I’m torn again. The next bit of dialogue is so grossly obnoxious that I can’t bring myself to recap it. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I can properly convey just how awful it is without recapping it verbatim. Oh, the pain. Fine. Fine, I will not shirk my duty as a recapper. Here you go, courtesy of Ryudo the Fucking Fucker: “All she ever wanted was to bring a little happiness into the world. Is THIS what she deserves?! You’re her mother, but you want me to ‘put her out of her misery?’ Ma’am, we do that to our pets, not our children!”

Hate. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.

I don’t think my computer has enough hard drive space to store the file that would result from a rant on the subject of pets vs. children, so I won’t even get into it. Man, I can’t believe I’m this steamed over a comment by a video game character, but that last bit seriously pissed me off. Fuck you, Ryudo, and your fucking child-ass-licking attitude. Bite me, and kindly suck my nonexistent penis.

I feel better now.

On a lighter note, I bet Skye’s really happy to hear that he’s second class to some random chick’s uterine discharge. Still not shutting up, Ryudo continues to practically sob over Samara’s misguided wish to make everyone happy. Everyone else just stands there awkwardly, trying unsuccessfully to disappear.

This embarrassing wankstapalooza is cut “short” when a couple of Eyeball Bats fly by. Millenia tweaks Ryudo by pointing out that this is a sign of Samara’s suffering. So when the girl gets upset, she sends her Eyeball Bats out for a little exercise? What? Ryudo springs into action. In order to reach Samara before that witch Selene, he thinks they should return to the Creepy-Ass Garden. And it’s not because he likes all the pretty flowers. Not at all.

Trying not to look too eager, Ryudo saunters over to the texture mapped fields of his favorite garden. Contrary to Ryudo’s expectations, however, Samara is nowhere to be found. His idea of looking for her in the garden fried his single brain cell, making him unable to think of anywhere else to search. Luckily for him, Millenia uses her Valmardar (Valdar?) to detect that Samara is somewhere in the Creepy-Ass Garden. “Just wait a little,” Millenia tells him.

She walks a few feet away and opens up a purple swirly void in the ground using her sweeping spokesmodel arm motion. This butthole-esque portal leads to…the broken seal. So they could have hopped in the shed hole and saved me the walk. But you can bet if I had attempted that, the stupid game designers would still have made me go to the garden to trigger the next sequence. Jerks.

A black doorway with fabulous glowing purple edges has appeared next to the seal. It looks two-dimensional, but most likely leads somewhere very exciting and mysterious. Millenia announces that it actually leads to Samara’s soul, so I was pretty much wrong. And lucky me, this is one of those point of no return places. Seeing as how sticking around the area and leveling up would simply prolong my Grandia II experience, I opt to just dive in and get it over with.

According to Millenia, the entrance to Samara’s soul has appeared due to Samara’s disappearance within herself. It’s all very deep and meaningful, but it’s still a fricking dungeon. Upon entering, Millenia puns that they’re going to do some “soul-searching.” GET IT?!

Given that many characters in this game, not to mention people in the real world, think that children are innocent, pure beings, one might expect Samara’s soul to reflect this. Maybe with more of her trademark flowers, or even some bunny rabbits hopping cutely about. Sunshine and rainbows. You get the idea. Instead, it’s a barren landscape, speckled with deformed brick walls and leaning pillars. A bunch of aggressive and annoying starfish monsters make it their life’s goal to impede my progress. And the whole area is smokier than a game designer boardroom. This doesn’t seem to fit in with the aforementioned expectations, does it?

Even though finding my way around a landscape with few defining features is so fun with enemies ambushing me left and right, my first step is to clear out those God damn starfish monsters. In my search of the area, it appears that Samara has somehow managed to stash helpful items and money around her soul. Items and money that my party is able to take back to the actual physical world. I’m just going to enjoy this completely nonsensical concept that actually benefits me for once and let you guys engage in a fanwanking deathmatch over it.

Working their way to the end of the area, the party discovers a large golden bell inside a cage. When they ring it…well, a big blue whale with wings floats up from the foggy depths. At first I think that the killer brownie I ate today had some extra ingredients. But it looks like this fucked up sequence is actually in the game.

The whale is not just there for decorative purposes — he’s my ride to the next area of Samara’s diseased brain. Unlike the previous fog-filled part, this one is a barren brown wasteland with rock penises sticking up all over the place. And more sunburned Uruk-hai. Wait, so if there were sunburned Uruk-hai in the cavern by Samara’s house, and the same creatures live in her soul, then what does this mean? Once again, I’ll let you guys fight it out.

Ryudo and company skip past the big gaggle of monsters as well as some strange and random piece of machinery. Their portal to the next area is mere feet away — a giant translucent orb with blue diamonds floating around it and more rock penises surrounding it. At first I was going to make a Lucky Charms joke about the blue diamonds, but then I realized that “brown penises” doesn’t really fit into a children’s cereal.

The orb teleports them to the third and final part of Samara’s soul. This is also the most disturbing and fucked up part. And I thought the pot smoke, starfish, and winged whale was bad. Hoo boy. Several areas of land stick up out of a bubbling pool of red liquid. Lava? Blood? A walkway of stone pedestals leads from the first island to the next. Okay, the bare, pointy trees aren’t that strange, really. The pine trees surrounded by random fences are kind of out there, but still within the realm of sanity. Then there are the eyeballs. Eyeballs everywhere. A pond of blood lava in the middle of the land? Has an eyeball with leaves floating in it. The bridges that connect the islands? Blocked by eyeballs that disappear with a squishing noise when Ryudo approaches. Then there are the hills with numerous eyeballs, some of which appear to be sucking up the blood lava. And last but not least, a gigantic freaking eyeball is nestled in the middle of a depression in the blood lava lake.

I may be making an understatement here, but this isn’t the most pleasant of places. And I’m sure the creepiness is 100% due to Valmar’s influence and not some weird eyesight obsession on the part of Samara. Yup. Finally, the group reaches a ledge overlooking the giant eyeball. And there’s an extremely convenient Gay Cone right there. This must have to do with Samara’s generous spirit that we keep hearing about and not because Samara’s soul coincidentally follows the Grandia II Dungeon Rules. Crap, I got fanwank all over my new shirt.

When they approach it, the eyeball rises scarily out of the depths, turning to face them. A series of stones floating in the lava form a bridge leading directly into the pupil. Um, ew. I would like to turn and run away like a pussy, but I guess I’d better just get this over with. Steeling myself, I enter the eyeball. Inside, Samara stands on a floor made of black clouds. She’s also standing in the middle of a glowing ring that looks just like the ring from The Ring. I KNEW IT! See, I’m never wrong about this shit. Who’s yo’ daddy?

As the party walks toward her, Samara is all, “Not you fuckers again.” I can relate. I can’t imagine how ooky it would be if this crew of assholes entered my soul. Now I’m all freaked out again. While Samara orders them to get the fuck out of her head, Ryudo tries to take her home to her mother. “You’re lying, I know it. You’re afraid of me too,” she whines. Now that takes some real psychic powers, there. If I had a giant eyeball in my forehead — and for all you guys know, I do — I think it would be quite the statement of the obvious to make the observation that people were disturbed by me. A DURR, if you will.

Samara knows all about Millenia’s desire to eat her (and typing that just made me feel all sorts of wrong) as well as Sandra’s request that they kill her. It must be loads of fun to try to surprise this kid at Christmas. When Ryudo attempts to bullshit Samara further, the girl screams at them to make like trees and fucking leave already. The force of her screeching lifts the darkness in the area to reveal that they’ve been standing on a yellow ground with arteries and veins snaking all over the place. Samara herself is directly in the center of another giant eyeball. Like, gross.

Samara sinks into the pupil, and that’s when things really start to go to shit. From the pupil emerges a yucky monster. It’s a pineapple with tentacles. Yes, you read that right — a pineapple with tentacles. Not to mention another four God damn Eyeball Bats. The pineapple splits open to reveal some more phallic tentacles, these ones with flowers or pods on the ends. The “petals” of the pineapple also house some big, slit-pupiled eyeballs. I’m going to wager a guess that the monster is none other than the Eye of Valmar. I’m good at reading subtleties.

And if I thought the Eyeball Bats were challenging before, they’re doubly a bitch now, with that dickhead Valmar thrown into the mix. I’ll admit it — it took me two tries to beat this asshole. Hint: get rid of those fucking bats first. Seriously. Millenia’s choice of Bitch-o-meter attacks can make or break this battle as well, as I found out the hard way.