I work my way through the valley, fighting more Goos than you can shake a wand at. There are a few simplistic ‘puzzles’ during the course of the dungeon, but I’ll spare myself the pain of reliving them. After what seems like a few hours, I stumble across a strange old man and his dog. The old man has the freakiest bushy eyebrows you’ve ever seen. He offers to loan me a shovel (and his precious pooch) so that I can dig for treasure. I feel another tedious minigame approaching…

….and creepy old men with freaky eyebrows.

The treasure hunting minigame works like this: the old guy’s dog enters a circular ‘room’ and sniffs around for anything suspicious. He barks when he finds a treasure spot. Once the dog has finished, Ruley enters the room armed with his shovel (I resist the temptation to leap through the TV screen and hack Sandy’s head off with it). Now Ruley must use the shovel to dig at the points where the retarded dog sniffed out treasure. This would be somewhat bearable if it wasn’t for the fact that, by the time Ruley enters the area, the player has forgotten exactly where the dog stopped. Or maybe that’s just me, because I suck. Finally marking the dog’s treasure points by sticking tape on the TV screen, I manage to dig up numerous items, including a Sage’s Staff (used by Sandy) and the elusive Sandflier Parts. Woohoo! Maybe now I can actually repair the Sandflier and get away from this fucking desert.

Potential pedophile at 12 o’clock!

So, back to Sarai. I return to the tavern…but wait! Something isn’t right. The screen is completely black. Some ominous music plays as a creepy-looking blond man (well, he looks creepy in his avatar) says: “Don’t be afraid…”. Ew. I wonder if he’s talking to a child. Surprisingly, the screen lights up and I see that the pedophilic man is in fact speaking to the merchant from earlier…you know, the one who was telling the story about the dragon in the pit. Lord knows we’ve met about 30 travelling merchants already. For some reason, everyone else who was previously in the tavern has vanished. The game designers’ laziness shines through once again.

The creepy man looks like a general, as he is surrounded by generic soldiers. The soldiers look the same as the ones who attacked Hamlet in the last recap. I think this is supposed to be important, but I’m too busy staring at Wanky General’s humongous nose to notice.

When the terrified merchant refuses to comply with Wanky General, he finds himself flying across the room courtesy of a magic blast. It seems that Wanky General is somewhat of a ruthless bastard. Sandy ever-so-gracefully descends the stairs into the heart of the tavern, and rushes over to tend to the unconscious merchant. This is a big mistake, as Wanky General decides to capture her. Why, I don’t know. Maybe he wants to do us all a favour.

Wanky General and Sandy now have a ‘dramatic’ confrontation. Sandy’s all “I thought the war was over!”, and Wanky General’s all “there’s a difference between a ceasefire and a declaration of peace, you stupid bitch!” Wait, I made the last three words up. Damn.

“Do you know anything about my sister?” Sandy wanks. Oh, she means the sister who she was so desperate to find in the last recap, but hasn’t mentioned since. How convenient that Sandy remembers her sister right at this moment. Wanky General responds by ordering his guards to grab the “little girl”. No comment.

Let’s just analyze this for a minute — Wanky General is an arrogant, manipulative, egomaniacal, annoying shit with a larger-than-average nose. He sounds not unlike a certain WWE wrestler. So, from here on out, Wanky General shall be known as Triple H.

Triple H now, using some graphically-pretty-but-otherwise-pointless effects, conjures up the most overused boss in the world of RPGs — a bunch of floating pieces of armor. Scary. From now on, this incarnation (for we will meet other variations on the rusty junk theme) is known as Scrap Metal.

Sandy is then forced to fight Scrap Metal…alone. Gasp! How will she ever win? She’s only a stereotypical RPG female, after all. I mean, come on – the magic blast from her wand is about as powerful as my goldfish. And my goldfish, bless its soul, died back in 1995.

But I digress. Surprisingly, Sandy fares pretty well against Scrap Metal. I’ve worked out that her usually-crappy Sever magic (that’s a level 1 Wind spell to you and me) unbalances Scrap Metal, disabling it for a turn. Triple H, here’s a little tip: next time you summon an ancient guardian, make sure it’s wind-resistant before you waste the AP. Even without casting Sever this boss is a complete wuss. After a few turns, Sandy makes RPG history by becoming the first female healer to absolutely destroy a boss – without the male hero jumping in to help her. Speaking of which, after the battle, Ruley jumps down from the walkway, heroically protecting Sandy. Uh, maybe this act would have been even more heroic if Ruley had helped Sandy earlier, instead of watching while she was attacked by a ten-feet-tall chunk of metal. Bastard. Wait, what am I saying? I’m supposed to hate Sandy. Okay…Sandy, you fucking bitch. There, all better now.

Triple H and Ruley have a stare-down, before Triple H (sounding eerily like his real-life counterpart) spouts some annoying and boring crap for ten minutes about Ruley not being able to beat him. I just hope he isn’t about to start screwing a mannequin or talking-a, like-a, this-a. Ruley, ever the pacifist (ha) responds by slashing Triple H’s face with the King’s Sword, which now unfortunately breaks. The King should sue. If his legendary sword can be broken by taking a much-needed swipe at a big-nosed, blond-haired poseur then it isn’t much of a weapon. I begin to laugh upon visualising the above scenario on a WWE event:

Good Ol’ JR: Oh mah gawd! Ruley just sliced The Game’s face open! Triple H is being whipped like a government mule! Now Ruley’s runnin’ like a scolded dog! Good God almighty! This is heinous!
Jerry Lawler: Heinous…anus! Stacy Keibler! Puppies! Pu – oh yeah, I almost forgot this is a wrestling show.
Spoiler for possible boss battle: Triple H wins!

However, it turns out that we don’t have to lay down for HHH (ew, not in that way). Instead, Ruley and Sandy courageously decide to high-tail it out of the tavern. Their bravery brings a tear to my eye. We are shown another fine example of the game designers’ laziness when Ruley and Sandy emerge on the World Map. Oh, I guess they stumbled upon a magic teleportation device on the stairs, meaning that they didn’t have to spend half an hour trying to find their way out of AlleyLand. Man, they’ll have to show me where this teleporter is before I beat myself silly with the controller through frustration.

So, Ruley and Sandy are fugitives…well, they might be. It’s kinda hard to figure out right now. I’ll leave that burning question until the next thrilling installment. Next time, Ruley and Sandy enter a cursed town (any town becomes cursed as soon as Sandy steps through its gate), and acquaint themselves with the most hated tin can in the history of RPGs and GameFaqs. Oh, and we’ll finally manage to find Clay again (I can hardly contain my excitement). Until then, take care. I’ll be stocking up on Valium to get me through the next hour of this game.