When we last left our homosexual heroes, they had met up with Flik, the man in blue who wandered for three months before finding the immense phallic castle in the middle of the lake. Flik then proceeded to blow his wad too soon, embroiling the army in a battle against the fabulous Flower General Milich Oppenheimer and his poisonously poisonous roses which turned out to be their undoing. The final decision was to send in a small party of, conveniently, six people to find a way to neutralize these beautiful but deadly flowers.
Before I go on, I have a confession to make. As a recapper, I am only human, and therefore am prone to making mistakes. But I’m a big enough person to admit when I am wrong. No, no, I’m not going to admit that I don’t think that Gremio and Ted regularly got into slapfights over PUGGY!!! in the McDohl house, because I do. What I’m talking about is the name of PUGGY!!!’s army. On the VGR boards, Cat Slave was kind enough to point out my error — that the Liberation Army should, in fact, be the Lubrication Army. At least I hope those boys are using lube. I can only apologize for my mistake and thank Cat Slave for correcting me. And now, on with your regularly scheduled recap!
So what to do about those pesky God damn roses? Back at Penis Castle, PUGGY!!!’s first visit is to Dirty Sanchez, who attempts to get PUGGY!!! drunk on wine and take advantage of him. At least that’s how I interpret his offer of wine to an underage individual. PUGGY!!!, wise to this, declines, and instead uses Dirty Sanchez’s party change abilities to kick that worthless fucking Kuromimi out of the group and replace him with the underleveled Cleo and her fab Fire Rune. Sure, for PUGGY!!! choosing between a chick and a Kobold is like me choosing between Tidus and Rinoa, but he has some brotherly affection toward Cleo. Also, he kind of feels sorry for her, the lone chick in McDohl’s House of Man Love.
PUGGY!!!’s next stop is the lifesaver Viki, who saves him however much time it would take to walk to Garan by teleporting him there instead. PUGGY!!! would totally kiss her if she didn’t own a vagina. Lurking on the far side of the familiar stone bridge at Garan is a…person named Quincy. I’m not clear on the gender of this individual, but that kind of goes without saying in this game. In this case, I don’t care enough to look it up. Quincy, a hunter, wants to become rich and famous. However, s/he wants to make sure that s/he doesn’t end up on the losing side. Right now, according to him/her, it could swing either way, so to speak. Obviously s/he doesn’t worship PUGGY!!!’s banana yellow pants and the green headband like s/he should, the bastard/bitch. “I’lll think about joining you when you have a few more recruits, say36more,” s/he finishes. I’m sure s/he just jammed those last three words together in his/her speech and it wasn’t like the text programmer forgot to add spaces around that number variable or anything.
PUGGY!!! thinks this person is kind of a butthead, and doesn’t see why 36 more shopkeepers, mini-game masters, and criminals makes that big of a fucking difference. He doesn’t feel like throwing a hissy over this individual, however, so he continues on to better things.
Now that the area beyond Garan is open to PUGGY!!!, there are several more towns that he can visit, all in the vicinity of Milich’s place. And if anyone is going to know the full scoop, it’s going to be random NPCs in those towns. First stop, the pissant town of Teien.
As usual, PUGGY!!! isn’t in a gigantic hurry to carry out the main mission. He stops in the combination inn/item store to pick up some yellow paint and yellow flower seeds. Penis Castle is positively drab, and he’s heard that pastels are in this season. Next, he heads into the one room in the inn, where an old ponytailed woman wearing some kind of mystical dress/robe thingy stands between two treasure chests. Her name, of all things, is Hellion. As in how you might call some annoying little brat a hellion. But she’s old, so it doesn’t make sense. Whatever the case, from her garb and from her dialogue, we’re supposed to get that she’s all magical and shit. She somehow knows PUGGY!!! and according to her, this relates in some way to the fact that she is also a runebearer. Only…she just has the regular kind of rune and not a True Rune or anything. It’s totally obvious that she’s this huge True Runebearer-wannabe, kind of like your average Suikoden fanfic Mary Sue writer who wants the True Rune of Making-Suikoden-Guys-Straight-So-They’ll-Have-Badly-Written-Sex-With-Me.
Obviously not in the biblical sense.
“That Soul Eater of yours has unlimited possibilities, but also evil intentions,” Hellion duhs. PUGGY!!! inwardly rolls his eyes. By this point, he just wants to know if it has any other fancy tricks, like doing his laundry, washing the dishes, or making that cute guy he met at the local tavern want to do it with him. “I wonder what controls it,” Hellion continues. “I’d like to look into your future, OK?” PUGGY!!!’s all, “Whatever.” In return for this bogus crystal ball consultation or whatever, Hellion offers to join the Lubrication Army. Just what PUGGY!!! wants — some old woman in his castle. Great.
But what Hellion tells him next makes this deal quite a bit sweeter. In one of the treasure chests blocked by her wrinkled old body, there is a mirror that will allow PUGGY!!! to return to Penis Castle immediately. It’s all PUGGY!!! can do not to shove the crone out of the way and grab the freaking mirror, but he manages to control himself long enough for Hellion to officially join via the “Pokeball Go!” sound effect and then disappear via the Black Screen of Lazy Game Designers. Finally, the mirror is his. This game just got a whole lot less irritating. The asstastic item system is still there, but I have to be happy for small favors.
At the entrance to the town, a peon Imperial soldier announces that the town’s name is “Lac Virginite.” Is Virginite like Kryptonite for the guys in the Lubrication Army? The surrounding villages, according to this douche, are called “Premier L’Amour” and “Bier Blanche.” Well, the informational text box when I entered the town told me that this town was called Teien, so the guy’s obviously lying. He confirms my suspicions when he announces that the Flower General is responsible for changing the regular town names into something more gay and French. I don’t think that’s a surprise to any of us.
A regular townsperson clone tells PUGGY!!! something a little more helpful: “I’ve heard that there’s a fellow who can create a potion that makes that fog harmless,” he says of the poisonously venomous haze around Milich’s pink penis castle. Unfortunately, he’s not more forthcoming about this dude, even when PUGGY!!! cozies up to him seductively. His usual information-gathering tactic rebuffed, PUGGY!!! attempts to find out more from other COOLER people in town.
Ignoring two obviously unimportant houses right next door to each other, PUGGY!!! talks to random people walking around aimlessly outside. Most of them bitch about the town name or beg the Lubrication Army to help them out, but one guy gives me a little more to go on: “South in Rikon, I mean Premier L’Amour, there used to be a famous pharmacist named Liukan. They say there’s no medicine he can’t create.” I wonder if this Liukan would know something about the potion-making guy we’re looking for.
After spending most of his hard-earned bits sharpening the shit out of Pahn’s weapon, PUGGY!!! leaves town and heads south to Rikon. PUGGY!!!’s all about gay-sounding town names, but Milich is on his shitlist right now, so he’s not going to humor the guy by calling it Premier L’Amour. Even if that does sound like something he’d like to do with a lot of guys in the Lubrication Army.
In Rikon, PUGGY!!! finds an assortment of tiny hexagonal buildings about three sprite-widths wide. Sure, they look like short and squat penises and sure, it might be fun to be crammed in there cheek-to-cheek with several pretty men. But PUGGY!!! has developed a taste for larger dwellings in his lifetime, so this takes him aback slightly. A man outside the appraisal shop helpfully says, “That Jabba, he’s always saying that he can appraise anything. But I know of one instance, years ago, when he failed.” Okay, I get that we’re dealing with the Empire, the dad of our protagonist is, for all intents and purposes, a bad guy working for the Emperor, Gremio has been compared to Threepio on the forums, and Pahn rhymes with Han. Really, we can fanwank this into Star Wars if we want. However, I can’t really say I expected everyone’s favorite fat Hutt gangster to show up as the local appraiser. Especially since he was last seen hiding out in a cave and passing out testicular jewelry to a young gay boy.
Another NPC gives us some more info on this Liukan guy. Apparently, he’s no longer in Rikon — he retired and now lives in “the hills.” God damn it. PUGGY!!! is not in the mood to look all over creation for this guy — he’s got things to see, people to do. A woman standing near a pile of boxes whines that she came here to get some medicine for her sick chyyyyyyyyld from the “renowned pharmacist.” PUGGY!!! scoffs at her — his mission is much more important than her inbred brat. I mean, he’s not even able to take a buttsex break until he gets rid of this Milich guy!
Of course, this urgency doesn’t stop him from exploring the town some more. He uses some of the piddly cash he earned in random battles on the way here to buy some blue paint and blue flower seeds. After all, too much yellow would be absolutely hideous. PUGGY!!! likes to mix and match his bright colors, as we can see.
The inn, the third and final building in town, is about fifteen times the size of any of the other shops. Upstairs, PUGGY!!! finds a young red-haired girl in a yellow dress standing around, whining about her lost cat, Mina. PUGGY!!! sighs when he sees she has a character portrait — this means that she and her God damn pussy will end up in the Lubrication Army. Fuck, can this day get any worse?
PUGGY!!! and I rethink our stances on animal cruelty.
The only thing that makes the quest for the lost cat not an exercise in futility is PUGGY!!!’s fine True Rune of Strategy. From this, he learns that the cat is in Kaku. Easy-peasy with the blinking mirror and Viki’s teleportation, right? Well, you might think so. It takes me thirty motherfucking seconds to catch the stupid thing. It seemed like a lot longer when I was actually playing the game instead of watching the footage, but that’s still pretty sad. PUGGY!!!’s glad that he finally chased the cat down and didn’t have to lob a rock at its head or anything. That probably wouldn’t go over very well with Lotte.
Speaking of whom, the girl is very pleased to have her kitty back, claiming that she looked all over for it. Given that Lotte probably lost the cat in or near Kaku and yet is hanging out across the lake and down the river from there, it doesn’t seem like she did such a good job. Not that PUGGY!!! really gives a shit. Lotte is so overjoyed to have Mina back, she offers to join the Lubrication Army as thanks. Wow, what a gift — another icky girl.