There’s no way this guy doesn’t have long-lost Nazi artwork in his attic.

All of this is preamble to Lebrante’s request. No, he doesn’t want Barry to steal the Maltese Falcon and bring it to his yacht. He wants him to find a “Celadon Vase,” known otherwise in this game as a “Celadon Urn,” or at least it’d better be because that’s what Barry brought with him. Lebrante thinks this will demonstrate what a great hero Barry is, like he hasn’t been offing squirrels like a serial killer in training just to get this thing. So, two seconds after he asked for it, Lebrante shrieks when Barry presents it to him, “Ah, ah…..that vase!!!!!!” He’s going to need to have his robes dry cleaned. Lebrante very quickly closes down his shop–almost like he was already prepared to disappear and start over somewhere else, like Argentina–and meets Barry at the western entrance to town. He apologizes for not traveling with Barry back to HoYay Castle, and then takes his leave by slowly and conspicuously backing away from Barry, then turning around and speeding away, like he wanted to first be sure that bundles of cash and bags of cocaine weren’t going to go flying out of his sleeves.

Finally, Barry stops in the tavern where Clive and Elza recently had a gunfight. The place remarkably still has patrons, and they are all at the moment crowded around a pudgy sprite in an orange gi and brown hair in a topknot. Topknot, a man named Hoi with horrible eyebrows and no chin, is in the middle of telling the townsfolk a captivating tale: “He he he!!!! That’s right!!!! I gave him this angry scowl!!!! And then Kiba just kneeled down in front of me and begged me to let him join my army!!!! I have that effect on people!!” Obviously, we are meant to think Hoi here is fooling these drunk idiots into believing he is Barry. But with that punctuation, it’d make more sense if he were impersonating either Nanami or the late King Adolf. He goes on, hilariously, “Well you know I’ve got a big heart, so I took Kiba by the hand and lifted him up. I said, ‘Lift up your head, General Kiba. I can’t kill such a fine soldier as you’. Kiba was so moved, he said: ‘Lord Barry, from this day onward, my life is yours to do as you wish’.” Hoi’s story makes Kiba and Barry’s relationship sound so much more erotic than it actually is.

This is enough for Barry to be all, “Now, hang on a minute,” but Hoi continues on as if no one interrupted him. “So anyway, that’s how my Yaoi Army beat the Highland Army and got General Kiba to join us. That’s why you’ve got me and only me to thank for saving the town of Radat!!!!” These fuckers must be really drunk, because this dude looks absolutely nothing like Barry–who has been to Radat like a thousand times–and isn’t even attempting to dress like him. Barry goes, “C’mon now…” because this is just ridiculous. This dude has thirty pounds on him, easy. Hoi still hasn’t noticed him, though, and puts in with the barkeep for another complimentary order of fish and sake. That’s the last straw. Barry does not like fish, you cheap impostor!

When one of the drunk lickspittles says that the fish will be happy to be eaten by Lord Barry–UGH–Hoi replies with a guffaw, “Ha, you’ve got a golden tongue! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! That’s right!!!!!! I’m the great hero, Lord Barry!!!!!” There are probably more exclamation points in that one line than Barry has used in this entire game. That should itself be enough of a giveaway, but this will do too: another idiot asks if they can please see the Bright Shield Rune on Barry’s hand. Hoi makes sure he’s got another order of sake coming to blur everyone’s vision before showing it off. But his efforts are in vain. One guy says diplomatically that it looks “different” than he expected, and another shouts, “Hey!!!!!! You fake!!!!! It’s just drawn on there!!!! You’re an imposter!!!!!” Ironically, they decide that Hoi was obviously a fraud since “Lord Barry couldn’t be so small!!!!” Hey! He is big where it counts.

Because of this I will always picture runes as M&Ms.

Hoi tries to make a run for it, but he’s stopped at the door by the other half of what’s about to become an unruly mob, claiming that he’s been using his stolen identity to eat and drink for free in South Window, Two River, and Rockaxe as well. Hoi protests that he’s never even been to Rockaxe, which makes me wonder how many of these instances were ones in which it was the real Barry. Then again, nobody ever gives him anything for free. Even Hump had to pay for his room in the Highway Village. Finally, Barry asks everybody to calm down, since this probably is not a severe enough crime to warrant vigilante justice. Unfortunately, this crowd is not exactly in the mood to believe even the real Barry is Barry, and when they see he has tonfa, they assume he’s a con artist too and throw both of them out on their ears, after a black screen-censored round of beatings with sacks of doorknobs.

Outside the tavern, Hoi asks if Barry is okay, but like the drunk barflies, he has not figured out the identity of his would-be savior. Barry should come back here with a full army company and see how they feel about beating him up then. “Damn…..” Hoi laments at his bruises. “But hey….I guess it’s fate! Let’s join forces, huh. How about it, bro!” Barry accepts this offer and celebrates adding this useless lump to the Yaoi Army, but Hoi just thinks he’s made a new lowlife friend, so this feels a little bit shady. Sure enough, when Barry returns to HoYay Castle with Hoi in tow, Hoi is more than a little surprised to be there, and a little afraid that the real Barry who lives here is going to find them and pound them to a pulp too. Possibly like that. But after a beat, during which Barry just stares creepily at him, Hoi goes, “Eh? Could it be…. Are you the real….” I would not blame him one bit for deserting at this point, but he spastically adds, hoping Barry won’t shank him right here, “Ha! Ha ha ha…. Hey, bro, we’re friends, right? Ha ha ha ha ha…..” Barry’s going to wake up missing most of the contents of his warehouse and at least one kidney, isn’t he?

Barry’s next stop is Kuskus, where he carefully avoids the two Suikoclones conspicuously blocking the road and enters the inn next to the blacksmith. A small stage stands next to the innkeeper’s counter, and a young lady sprite with a pink dress and purple hair stands sheepishly next to the stage, while a few Suikoclones sit in the audience, no doubt nervous that this show has lady parts in it. When Barry talks to her, her portrait reveals that she has mousy brown hair. Whatever, game. The girl, named Karen, shyly asks what he wants, and one of Barry’s possible responses is “You’re beautiful.” Nice try, writers. I’m assuming he will follow that up with asking her about her brand of moisturizer.

Obviously Barry asks her to join the Yaoi Army, and obviously Karen is like, “Um, why?” It’s a valid question. I mean, if she can’t come up with something useful she can do, odds are she isn’t secretly some ace with throwing knives. But Karen does have one condition for joining, other than to come up with one helpful contribution she could make: “Um…just one thing,” she murmurs. “If you can keep up with my dancing, I’ll join you……is that okay?” Well, why didn’t she just say that she was a dancer? Barry has been looking for some entertainment for his lesbian recruits. Oulan has been itching for a lap dance for weeks.

When Barry agrees to this, a black screen ushers both of them onto the stage, and Karen has changed into a pale pink harem getup, complete with gold tassels and five dozen glittery bangles. Miles Edgeworth just found his Halloween costume. Karen’s hair has also become long enough to dangle from a high ponytail all the way down to her ankles, so either she put in some extensions or she was doing some really creative hair wrangling before. Like, with sailor knots. So, like PUGGY!!! with Mina in the last game, all Barry has to do here is follow along with Karen’s Dualshock-assisted, immersion-breaking dance routine and copy it exactly. It’s not even random–she does the same goddamn dance every time. And it’s just her waving one hand or leg in the air at a time, something even Elaine Benes could not fuck up. Barry is not a moron and manages to pull this off, with minimum enthusiasm, while Karen and the tiny crowd clap along.

Barry is so relieved she’s wearing pants.

Back in her, um, street clothes, Karen says she had fun and pledges to bring her glittery harem pants to HoYay Castle and give Nanami a night in the champagne room she’ll never forget. Barry could not be happier about this. The ladies were really tired of having nothing but jigsaw puzzles and old novels to occupy them.

Next on the “Who wants to fucking touch me?!” tour is South Window. Barry has barely set foot in town, let alone entered the trading post to finally buy that peeing boy for his bath, when a crazy old man shouts from behind him, “Hey!!! That’s it!! That’s it!!” I’m pretty sure the purpose of HoYay Castle–now that Patient Zero of the punctuitis epidemic is in the ground–is to quarantine all the remaining afflicted. That really, really sucks for Barry, but it’s for the public good. Grandpa, who is really the “famous” Maximillian of the Maximillian Knights, totters through the city gate in his shabby armor to congratulate Barry on defeating that “evil demon” Adolf Hitler, and announces he is late–you think?–but “here to help.” If we didn’t all know perfectly well that the conflict is far from over, this would be totally ridiculous, and it still kind of is, given that Max doesn’t look all that different than the old man Suikoclone with a cane standing right behind him. But he is pretty insistent, and Barry is forced by the CDC to take him in anyway. “Lord Barry,” he screams before lapsing into wheezing, I assume, “I beg of you. Accept my pledge of knightly fealty!!!!!” Barry is worried about tasting Max’s semen wine–what if that’s how the disease transmits?!–but he goes along with it. Somewhat more worrisome, Max goes on, “Th, Thank you. I, Maximilian, will fight for you while there is still breath in my body!!!” That might be for the next five minutes, the way this conversation is going.

Now Barry can finally go buy the peeing boy of his nouveau riche dreams, but in front of the trading post he finds another prospective army member. Sigh. He is conspicuous in his non-Suikocloneness by his crimson coat and pimp hat, angled jauntily over his slick hair. This man’s name is Killey and he has, beneath his fantastic hat, an unfortunate, pinched expression on his scarred, thin face. He asks, without even bothering to introduce himself, “I’m following the trail of the Sindar…… Have you heard any rumors about them?” Barry obviously knows plenty himself, but totally passes the buck and tells this weirdo, “[Lloyd] knows a lot about the Sindar runes….” Well handled, brave hero. Killey has obviously heard this story already, because he doesn’t consider for a moment that Barry is sending him on a wild goose chase, and heads off to confront “the guy from the inn.” More on Killey later, because that’s going to go awesomely.

YESSSSSSS

For the moment, there is only one more recruit in South Window, and I drive myself crazy checking for her in the place where Barry eventually has a scene with her, instead of going to where he’s supposed to meet her. This eats up at least twenty minutes of my footage, and Clive is fucking furious about it. Eventually I realize that the game is not broken and that I’m just wrong, so Barry finally enters the South Window inn like he should have done in the first place. Inside, the innkeeper is yelling in a disturbingly punctuitis-like way at a young lady, “No way! Absolutely not! I’m running a business here!!!! It’s hard enough with this damn war going on!!!!!” Annallee, the stoned-as-fuck-looking young lady on the receiving end of this shouting, replies to him, “I, I’m sorry………. But I don’t have any money….. And I’m not strong enough to do manual labor…….. Perhaps…perhaps a song….” Wow. This is the dark side of Mary Sues, people. It can’t all be goddess festivals and princesses in gilded cages who long to fly free. Eventually they end up trying to sing a shitty song to pay for a chicken leg, which turns into giving the disinterested bartender a handjob while he looks at Miklotov/Camus porn. This should be in a PSA for young girls growing up in RPGs.

The innkeeper identifies Annallee (at no point am I going to feel like I’m spelling that right) as a refugee from Muse, and an especially useless one at that. “Besides, who wants to hear a song these days!!!!” he bellyaches, while poor Annallee just stands there. The Cold Truth of War™ has no time for your bullshit Adele cover, girl! Annallee says, really, “But…but…but singing is all I can do…..” Oof. I know her heart rings pure and true with the melodies of life and everything, but nobody’s stopping her from singing while she learns C++ or takes a cooking class. The innkeeper boots her ass out, and eventually Barry finds her where I was originally looking for her like an asshole, outside the late Lord Granmeyer’s manse.

Thanks to the framing of her portrait, I spent years thinking Annallee had cat ears.

Barry’s like, “What happened to all your money?” and Annallee avoids the question, because the answer is probably something embarrassing like “I bought this cute peeing boy.” As she gazes south, she wonders, “I was just looking at the sky….thinking….I wonder if Muse is that way over there….” Nope, it’s the exact opposite direction. I can see why she’s having trouble finding work. Even more embarrassingly, her stomach growls loudly at this point, and she tries to get out of this conversation before she has no dignity left at all. But Barry is nothing if not persistent, strangely even in his pursuit of girls, so he bugs her again. She tells him she was in a shitty band with two guys named Pico and Alberto who absolutely had to be fucking, but then adds, “But….then the war came….everyone got split up…..” Fascinating. You’d think all these Muse refugees would have heard the stories of the soul-sucking Three Wolf Moon Ghost and realized they’re the lucky ones.

Even better, Annallee chooses this spot to put down a nice blanket and basket of stolen food for an afternoon pity party picnic. “I….I….it’s true….” she sobs. “I’m worthless all by myself…..and I don’t have any gold left… But after talking to you, I feel just a tiny bit better….” Wow, really? That’s so sad. She asks Barry now, hopefully, “Would you… Would you like to hear my song?” Singing is her only talent, and she only has one song? Jesus. Pico and Alberto really should have taken their tongues out of each other’s mouths long enough to write some other songs.