When we last saw Benjamin, he was about to enter the Focus Tower.
In case you haven't figured it out, this is the inside of the Focus Tower.
You see that little notch to the left?
Yeah you can walk straight through that. Neither the shortcut nor the long way round contain anything particularly useful or entertaining which makes me wonder why the hell they bothered with it but whatever.
Oh, you'll be able to sneak up behind this guy, but it makes absolutely no difference to anything.
"Hey your name's Cid isn't it?"
"WHAT HOW DID YOU I MEAN UHM NO IT'S NOT."
"Yes it is. It has to be because it isn't anyone else's and it has to be someone's..."
"OKAY FINE. My full name is "Magic" Cid Johnson McCoot. Everyone just calls me Magic Cid though."
"'Everyone'? I'm the only person who knows your name!"
"Exactly..."
Benjamin goes ??
Magic Cid: A girl named Phoebe will help you.
Benjamin: But I'm going to Aquaria!
Magic Cid: Maybe you'll find her along the way...
"Man if this turns out to be another one of your guesses I swear I'm gonna *THWACK* something..."
Magic Cid flies off. Benjamin goes !!, then waves, then does the hand thing.
Look man, Magic Cid can either predict the future or has the power to make his crazy ramblings come true. Which he can do doesn't matter, the fact remains: YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A PAWN TO THIS MAN. None of the decisions you make will matter. You have become part of events in which all your actions and reactions are determined by an unseen puppet-master who will manipulate you, and anyone else he needs, to do whatever he needs done. If there's one thing that this isn't, Benjamin, it's confusing. So put your god damn hands down and GET ON WITH IT. You've got a job to do.
...
Let's head up the stairs.
To the right, there's a door with a sword on it. Hey, didn't the Sand Coin have a sword on it?
Yes, it did, and the door opened as a direct consequence of this.
I really love the idea of a coin operated door. Sure, people can get through the door without the Sand Coin, but the Sand Coin is worth a traspillion GP and the machine only gives 100GP change from that, so... yeah...
As you can see, there's another door as well. There are four doors, but only three of them are accessible from here. The fourth can only be accessed from a staircase, the location of which is unknown.
Going through the door, we come across some stairs leading up. You can go on around to the right, but it doesn't go anywhere, so we head up the stairs.
We come out the top and head down to the right. There's a chest, but it's not on the same level as us, so we can't get to it yet.
Heading on around, we get to a gap we can jump over to get to a chest.
Ah, some more Black Magic. Wonderful stuff. There's another chest to the left, but we can't get to it either. I've no idea why the designers felt the need to taunt us with such beautiful, unattainable treasures...
Anyway, we continue on, and end up back where we started. We head through the door above, and come out back on the World Map.
We head right, then up past the Battlefield.
The path stops at Libra Temple, so in we go!
Hmm. There's an OMEGA tile on the ground and ooh who's that?
????: It's hopeless, I give up. Aquaria is frozen, people are sick, Grandpa is trapped...
Then she walks off. How rude.
The girl goes !!
????: Why... he's my Grandpa!
Benjamin: What luck! Let's go free him.
????: But we can't! I'm going home...
"Hey, wait a minute! Maybe if I don't go home, we can save him!"
Then she walks off. Again.
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Phoebe from Aquaria.
Benjamin: YOU are Phoebe? Then I'm going with you!
Oh woo, she's going to be a real laugh...
We're introduced to new spells Heal and Thunder, White and Wizard magic respectively. She's also got Cure, Life and Fire.
Now, let me tell you about Cure and Life. As you have probably already gathered, Cure cures, and Life brings people back to life. You may not have gathered that Life gives people full HP. You may also not have gathered that Life does this even if the person it's cast on isn't dead. Now, considering that all spells expend the same amount of magic (i.e. 1), having Life makes Cure completely and utterly worthless. GOOD JOB DEVELOPERS.
She also has a claw. It inflicts poison and... sparkles, apparently. Maybe it used to belong to Stephanie Meyer! LOL TWILIGHT SUX.
Anyway, outside, the path to the right has opened up, so we head along it.
After going past two battlefields, we wind up at Aquaria.
Heading left, we see a man and a house. Turns out, this is Phoebe's house.
Phoebe: In the tunnel he was digging under here. The dirt is frozen solid, so he can't get out.
Benjamin: Can't we melt it?
Phoebe: Not until we get Wakewater from the Spring of Life. But a monster in the Wintry Cave stole the Libra Crest which Warps us from the Libra Temple to the Life Temple.
Benjamin goes ??
Phoebe: Right! To the Wintry Cave!
SO MANY QUESTIONS:
1. Why did we have to be in your house for you to tell us that?
2. You knew all of this already, so how is everything all of a sudden not hopeless?
3. If this house doesn't belong to the man outside, why is he walking around in your garden?
4. Why would a monster steal an item which is only useful in two places, particularly when the only purpose of the item is to allow transport to the other place, and the only thing in the other place is Wakewater?
5. Where/who was it stolen from?
So, we have to go to the Wintry Cave to get the Libra Crest so we can teleport from the Libra Temple to the Life Temple to get Wakewater from the Spring of Life so we can melt the ice so we can save Spencer who is your Grandfather who Kaeli also wanted to see?
...
The plot may be shallow, but it's a bastard to keep up with. But at least there aren't any arc words...
AW HELL NO
Anyway back outside, we head right, cross a bridge onto an island. There's some sort of plant there, surrounded by trees.
Across another bridge, there's some stairs. We head up them and into a house.
The woman here will sell us a Steel Helmet (don't ask) for 200GP.
The Steel Helm has a Defense power of 4. We now have all the lower-tier armor, and a total Defense power of 16.
To the right, in the bedroom, there's a treasure box.
And now we've found all of the usable items in the game! Refreshers are very useful because they do something that other items don't do! They're great! I'm not sure how I got this far without them! I mean they're just... OK, I don't know what they do. Never did. I actually had to look up what they did. Apparently, they remove stat changes from your characters during battle. Considering I've gone through the entire game before whilst not knowing what they do, it's abundantly clear that they don't actually matter.
Anyways, heading down the stairs, we find something that looks familiar but different.
Oh, it's another one of those crazy tiles. This one's an HOURGLASS tile. Appropriately, we will probably use it in the FUTURE.
But anyways, now that we're done here, we leave Aquaria and move onwards! Except we don't! We head back to the Battlefields we skipped on the way here!
Here's the first one. It consists of Mintmint and Mintmint/Mintmint. It's a fairly low-budget Battlefield, it seems.
Mintmints seem to be basic enemies. Not too strong. No weaknesses or resistances.
Our reward?
OH YAY.
Next, the Battlefield next to the temple. It consists of Mintmint/Mintmint, Giant Toad/Giant Toad and Giant Toad/Giant Toad/Mintmint.
Giant Toads are strong against paralyze attacks (OH SO THAT'S WHAT THE CLAW'S SPARKLES ARE).
300GP? The cash rewards seem to be getting... I dunno... fair?
Next Battlefield, more enemies. This one is Scorpion/Scorpion, Scorpion/Scorpion/Giant Toad and Giant Toad/Giant Toad/Mintmint.
Scorpions are weak against Fire, so hooray for that.
Also, Thunder is basically a gamebreaker at this stage of the game.
Three enemies die with one shot of an attack that hits everyone. That's fair...
Ooh! A Magic Ring! Phoebe's already got one, and it's the first mid-tier piece of Armor. It replaces the Charm, provides protection from Silence, and bumps the Defense power up 2 points. Because a ring is obviously going to do three times better than a necklace at defending physical attacks. Obviously.
And finally. Edgehog/Edgehog, Edgehog/Edgehog/Scorpion, Scorpion/Scorpion/Giant Toad.
Edgehogs are weak against Fire. Again. Woo!
And they go BALD when you attack them! BALD! I mean why?!
Anyway yeah the prize for the Battlefield sucks again.
Anyway, now it's time for the Wintry Cave.
To the left are some items which I didn't get. If memory serves me rightly, they're Cure Potions. We head past the Scorpion to the right.
Up the right side of the room and up some stairs, then past an Edgehog.
Ah, a reskinned Sand Worm. What's it called?
Land Worm! You're not even trying are you? Anyway they're still weak against axe attacks so they're pretty easy to kill.
So anyways, we just head around here and OH SHIIIIIII-
-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.
Phoebe climbs down the wall after Benjamin, the unlucky son of a bitch.
Phoebe: Select the claw, hold the A button down, and press the Control Pad. Now it's yours!
"Well thanks that's great but what about my broken legs?"
"Oh, it's hopeless..."
Now, unlike in the Bone Dungeon, when Tristam pulled some Explosives out of hammerspace for the sole purpose of selling them to us, Phoebe needs to pull something out of hammerspace to replace the Cat Claw she just gave us. What she has is this:
The Bow of Grace. Yet another weapon with a completely pointless ammo restriction. The Cat Claw had an Attack power of 32, whilst the BOG has an Attack power of 79. That's more than double. Which raises the question: Why the hell was she using the Cat Claw in the first place? The BOG also inflicts... uhm... tanned Imperial Stormtrooper status.
Around the corner to the left of Benjamin's bones, there's a Scorpion. Beyond it is a climbable wall.
The platform we're moving onto is the same place that the path that we were on (before we fell to our pleasant landing) led to. So we've dodged that enemy (whatever it is). The blocked door you can see to the right needs detonated, so detonated it gets, and through we go.
We head through the Land Worm. It turns out that Edgehogs are strong against Blind attacks, showing that tanned Imperial Stormtroopers are, in fact, Blind.
We take a look around first. There's an enemy to the left, in the middle of the room, but we can't get to it yet.
Around the other side, there's some previously unencountered enemies for us to take care of. We'll start with the bird.
"This is Roc!"
"Roc... THIS. IS. SPARNA!!!"
...
Oh god I'm so sorry.
As we've discovered, the Bow of Grace is very strong. Bows shoot things. Sparnas, like Rocs, are weak against shoot attacks. Combined with a Critical Hit...
...and we get damage of 1375. That's OVERKILL.
Next, we'll go for the mole-type guy.
Oh apparently the mole-type guy is a Centaur. I suppose if you squint... Centaurs don't have any resistances or weaknesses, but their attacks are quite strong, and it can inflict Confuse, so they can be dangerous.
The fact that he continues to use Bow & Arrow when he clearly DOESN'T HAVE ONE counters the points I gave Flamerus Rex for not using the exploding rib move when he ran out of ribs. GOOD WORK CENTAUR.
The treasure box above has Cure Potions. Let's take a look at the monster to the right.
Land Turtles are also apparently weak against axes. A lot of Land things are weak against axes. Well, both of them. Anyway, the second treasure box contains Arrows. With nothing left in here, we need to backtrack back to the climbing wall, and drop down.
We head through the Edgehog, then around to the left.
Kill the Scorpion, then use the wall to drop down the the ground.
Continue down, then kill the Edgehog. Climb up the wall...
...and to the left. Then go through the Scorpion and up the wall onto the platform.
I'm sure you can figure out what happens here. Just in case you haven't been paying attention to THE WHOLE GAME, we kill the Edgehog and bomb the door.
..?
*sigh* THEN GO THROUGH THE DOOR.
Hmm. A room full of enemies. You gotta fight at least two of them in order to get through, and that Land Worm in the middle is NEVER one of them. WHY? Anyways, we kill the Land Turtle, get the Cure Potions and Arrows in the treasure boxes, then kill the other Land Turtle.
Through the Centaur...
...Land Turtle and Centaur again.
We head through the bottom Edgehog, and either the Centaur, Land Worm or OTHER Centaur in order to get the the Arrows and Heal Potions below.
Then, up through the Land Worm and Edgehog, then down the stairs.
If you look closely, you'll see Benjamin under the floor/through the roof. This is SUPPOSEDLY the room we were in earlier, but the fact that the old room had no monsters under the floor and the new room has no monsters on the roof leaves me unconvinced! It's a conspiracy! The monsters are doing confusing things of no consequence to further their agenda of evil things!
"Hey Flea, maybe it's a way of conveying the fact that YOU CAN'T SEE THROUGH THE ROOF. You know, JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE"
"SHUT UP."
Anyways, we only need to kill one enemy in order to proceed: the Land Turtle on the right.
We need to kill the Land Turtle and either of the Sparnas. Doesn't matter which. Then we kill the Centaur and get the arrows from the treasure box.
This is the boss of the dungeon. He completely subverts expectations by having absolutely no dialogue whatsoever to answer the many, many, MANY, questions I have.
The Sparnas go down in one, so they're hardly worth talking about. Squidite is sort of weird, since he has no weaknesses whatsoever. He's like a giant meatbag full of seafood that will occasionally try to electrocute you in a hilarious fashion.
During the animation, Benjamin's arms flail about wildly. The consequences of this? "Benjamin's magic down!" and 1 damage.
He loses his side tentacles, then his viagra wears off.
This boss fight was incredibly easy, probably because I'd been saving up Phoebe's magic throughout the dungeon. I realise that Squidite was only meant to be a boss in the same way that the Minotaur way back in Level Forest was meant to be a boss, but the fact that the Wintry Cave could realistically be described as a dungeon raised my expectations a bit. Then again, I expected some form of exposition as to why the hell the Crest was here in the first place, so maybe the game just likes screwing with me.
Anyway, back in the dungeon, the monster vanishes and a chest appears. Phoebe goes !!
Phoebe: Stand on it, and we'll be Warped to the Life Temple!
See, now I can't be the only person who was confused when she refered to the Libra Temple as "there" when the last time she mentioned it was quite some time ago. Also, why the hell is "Warp" capitalised? She did it earlier, but I figured it might just have been a typo. But here it is again. Maybe it's like Earth or World except even that doesn't work because there's no such thing as a proper verb.
How many times are we actually going to use this? Seriously? Then again, we're still carrying a piece of dead tree around so I guess we should worry about that first, eh? Anyways, we backtrack out of the cave, to the world map, then back to the Libra Temple.
This is the square which must be stood on.
We warp to here. The sound effect is quite pleasing.
Then, she walks up to the Spring of Life and is so shocked by what she sees that she goes !! twice, on different sides of her head.
Phoebe: It's hopeless now.
Benjamin: Don't give up yet. There's someone inside. Let's have a look.
Wait, how the hell do you know that? Anyways, there's a door at the top, which is the opening to a tunnel.
Oh fancy seeing you here...
Magic Cid: I know that. We need Wakewater to melt the ice...
Phoebe: But the Wakewater has dried up! It's hopeless!
Magic Cid: Hear me! All that's left of the Wakewater is in this bag. Take it and go back to Aquaria.
"Hear me"? He's talking like some sort of god-type-thing! This would be fine if he hadn't spent the rest of the game spouting cryptic nonsense!
So wait, even though the Spring's dried up, everything's going to be OK anyway? I DON'T BUY THAT. Anyways, the Temple does have a door out.
But it leads here. There's nowhere to go, and apparently, nowhere we can ever possibly go. Which raises the question: How did the temple get built? Anyways, we need to head back to Aquaria. Upon entering, we're dragged back to the the plant in the middle of the town.
She puts the Wakewater on the plant and it flashes from frozen light blue to the standard plant green. That's it.
Benjamin: Then we'd better hurry to the Ice Pyramid!
Wait what? The Wakewater didn't thaw the town, so now we have to go free the Crystal. Fine. Except, once again, Phoebe, YOU KNEW THIS ALL ALONG. When all the Wakewater was dried up, it was hopeless. But now that you've shown the Wakewater does nothing, you suddenly have a plan!
My theory: Multiple personality disorder.
So, Phoebe, Phoebe and I, head off to the new Battlefield in the area. It opened up once we beat the Wintry Cave and is just to the left of it. Enemies here are Desert Hag/Desert Hag and Desert Hag, in yet another low budget Battlefield.
Wait, this isn't a Desert! This makes slightly less sense than the Land _____ monsters! Anyways, they're weak against Fire and strong against Paralysis for no adequately explored reason. And when they're hurt...
THEYRA FIRIN THEYR LAZAR.
Hmm. 600GP is actually pretty OK. Anyways, we need to get to the Ice Pyramid, but it's not as easy as just going straight there oh no.
Falls Basin. It's an anagram of A Balls Fins, but that's not important.