44:13.10 Jala You say it because it makes you happy. Anyway, Benetram questions this priest about the purpose of the spirit and intentions of the creator. And some of the questions get answered and some of those questions don't. So spirit is sent to measure the balance of good and evil in the world. And if on the whole, the world is more evil than good, the creator will destroy everything and start over again. And what the creator desires is order. The creator is neutral and impartial and basically just wants to see what everybody does in this little sandbox that was made for them. So... And I love it because Benetram's like, but wait, but wait, what do you mean? Hey, come back here. I have more questions. And like, this is a running thing with him. It's very funny. ah Anyway, Gracia is made into a true Innovator who can use the Staff of Besem to promote anybody at level 20 plus. And everybody is yeeted from our kill and then our kill disappears. And the guy inside's like, I'm not going to see you again. So deuce, good luck. 02:45:15.03 Daniel Bye. 02:45:15.55 Jala Yep. So back in the desert, Gracia, who now strongly resembles Guy Fieri with the new flame colored duds, promotes Julian and everyone marvels at his costume change. It's very funny because Donheart asks, what new powers does he have? And everybody totally ignores him and talks over him and moves on and doesn't, doesn't bother answering him at all. And like, I know that he, yeah, yeah. 02:45:39.50 Daniel but Disco Inferno, baby. Disco Inferno. Burn it down. 02:45:43.60 Jala Yeah. He gets Inferno, which is a very strong skill. ah However, it would have been hilarious if he didn't start with it, if he only got it after like level two or three, because then Donheart's question of, so what new powers does he have? And the answer would be nothing. Like that would be so good. That would have been so good. 02:46:04.58 Daniel He's just a little stronger and his clothes look cool. 02:46:04.73 Jala Anyway. Yeah. His clothes are cool, man. He got an outfit change. 02:46:08.70 Daniel Oh, dude. 02:46:10.15 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Suddenly impatient, though, Benetram says that everybody else needs to be promoted along the way and they need to hurry to remotest. So even though they've been hanging out and Benetram's been playing you know Jeopardy with this this priest and the Technodrome that we were just in in the middle of this desert, ah suddenly we're in a hurry. And now that we've got Guy Fieri, we need to go. 02:46:33.32 Jala Yeah, right. So the forest goes north through the mountains where the weather steadily worsens, becoming a full on snowstorm, and they rush to take shelter in a cabin. Inside this cabin are orichalcum and a potion. There are weapons and items shops as well as a blacksmith and a church. So, you know, there's going to be a big battle here real soon. Of course there is. So when you head for the exit, the doors are flung open and a booby lady appears. Just what I expected from a snowstorm. ah This is Maki, a snow witch who freezes people and drinks their blood. There is an exchange but between her and the force, all of whom hurry out to see what the hell is going on when she cranks up the ice and tries to kill everybody, failing only because Gracia Fieri raises their staff and uses undisclosed, undefined holy power to keep them all from death. This only happens for plot reasons. It's not a thing that you have in the game. 02:47:29.81 Daniel Thank goodness he's an Innovator now. 02:47:31.53 Jala Yeah, exactly. 02:47:32.34 Daniel Thank you, Harry, for the win. 02:47:33.79 Jala Woo! And the team warns Maki to knock it off, but she says she's only doing that to survive. She desires to get revenge on Bulzome for turning her into what she is now. She's trying to get by and survive, and she has to do this to survive. She has to drink the blood of people whom she has frozen. And rather than fight in the confines of the cabin, she says she will wait outside and fight them there, or if they fail to show up, they will starve and die in the cabin. And it doesn't matter to her which one of those things happens. 02:48:02.65 Daniel No, she don't care. She's going to eat some people anyway. 02:48:05.83 Jala Yep. She going to get somebody one way or the other is her attitude about this. And i believe Snow Witch, which is the localization for Snow Vampire. Like, I feel like that it's the Snow Vampire version of the Yuki Onna, which from Japanese folklore. 02:48:23.64 Daniel There was much debate in the translation project as to what her title and class should be, and that's still an ongoing field of discussion, I think, because we're not 100% sure the best way to do it. There's only so many physical characters. We want to convey that she's a snow something. Calling her a snow vampire doesn't make sense in English. 02:48:42.50 Jala Yeah, it doesn't make sense in English unless you know what it references. 02:48:45.85 Daniel And the fact that she has red eyes and fangs, you can kind of surmise for yourself that she's a vampire. 02:48:50.46 Jala Right, right. Especially since I think they say that she sucks people's blood. So, I mean, like, she's a snow vampire, but they call her a snow witch. But they say a snow witch because unless you know what a Yuki Onna is and you know the legend of the folklore, which most people don't, it's going to go over your head. 02:49:05.33 Daniel Yeah, it's over the head, yeah. 02:49:07.31 Jala Yep. So then we get ready for battle number 21 against Maki. So you've got gargoyles, yetis, skullfish, blue dragon, and of course Maki as your boss. There are two orichalcum, one on the left side of the canyon near the start and one on the left side of the canyon near Maki. And Maki creates a blizzard to form ice crystals at the start of every turn down this one major path where that's your through line to get up to her. And breaking the crystals and putting units in their place to keep the way open for everyone to pass through is really your best bet. You can have some flyers go forward, which I always do. i send the flyers on the side, but they're not enough to take out Maki. You need like the rest of your team to come up to. Yeah. 02:49:49.51 Daniel Yeah, and it's best to try to do single file or double file, not to have them spread three wide because that becomes really challenging to get through when the ice crystals re-form. Also, AoE on them is really handy, and I believe the crystals give you like five experience points per kill. 02:50:03.80 Jala Yeah, I think so. 02:50:04.46 Daniel So you can gain an extra couple of hundred XP here if you want to hang out and just deal with that if you're looking to farm up levels. It's a good way to get five XP if everything else is already giving you one. 02:50:15.69 Jala Right. And so I, I redid this battle, um, a couple of times cause I think I was trying to get one or two people that were lower levels leveled up so they could get promoted. I think Jube was like my last guy or something to get promoted, um, for whatever reason. But there's three Yetis that come from the rear after you approach the midpoint of the battle. Like once you get to that kind of bowling alley lane where all of the, yeah, yeah. 02:50:40.03 Daniel As soon as you get around that corner with enough guys, they spawn. 02:50:43.50 Jala Right. And if you have Gracia or Julian talk to Maki, um then they will have her join. And if otherwise she just dies. so So. 02:50:50.96 Daniel Yeah, I had to restart this because I i had to take a whole other crack because I didn't save during the battle. And then Thousand countered her and killed her because she decided to melee attack him for whatever reason. 02:50:59.07 Jala Oh, yeah. Oops. 02:51:04.06 Daniel Because the AI sometimes does silly things like that. And he's in there punching her and just trying to get some free XP. And then all of a sudden she hits him back with like 10 HP and he's like, ah, ump. Yeah. So that was an extra two hours of my gameplay that I had to redo. 02:51:16.75 Jala Whoops. But like I said, for me, I was, I was definitely like running through some people to make sure that they were, uh, promoted up. Cause I had some people that hadn't been, i think, cause they were in my reserve team and they hadn't been around for, you know, a bit because, um, maybe I didn't switch out some people when I went through one of those chains of battles or something. So somebody fell behind. Anyway, if you talk to Maki, she tells you that she defied Bulzome. We don't know how she defied Bulzome, just that she did. And she was turned into a snow witch or, you know, a snow vampire as punishment. She's trying to stay alive so someday someone can free her of her curse and she can exact revenge on Bulzome. So Gracia offers to give the Staff of Besem a try. And with their blessing, Maki is cured and returns to normal. In gratitude and also so she can go fight Bulzome to get her revenge, she ends up joining the force. Directly after you finish the fight against Maki, Galm appears and Julian, of course, is itching for a fight. Gracia and Benetram meanwhile decide to use this opportunity to ask Galm how to get the to the Bulzome Temple. Let's just ask our Vandal enemy, hey, how do you go in there? 02:52:37.83 Daniel yeah you know how to get in there, right? Let's go. 02:52:40.09 Jala Yeah. So Galm says, I'll tell you, but only if you win a battle against me. So ah he will only fight, though, if Gracia throws the staff of Besem aside and fights without the staff. And when Gracia hesitates, Galm is about to leave, and then Gracia just is like... I'm going to literally physically throw it away. So far away far away that after the battle, Honesty has to fly away to go look for it in the snow because that was a good idea, Gracia. 02:53:01.39 Daniel As far as I can. 02:53:10.50 Jala But anyway, then we do our finally our showdown with Golm that Julian has been waiting three games, you know however, three installments for it 02:53:18.19 Daniel He's been waiting 20 years for this. 02:53:19.66 Jala Right, right. So ah there's gargoyles, earth dragons, and Galm. And I don't know if they infinispawn or not. I didn't bother killing them. I just kind of like went down. 02:53:28.56 Daniel Yeah, they can be avoided for the most part. I killed one or two that approached me in a bad way when I needed to. Or I could reach them with AoEs with Galm. But other than that, I didn't really have to deal with them much either. You can lure Galm to your side of the map, and that makes it really easy to kill him. 02:53:45.56 Jala You don't even have to do much luring. He just kind of will voluntarily be like, I'm up in your business now. 02:53:51.57 Daniel And then you surround him. 02:53:53.04 Jala Yeah. Well, one thing you want to make sure, though, is that you get your items. So there's an orichalcum in a rock on the left upper side ah near the beginning of the battle, an evil ring on the last rock on the lower left, ah like lower level on the right. And then also something to note, Galm gets two turns per round and heals for 20 HP every round. So the most important thing, and this was a tip you gave me, so thank you for that, reminded me that slow exists. 02:54:17.13 Daniel you're welcome. 02:54:20.15 Jala Slow is a very useful spell for people. 02:54:21.47 Daniel Well, it's important here, yeah. 02:54:22.98 Jala yeah well, it's important on any boss character or any high hit point character, uh, to slow him down, to speed up your slaughtering him. And, ah if you focus on Gollum, you don't worry about the other guys so more or less. 02:54:34.96 Daniel Yeah, pretty much. It's very straightforward forward battle. I liked having range 3 on a lot of characters here. Jubei had throwing stars, so he was range 3. Who else had range 3? Produn had range 3 because he had an axe, a throwing axe. Leon was range 3, so he had a throwing axe. All the spellcasters. And then you just have to worry about your mid and close range fighting. And if you park Julian next to him, he will attack Julian most of the time. And if you park Gracia next to him as well, he'll attack Gracia even more of the time. So that makes it, you just spam some Aura. One of the things I did do is, is ah was it Isabella? No. um Who's the other spellcaster? I can't remember her name right now. 02:55:11.90 Jala Brigit? 02:55:13.03 Daniel Brigit. I gave her the Ankh that gives you Aura too. Just for that extra bit of healing. That was the other little piece of advice that I will give here for that. 02:55:21.70 Jala Yeah, Aura spells are real important because Galm has magic and Galm can hit a lot of people, not for a lot of damage, but when he follows that up with also a physical attack, that that becomes painful. 02:55:31.17 Daniel Yeah. Somebody has 18 HP left. 02:55:31.89 Jala So... Yeah, right, right. So ah after this battle, Gollum informs the team that Jumesyn is the secret to accessing the temple. Ah, here it is. This is why it comes into play. There are two shrines to the right and left of the temple and the keys are inside. So in order to get into the Bulzome Temple, three separate forces are required to attack simultaneously. The door to the temple is only open for a short amount of time, so if Julian and company miss it, that is it. So ah this is that massive multi-map battle that I was telling you that happens at the end of this game that culminates with all three armies going to war at the same time. This is that one that I mentioned way at the beginning, that I talk about as being a very cool, ah massive thing that I'm not quite to yet in my playthrough. Benetram also proves to be the most annoying student because he's like, where are you going, Galm? I have more questions. And this is not the first time that he has driven someone away with questions. 02:56:30.32 Daniel yeah Please wait. I want to talk more. Best boy is always prepared. He'll make a good Boy Scout. 02:56:35.42 Jala Right? Right? Absolutely. So now you have the scope of things. You're like, oh shit, I actually need Synbios and Medion for real, for real, because we all have to attack at the same time. And then the doors only open briefly, and then Julian gets to like scoot in there so he can finish things. And Honesty, meanwhile, is screaming that she found the staff of Besem, and then as she's screaming and coming back, Gollum takes this opportunity to deuce out because he doesn't want anything to do with that staff. 02:57:02.11 Daniel Yeah, it must really hurt him. 02:57:03.99 Jala It must, it must. So the team then heads on down the road to remotest. And that is the end of chapter five. We are going to leave it there because that's a good stopping point. So of this, so far through these five chapters that we've talked about, ah what's your favorite battle? 02:57:41.99 Daniel Man, the lighthouse battle's got to be top. It's just so technically amazing, and they did such a great job with it. And the fact that you can't even approach the final section until you've been there and turn that switch off, ah the the technical prowess for that battle is amazing. 02:57:57.30 Daniel Second favorite would be Maya. 02:58:00.54 Jala In terms of narrative, Maya is a very good battle. A runner-up for me would also be that Golem bridge battle. Like, that's a very cool battle, too, in terms of just something to figure, you know, having to figure out what to do with a bunch of different stuff and happening at the same time. 02:58:15.07 Daniel Yeah, my least favorite least favorite battle has to be Ark Hill. And I was glad I was overpowered for it because after I was done that battle, I was able to promote everyone. That was fantastic. I didn't have to do any extra leveling. 02:58:30.03 Jala Yeah. Well, and again, like I, I was doing some of that extra leveling, but it wasn't too bad. There was just like a a few people that just were not quite at that level. So I had to, you know, get them to fight the Yetis and stuff. But, insofar as me, let's see another thing I wanted to ask was like narrative moment, favorite narrative, because this one has a lot of big narrative moments where you've got like shit flying over hills and hitting you with beams of light and like everybody getting weirdly horny in the dragon graveyard and like all different kinds of, yeah. 02:58:59.25 Daniel My absolute favorite narrative moment, though, is Melinda. Oh, I read a lot of books, so Jumesyn is a portmanteau. And everyone's like, oh, that makes so much sense. Why didn't we think of that? Melinda for the win. Best character in the game. And then the fact that she and Benetram have a thing going on now, that's pretty cool. I was super stoked with that because i for a long time I thought Benetram was really an interesting father figure style person, but now at my age, looking back on him, I'm like, he's who I would be in the series. 02:59:39.81 Jala So it's very good. It's very good. I definitely enjoy, narratively, there's some really cool things. Like, I love that you had that fight in the beginning where you've got the Valkyrie coming up from behind the hill and you're like, fuck. And you do get to fight it right after that, but at that point, you're like, I don't know how this is gonna go, you know? And that's a very cool... 03:00:02.72 Daniel yeah and the fact that you never actually you never actually fight it as a character, it never has a it never has HP, it doesn't it just terrifies you throughout the whole thing. 03:00:06.23 Jala No, you don't. 03:00:12.00 Daniel so here, just suffer in silence with this thing attacking you. 03:00:15.33 Jala Well, and the thing that I like too is the fact like for a long time I thought it was stupid because it looks like a mushroom. But then like now that I'm thinking about it again, like and playing through it as, you know, 20 years past the first time I played it, I'm like, you know, it's actually very cool that it's a mushroom because this is like the death, death machine that was formed by this highly advanced civilization. It's just a mushroom cloud, y'all. It shows up like a mushroom cloud everywhere on the, on the horizon and brings death everywhere, you know? 03:00:39.82 Daniel Which, and guess what nuclear weapons do when they explode? They become mushroom clouds. 03:00:47.00 Jala So I was like, actually, now I'm behind it. like I've transformed into somebody who likes the being a giant mushroom because like what that symbolizes is actually very cool. 03:00:57.23 Daniel I didn't play Scenario 2 or three as a kid because I didn't have access to them. I didn't have Japanese. I didn't have all the skill sets and the translation wasn't real for me for a long time. So playing it when I was already an adult, for me, it was already, oh yeah, that's a mushroom cloud of death. 03:01:13.22 Jala Yeah, well see, here's the thing. Like I only had some of the dialogue in English when I played it the first time 20 years ago. So I mean like not everything hit home the same way because I wasn't getting all the context of everything else that was going on with the narrative to really get like what it's trying to say you know, what how it's zooming out from human civilization so much, but not in that, but oh, you've got to kill God kind of way. Like, although you are killing basically a God, it's, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like you're just part of a larger, more epic story. And like, you even have characters in your team that are, you know, participatory gods in this fight, you know, and that's, that's badass. I mean, like, it doesn't feel like standard JRPG stuff as much. And it's, it's cool because it makes you think of things in that kind of like zoomed out way. 03:01:59.73 Daniel Yeah, and even like comparing them, Scenario 1 has a lot more human figures. You deal with a lot more humans and people. Scenario 2 broadens that, and you have robot, and you have you know an adapted level of society. And sure, you get a penguin in the first one, you get a penguin in the second one, you get a penguin in the third one. But the third one really showcases the depth of the civilization that you deal with. It showcases the different races. I don't think you get a Kyantol. I don't think you get one in the second one. So that's the only race that I don't see represented though in scenarios two and three, right? Everybody else is pretty much represented across all three. If you take them as a whole, you get to see the breadth of the world, not just the depth that it has, but you get to see every aspect of these heroes trying to come together to save the world. 03:02:48.67 Jala Right, and I like that because like um in a lot of JRPGs, it's just humans. And in a lot of JRPGs, you know you you don't even have, because like you don't go to like a Kyantol village. You don't go to like a Dragon Man village. You don't know where they live. You're only in human civilization. Like in human civilizations the entire time, except for maybe like you go to the elf place, like you go to and like an elven village, but you don't really um like hover around and you're not like in parts of the world where these people exist, but they are part of your team. It's kind of like in Lunar, they have beast men and you don't know where they live. there're You don't know culturally what they're like because you know like you don't ever get to see that, but they they're represented. What you have going on with uh Shining Force and Shining Force three in specific and i just love that so yeah we'll cut it here because we are at three hours so that is awesome yay I figured we would only get through five chapters so uh thank you so much Daniel where in the world can people find you if you are to be found anywhere sir 03:03:56.70 Daniel I am on Discord. The Magic Knight Fredrickson is my handle, and I am in Jala's Discord. I am on the Shining Force 3 Translation Project Discord. I'm in Sega Extremes Discord, and I frequent the Sega Saturn Shiro Discord as well. So if you're interested in any of those topics or any of those things, look us up in there, and you can reach me through that that area of the world. 03:05:01.48 Jala So as for me, you can find me anywhere that I might be found @jalachan, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and all of the others. So until next time, take care of yourself. Remember to smile and please, please, please have pity on poor, poor Bresby, sad Bresby, who got left behind by the Shining Force to go take care of Melinda and didn't get to go cross the wall. Nobody loves Bresby. 03:05:27.63 Daniel Yeah. but not enough of a Navigator for his own good. 03:05:32.26 Jala Right, right. Bye, guys.