Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Dragon Quest V SFC, Part 6 - Magic Carpet Ride

 

Today on DQV: Our heroes take on the three-tittied alien from Total Recall.


Our next big goal is to get the most rudimentary of flying mounts in this game. It can't fly over mountains, hills, or even forests. However, it looks RAD.

WELL, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT

WE CAN FIND

WHY DON'T YOU COME WITH ME LITTLE GIRL

ON A MAGIC CARPET RIDE

Next is the Royal Cloak dungeon, which has some seriously nasty foes to contend with. And this is AFTER my mega level-up. This is like if Rocky trained up to SSJ 1.5 to face Drago in Rocky IV and still got his ass kicked.

Zenithia is next, and it has seen much better days to say the least.

We're gonna need to restore flight capabilities to this monstrosity.

I've got a chance to recruit a King Healslime here, and I tried, but I just couldn't get one to "drop". Gonna stick with the regular Healslime, which actually cuts it in the endgame just fine. King Healslime is a big boon, if you can put in the effort to get it.

WELL, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT

WE CAN FIND

Next is my least-favorite dungeon in this game, Mine Cart Mayhem. Basically a big puzzle of track-switching.

Next, our heroes battle the guys this series was actually named after. A lot of people don't know that. They were a big hit in their day, these guys.

This guy got trapped on a mine cart for 20 years...similar thing happened to a guy in the Paris airport once. Got stuck there, lost his passport so he couldn't leave, didn't have any money to fly home, so he just wandered the airport for like 3 years begging for change and buying stuff from the airport shops.

Speaking of food, how did this guy not die while he was on this mine cart for 20 years?

He has the same philosophy on party size that Bianca does in the bedroom.

Next we meet the mysterious...Pusan.

He tells us that we need a certain Orb to make Zenithia fly again. But where could it be?

Flashbacks to the youth portion of the game remind us that our hero once had the Golden Orb, only to hand it off to a mysterious stranger.

Next we talk to an invisible man to get access to the Faerie Village.

The downside is you have to repeat this section of woods and do this every time you want to go there. In this version of the game, you can't just warp to it. A lot of locations are missing from the warp list in this version of the game, for some reason, and it might be the one real strike against it. The remake / phone version has a ton of areas listed for warping.

Going retro here with perhaps Dragon Quest 2's most memorable item.

The Faeries haven't seen Gaz since he was a little kid. Now...he's all grown up, and strapping.

Hey, eyes up here, lady!

::funky music begins to play::

The Faeries got so excited that now Zenithia is flooded. Great.

::funky music begins to play::

Before the trip back in time, I get what might be the strongest attack spell in the game. This is the signature attack for most of the "hero class" main characters in this series, and it does even more damage than Explodet. At a high MP cost, though, for characters who don't have nearly as much MP as your pure casters do. For that reason I tend to rely on physical attacks more for the heroes as I reach the various DQ series endgames.

Back in time, Gaz tries to warn his dad about the impending disaster. I don't know if I'd be meddling in time this much... but at the same time, you pretty much have to try.

Now a NUN is trying to get in our hero's pants?

He's just trying to be an adventurer and these women won't stop going after him!

"I haven't had a propa shag in ten years" she mutters as she wanders off.

The hell? Now Child Gaz is flirting with our hero.

I do the orb switcheroo and get outta here.

Not before our hero leaves his younger self with an important message though. Even your worst day might be followed by a really good day. Or year. If you stick around.

Next, this Pusan fellow is ready to launch Zenithia into orbit. I hope he doesn't turn out to be a villain who secretly wants to bomb the land into submission.

The castle takes flight, and it's a much better flying mount than the Magic Carpet. It can go over pretty much everything, but it flies very very slowly. There's a third flying mount yet to come that can do all of this plus go fast.

Now that Zenithia is restored to its former glory, some of the residents come back. The weird thing is...they've never heard of this Pusan guy.

This is a key item for infiltrating the dark temple of the bad guys, which is our next stop. We're in the endgame now.

They locked the door to keep our heroes out, but unbeknownst to them, we have a Grappling Hook. Like the guy who killed Scarface.

This allows us to drop in from the roof and interrupt Bishop Ladja's cocaine binge.

* - Well, now he's Gema

But first we have to go through the non-horse goon.

Gema's other goon is such a loser that he doesn't even get his own dungeon. That horse guy did! Gonz really got short-changed.

The strategy here is to sap him with Decrease and use Bikill to power up the fighters. ...this is the strategy for almost every boss past a certain point in this game.

Weird thing is, Gonz and Gema can be fought in either order, even though Gema is the boss. Each one guards an eye.

After getting lost some more in this infernal dungeon, we find...

...Gema. I prefer Bishop Ladja. Regardless, like I said, you can fight this guy before his goon. He's easier to find, so chances are a lot of people do it that way. Seems wrong to me though, so I always go for the goon first.

I bring the Familial Unit for this fight because it's a family matter. He's no joke, and much nastier than Gonz.

Eventually I eke out a win, and Steph gets her best attack in the process, which would have helped on the fight if I'd realized I was that close to getting it.

Back at Zenithia, it looks like the aptly-named Pusan is being confronted by Zenithians. He's a fake Zenithian! He's a PHONY!

"Ya PHONY!" they screech.

Pusan then transforms into the Dragon God of Zenithia and takes his throne. Well, uh...oops

The Zenithians are all "hey uh, forget about all that stuff we were saying" as the Dragon God gives us our final mission: Defeat the real bosses of the Order of Zugzawang. Or however it's spelled. Turns out Gema was just a pawn in a much larger game of evil.

Next time: I finish this game off once and for all.



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