Mathiu tells PUGGY!!! that Odessa’s earring has a map to the Liberation Army’s hideout inscribed on it. That must be the biggest earring ever. “Whoever holds this earring is destined to lead the Freedom Fighters,” Mathiu announces. Wait, isn’t Gremio holding it? Whoops, game designers.
Mathiu is all “Dammit PUGGY!!!, I’m a doctor, not a leader”, and he somehow seems to know, although PUGGY!!! has maybe said one or two sentences to him, that PUGGY!!! is a born leader. I guess he must have an advance copy of the script. I sure hope he didn’t read the end.
This is where the biggest plot twist, the most giant surprise in the history of RPGs, the out-of-the-blue, non-foreshadowed, smack-in-the-face shocking turnabout revelation occurs — you’ll never guess it, but PUGGY!!! agrees to become the leader of the Liberation Army. I bet the other guys in the Liberation Army are wishing that they hadn’t run off like a bunch of pansies back at the hideout, because now this upstart little ex-Imperial guy gets the prime job. Oh well, at least they won’t have to lug around that gigantic earring.
Gremio and Cleo decide to stay with PUGGY!!!, like that’s a big shocker. Gremio thinks that Teo will forgive him. That’s what we call “wishful thinking”. It’s not like PUGGY!!! took dad’s horse out for a joyride, or got caught in the hayloft with some chick — the dude BECAME THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSING ARMY.
Mathiu’s first piece of advice is to recruit people. “And to do so, we need a headquarters.” Luckily, there just happens to be an abandoned castle in the middle of Lake Toran that they can use. But first, they need access to a boat, so they must head to the lakeside village of Kaku. Mathiu is going to stay behind and pack his shit. No, not like that.
PUGGY!!! may have become the leader of the Liberation Army, but his navigation skills have not improved. He walks over the entire countryside before realizing that all he had to do was walk just a little ways south and west from Seika. The other party members are understandably pissed, but I don’t see them helping out.
What did you call me?! Hey, you’re kind of hot for an old guy….
In Kaku, PUGGY!!! finds out that no one wants to take him to Toran Castle because it’s infested with monsters. I didn’t see that one coming at all. As it turns out, the only one who is crazy enough to take PUGGY!!! to the castle is “Reckless Tai Ho”. Next step: locate Reckless Tai Ho. First stop: the bar. There are two people in the bar besides the bartender. One of them is some guy named Sergei who is blathering on about his invention, the elevator. We don’t care about him right now. The other person is a feisty redhead who knows all about Tai Ho. Unfortunately, before she can give PUGGY!!! the information, she spots Gremio and gets upset. Apparently, Gremio owes her some money for services rendered at a banquet for Master Teo. And he also owes some money at the inn. We don’t find out the specifics, and I think they left it ambiguous on purpose. Camille also seems to have a bit of a personal stake in the whole situation, judging by the level of her anger and bitterness — and by the “Suikoden porn” music that starts playing during this scene. I’m guessing she tried to get with Gremio. The game makes it seem like she was successful, but we know better. I’m guessing that Gremio probably got a bit tipsy at the banquet, and got himself into a compromising situation at the inn. But he ended up running out on Camille because of his feelings for PUGGY!!!, and now Camille is pissed off and frustrated.
She just wants a piece of Gremio’s bum.
Camille won’t tell them where Tai Ho is until Gremio pays her back (in cash, you sickos). Viktor reasons with her. He says that they have no money, but if they find Tai Ho, they’ll have a way of getting money. Camille is skeptical, but agrees. She joins the group, insistent on sticking around until she gets her cash. As it turns out, Tai Ho is downstairs. As in, down the staircase that is probably ten feet away. God damn it.
Tai Ho and some other dude named Yam Koo (who looks like a relative of Cousin It) are downstairs. Talking to “Reckless Tai Ho” reveals that he’s not reckless enough to agree to take them to the castle without making them take a similar risk. The risk being that PUGGY!!! has to bet all of his money on a game called Chinchirorin, which translates to “Shitty game designed by shitty game designers and is rigged so that Jeanne never wins unless she tries for a period of time that can be measured in hours”. For brevity’s sake, I shall refer to it as “The Game That Shall Not Be Named”.
To understand why TGTSNBN is so evil, I must explain the rules. Since I am lazy, I will explain only the basics. Each player rolls three dice a maximum of three times. Whoever gets the better dice roll wins. There are a number of different results you can get, but that doesn’t matter because the game designers rigged it in such a way that Tai Ho will get the “Super Duper Dice Roll that Automatically Wins Triple the Amount of Money” or PUGGY!!! will get the “Shitty Dice Roll that Automatically Loses Triple the Amount of Money” 99.9% of the time. I’m not sure if this blatant rigging of the game was supposed to make it seem as if Tai Ho was being a scoundrel, or if the game designers just hate me. So I am going to direct my rage at all of them just to cover my bases.
I will not recap the details of my horrible experience playing this game. I will only say that there was much screaming, swearing, and, yes, controller throwing at the television. Finally, I managed a dice roll that didn’t get me reamed up the ass, and I was happy. Happy in the “Thank God I don’t have to play this fucking evil game again” sort of way.
“Well, you’re lucky today,” Tai Ho says, conveniently ignoring the 345,898,547,258 times PUGGY!!! lost. “I tend to go along with lucky folk.” He and Yam Koo then go to the docks to wait for PUGGY!!!, unaware of how close they came to being impaled by a wooden staff.
Gremio finds himself excited at his first view of Toran Castle.
The castle in the middle of the lake is actually a big phallic tower of rock. Home Sweet Home. It’s all foggy and stuff, and one of the entrances is blocked by a big boulder. Even though Tai Ho made a big deal about not wanting to risk his life earlier, right about the time he forced PUGGY!!! to play his little game, suddenly he’s all excited to fight monsters. I hate him. Yam Koo stays behind because of the six member party limit.
The party goes in the other entrance that doesn’t look man-made. Sure enough, they end up in a big cave. With lots of monsters, in case you didn’t catch that. They wind their way around until they find the actual castle part, but they can’t start moving in their belongings just yet. Nope, they have to fight a boss first.
You might think that the reason I’m ending this recap at the save point before the boss fight is that I tried to fight the boss and got my ass royally kicked and was too irritated and mad from playing 345,098,123,098 hours of The Game That Shall Not Be Named to go spend another half-hour building levels to try again, but you’d be wrong. Yeah….wrong.