PART 2 - A RISKY ADVENTURE? SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!
Having been cast out of the castle by King Innocentis and his highly-questionable parenting skills, we're now in control. Let's open up the menu and take a look at our status.
So, Blade is a knight in addition to being a prince. A level one knight with exactly one experience point. And no horse. Well, at least he should be well-armed, right?
Sigh. Well then, let's wander about the town before departing. Maybe we can find a shop to spend some of our 1000 gold in. I guess King Incendiary couldn't be troubled to let his son visit the castle armory, or put some damn pants on before sending him off on this vital mission.
So BLADE is 20, and I'm going to assume this is well before Lortland passed a minimum drinking age, so you know what that means: time to hit the pub! Let's get sloshed, and ask around about these caverns I guess.
Nice name, Tud. Also, this guy is almost as drunk as whoever translated this game. He won't be any help to us.
KERINE: SIR SHIKEE WILL SOON ARRIVE TOO,
AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HOLY
KINGDOM.
Take note of what this guy dressed like a leprechaun has to say. I'm guessing METTARAH is what the opening crawl referred to as Metara. Shikee is a name we'll see later on.
PUB: EACH OF THE NEIGHBORIN
COUNTRIES HAVE COME TO
CELEBRATE YOU BIRTHDAY!
Oh good, for a second I was thinking the bartender's name was just Pub. Maybe it's his last name. He's Ian Pub.
PUB: BUT WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MERCENARIES
GATHERED HERE? AND SO MANY VAGRANTS TOO?
ONE OF THOSE BUMS OR JUST OMEONE
PUB: WHO JUST WANTED TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE
CAME IN AND SOUGHT A PARTNER TO GO
WITH HIM TO THE GARUUN CAVERNS.
BLADE: WHERE IS HE NOW?
I never trust a man who is rinking by himself. But I suppose as long as we're here, we should talk to him.
BLADE: THEY SAY YOU ARE LOOKING
FOR AN ASSISTANT.
GIURAN: I DON'T NEED A KID LIKE YOU!
Kid? BLADE here is 20, that's close to a senior citizen in RPG Protagonist Years.
BLADE: I NEED A TRAVELING PARTNER TOO.
DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO ENTER
THE GARUUN CAVERNS WITH YOU?
GIURAN: IF SOMEONE LIKE YOU GOES IN THERE,
THEY WILL SURELY DIE!
So much for that. Let's leave this guy to his rinking. He has a portrait though, so I'm sure we'll be seeing him again.
After getting throroughly wasted at Pub's Pub, our still-naked hero stumbles into a random house and opens up a treasure chest. Hey, it's his birthday, don't judge him.
We have a weapon! Also, go ahead and mark "the hero blatantly robs people's houses" on your bingo card. Now, still naked but armed with a single dagger, let us venture out into the world!
Okay, so the world map in this game is shit. See the roads between places? Generally speaking, you have to follow those roads. Now, what if multiple roads go into a single town or castle? Can you get from one road to another? The answer is sometimes, if the game feels like it. I'll explain this more later on, but for now, there's only one place we can go. That castle at the bottom is Moss, and we can go into the forest just north of it. That big long path to the east is not accessible. So we'll check out the forest.
Artemis is the name of a goddess from Greek mythology. So yeah, there's not much of a rhyme or reason to the historical and mythological references in this game, it's like they just picked them out of a hat. Greek goddesses, Tolkien characters, Roman Catholic Popes, they're all in the mix here. This is just a filler dungeon anyway.
And, with our first dungeon, you know what that means: it's time for some combat!
Congratulations to everyone who had "the first enemies you fight are slime puddles" on the bingo card!
So, this is a turn-based game, no active battle mode, so we can take as much time as we like. The turn order is not quite what you might expect, however. In a nutshell, each turn, we choose a party member to do something, and then one of the enemies does something, and then it comes back to us. So even if we have four party members, we only get to attack with one of them each turn. Likewise, only one of those two slimes is going to hit us each turn. So naturally, most turns we'll be attacking with our best damage-dealer, or healing with our best healer, while everyone else gets to stand around and be a meat shield.
Each turn, we have four options. Attack, Magic, Item, Retreat. These do exactly what you'd expect them to, aside from the previously-discussed bullshit of magic costing both MP and an item.
We beat up a couple of slimes, resulting in a VICTORY.
If Blade takes too much damage and becomes Groggy, it's EXTERMINATION.
The purple slimes give you the Poison status. Poison is some serious bullshit in this game. Like in other console-style RPG's, it causes your HP to decrease over time. To cure it, you use an ANTIPOISON. However, there are a few things setting this game's version apart:
1. There isn't a very obvious indicator that you are poisoned. Blade doesn't turn purple, there's no flashing every time you take a step, the only way you know is by looking at the character's Condition:
2. Outside of battle, you don't just lose HP every step - you lose it over time. This means you can lose HP just standing around after a battle.
3. If you run out of HP outside of battle, in most RPG's, you stay at 1 HP. Not so in Legend of the Ancient Dragon PURSIVAL. You hit 0 HP, you die on the map screen, and you get this lovely message:
Fortunately, if you have too much difficulty beating the SO WEAK monsters, there is good news. You don't have to fight any battles in this game. Just press the F3 button, and you will stop getting encounters.
"But what happens when there's a boss fight?" you ask. "Won't my levels be too low?" Read what I said. Press F3, no more encounters. Not "no more random encounters" - no more encounters, period. If you would fight a boss battle, you automatically win and skip to the cutscene afterward. This means we could, if we wanted to, skip all battles for the rest of the game, leaving us to experience nothing but the story and the game's wonderful dialogue.
Seriously though, dungeons in this game are bullshit and turning encounters off is about the only sane way to get through some of them. But I do plan to fight all boss enemies and other scripted battles, and do enough random battles to show off the enemy types (and see if there really are 300 like the back of the box claims).
Here we grab a Banded Robe. Equipping the dagger and the robe don't seem to have any effect on our attack or defense. Something about this is bugged, but I haven't figured out exactly what the bug is yet.
There are some other chests in the forest, but they don't have anything especially noteworthy.
Anyhow, despite Blade being a complete wimp at level 1, he only needs 9 EXP to level up, so let's get him to level 2. Even slimes are extremely dangerous when you have 15 HP, so I died a few times on the way, but after a few fights with just the blue ones:
MUCH better. Leveling up once doubles Blade's HP, increases his attack slighly, and dramatically improves his defense. Also, the Banded Robe now apparently adds 1 defense, so it's 25 if he's naked. As far as I can tell, level matters a lot in this game while equipment tends to not matter very much. On the other hand, it's all so terribly programmed that it's tough to say for sure. Speaking of terribly programmed, let's venture a bit further...
This pink-haired elf looks suspiciously like someone seen on the front of the CD! Let's talk to her.
wait what the fuck
Aaand now we're on the right. I tried to walk around her, and suddenly I teleported to the opposite side of her cart! Apparently we were meant to approach from the right side, even though that's not possible to do without... you know what, never mind. The cutscene continues normally from here.
ABRAND: LISTEN, WILL YOU HELP ME?
BLADE: OF COURSE, I'LL HELP YOU!
BLADE: SO, THE WHEEL FELL OFF, HUH?
Yeah, Blade is all about helping out Abrand here. I think someone has a thing for elves.
ABRAND: I AM REALY INDEBTED YOU.
FOR YOUR HELP,
I SHALL TELL YOU YOUR FORTUNE.
BLADE: FORTUNE TELLING?
I DON'T BELEIVE IN THAT STUFF!
I just love how "ADVENTURE" is broken across two textboxes here.
ABRAND: YOU MUSTN'T TRAVEL ALONE...
GATHER COMPANIONS FOR YOU JOURNEY...
BLADE: GATHER.. COMPANIONS..?
ABRAND: MUST GATHER COMPANIONS...
BLADE: WOW... I SAW AND ELF...
I HAD ONLY HEARD OF THEM BEFORE...
Yeah, I think Blade here has forgotten all about the Garuun Caverns and is now on a quest to get busy with an elf.
From here, we can exit the woods via
three possible paths:
1. The volcano to the west
2. The castle to the north
3. The fortress to the east
Please vote on which path we should take for the next update! Also, before I go, here's a brief video showing off the Giuran/Abrand glitch. In this case, I started a new game and didn't talk to Giuran in the pub, so you see his full dialogue in the forest.
https://youtu.be/60VoZHntNKE
Yeah, this game is a beautiful mess.
Once again, remember to vote for the path for the next update!