Now, time to finally head for the Straylize Temple. The first sign that this isn’t going to be as straightforward as it seems is the fact that the World Map has no compass. So, even though the king has given me the general direction to head in (northeast), he might just as well have repeated the word “penis” for five minutes, such is the uselessness of his information. Well, I’m assuming that Aslan is facing south immediately after leaving the city, so I turn around and follow what I think — and hope — is the northeastern road. Soon, the road ends and Aslan is forced to follow the shoreline instead. Eventually he reaches the village of Armeida, whose inhabitants babble about living in the last stop before the temple for those making pilgrimages, which makes me think I’m on the right track. One NPC in particular explicitly states that the road to the temple is a mountain path, which I make a mental note to remember. In one of the houses, Aslan is mildly surprised to find his old “friends”, the Black Wings. None of them have anything interesting to say, so I won’t repeat their dialogue. After resting up and restocking, the party leaves for the next leg of its journey. And what a leg it turns out to be.
Some distance from the village, Aslan discovers a plateau crowned with a thick forest, and enters the area to sate his curiosity. There’s little in the area apart from a vaguely-phallic gravestone, whose inscription is too faded to make out. “You’re not ready to read this yet,” SoS snits, remembering he has the power of speech. Since there’s nothing else of note in the area, and the place is a forest, not a mountain path, I decide it’ll become important at some later point in the game. I think you all see where this is going.
I’ll spare you the gory details of my endless, profanity-ridden trek across the horrendously-designed World Map in search of the elusive mountain path. Just know that it clocked up a total time of 38:24 and the party gained about five levels each by the time I accepted that I’d trawled every accessible inch of the land. Now, you’re probably wondering why the hell I didn’t just fire up GameFAQs and find out exactly where I needed to go. I would like to pretend that I’d made some kind of noble decision not to use a walkthrough in the interest of avoiding spoilers, but the sad truth is that the laptop was in another room and I was too lazy to go and switch it on. Yes, that means I only have myself to blame for the rage I suffered as a result of this. That doesn’t mean I can’t rant about it. Who are you to judge me?!
Ahem. At a complete loss, having searched everywhere and returned to speak to the NPCs in BOTH Darilsheid and Armeida, Aslan revisits the only other place he can currently access — the forest with the penis stone. And there, just to the left of the clearing, is another path through the trees I completely missed the first time around. Yes, it turns out that the random forest clearing I’d investigated right at the beginning was the motherfucking, shit-eating, dick-licking mountain path, meaning that my hellish forty-minute search for it needn’t have happened at all. Fuck this game, fuck my navigational skills, and fuck whoever decided it was a good idea to make a mountain path look like a forest. Not necessarily in that order.
‘BY LUCIFER’S BEARD!’
Strangely, Aslan suddenly stops and stands in place for roughly four minutes, before moving off again as suddenly as he stopped. At first I assume it’s some kind of glitch, until I remember what happened when I was recording the footage. After my eternity spent wandering fruitlessly around the World Map, a red mist descended upon me. Now, despite my frequent hyperbolic rants about controller-smashing and other wanton acts of destruction in my recaps, the truth is that I’m usually pretty mellow when gaming. However, on this occasion, my frustration at my own inability to follow simple directions, combined with the absurdly-high random battle rate in this game, made something snap. Namely, the L2 button on my controller as it ricocheted off the wall. This in itself wouldn’t have been so bad, but this impulsive act of anger somehow fucked up the circle button too, meaning that I couldn’t pull up the menu to save. And now I’d finally got to where I needed to go, not saving simply wasn’t an option. Luckily, I had a spare, undamaged controller, but it took me a while to find it, hence the weird pause in the action. I know none of you really needed to know any of this, but I just thought I’d give you a taste of the frustration I’ve experienced in the past hour. The worst thing is that I can’t even blame it all on the game designers this time — it was mostly me and my craptastic sense of direction.
Well, I’m here now, so I might as well continue. Incidentally, I hadn’t noticed this before, but Mary totally looks like Sideshow Bob from the back. Not relevant whatsoever, but just thought I’d throw that out there. I need to distract myself from the monotonous button-mashing random battles somehow. Of course, now I’m going to imagine all her lines being delivered in the voice of Kelsey Grammer, which probably isn’t all that inaccurate given the levels of testosterone being pumped around her body.
Treenis?
Hiking along the forest mountain path, Aslan and friends (plus Leon) enter battle against an interesting enemy known as an “Orcrot”. It appears to be a walking tree with a large, unblinking eye set into its trunk. For some reason, it looks obscene, like there wasn’t enough of that already in this recap — Rembrandt alone was enough to make me want to take a few boiling-hot showers.
Toward the end of the forest path, the group reaches a grassy cliff, from which a panoramic view of the Straylize Temple can be seen. And, whaddaya know, it’s a ridiculously huge building that I’ll probably get lost in. Words cannot express the hatred I currently feel for the architect responsible for this. I just went to grab something alcoholic, so I missed the party’s exit from the forest mountain. As soon as they step into the gargantuan temple complex, Leon declares “Something’s wrong.” Apart from the map designer’s grasp of basic geography? Rutee agrees with Leon, demonstrating that there is indeed a first time for everything. Everyone stands around flapping their gums with cliché “It’s too quiet” dialogue, instead of, you know, actually INVESTIGATING whatever may be wrong inside the temple. “Maybe everyone’s dead.” Sword of Snark deadpans. Even if they weren’t to begin with, they probably will be by the time these idiots finally get around to finding them.
Looks more like Straylize City to me.
The BGM for this area is a vaguely-creepy church organ tune, just to drive home the point that Something Is Wrong Here. I’m just glad the characters themselves can’t hear the background music — if that were the case, they’d probably spend another ten minutes talking about how ominous it is. Back in control, I have Aslan thoroughly search the grounds of the temple, because I still hate myself after my epic fail from earlier and feel the need to punish myself in some way. Fortunately, most of the outbuildings and annexes in the area have been bombed in, rendering the doorways impassable, so all that remains to explore is the temple itself and a separate cathedral to the east. There are a few decorative priest corpses littering the aisle of the cathedral, one of whom isn’t quite as deceased as the others — with his final breath, he tells Aslan that the bishop is hiding in a back room with a few other survivors. Survivors of what, I hear you cry, but we don’t actually find out yet. Checking the back room, Aslan finds the bishop, who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on either. Apparently the archbishop is still missing, so Leon decides they should go find him. I hope they all have a few spare years in their diaries, since I can’t foresee myself finding my way around this place as easily as they expect me to.
The first point of interest is a quartet of penis monuments situated in front of the temple’s main doors. Man, Atamoni sure knows how to lay on a welcome. After shooting the monuments a discreet glance of admiration, Aslan pushes open the doors and enters the temple, where the unsettling organ music quickly changes to a relaxing, serene melody. The camera pans up the grand staircase to a closed door, above which floats a group of five glowing blue orbs. We hear the sound of someone banging on the door from the other side, before a voice calls out “Is anyone there? Oh, Atamoni. Am I condemned to die here, trapped without hope?” Great, it’s a fucking drama queen. Aslan tries to run in the opposite direction, but no matter which door he tries to investigate, he’s railroaded back to the stairs by Rutee. Reluctantly, he inspects the door, but it won’t budge. The mystery person on the other side again yells out, begging to be released. Aslan’s all “Uh, just unlock the door from your side…”, but of course, it isn’t that simple — a magical forcefield is blocking the door. SoS helpfully explains this to Aslan in tiny words, but he still doesn’t quite understand. Sweet Jesus.
More penises!!
Chaltier deduces that the five orbs above the door are linked to “shield crystals”, which are probably dotted strategically (read: annoyingly) all around the temple. Oh, this day just gets better and better. I won’t cover each of the five crystals individually, as doing so would invariably result in at least one of us going insane or throwing ourselves out of the nearest window. All you need to know is that each crystal (unnecessarily misspelt “Krystal” on the battle screen) is guarded by a rather unscary-looking Lizard Man. After killing the monster and shattering the Krystal crystal, the corresponding orb in the main hall vanishes with a strangely-satisfying popping noise (I like to imagine Aslan’s head making the same sound when I reach through the screen and pinch it between my thumb and forefinger). Weirdly enough, I actually manage to find and destroy all the crystals in no time at all, despite the gazillion rooms in this place. Maybe the Gods are throwing me a bone after my well-documented navigation difficulties earlier in the recap.
After popping the fifth and final orb, the team finally makes it through the now-unsealed door. A priest-looking dude named Ayles turns out to be the mystery drama-queen, and he’s no less annoying in person — as soon as he sets eyes on his rescuers, he starts whining about Archbishop Marton perishing at the hands of someone named Lydon. Rutee just ignores the death of the poor guy and demands to know where “that THING” is. She’s obviously referring to the Eye of Atamoni, but Ayles claims he has no idea what she’s talking about. After a little light persuasion, he admits that the Eye is indeed housed here. Hearing this, the assorted Swordians in the party start freaking out, asking their masters why they didn’t mention this sooner. Now, I know the Swordians weren’t around for the king’s briefing, but surely at least one of the human party members would have raised the subject of the Eye at some point on the road (let’s face it, they had more than ample opportunity)? This makes no sense. Well, lack of sense-making is as old-hat as the sun rising in the morning by now, so I’ll just move on.
But wait, they’re all STILL arguing about the Eye of Atamoni and why nobody thought to bring it up before now. Rutee screeches that she doesn’t care one jot about the world-destroying powers of the Eye, and just wants the reward money for finding it, while SoS and Atwight chew her out because she can’t possibly understaaaaand how serious this situation is. If this game were voice-acted, my ears would be bleeding by now.
What he means: ‘I’m a useless idiot, but Bishop Ayles gives me lip service whenever I blow him.’
After some more pointless back-and-forth bitching, Ayles steps in and agrees to lead the party to the heart of the temple, where the Eye is supposedly kept. They pass through several rooms filled with very-much living NPCs, which raises the question of where the mysterious attack on the temple was centred — did the monsters only target the exterior of the temple, hence the corpses in and around the cathedral and the destroyed smaller buildings? I’m assuming this Lydon dude, whoever he is, was in charge of the attack, and was presumably after the Eye…if this is the case, why did he seal the rest of the priests inside the temple with the dumb crystal setup, instead of just slaughtering them along with the others? Is there something I’m missing here?
Soon enough, the party reaches another cathedral within the bowels of the temple. Ayles steps forward and whispers some kind of secret prayer, which opens up a hidden door behind the altar. Whatever. There’s a huge room beyond with a lame floor-switch puzzle which I’m going to ignore because it took me forever to solve it’s irrelevant. Behind the final door of the temple lies…a statue of a woman and a huge hole where something large and disc-shaped used to be. The operative words there being “used to be”. Yep, looks like the Eye of Atamoni is no longer at home. Oh, the Swordians are just going to love this.
Taking a moment to digest the lack of Eye in the room, Ayles steps up to the statue and wonders aloud “Philia…why is she here?” Leon is unimpressed by the icky female idol before him, snapping “An acquaintance of yours?” Ayles quickly pulls on his Exposition Robes and reveals that Philia is an apprentice priestess studying under the oft-mentioned Lydon. Presumably, she hasn’t always been a statue. “I see an ally of the enemy,” Leon snots. “I’m going to use a Panacea Bottle on her!” I think I could use a “panacea bottle” right about now, too. He duly pours the bottle over her, and in a flash of light she instantly returns to her human state. “She, she became human!!” Aslan gasps, huge shock!bubble and all. Ugh, he needs to be quiet in this recap. And all future ones, too.
Slowly coming to her senses, Philia suddenly cries out for “Master Lydon” and then enters full-on freakout mode when she notices the Eye is missing. She starts jabbering about not being able to stop Lydon, inciting Rutee to yell at her to calm down because she “isn’t making any sense”. Like that particular problem has ever bothered anyone in this game before. After a while, Philia actually becomes coherent, and reveals that Lydon is the High Priest of the temple. She soon breaks down again, however, wailing that she never predicted he would do anything like this. Oh God, she’s going to be the submissive, overly-apologetic one, isn’t she? Leon understandably loses patience with her: “Don’t bore us with your self-loathing! We don’t have time to listen to your whimpering.” I know he’s an ass, but sometimes this attitude is exactly what a person like Philia needs.
About a minute after Philia confirmed it, SoS gasps “He took the Eye of Atamoni?!” You know, for someone who’s supposed to play the role of the snarky, all-knowing expert on all things, he sure is challenging Aslan for this recap’s “DURRRR!” award. Speaking of King of the Idiots himself, Aslan dumbasses “What’s the big deal?” I actually want to hurt him right now, not least because his stupidity elicits yet another exposition-dump from the more knowledgeable characters in the group. The crux of this latest lecture is that the Eye is a gigantic Lens with the power to destroy the world, like we hadn’t all guessed this already. Well, maybe not the part about it being a giant Lens, because that sounds pretty damn funny. I’m getting flashbacks to the knee-tremblingly powerful and dangerous Burning Mirror right now, and not in a good way.
Because the game needs a solid objective for the team to strive towards, they all vow to go after Lydon and retrieve the Eye, by any means necessary. It shouldn’t be too difficult if he’s lugging that enormous Lens around with him, surely. Philia basically forces her way into the party because she feels responsible for what happened or something. I don’t know how she can be held accountable for Lydon being a treacherous dick, but it seems to make sense to the other party members. Leon, predictably, isn’t up for an extra member tagging along (one with a vagina, no less), and tries to assert his leadership, lest the other characters forget who wears the pink cape around here. Rutee basically tells him to cram it and look at the bigger picture — none of them have even laid eyes on Lydon before, whereas Philia at least knows what he looks like. That’s an understatement if ever I saw one — she probably knows what colour underwear he’s currently wearing, given that she’s blatantly and unoriginally in love with him. I predict much angst and conflict will arise from this situation, but it will all have to wait — I’m done for this recap. Will the gang manage to find Lydon? Will I learn how to get from A to B without breaking any more controllers? Will Philia turn out to be a submissive Mary Sue, or a kickass Swordian-wielder? And will Sideshow Mary finally achieve her lifelong ambition of killing Bart? Hopefully we’ll find out sometime before 2053. Until then!