Suddenly, an axe whirls into view and embeds itself into the floor, mere feet away from Random Fenril Sprite 2. Rather foolishly, he walks over to it (exclaiming “Wha what?!”) only to be consumed by a flash of sparkly white light. Another of the Sprites steps forward and cries “Ryan!” Wait a second, I thought Ryan was the king? For the love of God, will you game designers PLEASE decide who is who in this god-damned intro? Fortunately, it isn’t long before the intro ends and the real fun starts. Joy.
As the king sinks to his knees in shock…something appears. It is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen (and yes, that includes the cast of Chrono Cross). It looks like a floating steel sphinx/lion mutation, covered with a jewel-adorned white sheet, with a gold metal head. See for yourself – my description couldn’t possibly do it justice. The thing purrs, matter-of-factly, “Nice to meet you. I am the demon, Alhazad.” Now I know its name, I can give it a nickname. Due to the white blanket adorning it, the ominous-sounding Alhazad becomes the not-so-ominous-sounding Blankie.
…The HELL?!
Elmina steps forward. “But the Demon Race is only a legend?!” she cries. “And yet, here I am right in front of you…” Blankie replies, still floating up and down. The gist of the ensuing borefest conversation is that he wantsssss the cocoon. The king agrees, grovelling for his life, only to meet the same fate as Ryan. Ooh, pretty white sparkly things. “I’m sorry…” Blankie says. “All I can give you in return is a Painless Death.” Hee – Blankie may be a bad guy, but anyone who kills these wankers is a friend of mine.
The music swells as the last remaining Fenril Sprite, besides Garrett and Elmina, raises his sword and cries “Garrett! Elmina! You must escape from Arctica Castle! Let everyone in Filgaia know what has happened here!” Garrett and Elmina make like trees as Random Fenril Sprite 3 leaps towards Blankie and the screen whites out. OMG how exciting!
Now we see Garrett tending to Elmina’s injured leg. The touching moment is ruined when Elmina blurts out of the blue “Hey Garrett! You’re a bigger coward than I thought…” How lovely. Elmina seems to have conveniently forgotten that she didn’t exactly need much persuasion to hightail it out of there either. “You have no ‘Courage’,” she continues. ‘Courage’ is capitalized and in quotation marks because it will be rammed down our throats a few thousand times as a running theme throughout the game become important later. I pray that this scene will end soon, but noooo, Elmina’s on a roll now. She babbles on about how throwing one’s life away isn’t ‘Courage’, then begins to lovingly nurse a wound on Garrett’s arm. Jesus, talk about blowing hot and cold. Still, I’m cutting her some slack – at least she’s showing signs of having a spine, which is a darn sight more than most female RPG characters. Besides, with a nickname like “Sword Princess”, I’m sure she’d be a kickass ally to have around during a fight. I have a feeling that she’s going to be an integral member of my battle party, allowing me to use her stabbity stabbity skills to cut down any vile beast that stands in my way.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. I know, I know, how stupid of me to hope for a female party member whose knowledge of physical combat surpasses the “wave magic wand around and look pretty whilst the males do all the work” strategy. Almost as futile as hoping for a GameFAQs Character Battle final that doesn’t involve Link, Mario, Cloud or Sephiroth.
The music turns all sombre as Garrett and Elmina make their way towards the exit. Elmina deliberately lags behind Garrett, who is too dumb to notice until she lowers the portcullis behind him, trapping herself inside the castle. Garrett’s all “Huh? What choo doin’, bitch?” and Elmina’s all “Save yourself! I’m doomed anyway.” Garrett rightly points out that Elmina herself, not half a minute ago, was talking about how throwing one’s life away isn’t ‘Courage’. Elmina replies that she’s protecting something important to her (Garrett) and therefore her sacrifice isn’t a waste of life. Even though she’s a goner in ten seconds, tops, this warrants her a new name – Elmartyr.
Elmartyr backtracks and says that she has no intention of dying here – the ribbon she used as a tourniquet for Garrett’s wound was expensive. Typical woman – she’s practically awaiting her doom, and all she cares about is the ribbon she gave to her shagpiece. I could understand if it had been made from the finest silk, dipped in gold and adorned with diamonds, but still. Girls, don’t even think about flaming me – my email has a Militant Feminist Filter. Kthxbainow.
Blankie finally appears and asks Elmartyr if she’s ready to die. She raises her blade and screams “Have ‘Courage’!” before Garrett leaves, promising her that he will return her ribbon. The music goes all dramatic again, with a vocal choir and everything, as Blankie leers “Hee hee hee hee…you are noble and beautiful…can’t you see? My body is trembling with joy.” Eeeeew. Luckily the White Screen of Intro Endings appears just in time to save us from a molestation scene. Phew. We see a short scene of Garrett trudging through the snow away from Arctica Castle, complete with Magic Horizontal Snowfall. Then we close with a scene of Blankie (sans Elmartyr – I’m not sure I want to know what he’s done to her) and a purple-cloaked figure observing the cocoon inside the castle. It looks gross, and is pulsating with a heartbeat sound. The screen fades out and we see the text “Several years pass…” written slowly across it. With that, the intro is finally over.
I press start at the title screen very quickly indeed, before the Intro of Doom gets a chance to run again. The first screen I see comprises of three boxes and a message telling me to select a character. My options are A wandering youth, A treasure hunter, and A girl from an abbey. I decide to pick the female first. Who says we recappers hold back women’s lib? The game does a fine job of that without my help, but more on that later.
Some tinkly, mysterious music begins to play as we see yet another black screen. “Oh…Innocent One. You can feel my mind in yours…” someone or something says. A female figure appears. She has long blonde hair and is wearing a floaty pink and white dress. I won’t keep you in suspense – it’s BlondeSue from the first intro, even though her dress was yellow when we saw her fifteen minutes ago. Nice to see that the game designers value the little things, like keeping their characters’ appearance consistent. BlondeSue – who at this point is referred to only as ‘Girl’ – replies, in that passive manner perfected by so many RPG females, “Me…? Are you calling me…?” She looks around for a while before Shioning “It’s dark in here. I can’t see…” As if on cue, some blue sparkly orbs appear and swirl around, gradually whiting the screen. Now the black void of nothingness has a trippy turquoise background.
Loading ...The unseen someone or something continues to speak to BlondeSue, babbling random shit like “Take my wishes to your heart” and calling her “Innocent One” about a million times. “Tell me your name…” it continues, then is forced to repeat itself twice while BlondeSue kicks in with her “What do you want from poor li’l me?!” shtick. We learn that “Once again, the world is being engulfed by darkness”. Hey, that makes a refreshing change from all the RPGs in which the world is peaceful and happy and full of rainbows and fluffy bunnies! Eventually BlondeSue caves in and decides to tell the Annoying Exposition God her name – or, in other words, cuts to the “Enter Name” screen.
Her default name – Cecilia – is suitably prissy-sounding, but, as she’s totally a Mary Sue, I fiddle around until I find a more suitable moniker. “My name is…Cesuelia,” she declares, prompting the Annoying Exposition God to finally show itself…in the form of a shadow. It tells Cesuelia to “let go of [her] ego” and reveals that “the power is in the book”. I wonder if it’s referring to the Big Book of Clichés. Suddenly, it fades and disappears. Cesuelia wonders who it was. I guess it would have been a good idea to ask it that while it was standing in front of you, honey. The screen turns black again as a disembodied voice calls “Cesuelia…” repeatedly. The voice turns out to belong to a nun, who declares that “the class is over”. The screen now brightens and shows a classroom of some sort. Cesuelia and a few other girls are sitting at desks. Apparently, they’re in a school – not, surprisingly, a school of Mary Sueology, but a school of magic, which doubles as an abbey. Of course, Cesuelia is the only one wearing a pretty dress, while her classmates have to put up with insipid blue uniforms. Man, I bet you can almost smell the resentment: “It’s not fair! That bitch gets to wear a dress and converse with random godlike beings! I can, like, totally cast a better Ice spell, but she gets all the attention!”
Cesuelia does the “Huh? Where am I?” thing, then one of her fellow students, who is apparently wearing an Exposition Pinafore, blurts out of nowhere “Aren’t you turning 17 today? You need to work on not being so spaced out”. I know RPG exposition is clumsy at the best of times, but this just seems overly forced. I mean, it’s not like Cesuelia would forget her own fucking birthday. Another student, donning a pair of Exposition Leg Warmers, remarks “Aren’t you supposed to go back to Adlehyde when you turn 17? I worry about the future if our princess has mental problems.” Your princess isn’t the only one with mental problems. I’m sure I’d be driven insane if people started randomly expositing stuff about my life I already knew. More importantly, now we know Cesuelia = princess. The Mary Sue Meter just shot up.
One of the Exposition Students tells Cesuelia that she should say goodbye to everyone before she leaves. She starts by speaking to Sister Mary, the nun/teacher, who tells Cesuelia more stuff I’m sure she already knew. She’s due to leave the abbey, her life will become a journey, yadda yadda. I’d say her life is already a journey – trying to cope with such useless exposition every day, as well as normal teenage issues and the enviable benefits arduous problems of being a princess must be akin to walking a thousand miles through tar. A student standing by a bookcase remarks that Cesuelia’s “Tear Drop” crystal is very beautiful, and is supposed to have secret powers inside. Magic personal artifact? As I weep for the loss of originality, the Mary Sue Meter sneakily climbs a few more inches.
Whilst exploring the abbey, I discover a small but cool detail: holding the X button makes Cesuelia run in the direction she’s currently facing. If she hits a wall, she’s thrown backwards with a loud THUD. I repeat the maneouvre a few times, purely for the entertainment value of watching a princess brain herself repeatedly. Leave me alone. The abbey is a veritable fountain of exposition, which I’ll spare you the trouble of reading as most of it is unimportant crap we’ll hear several times over anyway. I do discover that Cesuelia’s magic spell quota can be increased by finding “Crest Graphs”, onto which new spells can be inscribed by taking them to a magic shop. A nice touch is that you can rename her spells too. Right now, her only two skills are “Heal” and “Flame”. Somehow I resist the temptation of renaming “Flame” to “OMG U SUK!!!11”, which shows that even 12 year olds can display maturity under certain circumstances.
In the abbey’s small library, a book tells me that “About 1000 years ago [why is it always 1000 years or another nice, rounded number?] a race of Metal Demons tore through Filgaia. The Guardians [whatever they are], the Elws [ditto] and the Humans won the war at a considerable cost.” I have no idea why I need to know this, as I’m sure history won’t be repeating itself any time soon. No sir. Another book refers to ancient machines known as ARMs (yay, the first mention!), which stands for Ancient Relic Machines. I’m sure I can think of a dirtier acronym, given time.
A student in the library practically creams herself at the sight of Cesuelia, whose help she desperately needs. Of course, there’s no way any of the other students could have possibly helped her, because Cesuelia is SPESHUL!!! Fact is, the student was “sorting the books, but ended up making a mess”, by scattering them all over the floor. Instead of…oh, I don’t know, picking the books back up, she wants Cesuelia to visit the magician Anje, who owns a magic Pocket Watch that can reverse time. Riiiight.