When we last saw Benjamin, he was about to enter the Focus Tower through one of two doors: a lower door and a higher door. He went in the higher one.
We end up in a circular room, on a ledge around the outside. We can't get down into the centre yet. We can, however, go down these stairs!
This room looks kind of familiar. Yes, this is the room of unattainable treasures from Chapter 3! Presumably, they are to become attainable now!
Magic Cid awaits us at the bottom of the stairs...
Benjamin goes ??
... Anyway, seek Reuben in Fireburg. Say, what's this statue for?
He then flies off upwards, as always, leaving Benjamin to...
...oh no...
...oh god no.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Anyway right, there's this door that needed exploding, so we explode it and head on through.
Unattainable treasure 1 of 2, here we go!
Presenting: The first (and possibly only) chest which Benjamin actually announces the opening of. This is, presumably, because this chest required Spencer's key in order to open.
Anyway, the Venus Shield replaces our Steel Shield. It has a Defense power of 10 (as opposed to 5) and protection from paralysis. You'd think the shield that's oh so important to the Prophecy would be, you know, the best shield in the game, but you'd be wrong.
Around the bottom of the room, there's a three-space wide gap between two ledges.
Further on around, there's a chest containing Blizzard. Hmm.
Fire before the ice area, and Blizzard before the fire area? What a coincidence. You'd almost think that some omniscient figure was controlling everything from the shadows.
All right, let's get this pillar sorted.
Luckily, there's a handy block here which makes it incredibly obvious which of the two places you could reasonably put the pillar is the right one.
So, now that we're done here, we need to do some backtracking. Out of the room, out of the Focus Tower, and all the way around to the other door, down the stairs and back to the room with all the doors.
One of the four doors is inaccesible, and one of the four is open so if you can't work out which door we're going to open, there's really no helping you.
WRONG!
So we head through the door, and up the requisite staircase.
Ah, so we're in here. OK.
Around the bottom and over the pillar.
Then around the left and up the stairs.
And hey, we're down in the bottom level of that circular room we were in right at the start! We'll head out the door.
And we're in the fire area of the game.
We'll follow the path to Fireburg, going past three Battlefields! Oh, and every single time you move, an earthquake happens. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
It gets tiring fast.
Fireburg's music is a lot more upbeat and jazzy (read: a lot less inherently depressing) than Foresta's and Aquaria's. It seems there's a climbable wall in the middle of the town.
There's a house in the crater, but the door's locked.
Back out of the crater, there's an Inn Hotel. Inside the hotel is a man who sells Seeds! There's also a man who sells Elixir at extortionate prices.
...
That's it. That's all he says.
I'm going to go ahead and say that Reuben is the man.
Reuben: I can't deal with that now. I've got the help Dad.
Benjamin: Well why don't you let me help you!
Reuben: He's stuck behind a boulder.
"Oh, yeah, fair enough. I'd be absolutely no help with that at all. Negotiating with morally-grey capitalists? Fine. Rescuing a man from a frozen underground system of tunnels? Fine. But no, a boulder is far too much for me."
Benjamin: Where's the guy's house?
Reuben: In this town, but he's shut himself in.
Benjamin: We'll pay him a visit anyway. Come on!
Reuben has a Morning Star. It is essentially a mace with an Attack power of 150. So yeah, let's go pay another visit to this man, eh?
Huh?
It is at this point that the game gets very unintuitive. We first entered the town, and looked at the house in the middle, which was locked. Then we met Tristam, who was useless. Then we met Reuben, who suggested we go to the house in the middle, which is still locked. What's the next step?
That's right.
We have to go talk to Tristam again.
Benjamin: We went to the house in the pit, but the guy wouldn't let us in.
"Maybe try knocking?"
Tristam: You two want in? Then take this.
OK, we actually are just breaking into someone's house now. There is no other way that this can possibly be construed. We are breaking into this man's house.
Arion is the name of Reuben's dad, in case you were wondering.
... Only a Mega Grenade can free him.
Benjamin: How do you use one?
Reuben's Dad's Nameless Buddy: Just throw it!
... Go through the abandoned Mine to reach the boulder.
So Mega Grenades. It wasn't that long ago since we got the Jumbo Bombs. Anyways, we can throw Jumbo Bombs up to four spaces in the direction we're facing. It'll blow up the first thing it hits though.
Huh, it's pretty strong too. The Jumbo Bombs had an Attack power of just 112. It's quite early in the game to be getting a top-tier weapon. Particularly since we're still on a lower-tier axe and claw. Then again, 7/12 weapons when we're just past the halfway point is all right, I guess.
Down the stairs of his house, we have a NOT QUITE INFINITY tile.
Outside his house, up the wall and around the bottom end of town, we have another house.
Wait a minute. I'm almost certain there's a house exactly like this in Aquaria. That woman is going to try to sell us something, isn't she?
Ah. The Battle Axe has an Attack power of 112. Just like some Jumbo Bombs we used to have. Anyway, let's take a look downstairs.
Huh. The other house had a tile exactly like this.
So, that's everything in the town we can do, so let's go. But before we head off the to Mine, we've got quite a few Battlefields to take care of.
This Battlefield is Jelly and Jelly/Jelly.
Jellys are reskins of Slimes, which we haven't seen since the Level Forest. They're weak against Bombs, which means they're pretty much screwed against Mega Grenades.
Eh.
This one is Sting Rat and Jelly/Sting Rat.
Sting Rats are reskins of Edgehogs from Wintry Cave. See, now they seem to be getting the hang of how reskins are meant to work. These are enemies that we haven't seen in a while, just long enough that we'll have forgotten about them. Sting Rats are weak against water attacks.
Blizzard is a water attack, by the way. Apparently ice isn't an element in this game?
Oh, we've got the hourglass crest. Now we can use those hourglass tiles. Who knows, maybe the one in the house Aquaria doesn't connect to the one in an identical house in Fireburg!
Spoiler alert: It does.
OK, so imagine this in real life. There's a house with a special tile in the basement. You are told that, when you step on this tile, you will be teleported somewhere else. So you step on it, and none of your surroundings change. Then you head upstairs, and nothing's different at all. Actually, a little blonde girl is gone, but apart from that, everything's the same.
You'd think they were nuts! You'd run out of the house as fast as you could, and be greeted with a completely different climate! If you were really cynical, you'd probably blame it on global warming![/spoiler]
This third Battlefield is Plant Man and Plant Man/Plant Man.
Plant Mans (wait, what?) are, like their Mad Plant buddies, weak against axes. As such, they die pretty quickly from our new Battle Axe. Intent on showing us up, however, Reuben reveals that his Morning Star is also treated as an Axe, making his attack even stronger.
Sucks.
And now we're past Fireburg. This one is Plant Man/Plant Man/Plant Man, Flazzard/Flazzard and Plant Man/Plant Man/Sting Rat, in what is possibly the most variety in any Battlefield so far.
Flazzards are reskins of Basilisks from Bone Dungeon. Aside from some stat upgrades, they're pretty much identical. No weaknesses or resistances, just giant sacks of meat to hit.
Ooh, a relatively high amount of GP actually.
And finally, we have Red Cap/Red Cap, Red Cap/Red Cap/Flazzard and Flazzard/Flazzard/Flazzard.
Red Caps are reskins of MintMints from... uhm... nowhere in particular really. They were wandering around in the ice area, but they weren't actually in any of the dungeons. Oh, and there were Brownies back in the Level Forest, so I think that makes this the first monster to be reskinned twice. And the thing is, I'm less annoyed by this because they aren't that close together.
Red Caps are, of course, weak against ice water.
Oh now this could be very good.
It actually isn't though. For a start, none of the enemies around here are weak against thunder. Benjamin's Magic stats aren't really high enough for this to be particularly strong either.
In other words: Thunder isn't a gamebreaker here.
But we still have Exit so who cares?
Oh, and the only spell Reuben has is Life. Aside from that and is giant spiky ball of death, he isn't really that useful.
Then again, that might be all you need to get by in life.
So, the Mine. The Mine, like the Bone Dungeon, seems to have been designed to look like something evil. The trouble is, Mines are man-made for the purpose of extracting minerals and the like from the earth World. This raises the question: Who would mine for stuff in such a way that the craters left behind formed the shape of an monster? Also, how are lights coming from the eyes?
So, we've got ourselves another puzzley dungeon. Those metal strips are conveyor belts, and those pulleys raise the bucket immediately after it falls to the bottom. What this means is that every trip is one-way. However, more telling that this is a puzzley dungeon is the fact that it reuses the music from Falls Basin.
The belt to the right is coming towards us, so we'll take the one at the top, and fight this skeleton fellow.
Red Bones are reskins of Skeletons from the Bone Dungeon. They're still weak against Cure, but Cure just isn't as effective as it used to be. They're also now weak against Blizzard though, which is more effective at destroying them.
Inside here is a collection of enemies guarding some treasure boxes. The contents of these boxes will invariably not have been worth the effort, so we'll just leave them be and take the belt to the right.
Further down here is a climbable wall which leads to absolutely nothing.
To the right, there's a bucket that we use to drop down. We'll go through those Red Bones and into the door they're guarding.
The Flazzard to the left leads to a dead end (of course, I never knew that until afterwards, fucker), so we'll head through the Red Cap and that new enemy to the right.
The new enemies are Zombies. They look a lot more like mummies though which makes me think there might have been some translation buggery. Except this game was made for America so maybe not. Being zombies, they are weak against zombie attacks (?) such as Cure.
I took a stab at casting Life on them, and it turns out that they (as well as Red Bones and the like) are strong against "fatal attack". So Cure is a Zombie attack and Life is a Fatal attack? Ohkay. The Zombies do, however, have one somewhat annoying feature.
See, the thing is, they can only multiply themselves if there's an empty space which was occupied by a now-dead enemy. They essentially re-animate the dead enemies, which I think was a very nice touch. Annoying, yes, but it's a nice touch nonetheless. And it MAKES SENSE.
So through the Zombies, through the door, then through this Red Bone here.
Whoa, slow down. We've been through one town and about half a dungeon, and we've got three new weapons already! 9/12 leaves us with only three weapons left in the entire game! Strangely, we actually are now on mid-tier or higher on everything, something I was complaining about not being true earlier.
Our new claw's Attack power is 92 (as opposed to 32), which is comparatively weak in comparison to our new Battle Axe, Mega Grenades and is even slightly weaker than the Knight Sword. Our new claw inflicts far more status effects than our old one though. As well as Blindness, we now inflict Confusion, Poison, Paralysis and Sleep.
Back outside, we'll head down the conveyor belt just below the cave entrance, and fight this Zombie.
Down and to the left, there's a destroyable door. Inside the cave, there's a two-leveled room with a climbable wall, but the only treasure inside is a treasure box with some Explosives.
Inside though, I discovered this.
This evil fairy type thing appeared when I attempted to cast Heal on a Red Bone (i.e. something which is vulnerable to zombie magic). Presumably, it's using its lance to stab arbitrary ailments onto the victim, but I'm not sure if it actually had any effect.
I had never seen this before when playing this. This is probably because I'd never tried it before, but I still love how the game can still throw me surprises after all this time.
Outside, we climb up this wall. There's a conveyor belt to the left, which leads us back to the front door. We'll head down the bucket instead this time.
This is something that actually looks like it would be quite fun to do in real life. It's called an elevator you moron.
Across the conveyor belt and through the Zombie.
What you see in the bottom left is a climbable wall which leads to a small ledge containing absolutely nothing. AGAIN.
The belt to the right leads to a Zombie.
AH! Which way which way which way!?
There's a Zombie at the end of the belt, and a bucket to the left but don't go down it! That bucket takes us back here, which is not somewhere we want to be!
At the top of that platform is a conveyor belt leading to the right.
With a Red Bone at the end. See that Red Bone at the top of the screen? It's guarding a conveyor belt. That conveyor belt leads to another Red Bone guarding a completely different conveyor belt, which goes here, which is where that cave with the claw was. As such, it's a bad idea to go there. So don't.
Hey there man who is apparently a deep sea diver but is definitely the boss!
Nope I'm really not seeing you and your sprite as the same thing. Sorry man.
As always, the Red Bones go down pretty quickly and easily. Occasionally though, they'll Confuse you, and that'll cause some problems, as quite a lot of Jinn's attacks are pretty powerful. Jinn itself can put party members to Sleep, and its Flame Pillar attack causes quite a lot of damage to both party members.
It was totally worth a shot.
After a few hits, he gets mad. Man the emoticon for his face right now would totally be 0O.
So I was under the impression that he was further away but then I looked at the ground and discovered that he's in the same place so basically attacking him makes his legs turn into wind?
After a few more hits, he dies. Or maybe he turns entirely into wind. Who knows?
So we head through the door on the other side of where he once stood, and come out outside on a ledge full of treasure boxes. We've got Explosives, Cure Potions, Heal Potions and more Explosives.
He turns towards the boulder.
... Dad! Stand back!
Clearly, we're not close enough to hit the boulder.
Huh. Apparently not.
Wait a minute. Why didn't Arion just walk around the boulder? I mean there was clearly more than enough room for him to do so. Then again, the boulder itself seems to fluctuate between being around twice as big as a man, and being around twice as big as a Mine, so maybe we was worried that he'd be crushed arbitrarily.
Arion: Reuben!... I knew you'd save me!
"Dad!... You can't follow an exclamation mark with an ellipsis! Also! I'm not sure how I knew what punctuation you were using considering that you were speaking!"
Reuben: Please head home to Mom!
Arion: Right. You two be careful!
Reuben: Benjamin, let's return to Fireburg.
Back inside, there's a bucket that takes us to a conveyor belt which, in turn, takes us back here. In case you're wondering where "here" is, it's the place just before the place where I mentioned the bucket that took us back to the cave where the claw was.
What we're going to do is, we're going to actually use that bucket, then follow that path until we end up back at the door, then leave! Savvy?
The rolling boulder has stopped rolling, mainly due to the fact that it's fallen into a chasm. We can cross the boulder in order to enter the Sealed Temple.
Inside the temple is Magic Cid, who comes out with possibly the most cyptic bullshit so far.
The fuck?
Then he flies off.
I'll let you away with that this time...
The tile teleports us to the room inside the Wintry Temple that has no exit. The boxes contain Cure Potions and Heal Potions. The treasure boxes actually inside the Sealed Temple itself also contain Cure Potions and Heal Potions.
Back in Fireburg, Reuben's house is full of excitement.
Apparently Arion's sick. Or lazy. I don't know.
... The Crystal of Fire is in the Lava Dome!
Man, I love that someone with some plot relevance knows where the Crystal is, rather than having to go find it out from random townspeople. Wonderful.