Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Lufia: Ruins of Lore #4 - The Horror

Back to the horrific dungeons. I'd rather get a root canal than do a dungeon from this game, and that's no exaggeration. This one has a creepy stone head as an entrance, so at least that's kind of cool.

The following takes place in an incredibly boring game with characters you want to set on fire.




I totally skipped over this dungeon in screenshot-taking. It was probably the biggest pain in the ass yet, including the mines. I had to go through an ultra-confusing mess of a dungeon and light four torches. With all of the one-way passages, it was a disaster to try and keep track of where I was.

I got to the end at one point, only to find that I had only lit three of the four torches, so I couldn't proceed to the end. Had to warp out and re-do the whole thing to find the one I missed, which ended up requiring a guide. Just horrible.

The next dungeon is actually okay. It's short and has a point. You go through some haunted woods.

Another boss. This fight is kind of appealing, a grim reaper on a ghost-horse. What is this? An acceptable dungeon followed by an acceptable boss fight?

Leaving the forest, we arrive at the great wall of Gratze. This is the border of the nefarious empire. The soldiers take pot shots at our heroes, and unfortunately miss.

Dekar doesn't like being shot at, and suggests we STIRRR IT UP!

Little darrrrling STIRRR IT UP!

Nearby is a town full of ghosts. Apparently Gratze bombed the place and now the only inhabitants are the dead.

Oh great, just when the game was getting interesting, it's time for another crappy dungeon.

Our heroes traverse dungeon #580, a haunted graveyard...house. What circle of hell is this? Pay no mind to the shadow on the wall, which may or may not be daemon-prince Zazathool.

RVD hides behind Bau as we explore the house. The wolf-man's positive attitude should make things a bit easier.

"Time for some peeping tom action!"

.....

Few things are more of a downer than a Basic Girl writing poetry.

Outside, it's raining. This is a good time to note that the rain in this game falls down in set patterns that loop almost right away, which is pretty fake-looking. Man, this game can't even get rain effects right.

"Now I can watch women while they go to the bathroom!"

Man, this guy is a real sicko. Just try to avoid eye contact with him.

At the end of the dungeon, I find a pendant. Then nothing happens. So I roam around for a bit wasting some of the precious little time I have on Earth until giving up and checking a guide. Turns out there's a specific room in the dungeon (this one) where you have to use the pendant from your inventory while facing the bed. There's nothing to indicate this in the game whatsoever. The bed is nothing out of the ordinary.

The game does a lot of this kind of crap just to waste time.

BOSS FIGHT. It's the first difficult boss in the game. Here's why: It uses a nasty AOE attack every round. ...and nothing else. Of course, a boss just attacking the whole group over and over again is going to result in a challenging boss fight, but it's like a six year old's idea of a challenging boss fight. Actually, most six year olds could probably come up with something more interesting. The kids are clever.

Talk about close calls, RVD is the only one standing. I haven't seen this many dead people since the last time I watched a pro wrestling show from the 80's.

::groaning is heard from the studio audience::

...okay, yeah, that one was pretty bad.

Too-Good-To-Open-Her-Eyes-Useless-Character explains that Gratze is evil for killing all of these people. I don't know, seems like they're doing okay in their Groundhog Day ghost existence.

Every day is a new chance to catch the woman of your dreams, played by Allison Brie.


 Remember when I said this would be a No Pants Playthrough? Yeah, that just became a terrible idea for me.

It's gotta be rough learning about the harshness of the world when you're five years old, huh inexplicably-young RPG hero?

...Why do you exist?

Annnnd right away, time for another shitty dungeon. At least this one has a waterfall. That's kind of cool. Since this game ruins everything, though, it's safe to assume that the waterfall is made of spooge.

So THIS is where Foomies originate!

Oh, you think the game is above having spooge-falls? The enemies here are naked midgets! ...that or they're wearing skin-colored body-suits, as they dance to an Irish jig that only the soulless can hear.

My God. Gratze really is going all the way with the Nazi thing. ...that or it's Arizona.

Gratze is a technological city of sorts. The town area is a maze to negotiate, like everywhere else in this game. To the makers of Ruins of Lore, "convenience" is just another word for "you're a pussy".

Ragule is now the leader of Gratze. He also tastes like tomato saucy goodness.

The next dungeon is a pipe maze. Things are getting a bit more interesting, I'll give it that. This reminds me of the later parts of Lost Odyssey or Xenoblade, when the journey descended into a technology-driven landscape. Only difference is that those games are worth playing.

Seriously, I'll take Lufia III's boring, redundant, randomly-generated dungeons over the hellishly vague mazes of this game any day.

A new battle theme starts being used at this point, and it's great.

...no, seriously, it's great. Probably the best track in the game. Sounds like a fight theme from Mega Man X.

Gratze has lots of tanks. They're WW1-level in technology while the rest of the world is 12th century in technology.

Time to finally confront this Ragule guy. Time to see the face of evil! Time to see the mastermind behind everything that has happened!

Cole: "Ha ha! That's Hornswoggle's music! Hilarious!"

Wait, what? The big bad was just... Hornswoggle?

Look at him go! He just pinned ECW Champion Chavo Guerrero in a non-title match*! Damn it, he's metaphorically shitting all over everything we hold dear!

*This really happened

Who would ever think something like this is a good blow-off to a story?

Looks like the original king has been dead for a while, and Ragule is nowhere to be found. For whatever reason he just left the king here to deteriorate to bones.

...that or it's just Brie Bella sitting on the throne. Hard to tell.

At this point the game just sorta drops everyone on a boat, where they stand around.

Yep. Uh...yeah. Just...hangin' out.

...........

Looked it up on GameFAQs, and... oh, I have to use the king's ring while standing on the edge of the boat. WHY CAN'T THE GAME JUST DO THESE COMPLETELY VAGUE THINGS ON ITS OWN?

Better have GameFAQs bookmarked if you set foot in this despicable game. I'd rather go down on Ann Coulter than play this game. The acid burns to my face would be a fair tradeoff!

The next area is a sunken city. Music here is good too. This game is dangerously close to being marginally interesting, what with the music suddenly picking up.

...but it very quickly becomes just another pain-in-the-ass dungeon.

Woe to you if you get into a fight with three seahorses, because they completely stun-lock the party before you can do anything. And keep stun-locking the party. They don't do anything else. They also don't hurt you, so with nothing to break their stuns (or kill you), you have to reset the game.

Ann Coulter's wretched nether-regions. Preferable to this.

The boss here is Proto Kraken. The mind-boggling part is that after this you travel to a past version of the city (they'll take any excuse to make you re-do dungeons, seriously) where you fight Kraken. Yes, the present has Proto Kraken and the past has Kraken. The creators of this game must not have played Chrono Trigger. ...or gone to school.

Here's the time portal. We have to go back to protect Sarah Connor. After all these years I can finally make Terminator jokes and have it be topical because there's a new movie on the way.

This might be a good time to note that you can capture monsters in this game, then "install" them to your team as a capsule monster. I made it a point to never bother capturing any monsters for the whole game, so I have no idea if this feature brings anything to the table. Given how simplified and boring everything else is, I doubt it's very much.

Our heroes warp to the past and end up in a stomach. What day is it? WHAT YEAR?

The next town is shaking violently, presumbly from all the red-hot Pokesex that is going on. This is what happens when you go through the game without catching or "installing" any capsule monsters! They multiply and run wild with Pokesex!

...And I just got an idea for my future Pokemon series. Coming Soon.

Speaking of sex, I wonder if this game is going to have RVD and Rami get together at the end. I hope not, because they're almost pallette-swaps of eachother. When they're doin' it, it'll be like they're doing themselves.

Tune in next time, when our heroes all hopefully die.

2 comments:

  1. Gratze has really expanded in 20 years, they used to just be a little island.

    "So I roam around for a bit wasting some of the precious little time I have on Earth until giving up and checking a guide." - Real talk.

    The worst thing about that 80's joke is that you could have said 90's and it would be just as applicable. Sigh.

    "Gratze has lots of tanks. They're WW1-level in technology while the rest of the world is 12th century in technology." 12th century technology probably isn't too bad when you add magic to the mix.

    I know your idea was to spice things up with the RVD name, but it just leaves me wondering what you have against Rob Van Dam.

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  2. This inscrutable mansion maze is giving me massive flashbacks to when the same thing happened to you in 7th Saga 2.

    A game about a technological kingdom trying to survive when everyone else has magic would be really interesting.

    I LOL'd at everyone just standing there doing nothing on the boat. A piece of real-life awkwardness!

    Time travel? Really?

    Oh wow, this game made my Internet go down! Will post this when I get the chance.

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