Phantasy Star: Polar Exploration

 

I'm not a very good time manager.

    

Let's bring back a feature that I introduced here but never continued.

   

Overview of this session

   

• Flew to Dezoris and explored a lot of caves and the towns of Skure and Twintown.
• Learned I needed to find a Laconian Sword, Shield, Axe, and Armor.
• Bought an Ice Digger but never used it.
• Found the Laconian Armor in some compound.
• Explored the Corona Tower and exchanged my Amber Eye for an Eclipse Torch.
• Back on Palma, found the flute, then forgot about it.
• Found the hovercraft in Bortevo, used it to explore some islands.
• Found the Laconian Sword.
• Found the island town of Drasgow, explored a dungeon, bought a Gas Shield.
• Used the Gas Shield on Motavia to get to the town of Sopia. Learned about a hermit and the Mirror Shield.
• Found the Mirror Shield.
• Noah defeated a monk named Tarzimal in combat and got a FRD Mantle or FRAD Mantle.
• Went to the Tower of Medusa, defeated her, got the Laconian Axe.

    

Dezoris

 

The party begins our fourth entry a little rudderless. We know we need to find and defeat Lassic, but we don't know where he is or otherwise have clear guidance for the next step. We only know what's open to us. Our two major paths are to try to find a hovercraft on Palma, which theoretically should open more of Palma and Motavia for exploration, or go to the third planet, Dezoris.

     

Is the game trying to get me to go somewhere?

      

I choose the second option, as we happen to be next to our spaceship anyway. We blast off and arrive after a short flight. The manual map suggests that Dezoris consists of a bunch of mountains and canyons, with only a couple of towns and a lot of caves. As we land, we see the ground is covered in ice and snow.

   

The ship is supposed to take us to a city called Skure, but the "city" has only one thing in it: the entrance to a cave. We enter, follow a linear passage in which we meet a new enemy with an amusing name . . .

       

   

. . . and then come out in an underground city. I guess this must be the real Skure.

        

If it's underground, how do trees and grass grow? If it's not, where is the snow?

    

We find:

     

• The armory sells a wand, a laser gun, and a glove. We have just enough money for all three. The glove serves as a "shield" for Myau; the wand is supposedly the best weapon Noah can use. I don't know if the laser gun is better for Odin than the light saber. I guess it depends on how many enemies we're facing.

     

I'm still not sure why we're bringing a cat into battle.

      

• "Dezoris is a world of ice." I think I could have figured that out.

• "There are places in the mountains where the ice is soft and impassable to those on foot." Another need for the hovercraft? 

• "The Altiplano Plateau is at the top of the Ice Mountain." And there are Laerma Trees there, but I don't know what I need them for.

• "Arms made of Laconia conceal holy power. Lassic fears this power and has been running and hiding in different places in the planets of the Algol system." I guess I'll have to find some. Or I could smash my pot over his head.

• "The Dead Guaron Morgue have been called back to life! What fear!" How is a morgue "called back to life?" 

• "An eclipse occurs on this planet once every hundred years. A torch lit during an eclipse is called an 'eclipse torch' and is regarded as holy by the Dezorians." An American torch or a British torch? Because one is going to be a lot easier to keep in a backpack.

• "Most emigrants from Palma settle here."  

     

But are their children citizens?

    

• "I don't know a lot about this planet, but word has it that there is a town of native Dezorians in the far reaches of the mountains."

• "If you really want to kill Lassic, you had best find a sword, axe, shield, [and] armor made of Laconia." Okay, that's more of a quest than I had 10 minutes ago, though I don't see why more than one of those things is necessary.

     

The only way out is the way we came in. We hit the tundra for a little while, looking for other things in the area, but the only place not blocked by mountains is a cave to the south. Before checking it out, I'm curious what will happen if I use a "Fly" spell to teleport to the last place I visited a church, in Uzo. It turns out not only does "Fly" work across planets, but The Luveno is waiting when we arrive.

   

Knowing that I have the option to warp to safety when I feel like it, I enter the cave. We get attacked by Dezorians a few times, which look like "evilheads," which look like horror versions of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Most of the enemies that attack us are surprisingly weak given that you have to have completed a decent portion of the game to get here, but there are occasional white dragons, wyverns, and serpents.

      

Sorry to kill you, man. It's your planet.

    

After a brief single level, the cave spits us out into a hollow with another cave entrance. We take it. The same thing happens again. We exit our third cave in a much bigger area. I follow the right wall, take another cave entrance, and emerge in a small area with another town.

     

From one cave to another.

    

As with Skure, we have to travel through a brief tunnel before we reach the town itself, underground. It's called "Twintown," I guess because it has two major sections connected by a narrow passage. Its residents are native Dezorians. We find:

   

West Side:

• "The neighboring village are all liars! Don't listen to them!" Oh, I know this logic puzzle. 

• "To ze west of ze Corona Tower is ze Dezoris Cave. Our friends are in zere. Give zem our best, OK?" And from this moment, I hear everything else on Dezoris in a French accent.

• "Ze Corona Tower stands on ze far side of the mountain to ze north of zis village."

• "Laerma Trees grow ze Laerma berries. Zose berries are our most important food, but it shrivels up after a few moments unless it is put in Laconian pot." At least I know now what the pot is for.  

• "We of zis town hate Palmans."

      

Well, excuse me.

    

• "Do you know what Aeroprism is?" NO. "It lets you see another world."  

       

Moving between the sides of town.

  

East Side:

• "This town welcomes all Palmans. Yes, indeed, we do."

• "If you use a crystal in front of a Laerma Tree, it will become, yes, a Laerma Nut. Yes, indeed." 

• "Blue Laerma Nuts used in dyes. Yes, they are, indeed."

• "There is a spring of life in the Corona Tower. There is, yes."

• "You can warp from the 10th level of the dungeon under Dezoris, yes." 

• "The neighboring village are all liars! Don't listen to them!"

   

So I'm going to assume that one side is, in fact, all liars. Something about the way the east siders all qualify their statements makes me suspect it's them, but I'll be on the lookout for both possibilities. 

   

Here's an oddly-named foe.

    

There are two second-hand shops, one of which sells an Ice Digger for 12,000. After selling my excess stuff, I have 9,521. I'm not sure I want to take the time to come back here if I can help it, so I pop back into the dungeon that brought me here for some grinding.

   

You've seen me stop to grind in a number of places. Because this is a console game, which allows me certain exceptions from my normal rules, I've been doing it by putting the emulator in "turbo" mode, which allows me to just pound the "A" button to execute attacks in rapid succession. I time it, and a battle with 3 werebats at normal speed takes 20 seconds, including opening the chest afterwards, while in "turbo" mode, it takes 2. It's also easier to grind in dungeons because you just have to spin in place instead of having to walk back and forth outdoors. And this is the perfect place since there's a healer just outside the dungeon entrance.

       

Pausing to restore hit points.

    

So it's not more than 10 minutes before I have plenty of money—I actually overshot it by a few thousand. In a few moments, I have my Ice Digger, and I'm headed back out to the tundra. The Ice Digger turns out to be another vehicle, one with rotating grinding things (there's got to be a word for them) in front. It does not allow me to just plow through regular mountains.

     

I should be able to tear apart this town.

    

I take the cave network back to the large area and continue exploring along the right wall. Let me tell you something that starts to get annoying. Almost every enemy drops a flashlight, which the party picks up automatically and then has to manually drop from the inventory. Why not give the player the option to take something or not? 

    

One of the unique enemies here.

    

After a long trip, we come to some kind of compound tucked in the mountains. A Dezorian stops us as we enter: "What have you come for? Do you intend some mischief?"

     

A few minutes later, we walk into a pit trap and get dumped down to the next level. I have Myau cast "Exit" to take us outside, return to the same area, and see if the "TRAP" spell works in such situations, since there doesn't seem to be any way to use it to disarm chest traps. It does work. This comes in handy later when we encounter another one, reload, disarm it, and find a treasure chest with Laconian Armor on the other side. I give it to Odin, for whom I'm now glad I didn't pay 15,000 mesetas for the diamond armor.

      

I wasn't really expecting that my armor would talk much.

      

Feeling like what started as a side trip has been seriously worth it, we continue circling the land. Another small cave takes us to another large, open area, and from there to another compound. I think this might be the Corona Tower we previously heard about, as there are multiple levels. On the first, we run into several Dezorian NPCs, one of whom says, "Lassic lives in fear of the crystal possessed by the soothsayer named Damor. There is something special about it, without a doubt."

      

If we're lucky, there's beer in here.

    

The enemies are very difficult, including red dragons; titans; this tall, crystal sentinel-looking guy inexplicably named "Amundsen"; and the most badass-looking "centaur" I've ever seen in an RPG. I start running low on hit points and spell points, and I need to save enough to EXIT out of here and FLY home. I stop opening treasure chests halfway through the tower. 

     

I would love to know the backstory here.

Why not cover your hooves in armor, too?

    

We finally make it to the fourth or fifth floor and to the end of a long, winding corridor. Through a locked door, we find a Dezorian who wants to sell us an Eclipse Torch in exchange for our Amber Eye. I really don't want to have to come back here, so hoping that I don't need the Amber Eye somewhere else, I make the trade and EXIT back to the frosted landscape. I never found a place to exit onto this Altiplano Plateau.

       

I have no idea what this is for.

   

With our little life remaining, we keep exploring and come to yet another cave. A Dezorian meets us inside: "Be careful up ahead. At the break in the road, go to the left!" I do my best, but it's clear this is going to be a long dungeon, and I don't have the strength for it. I guess it didn't take me that long to get here. I can come back. I cast FLY and return to Uzo for healing and my ship, annoyed that I never found a place to use the Ice Digger.

 

Palma

     

All right, the hovercraft is supposed to be back in Bortevo, which I'm pretty sure I thoroughly searched looking for the stupid robot. The first thing we do is search an obvious place in Gothic for the flute and find it. Then we make the long walk along the coast and through the lava to Bortevo. By the time I get there, I would be willing to pay real money to ignore random combats.

      

(After finding the flute, I forget about it until near the end of the session. If used in combat, it puts an enemy to sleep for a round. I'd use it in an emergency.)

     

The flute enchants a reaper.

   

The hovercraft is literally in the first house I search.

      

Where was it last time I was here? A hovercraft is pretty hard to hide.

     

I'm not sure where to go with it, but I head outside to the beach, activate it, and start looking for any land masses I haven't seen before. It became clear on Dezoris that the maps in the manual aren't complete; or, rather, there are parts of them occluded by clouds. I focus on those areas. It would be nice if you couldn't get attacked while on the water, or while in any vehicle, but alas this is not the case.

         

Here I am, your special island.

       

I find and enter a pyramid-shaped dungeon on an island. This turns out to be the largest dungeon in the game so far, at least five levels, but with multiple interconnected sections and lots of pit traps. The enemies aren't too hard at first, but the traps in the chests that they drop keep doing massive damage. I eventually stop opening them. I do not stop opening chests that I find at the ends of corridors, as I figure they might have quest items. For a while, all I find are small amounts of money and burgers.

    

A rare battle in which I bother to use spells.

     

By the time I get to the fifth floor, which at the time I don't know is the final one, enemies are a lot harder, especially this "marauder" who has a spell that halves everyone's hit points. I hate fleeing from enemies because when it doesn't work (which is often), they get a free round of attacks. Fortunately, I persist, because when I reach the final room (again, after a long, winding hallway) and defeat a red dragon, I find a Laconian Sword. I give it to Alis, replacing her light saber.

     

Alis's loadout.

    

After a trip to Scion to heal, we jump back in the hovercraft to continue exploring the seas. It helps that the world wraps. I don't think there's anything to find in the rivers between islands, so I just have to explore the areas on the "outside" by bouncing between known points. Before long, I find an island in the southeast part of the map. It looks like a little town on a platform.

    

Beautiful sunrises and sunsets, sucks during a hurricane.

    

It is a town, it turns out, though not a big one. It's called Drasgow.

   

• "Long ago, I saw a giant rock float through the sky." Cool story, bro.

• "There is a magic sword in a tower on a forgotten island." Not anymore!

• "The top of the hill called Baya Malay is always hidden by clouds. Something must be up there!" I'm not even sure where that is.

• "You are daring to have found your way here even though the sea lanes are closed to ships." 

    

And there's a small dungeon, one level, no monsters. When I enter, an NPC says: "I hear they sell a Gas Shield here, but I don't know where the shop is! What a mess!" Confusing things, there's a guy who pretends to run a shop but then just says he was "pulling my leg."

     

What is it with stores in dungeons?

     

But there is a real shop, where a guy sells us a Gas Shield for 1,000 mesetas. I think I remember hearing about some place that had poisonous gas, but I'll have to go back through my notes.

       

We still have more to do on Palma. Now that it's easy to get around with the hovercraft, I return to the starting area, go north of Scion, and enter the walled compound with the locked door. It won't open to our Dungeon Key, but it does open to the "Open" spell. It appears to be some kind of prison. There are NPCs in cells along the walls:

       

• "All who face Lassic lose their souls to his magic!"  

• A Dezorian: "Have you found the armor in Guaron?" YES. "Well, aren't you something?"

• "It's foolish to try to get Lassic!"

• "Get me out of here? But it's in vain." 

• "Lassic is gonna sacrifice us! Agh!"

    

I don't know if she means metaphorically.

    

• "There is a tower at the top of Baya Malay. Something secret is hidden at the top of the tower!"

• "There are guards up ahead!" 

       

There are guards up ahead. They demand to see my Roadpass. When I hand it over, they declare it a fake and toss me in "jail," where an NPC tells me of a "way out." I look around and find a door that takes me back to the main entrance. So I guess that's out until I find a "real" Roadpass.

 

At least he's cheerful about it.

     

Motavia

I can't find any other new locations on Palma, so we FLY to Motavia. Motavia doesn't have an ocean so much as a lake. We take the hovercraft out to the middle of it and find an island with a single ant lion, but there's nothing special about that ant lion. We try talking to it, which doesn't work, kill it, and search its chest, but only get 8 mesetas.

       

This looks important.

   

Continuing our explorations, we find the gas field to the west of the lake. There is, inexplicably, a town in the middle of it. According to the first NPC we meet, it is called Sopia.

   

• "Before Lassic came to power, even our town had plenty." 

• "I am the head of this town. Because of the cloud of gas, we are cut off from other towns. We are therefore very poor. Will you donate 400 mesetas?" I'm not sure this guy understands how economies work, but I give him the money. "Thank you! According to our legends, the very shield Perseus used to overcome Medusa is buried on the small island in the middle of a lake."

     

Reaching the city through poisonous gas.

     

• "Hi, I'm Miki! Do you like SEGA games!" NO, they always find ways of breaking my immersion. "I can't believe it. If you don't like the game, why have you played so far?!" SEGA did not anticipate a blog that keeps track of win/loss statistics.

• There's a guy who wants a cola, which I happen to have. When I give it to him, all he says is, "Thanks! Come again!"

• "There is a monk named Tajim in the mountains to the south of the lake." That's actually interesting intelligence. 

• "I've heard that Palma is a beautiful planet. Is that true?" YES. "I'd like to go visiting someday."

      

With our new information, we took the hovercraft back to the island and searched cacti until I found the Mirror Shield. Just to confirm, I reload an earlier save and search the same cactus before visiting Sopia, and of course it's not there. I reflect that the information about the Mirror Shield was the only reason to go to Sopia, which in turn was the only reason to visit Drasgow. A CRPG like Ultima IV would have had the same chain of clues but also would have allowed the player to say, "Hey, there must be something special about that island," and search for it without the prompts. Which is the better approach? Discuss.

     

If I recall correctly, Perseus just used his actual shield, which he had polished.

     

The manual says the Mirror Shield should go to Odin, recommending the forthcoming Laconian Shield for Alis. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the manual has a paragraph about literally every item you find in the game, including its statistics. This is helpful, but it also makes the game seem smaller, more linear, and more predictable. Anyway, at this point, there are only three items that I haven't found. The "FRD Mantle," the Laconian Shield, and the Laconian Axe. I wonder what "FRD" stands for. Usually, items abbreviated in the game are spelled out properly in the manual, but here the manual uses this abbreviation. Is it possible that the mantle is fried?

    

The issue becomes even more confusing when we find it. Chasing the "monk" rumor, we hunt around until we find a box canyon we've never explored, follow it to the end, and find ourselves in a three-level dungeon that takes about 45 minutes to explore. On its top level, we meet a wizard named Tarzimal who by his dialogue is Noah's master. He says Noah must pass his final test: "We will duel!"

   

Noah has to fight alone in the subsequent combat, which isn't difficult. Noah isn't a great melee attacker, so I have him use offensive spells. Once he's defeated, Tarzimal says: "You have become much stronger. You are well prepared. I'll give you a Frad Mantle as a gift. It protects you from danger!" I can't find "Frad" in any dictionary or acronym finder, so who knows.

      

The problem with using ALL CAPS is that I don't know if it's a FRAD Mantle or a Frad Mantle.

      

And Palma Again

At some point during all of this, I realize that I never finished the Medusa Tower that I started back on Palma, which I suppose is a good thing if I didn't have the Mirror Shield. 

   

The Medusa Tower is huge. Like all dungeons in the game, I get through it by just following the right wall, but it feels like I go up and down a lot more than makes sense. Anyway, after an hour or so of exploration and combat, I meet Medusa at the top of the tower. The Mirror Shield is never specifically mentioned or invoked, and we defeat her in regular combat. Maybe if we hadn't had the shield, she would have killed us instantly or something. On her body, we find the Laconian Axe.

    

I'll bet we were supposed to USE the Mirror Shield to turn her to stone.

   

Didn't someone say this game was short? I had really hoped to push to the end this time, but I'm out of steam. At this point, I've explored everything I can think of on Palma and Motavia, barring that compound where I need something to pass the guards. Still, with most of Dezoris already explored, I feel like I must be close. Everyone is Level 25 if that's any indicator.

   

Time so far: 20 hours