Nikki’s big secret is how they can get to Viper Manor through some waterway. However, it’s blocked by a big monster. Surprise! There’s a special way to move the monster, involving luring the little octopus monsters with their favorite food over to the big monster so that the big monster can eat them. Isn’t that nice? Nikki says that he’s going to return to Termina until Cronabe needs him. So much for wanting to come along. He offers another song, but the others walk away. Burn.
Now I get to rename Nikki. Hopefully you won’t get confused when I start calling him Frank, as in Frank N. Furter. If this is a little difficult for you to follow, then you need to stop sniffing the glue, or else become a game designer.
Just like me! Oh God, that’s disturbing
In the cave, Cronabe finds another part of Skelly. When he’s reassembled is he going to be a fully-animated clown skeleton? Because that’s even scarier than what he is right now. Skelly has a whiny little “My life sucked” spiel, but we don’t really care.
“I’m sure things will be a lot different now that you are an animated clown skull.
Now is the fun part where Cronabe uses pollen to lure innocent little creatures to their doom. It would be like me using a dog treat to make my dog follow me…..right to the jaws of a hungry lion. And if that weren’t bad enough, Cronabe then slaughters the monster that ate the octopus. I don’t really understand why the game designers couldn’t just let Cronabe hack the shit out of the monster in the first place if he needed to get past. It does not. Make. Sense.
Run away, little octopus guy! Run away!
After defeating the monster, Cronabe and the others continue on to find a pond with a cave at one end. Unfortunately, they are attacked by some dragoons. One guy is up in a tree. He wears a helmet and talks in all caps. Obviously this dude spends a lot of time annoying the shit out of people on the internet. Blah blah blah, he can’t let them pass. He jumps out of the tree, and you’d think it would hurt to land in shallow water from that height, but he seems fine. Steelhead Capsman announces that he is “ZOAH, ONE OF THE 4 DEVAS OF THE ACACIA DRAGOONS.” I originally misread that as “DIVAS” and expected Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Celine Dion to show up. But this is an RPG, not a horror game. ZOAH announces that he will let Cronabe pass if Cronabe defeats him. Gee, I wonder if that will happen.
Speaking of shocks and surprises, the other two guards are Solt and Peppor. Oh, I can hardly wait for the wacky hijinks in this battle. This time Solt brought a Summoning element, but forgot that the entire field effect needs to be the same color. Unfortunately for him, he already tried to use the element so he can’t use it again! Whoops. That was pointless and supposedly funny. Kind of like my recap.
Does this question really need to be asked?
ZOAH says, “ARE YOU CLOWNS FINISHED WITH YOUR COMEDY ACT YET?” and this is our clue that the actual battle has commenced.
After the battle (how’s that for segue?), some sad music starts playing and ZOAH announces that he and Cronabe will meet again. The sad music seems horribly out of place, but I like it. It kind of reminds me of the ending theme of ICO. Except that ICO had more character development.
Cronabe, Gandy, and Biotch enter the watery cave. It’s dark (duh), wet (duh), mysterious (duh), and I know there are some sickos out there who just interpreted that in a sexual way. Shame on you. That’s my job.
The puzzle in the cave consists of a hole with a bunch of bugs jumping out of it, a random zombie monster, and a rock. The solution is to kill the zombie, then push the rock to block the hole, but man — who thinks this shit up?
What were you expecting? Fluffy bunnies and rainbows?
At the end of the cave is a vine, and Gandy (who, as slow as she is, is still the brains of the bunch) realizes that they are at the bottom of a well, under Viper Manor. After nightfall, they’ll sneak in. Cue an FMV of the manor looking all creepy with clouds over the moon and the silhouette of a dragon. The whole point of the FMV was to show us that it’s nighttime or that the manor looks cool or something.
Cut to the exterior of Viper Manor. It’s dark and there are crickets chirping, unlike every other nighttime scene EVER. The well is located in the corner of the grounds. Sneaky music plays as Cronabe and the others climb out for a night of breaking and entering.
There are searchlights that Cronabe and friends must avoid, and I bet all the random townspeople whose houses get broken into by RPG heroes wish they had this caliber of security system. A random doorway at one end of the yard leads to a dragon stable. As one would expect, there are about fifty billion dragons in the stable.
The dragon caretaker dude makes the same mistake as the soldiers from earlier in what I’m going to call the “Hey, you must be the….!” cliché. “You must be the new helpers I was told about,” the caretaker assumes. Gandy asks if he has a key to the manor. You know, out of the two speaking characters in the party, only Gandy has had any lines during this recap. What does this say about the other characters?
The caretaker says he’ll hand over the key if Cronabe and the others help him feed the dragons. In RPG-speak this translates to “Pointless mini-game that I suck at.” It only takes me two tries, which must be a new record for that particular genre of mini-game. With the key in hand, Cronabe and crew head over to the manor.