Lennus II, Part 2 - Ric Flair

"WHOOOOO!"

What the hell is that thing? Seriously, what the hell is that?

In other news, if you missed it, check out Part 1 of this game.

The next town is Revnant. I was stuck here for a little while, at a loss as to how to proceed. Guards block all of the exits to the town. Well, turns out that one of the bookshelves in the town hides a secret passage. That was a little bit obscure, and I had to spend a while going around the town trying to figure out what the heck I was missing before I happened to inspect a bookshelf that moved. Not a fan of time-wasting things like this in RPGs, or games in general for that matter.

The kids have all vacated the town. Where'd they go?

...to Du Flair, the local dungeon. What?

"WHOOO! RIC FLAIR!"

And that's where we're going next!

Here's a shot of our weird-ass merry band about to clash with an even more weirdass group of foes. Wonder when I'll get some new mercs? This group is extremely generic.

Here's Du Flair. It's very...purple.

"LIMOSINE RIDIN', JET FLYIN', WHOOOO!"

Note: No relation to bizarre bug-creature King Kai, of DBZ fame.

Kai is one of the village kids. Our heroes find him (and the latest crystal, to boot) only to discover that he's possessed.

A battle ensues, but this scrappy youngster isn't much of a challenge.

...that is, until he transforms into a weird-ass monster that takes some effort to subdue. This might be a good time to mention that this game is, in a lot of ways, the Phantasy Star of the SNES. Plenty of similarities, and enemy design is one of them.

After saving Kai from himself, our heroes claim the second crystal. Tien attempts, again, to convey a dire warning. Unfortunately, Tien has Sprint.

...and that's where we're going next. It seems like the people in this game are constantly telling the player how horrible the next area is.

At this point you get what can almost be considered a stage select type deal, as you can choose between two scenarios to undertake next. Both have nasty bosses of roughly equivalent difficulty levels, but Kua Terran is the lengthier and more difficult area overall.

Note: Much like in the first game, the plant life in this game is pretty damn bizarre. This is intended to be a strange, distant planet much unlike our own, one of the reasons why I've compared this game to Phantasy Star.

In Tol Terran, the people are being held hostage by a "death god". In actuality, it's some sort of nefarious witch who likes to steal people's life-force. Nothing our plucky band can't deal with.

Your wife isn't...that blue critter on the left, is she? Seriously, what the hell is that thing?

The next cave is locked, surprisingly enough. It takes some tedious running back and forth to town to get the proper key to get through.

Here's Forga's lair. There are three different sections to the dungeon; the middle section leads to the boss, while the right section has loot and the left section has the crystal for this area.

I went through the loot section first, where I found... the notorious Purpbird Feather.

It was "used on" Farus? I'm getting horrible visions of the other party members holding Farus down and tickling his feet with it. This is even worse than Chezni drinking the Wings of Purpbird in the first game.

Our heroes barge in on the soul-stealing witch while she's masturbating. Have they no manners?

What follows is another two-stage fight. At first, Forga isn't too powerful.

Before long, she transforms into... uh... what the hell? This is by far the hardest fight in the game up to this point, and I scrape by. The biggest thing to note about this fight is that her attacks get more powerful the fewer characters you have standing (as they consist of a set number of random strikes, rather than a simple one-shot-hits-all). This was a common type of attack in Paladin's Quest, and the hardest bosses in that game were as difficult as they were because of it. Garana had the machine gun punch, Zaygos had the rapid-fire energy rings. If you only have one or two characters standing when a boss uses an attack like this, they'll either be decimated or outright obliterated. Need four characters standing at all times to cushion the assault.

Victory is mine. But at what cost? AT WHAT COST? But not to worry, Joad popped up with 1 HP as soon as the battle was over. As my weakest character, Joad needs to be replaced as soon as I find another merc.

In other news, I've read that level 35-40 (likely closer to 40) is required to beat the final boss in this game. If so, that's quite a bit lower than the level 60+ necessary to finish the first game. Levels do seem to come more slowly in this game, though.

There's something familiar about this scene...

"ARE YOUUU A GODDD?"

Tien's 4G reception is improving a bit, and the message is moderately clear: collecting these crystals is bad. Farus, naturally, completely ignores the message and takes the third crystal. One left.

At this point I detour to a completely optional (and missable) area. This game doesn't go overboard with missable stuff nearly as much as Romancing Saga 3 (coming, eventually, to this blog) does, but there is quite a bit of it. Not my favorite kind of game design, but hey. In any case, the Gold Temple is home to the Gold Spirit, which grants Farus one of the eight elements. He already has Fire, Wind, and Lightning at the beginning, but with this he'll also have... Gold. That's an element?

Much like Heems, we're on that Golden Temple Flow.

Here's the boss. This area is a significant step down in difficulty from the previous area, and it's pretty clear that I probably should have done this area first.

Following that line of reasoning, this weird-ass boss is a lot easier than Forga was. I hope every element from here on out is guarded by a similarly bizarre foe.

Farus can equip two elements at a time in this game. The first three all grant you their attack spell. Gold doesn't seem to add any unique spells, but merely enhances whatever your primary element is with hit-all versions of their attack and whatever buff or debuff is specific to that element. Since his other element is fire, Farus gets a hit-all fire spell and a spell that stuns enemies out of this.

Onward to the other of the two areas in the "stage select". This place is a bizarre palace full of gnomes that are apparently pieces of a bigger entity. What a weird game.

This is some trippy Xenogearsy plot right here.

The next mission is laid right out. Unfortunately, re-assembling the gnome legion requires traversing not one, but two dungeons.

It's nice of the game to line up the two dungeons in an easily-accessible place, but the game slows down a bit here. Getting through these dungeons takes some time. This game is very dungeon-heavy, and seems to go from one to the next.

These dungeons are apparently the inside of some great beast, eerily enough. Well, Paladin's Quest had the player traversing the bony intestines of a dragon, so anything is possible.

Lennus 2 is fast becoming just like its predecessor in that enemies attack in HUGE GROUPS.

There are several tumor-esque mini-bosses in these dungeons. I'm not sure what they're supposed to be, and they aren't particularly challenging, but they are timesinks.

Returning to the town to get restored, I find out that there isn't an inn. Instead, the gnomes give Farus a full rub-down.

Who doesn't enjoy a thorough gnome-rubdown?

The new armor here is a significant upgrade, but it's so unaffordable that I skip it. I'll save up for the next upgrade cycle.

The next dungeon seems to be the inside of a giant heart.

After clearing both dungeons, the gnomes assemble.

They all climb into a box and transform into a giant. This... is one of the weirder things I've seen lately.

I hesitate to ask: hang on...to what exactly?

This is cool. The giant actually functions as a vehicle; you board and disembark from him.


This allows you to reach... yet another dungeon. This one is full of switches and barriers, and takes even longer than the previous two. I hope the game eases up on the constant dungeons soon. This is the final dungeon of the first world (the game has three worlds in it, possibly more), so perhaps there will be a change of pace after this.

Hey, the boss of this place looks familiar...

What the hell? That's Eagle of Water, one of the nastier bosses in Paladin's Quest.

He launches GREEN DEATH BEAMS. That wasn't in the first game. This is a rough fight, but his 6400 HP get whittled away quick enough.

Eagle explodes in a shower of sparks. Farus got taken out during the fight, but the mercs picked up the slack.

The last of the four crystals. They're all the rage.

With that, our heroes return to the very first area of the game, this ominous citadel, to place the crystals and put the Great Union into motion. What will happen? Is the Great Union as bad as Tien seems to predict? Tune in for the next episode, coming very soon.

In the meantime, what does Ric Flair think?

The Complete Lennus 2 Archive:

Part 1 - The Legend of the Nude Hero 

Part 2 - Ric Flair

Part 3 - The Hoodwinking of Farus

Part 4 - Dragon, Dragon, Rock the Dragon

Part 5 - Smoky Hellscape

Part 6 - Meridian

Part 7 - E. Honda's Commie Paradise

Finale - Immortals