This is hands-down the best hero design in this entire series, IMO. It's kinda too bad that such an awesome design was spent on one of the more middling games. Regardless, time to get in-depth and try to make some sense out of this game's convoluted plot.
Our blue-haired hero discovers that he was a prince in the Other World, long-rumored to have died on an expedition. Now, he unwittingly finds himself at the center of POLITICAL INTRIGUE~! as he "returns" to the kingdom that thought he was lost.
Not only did the Prince go missing, the King and Queen are trapped in a perpetual sleep of unknown origins.
...I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but who exactly is fourth in line for succession?
Captain Rusty is the alternate universe version of Captain Blade, who we met earlier. He's much nicer than Captain Blade, but he can also be kind of dull.
Looks like Chancellor Keating is fourth in line for rulership, and thus has been running everything while the royal family are mysteriously incapacitated.
::Darth Helmet's theme plays::
"PREPARE FOR CHANCELLOR KEATING"
::the theme continues as he walks past his shivering minions::
Our hero must be standing there confused at all of this. I guess he's playing along with their thinking he's the Prince? It's hard to tell when he's a mute.
The Chancellor seems surprised that he's here, and passive-aggressively treats him like his nemesis.
The Chancellor challenges our hero to answer a question that only he would know the answer to.
I just realized that "Vanessa" is a super hot name. Need to pocket that name for some other game.
After (inevitably) getting the answer wrong, they throw our hero out of the castle since he's clearly an imposter.
Stuff happens where I take a nap in this hovel and wake up in the other world...which is my original world...which is the Dream World. I don't know. At this point the story of this game is really starting to lose me with how convoluted it is. I just want to get to the class change part and start doing some customizing.
Steve Martin: "What the heeeeell is that?"
What it is...is that the waterways are turning to blood!
Nun: "Dios mio! The planet...she is having a period!"
::cut to footage of people running for their lives::
Our heroes climb inside of the nearby cave where all of the blood is emanating from.
Soldier: "Dios mio! It smells like...like pennies!"
Stuff happens with this Russian couple. I also fight a boss.
This guy. It happened. There was a fight. No big whoop.
All of that gets us this key, which gets us into the tower that holds Ra's Mirror (Remember that? Yeah, we're still after it)
The tower is interesting. It's full of mirrors, like 90's Shawn Michaels' house.
In here is Ashlynn, a ghost. She's also a hot redhead who resembles Bulma from DBZ. I continue to like the character design in this game a lot.
Our heroes sprinkle Dream Dew all over Ashlynn to turn her back into a non-ghost.
A soaked Ashlynn is very thankful. She's basically a weaker mage type character. With the class system (Coming Soon) anyone can have any abilities, so we'll see how things go with her. I'm thinking I'll keep her in the Mage field, but she's already pretty weak HP-wise. Either way, she's my new pet project character.
Now that she's un-ghosted, let's take a look at our newest party member:
Forget Bulma, that's totally Marle if she decided to stop wearing pants.
The other characters get one image to introduce them. Not Ashlynn, she gets ALL THE IMAGES.
Here she is...about to throw a Spirit Bomb?
Yeah, it's pretty clear from the Toriyama artwork that she's intended to be a mage character. So she's basically a fusion of Marle and Lucca.
Mucca? Larle?
I like the mirror gimmick in this dungeon. If something looks different in the mirror than it does on "your side", it's worth investigating. For example, this stairwell that was invisible here, yet visible in the mirror.
Here it is, one of the most interesting recurring items in this series. When you think about it, this whole tower was made of Ra's Mirrors. Whoaaaaa dude
Ashlynn starts at level 1, which is rough. I used to like when new characters in RPGs started at a low level, because it was like a new beginning where you got to see them level up fast. Now, though, it's just irritating for me when this happens.
Speaking of Lucca, time for Madame Luca's Exposition Dump~!
So, my world of origin was just the dream world of some other real world, meaning we're just apparitions that aren't supposed to exist in the real world.
She supplies us with an upgrade to the Zoom (Return) spell, which now not only lets you warp between towns, it lets you switch worlds at will. Should make things less-confusing in terms of knowing which world I'm in, as well. Note: This upgrade doesn't exist in the SFC version, so you have to hoof it to an access point if you want to switch worlds there. Needless to say this is a huge QOL upgrade for the remake.
We get the mirror for King Somnus, which means...
...Captain Blade can now find out if the king is actually a monster, or something.
Instead, it turns out that...
...the king is a woman!
.............
So...the King isn't really the King. What about that Chancellor Keating guy back home? Can we get the Mirror of Ra trained on that guy?
Queen Apnea, as she is now known, is from...the other world. What other world? The one that isn't this one.
"WHICH one??"
Captain Blade decides to engage in a coverup of King Somnus being actually a woman from another dimension. It's time to go ahead with the assault on Murdaw, known in the Japanese version as Maou Mudo. A far more intimidating name, so I'm gonna stick with that.
First, you can get some really good armor for Ashlynn by going back to the very first town and buying the Enchanted Armor on display (that it wouldn't let you buy before). It can be expensive, but it's got a lot of defense and is, most importantly, mage-equippable.
I've been neglecting Party Talk a lot, and here's why. Nearly all of the PT in this game is just characters giving you a clue of something you need to do. I haven't seen much character development at all, and for the most part the characters in this game are all blank slates after their initial flurry of character when you first get them. Carver was a pretty cool guy for a while after he joined, but eventually even he just became another silent blank slate.
Apnea goes with us to battle Maou Mudo in his underground lair. This isn't the place from the intro of the game. She also suggests that he may pretend to be someone else, but that he is indeed the villain. All of this reeks of Apnea actually being the villain, and tricking us into destroying her enemies for her because they might be the Archfiend in disguise. I DON'T BUY IT.
...nevermind. I don't know why they portray it like you might be fighting the wrong enemy, because the Archfiend appears right away in his normal Archfiend-y form and straight-up belches at you that he's the bad guy. No subterfuge from him at all.
This is the first of THREE battles with Maou Mudo in this game. They got a lot of mileage out of this game's Baramos/Esturk/Magus.
This first fight is pretty easy, and once it's over you can point Ra's Mirror at him to reveal...
...that he is actually King Somnus! From this world, not the other world. Whichever world that was.
"Well then where are WE??"
Wait, why? I'm already thrown off by King Somnus being a woman from another dimension, now it turns out the other King Somnus, who switched over to this dimension, was "playing the part" of Maou Mudo in this world and the REAL Maou Mudo is in the other world.
Why? Why was he playing a part? Who?
"Are WE Maou Mudo??"
That's because Spike is an HONEST-TO-GOD PRINCE.
This is how I feel about the plot of this game, at this point.
They know how confusing the story is because they interrupt it with some text to explain it. Generally if you need to stop and explain what's going on, it means you should probably revise the story a bit. Highlander: The Source does this at the very end because probably half the viewers were sitting there completely confused by then.
Finally, some dialogue that makes sense. Let's get our reward and get going on the next quest.
Stuff happens, and we get thrown into the dungeon for impersonating ourselves. Yeah okay.
The alternate universe stuff CAN be interesting. Like when you meet the same person in both worlds and they're wildly different. As someone who loves alternate universe stuff and discussing alternate universe versions of things, I should love all of this. However, most of the time it's just completely convoluted plot-wise, and the two worlds themselves are nearly identical so most of the time I don't know which one I'm in unless I just warped. Think I mentioned it earlier, but it would have solved a lot of problems if one world had blue trees or something.
Maybe I was just smarter in 2000, but I had no such issues with Chrono Cross and its dual-world system. Yeah, occasionally it got confusing, but I usually knew where I was and why.
It's time to strike out against Maou Mudo! ...Again! This time in the other world, and this time presumably the real one who isn't a morphed king for some reason.
We now get our next party member: Darth Nevan the Ubernerd.
This guy is a NEEEEERD. He's also equipped with that ridiculously good Healmore cane mentioned previously, which can be used by other characters so the game doesn't force you to keep him on the team.
Our heroes sail away for the Island of Maou Mudo, the place where this all began. Next time, on Dragon Quest VI!
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