Our boy Barry–hero of the City-State, unintentional beneficiary of systemic and magical nepotism, and world’s saddest rich and powerful man–just tied up every loose end he can think of in his life that doesn’t involve squirrels. All that is left is one very loose end, hanging like a ponytail on a certain king’s shoulders, waiting for him in L’Renouille. So, with his strongest (and coincidentally some of his most handsome) allies at his side, he requests that Viki teleport him to…Kyaro? Come on, Barry. This is getting sad.
None of his companions say boo about Barry openly either delaying the inevitable or wallowing in nostalgia or both, which is proper because none of them know what he’s going through. Well, except for PUGGY!!!. And I guess Flik’s girlfriend died, and he kind of cared about that. And Bear’s girlfriend also died, not to mention his whole village. And Georg apparently committed regicide and has been on the run his whole life. And Luc is a slave who keeps getting rented out to the boy with the shiniest marble at the time. Okay, one of them should probably sit Barry down and make him come to Jesus. Fine.
After Barry has done as Nanami’s ghost bid him and paid a visit to Grandpa Genkaku’s stubby penis grave marker, he chats with the townsfolk. Like in Sajah, the people are mostly concerned with what’s going to happen to Highland now, and bizarrely, like in Sajah, none of them seem to know Barry is the leader of the opposing army. I get it, they don’t have the internet, but you’d think rumors would have circulated about the City-States’ leader being the son of their former famous general who lived in Kyaro, and even if that didn’t penetrate, they certainly have to know JOWY, BARRY’S BEST FRIEND, IS THEIR KING NOW. Their access to this information is often hilariously inconsistent: of the two gabby ladies in the center of town, who are talking to each other, one is in the know enough to report that Jowy’s dad fled town thanks to fear of “retaliation” for being either a piece of shit dad or a piece of shit’s dad, while the other has barely even heard the name Yaoi Army and has no idea what is happening. You got me. Only one woman in town puts together that Barry is that Barry, and reasonably asks him if he should be showing his face around here. Well, you’d think not, but the neighbors are all morons! Whew!
UHHHHHHHHHH
After finding out from one last person with spotty current events knowledge that The Prick has also run off into the night, hopefully never to be heard from again, Barry figures he can’t put this off any longer, and heads toward L’Renouille. No, not by using the Blinking Mirror and then teleporting there: he instead takes the scenic route through Tenzan Pass, convincing himself as he and his boys fight minotaurs and blue-haired witches that he’s getting the team valuable levels and he isn’t there to stare at scenic vistas where he and Jowy held hands and jumped off a ledge together a million years ago. Clearly this is his last chance to take in this view! He’ll never be here again!
It is kind of funny that this is one of the highest-level, most dangerous areas in the entire game, and it was where the Highland Army was training boy scouts before the war. Good planning!
Cracker Jack translation job as always, gang!
Fucking finally, Barry arrives back at the gates of L’Renouille, ready to crack some Highland skulls and exorcise the demons of his past. But too bad for him, he forgot one other loose end! He can be forgiven for letting this one slip his mind. Waiting just inside the castle’s front doors, ready to fight to the death on the Blight family’s expensive red rugs and checkerboard marble tile, is Lucia. “Barry….. We lost our army, but we haven’t lost our spirit…..” she says. I mean, at least she’s admitting they lost their army? That’s progress. “You cannot pass here….. For all the warriors who died!!! For the Karaya!!!!! And for the King!!!!!” Barry only really has a beef with one of those, but it’s not like Lucia is going to stand down anyway. Oh well! More bloodshed!
Lucia is no different as a boss than Barry’s first two encounters with her–she attacks three times, using either her whip or her Fire Rune, though this time, like the first, she is without any of her Beech(a)(u)m cronies, I guess because they all died. I can see why she might be mad about that. It takes three rounds for this absurdly stacked group of six men to overpower this lone woman. Lucia is still surprised by this outcome–I guess she thought enough blind rage could carry her to victory? “Why….why can’t we win…..” she mutters, slumped on the floor. “Why can we have no justice…..” You are fighting for the genocide side of this conflict! Did no one tell her that?
If Lucia feels sorry for herself now, it’s about to get worse for her, as Teresa enters the castle, followed by Shin. Teresa says it’s been a “long time” since they last saw each other, and while I don’t think it has, certainly a lot has happened since then. Nothing that impacts their actual relationship, but Teresa is exactly the kind of person who thinks everything that happens to her is of extreme interest and relevance to everyone else in the world. “You!!! The little princess from Greenhill!!!” Lucia spits back at her. “What are you doing here!!! Have you come to laugh at me!!!!” Those are funny looking question marks! And so many of them!
“I haven’t forgotten my promise,” Teresa says, talking right past Lucia’s self-pity. “What you said…that my father had your father murdered…I’m going to look into it.” In the world of 2018, and maybe always, this means she’s going to ask her dad if he did that shit, and he’s going to look her dead in the eye while snorting lines of coke off their coffee table and deny it, and she’s going to be all “Okay!” and tell Lucia she did a full and comprehensive investigation and found NO COLLUSION. “What about you?” Teresa goes on, ignoring me. “You still wish to die, even though I’ve made this promise?” I’M JUST SAYING that if so much time has supposedly passed since these two last talked, and if Teresa is so gung-ho to solve this mystery for her new bestie Lucia, she does have access to her home and her dad again and could have already started looking into it. What’s Barry going to do, stop her? Noooooo Teresa, don’t go back to Greenhill, Barry neeeeeeeds you!
Lucia, the smart lady she is, just asks, “What promise?” Ha! Teresa doesn’t realize her precious integrity is being insulted, so she plows onward with burnishing it. “As acting mayor of Greenhill, it is my duty to search for truth and justice. Even if it means damaging my father’s good name.” Uh, it doesn’t sound like his name is all that good! JUST SAYING AGAIN. “After all, aren’t you also looking for the truth?” I so wish I could get excited about Teresa and Lucia REACHING OUT TO THE TRUTH together, and obviously having really hateful makeout sessions over Alec Wisemail and Wart’s dead-ass bodies, but I can’t muster the enthusiasm. Teresa sucks! She even ruins foeyay!
Lucia’s response to this earnest but toothless pledge from Teresa is to leap to her feet and lunge at Teresa’s back with a knife. Shin shouts, “You!!!!!” while not moving one step toward them, but Teresa just tells him, “It’s okay, Shin.” See, she just knows Lucia is such a good person that she totally wouldn’t stab an unarmed opponent in the back. Lucia, to my consternation, hesitates, the arm holding the knife trembling. “Teresa… Do you really trust people so much?” she asks. Her entire dumbass ordeal in Greenhill with the Muse refugee soldiers proves that yes, she very much does, but Teresa replies instead, “I trust you. That’s all.” If I were being consistent and fair, I would note these two are going to fuck any second. I am not fair. I will not ship this and you cannot make me.
Lucia drops the knife. “You can go….Barry,” she says. “This is your fight… I’ll watch and see how things work out…..” She says nothing about Teresa’s “promise” and when Barry leaves the entrance hall and returns, Lucia, Teresa, and Shin are gone. Back in the supply tent, having a threesome No! Noooooooo!
The door at the back of the hall is locked, which seems like it wouldn’t be much of an impediment to this group of burly invaders with big high-defense door-kicking boots on, but nonetheless Barry is stymied and has to go around via the side doors, a recurring theme in this place. It’s possible Barry is already mentally measuring for drapes and doesn’t want to settle for domestic fabrics just because he had to blow a bunch of his budget on new doors. That said, he won’t exactly have to do a lot, because this place is posh. Just in the front hall Barry finds two paintings he’s never seen in his trawling of the trading posts, one of this very castle and one of some Miles Edgeworth-looking Blight progenitor. He has no idea what the vases are flanking the locked door, but the Disembodied Item Describer calls them “expensive looking.” If you say so! There are rapiers crossing their long points all over the walls. A little thin of a shaft for Barry’s tastes, but those can totally stay up.
Trying to find a way to the other side of the locked door, and I guess operating on the assumption that the Highlanders wouldn’t just lock all of the doors that head deeper into the castle, Barry meanders through the east and west wings, which are mostly filled with supplies and munitions given that an enemy force was coming to their gates. And at least the stuff is in rooms, unlike in Rockaxe. Halfway through the east wing the group runs into a pack of Highland soldiers assigned with stopping their progress. That in itself isn’t unusual, but after they’ve dispatched them with ease, the bodies of the soldiers remain in the hallway, so Barry has to step around them to get through the door and go get a Robe of Mist for Luc. This will happen with every group of non-random soldiers the party encounters in this castle. What is this, some kind of guilt tactic, Jowy? It’s not working! Barry will kill all of these motherfuckers and drag you back to Kyaro by your ponytail and mink stole!!
Mostly out of habit–it’s not like he remotely needs the provisions anymore–Barry methodically works his way through the peripheral chambers and steals the valuables that no doubt the Highland soldiers were themselves hoping to steal so they’d have something to pawn once they desert and start new lives as, I don’t know, Harmonian mercenaries. Again, not sorry, there is only one side in this that’s pro-ethnic cleansing and they had a lot of opportunities not to actively be on it.
Ooh, wait, is that a Fury Rune? Yeah, Barry absolutely does need that. Here you go, Georg! Daddy loves you!
Barry is, unfortunately for Georg’s stats, impatient to get on with this, and senses that some critical impediment to his Jowy mission progress is just around the corner. The party emerges back into the main hallway behind the locked foyer door, kills some more passive-aggressively non-disappearing Highland troops, and heads north. Through the next door, Han Cunningham is waiting for them. “So you’ve come this far…..” he says. Well, obviously. “It looks like we couldn’t stop the ‘Bright Shield Rune’ and the ‘Black Sword Rune’ from fighting after all…. Me and Genkaku…… All we managed to do was buy a little bit more time.” I know True Rune bearers tend to be long-game thinkers but it was several decades those runes sat in a cave. Not bad, guys! Barry could choose to yell at Han in a macho fashion to get out of his way, but the mention of his dad brings him up short. Couldn’t he just sit here a while and listen to stories about how his dad and possibly his other dad picnicked in the hills of Muse and clinked teacups and enjoyed the hell out of their lives? Why not that, Han? “What are you waiting for, son of Genkaku? If you’re ready, come at me!” Oh. I guess he’s not in the mood for nostalgia, and wants to live in the here and now. “The duel with Genkaku…. It continues here…..” God dammit, man, make up your mind!
!!!!!
The ensuing fight with Han is a duel rather than a boss fight, probably a function of both foreshadowing and keeping the format varied in this boss-a-thon castle, but I’m guessing Barry also told his hot party to hang back and let him work out yet more daddy issues on his own. Han seems ready to fight to the death to keep Barry from moving on. So he does not want the Bright Shield and Black Sword Runes to fight, and he is going to accomplish this by…killing Barry before he can get to Jowy? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Jowy would not thank him for this, and that if Genkaku were alive to share his notes, he would also have several. Adding to the philosophical and ethical problems with this plan is that Han is a fucking grandpa with no True Rune and Barry shreds him in two rounds. Eat shit, Old Jowy.
The duel’s swift end leaves Han on his knees, leaning on his sword. “Boy…Genkaku’s son…… What is your name?” NO. NO FUCKING WAY DOES HE NEED THAT ANSWERED. Barry’s just like, “Hi, I’m Barry,” because he’s less petty than I am. “Barry………. I have to apologize to all of you,” he says. Dude, don’t ask for Barry’s name, WHICH YOU DEFINITELY ALREADY KNOW, only to say you owe everyone in the room an apology. APOLOGIZE TO BARRY. Anyway! “25 years ago, Genkaku and I sealed our two runes….. The ‘Bright Shield Rune’ and the ‘Black Sword Rune’ were once One. In it’s [sic, sigh] true form…… As the ‘Rune of Beginning’, it has the power to end war…. But….in order to wield that power…you must first….” You may think that Han is about to flop over dead before he can tell Barry what he must do–we know it is “Make out with Jowy,” but I’d like to hear Han say the thing–but it’s actually worse than that. Han flops over, but then keeps talking, and forgets entirely to finish his last thought. “Barry….. You’re a strong young man…” he now says, possibly sensing Barry needs some fatherly affirmation. “Genkaku and I were weak…. Forgive us for that weakness….” He tells Barry to leave, I suppose satisfied that Barry can do the MYSTERIOUS THING (I’m making sloppy noises with my mouth, just so you know) that will unite the two True Runes, and after Barry walks through the door behind his bleeding-out body, Han mutters, “Genkaku….. Now I can finally rest…..” Enjoy your tea party in the great beyond with your estranged ex, buddy! Your son will do you proud!
A staircase beyond the door Han was guarding leads upstairs, I assume into the plush private quarters of the royal family. Barry is going to take so many dumps on so many beds up here. After running into another goddamn locked door in the west wing, he encounters some more Highland soldiers in the east wing. Why, it’s almost like this is on purpose! Jowy! I am shaking my fist right now. I am finding myself increasingly and irrationally angry that Jowy–who is not real, I keep having to remind myself–is not placidly accepting his fate of either becoming one of Barry’s three husbands or going to the gallows. What’s your fucking problem, guy?
I’m dwelling on this because the alternative is exploring the exact contours of the same opulent-but-bland hallways Barry has been running through for half an hour, including one that’s just an endless series of hallways opening to tiny rooms with nothing inside. I have no idea what these are for, but I feel like some architect probably labeled them “Mud Rooms A-D” even though they don’t open to the outside.
‘I want it to be like Neuschwanstein, but twice as ludicrous yet also much more boring.’
Barry traverses this Mad King Agares nonsense to dispatch some more conscripted human shields and ascend another flight of stairs in the east wing, where he finds more locked doors hiding all of Jowy’s happy family portraits with Jillia and Lassie from Barry’s outraged eyes, but also a storeroom with a Stone of Power and a Stone of Defense. One of those Highland generals probably could have used these on him- or herself, but too late now! A trip down the center hallway brings Barry outside, to the area where the confused but excited troops watched Jowy stage a fake execution of his wife. Soldiers still hanging out in this area, hoping for more blood sacrifices of the few important women around here, come upon Barry and fight him to the death for ruining their awesome USO show afterparty. They were just doing shots of Fireball and talking about how they love genocide and gynocide!
By the time I’ve finished googling “gynocide” to make sure I used the right word for this incredibly unnecessary and distasteful joke (you are welcome), my footage has kept right on rolling and I have no idea where Barry is in this maze of a castle with random locked doors everywhere. At some point he ends up in the chamber where Jowy poisoned Agares with his jizz, and he really does not appreciate this walk through Jowy’s memory lane that he only experienced in agonized, fitful dreams, even if he found a Champion’s Rune in the process. It’s enough to make him wish he had lost this war, just so Jowy could be running through the halls of HoYay Castle, reliving where Barry and Shu humped on Apple’s desk, or where Barry and Klaus humped on Shu’s desk. There are a lot of desks in HoYay Castle, is my point.