Fargay has evidently had a lot of practice shoving his sword into a vast array of young men, as he makes my party his bitches. And enjoys it immensely. I finally kick his ass with only Biotch still standing. With only 8 HP. Bow before my pure dumb luck mastery. Afterward, Fargay admits that he is impressed by my shitty battle party, but reminds them that he and the other dudes are pirates, so they have no honor or whatever. Uh-oh. I want to go home. Cronabe suddenly does a Steve-style pass-out at Fargay’s feet, as apparently the ass pirate coated his sword with rohypnol. Glenn and Biotch fall unconscious as well, although the pirates will probably just stow Biotch in a storage closet while they ravage the young men.
I guess that’s better than sticking them in the hole, if you follow me.
Since no sleep sequence would be complete without a deeply-meaningful-yet-totally-fucking-confusing dream, we join Cronabe’s subconscious, which is basically an FMV run through the acid trip filter. An evil-looking panther demon growls, runs, and leaps. And that’s it. Wow, that sure gave me a lot of new and useful information regarding Cronabe’s panther demon attack.
After that totally pointless shit, Cronabe and the others wake up in a small room with barrels, boxes, spears, and a save point. I often like to put my prisoners in a room with a bunch of weapons at their disposal. Of course, the party still has their own weapons as well. We’re clearly not dealing with a group of pirates moonlighting as rocket scientists, here.
‘Are you saying I look fat?’
Glenn wonders if Cronabe is okay, and from Cronabe’s ambiguous head movements, we can draw no conclusion. Glenn warns that something is going on outside. I figure that he’s referring to just outside the room, but instead, the camera takes us all the way up to the deck. Obviously Glenn has super senses. Too bad he couldn’t use them in battle to, I don’t know, not die.
A lone ass pirate stands on the foggy deck, presumably on watch. My suspicions are confirmed as he talks to himself about being on watch. Thank God for necessary dialogue. He talks to himself about the extremely foggy fog, insisting that he’s not scared. Which means that he really is. Layers upon layers, here. On cue, a creepy sound effect heralds the appearance of a ghost ship. Unlike Fargay’s ship, this one is a real ghost ship. It even has tattered sails hanging off the sides. And what looks like some of that fake spiderweb material that I mentioned earlier. Hooray!
The ass pirate lookout pees his gay pirate pants as some spooky ghosts materialize around the deck. His girly scream over a black screen brings us back to the hold. Surely I will get to use the save point now, particularly after fighting three battles (including two boss battles) in a row. Never underestimate the sadisticness of game designers. Before I even get control of the party, a stupid pirate skeleton runs in and attacks. Fuck a duck. Actually, don’t.
The pirate skeleton is joined by two monsters that look like skulls with four small legs attached. Whether or not these assholes are difficult doesn’t matter — I’m starting the battle with two characters who only have one HP each. If I have to do this all over again, I’m going to scream like Squall being forced to wear flannel. Once again, my elite (I’m so 1337, I type out the word!) skills come into play and I kick ass. After the ghosties are gone, Biotch wonders where all these monsters came from, since she and the others were not privy to the previous scene on deck. Yeah, that would be kind of surreal — you think you’re in for a session of ass pirate gangrape and suddenly you’re attacked by a skeleton and skull spiders. Although a day like that is par for the course for game designers.
Cronabe hops onto the save point like Link onto a pink sparkly tiara. I may as well warn you now — from now until almost the end of the recap, Cronabe is forced to navigate the ship and fight an assload of random battles, if I may use the technical term. Before anyone thinks, “Aha! Jeanne already said that there are no random battles in this game since all the monsters are visible, so I will post on the forums and/or send her a smug correction e-mail!” just hold on one second. While a large number of the battles in question are, indeed, the visible-enemy-that-I-still-can’t-fucking-avoid types, the game designers have created an extra level of aggravation by adding randomly-appearing floaty ghosts that fly out of the wall and right up Cronabe’s ass. I admit that most of the time I don’t have a very good track record of not screaming like a little girl when ghosts pop out of nowhere in games, but in this case, any creepiness disappears in the face of utter annoyance.
With that said, I will still describe stuff in detail because that’s what I do.
The pirate skeleton and his cronies were kind enough to unlock the door on their way in to attack Cronabe and the others, so Cronabe simply steps out into the hallway, which looks like your average pirate ship hallway. The crack creativity must have gone into creating all 40-some fucked up characters. Unfortunately, Pirate Skeleton neglected to unlock the one door that leads to the next part of the hallway. Which is where I want to go, according to the walkthrough. But that’s okay, because I love fighting thousands of random battles just to get from point A to point B.
Loading ...Of course I have to explore every stupid room along the way in order to get the fabulous prizes that the pirates set out for me. In the first one, an ass pirate facing off against a pirate skeleton bitches out Cronabe for escaping. Good to know his priorities are straight. He wanks that he doesn’t need help fighting this battle. Fine, then, I’ll just go steal your treasure over on the shelf. Ass. Then I beat up the skeleton anyway just to make this guy’s metaphorical penis shrink. Yeah, this was obviously before I realized that I’d be fighting ten thousand more pointless battles before the end of the sequence. How innocent I was.
For some reason, I just noticed that no one does victory poses at the end of the battle. Not that it really matters in the long run, but when they kick some ass and then just stand there like retarded zombies, it kind of adds to the whole non-personality thing. Just sayin’.
The arrogant ass pirate is all “I could’ve done that” à la Tidus, but he at least has the decency to apologize, so I don’t have to curse the fact that I can’t take him down as well. Incidentally, he does not have the hallway key. The intense search continues.
Cronabe walks down the hall and saves another pirate from getting boned by a skeleton (get it?!). This guy doesn’t even bother with the thanks, and so pissy is he about his rescue that I suspect he was enjoying himself a little too much. We’ve found our resident necrophiliac. I love making up disturbing backstory for completely throwaway characters.
Ten million unnecessary random battles later, Cronabe heads up a ladder to another floor. A group of burning barrels blocks his path in this area. I never knew that floaty ghosts and skull spiders were pyromaniacs. But I suppose we wouldn’t really understand the seriousness of this invasion if there wasn’t something on fire.
Cronabe enters a nearby door, hoping against all hope that he’ll be able to find a way around those pesky barrels. In a complete coincidence, it turns out that an air vent leads to an adjacent room, which exits into the hallway just past the barrels. Oh happy day! After several minutes of random battles, Cronabe finally reaches this room. And after another fun and thrilling eternity of random battles, he makes it to the hallway. I can’t stress the frequency of these random battles enough. Just keep in mind that whatever irritation you feel from my constant mentions doesn’t even begin to measure up to mine while I played this shit. Seriously, get a grip.
In the hallway, another pirate wonders how they escaped, but unlike his crony from the lower level, he realizes that there are more pressing matters at the moment. Unfortunately, any good will I feel toward this guy for not being a complete asstard is canceled out by the fact that his fat ass blocks the hallway, leaving me open for another round of random battles. Afterward, Cronabe presumably asks him about the ever-important key. It just so happens that the pirate in the small alcove blocked off by Sir Fatass is in charge of the key. The Keymaster hands it over without a second thought. With security such as this, I can see why everyone’s so shocked at Cronabe’s escape. Also, the text box states, “[Cronabe] received the ‘key.'” Those dastardly quotations can really only mean one thing — it’s a penis.
The Keymaster tells Cronabe to go through the downstairs arsenal to get to the deck. Since this is where the locked door leads anyway, his advice is about as useful as a naked woman in Hyrule. To my utter surprise and glee, the game designers teleport me directly to my starting point so that I don’t have to fight through all those battles again. Wait, that’s just in my fantasy world where the game designers aren’t complete raging asscandles. Of course I have to retrace my steps.
Cronabe uses the “key,” once again in quotes, to unlock the door to the arsenal. I get an eyeful of phallic cannons all in a row right before a skull spider zooms straight up my ass. After dispatching it, Cronabe heads out a door that leads to the outside of the ship. This game doesn’t have as many interesting character moves as Wind Wanker, but we’ll still imagine that Cronabe has to sidle girlishly along the little shelf that leads to a ladder. Floaty ghosts pop out of various openings, after Cronabe’s sweet young flesh (or perhaps his “key”), but he’s too quick for them this time. SUCK IT, ASSHOLES! Not that I’m bitter.
The ladder leads down to another shelf, this one under the oars. A couple of skull spiders smugly swagger back and forth along its length, leering at Cronabe as if to say, “Come and get it, bitch.” But Cronabe is smarter now. No longer will he be lured by false promises of experience points and character upgrades. He sidesteps them as gracefully as a gay ballerina, entering a door at the end of the pathway.
I have entered hell. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but let me explain. This room contains four types of things: a stairway leading up to the next level, an assload of treasure chests undoubtedly filled with bounties thus far unimagined by the human race, Pip the Gay Pokemon, and more fucking skull spiders. The latter parade around the room like those naked people in the locker room at the gym who are just a little too comfortable with their own nudity. Avoiding them is about as easy as avoiding assholes on the internet.