Moving Box by Box

Hello dear reader, the blog you have come to enjoy is no longer here. As of today Going Box by Box will continue over at WordPress. The new address is http://goboxbox.wordpress.com. I'm making the move to take advantage of WordPress' various features, and because it's a more powerful community platform.

That's not to say that Blogger hasn't been good to me. It's hosted this blog from its beginning and given me a place to put my writing. Without that people like you would never have read any of it. And, because of you this blog reached over 15,000 views. Thanks!

Now. For the foreseeable future, this blog will continue to exist on Blogger. However, it will only be an archive of past entries. For everything new (and old) for Going Box by Box, come check out http://goboxbox.wordpress.com.

Thanks again!
-Nicholas

Pandora's Tower is finished, time for final thoughts (spoilers below)

Pandora's Tower came to North America thanks largely to Operation Rainfall. This fan initiative also helped to encourage Nintendo to bring The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles to North America. These last two games are dyed in the wool J-RPGs (with some variations).

But Pandora's Tower is the odd one out.

It's more of an RPG in the same way that Zelda games are sometimes considered RPGs.

You're given a big world (or a lot of dungeons) and get to explore, upgrade equipment, find new items, and mostly have bits of the story revealed as you do those first three things.

A stronger case can be made for Pandora's Tower being an RPG since it also involves an experience and levelling system, as well as character stats that determine the player's defence, attack, and stamina/health.

But Pandora's Tower also brings something else from the genre of the J-RPG into an action game framework.

The amount of HP of the game's final boss.

Seriously, with the boss' six weak spots each having their own screen-wide health bar, this battle can take a very long time. Since I didn't have any power-ups with me, it took me approximately 35 minutes to finish off the final Master, Zeron.

As such, it's definitely fair to say that the final battle is more a test of endurance than of skill. And that's fine, except that the quality of your ending isn't really based on your skill. 

It doesn't matter if you've finished the game without dying, or if you've somehow 100%-ed the game on your first play through. Instead, which of the game's endings you get depends on your affinity with Elena. Unless your relationship is ranked between eight and ten on a ten point scale, the ending is a let down in one way or another.

If your relationship is fairly strong (between six and eight on said scale) both Elena and Aeron hop off the top of the towers to rid the world of the bit of Zeron that lives inside of her. Also, the the Scar (a massive chasm over which the Towers are perched) is sealed.

If your relationship is middling on the game's scale, then only Elena jumps. Once again, in this ending, the Scar is sealed.

If your relationship is just okay, then Elena winds up trapped in the monster Zeron and Aeron uses her to bring a swift end to the world's ongoing war.

And, if your relationship is poor, then you wind up having to kill Elena.

Alternately, the game's best ending sees the curse lifted from Elena, the Scar healed, and the two living happily ever after in her village while the war comes to a close. But you only see that if you nurse your affinity with Elena to the full.

I suppose this affinity mechanic also links Pandora's Tower more strongly to J-RPGs, since there are a few that lock their best endings behind seemingly superficial sidequests.

All of this business of bosses and endings aside, I put 36.5 hours into this game. But it feels like I put in far more.

I think I'm left with this feeling because each play session engrossed me. Partially because Pandora's Tower is overtly darker than most of the games I play and because there's nothing to the game except the game.

There are no characters to interact with aside from Mavda and Elena. There are no oversized fields to roam in which things are cleverly hidden. There aren't even mini-games, unless you count inventory/equipment management and relationship tending.

So, what's my conclusion about Pandora's Tower, having finished it?

That it's an intense game. I always had a sense that every fight was for high stakes (because of the ever shortening curse gauge, and because monsters could often send you sprawling and sometimes surround you). The Masters offer some epic battles. The game's generally drab colour palette sets a remorseful, Gothic atmosphere. And the game's operatic score makes everything in it seem larger than life.

A final boss with six, full-length HP bars, as cumbersome a fight as it can be, is right at home here and to be expected.

Though making the entire game this intense would be too much, the Zelda development team working away on Zelda Wii U could definitely learn a thing or two from Pandora's Tower. (Just so long as it's not that the best ending should reflect the players' skill in only one of the game's mechanics/aspects.)

Nearing the end of 'The Madness of Crowds'' alchemists

Mackay makes it sound as if alchemists were more successful as time went on. Either because people's hopes were raised to a fever pitch, or the art of deception became so refined. 

Stories about people like Jean Delisle, a French alchemist from seventeenth century Provence, are a great example of both possibilities in action. 

Having already detailed alchemists' use of false-bottomed crucibles or wands filled with gold and stopped up with wax or butter, Mackay suggests that these were Delisle's tools of choice. And he insists that the man who was quite famous in his own day (having allegedly transmuted base metals into gold and silver hundreds of times in public places) was nothing more than a master of sleight of hand.

This stance makes a great deal of sense since Delisle refused to perform his transmutation before the king thrice. In fact, Delisle had to be drug to Paris. Even then he never performed before the king based on the excuse that he couldn't in fact make the Philosopher's Stone, but an Italian had given him what he had used before and had exhausted his reserves of it during his years in Provence.

Of course, being from a period of time closer to Mackay's, it's no surprise that so much more information about Delisle is available to him and thus he treats him with much more nuance than the earlier practitioners of alchemy.

It's also to be expected that being alive in the midst of the Victorian era, with its legions of genre writers (then largely called "hacks") and poets, Mackay points out the literary debt owed to the Rosicrucians' benevolent spirits (sylphs, undines, gnomes, salamanders) from their emergence in the seventeenth century up to his own day. Such creatures remain a steady inspiration even to today's fantasy writers and figure largely into the mythos of the incredible Tales of series of JRPGs. 

Pokemon Double Battle disappointment

I've just made my way through Eterna Forest in Pokemon Diamond. So, for the first time, I've experienced the Pokemon games' Double Battles. To be honest, I'm not that impressed. 

A Pokemon battle that's two versus two is more interesting than the usual one-on-one. But it still feels very much like a single battle since you only control your own Pokemon. The result is a battle that's reminiscent of the fights in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, even  while you have two party members: restrictive.

Being able to control only one member of a two member team just seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

What if two Pokemon of related types could combine techniques?

Or what if doing two techniques in a certain order unleashed some sort of hidden skill?

No doubt the later generations of Pokemon games get into this sort of thing. Though if they don't, then things like Double Battles aren't nearly as innovative as they could be.

Nonetheless, Double Battles do hold some potential for new ways to develop the game's plot since they mean that you temporarily team up with another trainer. 

Disappointingly, though, my partner in the Eterna Forest, Cheryl, looks like she'll be just a one-off character. But, there are another seven gyms to get through, and likely a whole lot of plot to develop. At this point I know almost nothing about Pokemon Diamond's Team Galactic after all. 

Zelazny's crystal telephones

Things are starting to come together in The Changing Land. Semirama, the ancient Queen that Jelerak revived to speak with the mad elder god Tualua within Castle Timeless, has sent for Dilvish. It's been confirmed that the Weleand of Murcave who has started towards the Castle isn't who he says he is. And Baran is plotting gain control of both Semirama and Tualua.

But what has me most interested is the use of crystals in the book so far. I'm not one who's versed in the lore or use of crystals in current pagan belief, but Zelazny's use of them is fascinating. In no small part because they figure into my own fantasy writing.

Though, I can't help but think that I needlessly complicate their use.

Zelazny's crystals on the other hand, are basically telephones. The wizard seeking contact with another brings him or her to mind, stares into the crystal and then the one they seek appears (so long as they're available). Zelazny's use of communication crystals is just so simple despite Zelazny's giving absolutely no explanation of how these crystals work. But he doesn't need to, and that's the rub.

It makes me really wonder if Zelazny himself knew how they worked, or if his crystals really were just stand-ins for telephones. Putting the familiar into the strange makes it all the easier for people to understand. Perhaps someday such a process will replace our own crude dialling method.

Two Masters, two bits of Flesh, heading to one ending (spoilers below)

My heart is still racing. The battle against the final two Masters was about as intense as I expected, but delivered in a much different way.

First Aeron gets a free attack on each of them. These attacks pull them out of the wall they were attached to and leads to its crumbling. Bringing down this wall opens the room up to the size of the game's usual boss chambers and also joins the Dawn Tower to the Dusk Tower (or vice-versa). But then the real fight begins.

Each Master has its own attack (a light beam for the one of Dawn and a homing shadow ball for the one of Dusk) along with a secondary attack that leaves a sword-like thing sticking out of the ground.

So long as Aeron steps out of that secondary attack's way.

Dodging isn't particularly difficult, though at times one or the other of the Masters will trap Aeron in the luminescent moss that's all over the interior of these two Towers.

To get them to expose their succulent Master Flesh Aeron needs to grab one of the swords with  the chain and then throw it at the opposite Master. Light swords go to the Dusk Tower's Master and shadow swords go to the Dawn Tower's Master. It's pretty simple.

Now, I had been forewarned in the guide I was following to get through these last two Towers that these Masters need to be finished off at relatively the same time. Otherwise the one that Aeron vanquishes first might revive while he deals with the other. So I winnowed each one's health down fairly consistently. But I was not expecting the little cutscene that followed the fight in which Aeron goes for the Master Flesh but both Masters also chase down their essential bits.

Luckily, after having wielded it for so long, Aeron's proficient enough with the chain to snag both chunks of Flesh and pin them to a pillar, well out of reach.

It's a very engrossing boss fight. And all the more so when your sensor bar is at just the right distance to pick up your Wiimote's signal. Whenever one of the Master's Flesh was exposed but the pointer for the chain disappeared I waggled all the harder until it came back on the screen.

Also from that guide that I had used I learned that if you're bound for the worst ending, the final boss is fought on the lawn of The Observatory.

Having stepped outside after Elena ate the Flesh, had her vision (which I think confirmed that the couple that's starred in them all were the last two Masters or are the game's final boss), and then rested up, I can say with confidence that I did not get the worst ending.

Since I cultivated a decent relationship with Elena, I'll probably get the game's standard ending. But I'm not expecting the "best" one, whatever that might entail. Though I won't know for sure until my next session.

Mackay lets some alchemists slip through

It seems as though I need to reign in my criticism of Mackay. He remains entirely skeptical, but he's starting to admit that some of what alchemists have done is actually good either outright or simply through omission.

First, a case of his seeming to let an alchemist by simply through omission. In his coverage of Sendivogius (at work in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) he never calls the man out as a charlatan or fake. Mackay's finishing this entry with a quick variation of "need I say more?" definitely implies that he believes this to be the case. He also indirectly jabs at Sendivogius when he notes that tales of this alchemist's greatest deeds can be found in the work that his attendant wrote about him.

Mackay has worked through implication and omission before, sure. But what makes the case of Sendivogius stand out is that, according the the stories told about him, he actually possessed the Philosopher's Stone and regularly transmuted quicksilver into gold, though he covered his wealth with a show of poverty and infirmity. I suppose at this point in his miscellany of human error Mackay simply suspects that any discerning reader will read the fantastic story of Sendivogius and conclude for themselves that he was nothing but a fraud.

I guess I'm just not that discerning, in the end.

The other point that I've come across in which Mackay seems to soften in his treatment of alchemists is when he outright says that for all of their bluster and visionary nonsense, the seventeenth century Rosicrucians did some good. For, according to Mackay, they were the ones that changed alchemy into more of a spiritual exercise and they helped to do away with old superstitions about demons and imps being everywhere and at the root of all human ills. Interestingly, Mackay makes almost nothing of their replacing these superstitions with new ones about benevolent spirits being everywhere and eager to serve humanity.

There's just no popular madness like a seventeenth century popular madness.

Pulled back into Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond holds a special place among RPGs. It's just got this power to draw me in after only a few minutes of play. I think a lot of it has to do with the game's variety. 

Most RPGs allow players to customize their party members, but the Pokemon games actively encourage you to get as many party members as possible. But, unlike RPGs with huge playable casts like Chrono Cross, party members in Pokemon Diamond have no backstory and are invested with only as much personality as players give them. 

Whether you give your Shinx a nickname or not, it'll always be your Shinx and it's quite easy to build an impression about its personality from how it fares in battle. Not to mention the traits and skills mechanics that the third generation games introduced make each Pokemon just a little bit more unique, leaving players even more to work with when it comes to building their party members' personalities. Though, aside from players projecting personality onto their Pokemon, these mechanics have just a minor impact on the core game.

Anyway, there's enough to do in Pokemon Diamond to make it interesting. And it's refreshingly different from the Red and Blue versions that I'm so much more familiar with. I haven't even gotten to the underground part of the game yet. 

Though I have more or less built up the party that I'll keep until the end of the game: A Machop, a Buizel, a Magikarp (eventually a Gyrados), a Shinx, a Monferno, and a Staravia. The Buizel might get switched out for a ghost, dragon, dark, or psychic type Pokemon, but whether or not that happens will depend on what the game throws at me. En route to badge number two, it just seems that my party is merely under-levelled and not at all unbalanced.

Zelazny as character builder

Well, I've just read through the scene depicted on the pulpy cover of my edition of The Changing Land. The one where Dilvish and his metal horse Black are depicted riding over a multitude of grasping violet hands. It was definitely as epic as the cover suggests.

But what's more enthralling about this section of the book is its character development. We see Dilvish and Black working together and get a strong sense of their history as partners. By chapter's end, it feels like they've been through countless adventures and seen many wondrous things before they even came to challenge Castle Timeless and the sorcerer Jelerak. Giving readers that sense of such a strong bond definitely shows Zelazny's skill.

Doing so also makes the chapter's end a real nail-biter.

In fact, though Zelazny litters Dilvish and Black's path with a host of obstacles that would be right at home in a fiendish D&D campaign, it's that character building that's much more enduring.

The trouble with invisible portals

Maybe I've been working at this, Pandora's Tower's final major dungeon, for too long, or playing with the lights off increased my focus on the screen, but tonight's session was really immersive. Powering down my Wii and switching to my netbook to write this post made me feel as if I were coming back from some place far away.

But while in that place I broke the last of the Dawn and Dusk Towers' chains.

In the end, I did have to use a guide, but it was worth it. Since the game had resorted to invisible portals near the Towers' end I would've taken even longer to finish them without any sort of assistance. But that's not what bothers me. Pandora's Tower involves a great deal of lore that's learned through the various books that you find and texts that Elena translates.

However, in the single book about the Dawn and Dusk Towers and their portals that I've come across there's no mention of or hint towards any sort of invisible portals.

There are very subtle clues about such portals near the top of each of the Towers, sure. But to me these clues come across more as puzzles than clues And the sort of puzzles you try to solve, fail to solve, walk away from frustrated, and then return to and almost immediately realize the answer to rather than a more direct hint. An additional clue about the existence of these invisible portals in one of the game's many books would have been much appreciated.

I suppose that every adventure game's last proper dungeon does need to have some ultimate challenge, though. Hopefully those invisible portals (and not the Towers' twin Masters) are just that.

Mackay's skepticism goes too far

As if it weren't already obvious, Mackay is a pure skeptic when it comes to alchemists. Though he's not deaf to their stories. In fact, he extracts Denis Zachaire's entire story from his own autobiography, a story that ends with Zachaire's reformation.

After a lengthy search for the Philosopher's stone Zachaire isolated himself to studying the alchemical classics rather than following the trends of his day. Then, as the climax of his story, he transmutes gold on Easter Sunday, thanking god before he decides to sell all he owns and disappears.

Now, transmuting gold on the most sacred day in the Christian calendar does seem very convenient. His solitary study leading up to and solitude during his transmutation also sounds like an embellishment. All of these details suggest that his success was the reward for some sort of increase in holiness.

Though, more than its being full of such embellishments, I think that Zachaire's story signals a shift in the culture of alchemy.

Around Zachaire's time the spiritual dimension of alchemy was picking up, and so Zachaire's story makes sense. Plus, if there is a moral to the man's tale, it's that alchemy can only come to a true end if an alchemist practices without greedy intentions. When Zachaire was working up to his final transmutation he wasn't doing it for gold or any sort of gain - it was just to prove to himself that it could be done.

Mackay, in his blind skepticism, misses this. He obviously has made himself an observer of crowds' madnesses by making himself insensitive to them. His dismissing them all as ridiculous and the worst kind of folly. It may be a fine way to go about writing such a book as his, but being so skeptical is as bad as being entirely credulous.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy finished (spoilers below)

The last section of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is strange. It's sort of like a boss rush but with a few screens of enemies and a puzzle scattered throughout it. Also, what I mentioned as a worry in my last entry on the game wasn't too far off the mark. The game's final boss was easier than those who came immediately before. Sort of.

After reaching the very last stretch of the game Ed faces off against Dante. However, this fight is easier than you might expect since it hearkens back to the game's very first fight. Yes, just as in the battle against Cornello, you just need to guide Ed through the obstacles and enemies that Dante conjures up. The difference being that two of the things she conjures (a series of falling rocks and a wave of fire) are very difficult to avoid unless you keep to the middle of the arena. These obstacles provide some frustrating moments, but otherwise Ed just has to outlast Dante. There's no context-sensitive alchemy, no impregnable defense, nothing. Just outlasting her.

Thematically, this is great. Cornello and Dante both wield a form of the Philosopher's Stone so it makes sense that these fights share a process. However, the game's final fight (if you can even call it that) is an experiment that fails.

Instead of running the game's story while the game's gameplay is on hold, the final fight against Envy involves a steady stream of dialogue that takes the place of Ed's alchemy on the Touch Screen. Envy's only attack is a simple jab, but because the dialogue is on the lower Touch Screen and the fight is on the upper screen it's difficult to follow both simultaneously.

If the game had done more that required you to pay active attention to both screens simultaneously (since the dialogue scrolls by quickly), I don't think this final fight/character building would be a problem. But as it is, it's too clunky to be effective (especially when Ed's down to a sliver of health and you're in no mood to test to see if you're invulnerable for the sake of the scene). Watching for context-sensitive alchemy works, however, because it's something that you can flick your gaze from screen to screen to do. The areas in which such alchemy is activated are fairly obvious after all.

All of that said, the game's final cutscenes reminded me of watching the series. In fact, even though these cutscenes involve nothing but a series of images, they were quite engaging. As the credits rolled, I definitely felt satisfied.

So then I peeked into the game's "Character Mode." Apparently you can play through the story mode's levels as a number of characters from the show. Though there are no cutscenes (aside from the opening) in this game mode. No doubt finishing it with all the available characters unlocks another.

But the game's content doesn't end there. Keeping true to this game's implicit m.o. of frequently using the Touch Pad, there're a bunch of mini games that are entirely Touch Pad based. They're fun little distractions, too.

So, having seen a fair chunk of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy think that it's more than a beat 'em up usually is because of the Touch Screen. Though it is, by no means, a classic of the genre. Fights can be reduced to speed button pressing if you corner most enemies, and more often than not enemy attacks are easily avoided unless they're alchemical in nature. My playthrough was in "Normal Mode," though.

Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is definitely a game to check out for fans of the series and for fans of the DS' Touch Screen. Beat 'em up lovers should look elsewhere.

On sorcerers and alchemists

From Mackay's collection of biographies it sounds like alchemists took a turn for the worst in the Late Middle Ages. From the late fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries in particular, the alchemists that he describes are truly deserving of his scorn. Specifically the child-murdering Gilles de Rais and coin debaser Jacques Cœur. 

Their crimes aren't exactly on par with each other, but both are terrible reprobates that hid their wrong doings behind a screen of being alchemists searching for the philosopher's stone. 

And this apparent state of things makes me wonder.

In the case of Roger Bacon, his grand intellect drew claims and accusations of sorcery. His contemporaries (and many later generations) regarded such claims as a great blow to his reputation. Currently though, and even in Mackay's day, people are much more able to regard Bacon's discoveries as quietly revolutionary, at least in so far as they ran far ahead of what science was doing in his time.

Now, turning to the groups of alchemists motivated by greed and a lust for power, covering themselves with the name "alchemist" (or, more accurately, "alchymist"), it's interesting how the same thing happened.

Most modern readers and Victorian skeptics like Mackay aren't fooled by such titles. Instead, they're able to see past them and to the bearer's crimes. Yet, it's not that the label "alchemist" has many negative connotations, it's that it has hardly any now. At least in the sense that anyone claiming to be an alchemist these days is likely to be dismissed out of hand (and the same could be said for someone claiming to be a "sorcerer").

And that's just what happened in both cases.

The negative label didn't turn into a positive one. Rather, it lost its adhesion and just fell off, revealing the terrible stain that it had been covering over.

When stories and difficulty curves alike are linear

I'd played Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy before, but I'd never gotten quite this far.

Since the game's keeping pace with the show, the best way to put my current position is thusly: I'm right in the middle of episode 36. (Spoilers: so at this point in the game, Ed and Al's dad has returned only to leave again, Al's armour is currently the Philosopher's Stone, and Ed has vowed to destroy the homunculi).

Needless to say, there've been a lot of cutscenes in the last 40 minutes of the game. That's definitely one drawback to making a game with so much story into a beat 'em up. Text becomes the only way to really convey it. Also, because beat 'em ups are a very linear genre, the storytelling becomes the same. And viewers of the show will know that Fullmetal Alchemist is a series that follows more than the adventures of Ed and Al Elric.

Nonetheless, the parts of the story driven by their father will likely get put into the next part of the game. I'm also guessing that that will be the final section.

Both because the game's story is only a few episodes away from finishing off the anime series and because the difficulty has increased substantially. Not so much in the sections where you're beating up troops of enemies, but more so when it comes to bosses.

For the most part, up until the fight with Greed, you'd do fine if you watched for a context-sensitive technique to come up or discovered which of your basic techniques is most effective. But from the fight with the diamond-shielded Greed onward, bosses get tougher. At first because you need to wait for the context-sensitive alchemy to show up rather than simply move to where it is, and then later (in the fight with Wrath, for example) you need to survive long enough to get through the boss's defenses often enough to lower their health to 0.

I can't help but feel worried, though. With the final boss just around the corner will that be the roughest battle yet, or will it feel all the easier after the tough fights that precede it?

Our hero (?): Dilvish

The introduction of Dilvish in The Changing Land is pretty incredible. He leaves an impression and Zelazny manages to maintain the air of mystery about him despite his origins being spoiled on the back of the book.

We readers might know that he's escaped from Hell, but exactly how isn't just left unanswered, based on what information we're given about Dilvish, it's also left sounding a little ridiculous.

Though Dilvish appears to be completely comfortable being out of place.

One of the elements of my first impression of Dilvish is that he's barely even aware that he's escaped from Hell. Dilvish's dedication to hunting down the sorcerer Jelerak seems so complete that nothing else matters - aside from remaining inconspicuous.

For all of his powers, there's definitely some element of self-consciousness that comes across when Meliash points out that his counter-greeting is out of date, as well as his referring to "the Society" as the more sexist "the Brotherhood."

Thus, Dilvish hardly seems the marauding badass type. Though there's a ton of potential for that to change.

Stepping into The Changing Land

Roger Zelazny is credited as a master of fantasy and science fiction. Though he wrote when the genres were still very new things. The Changing Land makes this quite evident (in its first chapter).

His characters read like they're building on templates made by Tolkien (elves, scheming magic-users, etc.). His setting gets little description.

Since the plot is being trickled out, there's no heavy exposition as of yet. Another weirdly modern note is the apparent lack of dialogue tags. I've not yet come across a single "[character x] [word for spoke+past tense modifier]."

Though those latter two qualities are the mark of good writing in any genre. And from any point in time.

Yet, Zelazny's tone in The Changing Land reminds me of Eric Rücker Eddison's in The Worm Ourobouros. Eddison's book was published in 1922, and Zelazny's came out in 1981, but there are still tonal similarities. Both share in a writing style that comes off as pulpy and have similarly fantastical content.

I still need to find Nine Princes in Amber to complete the first part of Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber, but The Changing Lands has opened up as a fine introduction to this icon of an author.

Dawn and Dusk nearing their ends

My trudge through the endgame of Pandora's Tower is one step closer to being finished. Both the Dawn and Dusk Towers now have but one chain anchor left to break in them.

Yet I can't help but wonder if I really only need to break one more anchor in either of them to get into the Masters' room.

I mean, that is where the two towers connect, and it wouldn't make much sense if you had to unlock both doors just to get in through one of them. But we'll see.

The trick now, though, is climbing up to the fifth floor in the Dawn Tower and then descending in the Dusk. Why? Because the last chain anchor in the Dusk Tower is somewhere between the fifth and third floors. Alternatively, I could just try to figure out the portal puzzle that stands between me and the last chain in the Dawn Tower.

This final dungeon — there's just no end to its generosity.

Trying to save Roger Bacon's bacon

Mackay's survey of alchemists across the ages continues in The Madness of Crowds. Over the course of twenty pages he wends his way from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. And most of the alchemists he covers have their alchemical deeds neatly covered.

His coverage of England's own Roger Bacon, though, offers a curious case.

Mackay makes no attempt to hide his contempt of alchemists. Each and every biography thus far has included some sort of reference to the alchemists being misguided or having wasted their lives. Roger Bacon's entry in Mackay's collection includes this treatment but it comes primarily through an apologist lens.

No mention is made of Bacon's famed bronze head, imbued with life and the wisdom to answer any kind of question put to it. Neither is there any reference to Bacon's idea of walling up all of England through magical means. Instead, the bulk of this particular biography is all about Mackay lauding Bacon's intelligence and his claims that superstition rose around his reputation because his peers simply couldn't comprehend the extent of his genius.

In fact, rather than Bacon's alchemical deeds, Mackay chronicles his general scientific accomplishments (like his understanding of convex and concave lenses). Mackay's Victorian English pride certainly shines through.

Fullmetal touch screens and recovery times

After another half hour of gameplay, another 15 or so episodes of Full Metal Alchemist have played out (so I'm up to about episode 33 of 51). Full Metal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy does a pretty good job of keeping pace though. Instead of highlighting every battle from the series, the major ones from the main plotline are emphasized and the game is otherwise filled out with little minigames.

In the section of the game I played through tonight (Warehouse 5, and Ed and Al meeting with their teacher Izumi) there were three such games. One is a memory minigame, another a rhythm-ish minigame, and the third a stealth minigame. All of these used the touch screen. As someone who doesn't play that many beat 'em ups, these breaks from mashing the attack buttons are very welcome.

Especially since Ed can beat up chimeras ranging from lizard-lions to dragon-gryphons in ten blows or less without so much as a scratch if you mash those buttons quickly enough.

That's not to say that the beat 'em up portions of this game are broken because Ed's overpowered. It's just that enemies have a very slow recovery time. If you manage to catch them in a combo (get within brawling range and mash those buttons!), then there's little chance they'll break free. Though the same thing goes for Ed.

Not in that enemies launch combos and those can catch Ed in a rain of pain. No.

But in that environmental hazards like retracting spikes are perfectly timed to match Ed's post-hit recovery time. So if you're hit by a such spike once, you'll likely be hit by it again just as Ed's getting up. And again before you manage to jump (or have the damage dealt throw you) out of harm's way.

Tonight's session also saw the first appearance of necessary alchemy in a battle. While fighting the living armour named Number 48, you need to transmute giant stones into statues. Number 48 then attacks these statues and while it's mid-blow you need to knock its head off so that you can fire off some of your offensive alchemy. Otherwise, when it's got a cool head about itself, Number 48 just blocks everything.

What I like most about this sort of necessary alchemy is that you aren't really told about it going into the battle. You either need to remember the fight from the series and watch for your cue to copy what Ed did in it, or just watch for when your currently available alchemical skills change. Forcing the player to keep an eye on both screens like that is something I enjoy because it brings an element of discovery into an otherwise dull and straightforward genre.

The madness of alchemy

Mackay is quick to state that all alchemists through the ages are quacks of varying degrees. Though he also mentions the very important point that in their fumbling about for the philosopher's stone and elixir of life they made several important scientific discoveries.

After a little bit more of an introduction, he then proceeds to give a brief biography of every known alchemist from the earliest record to the most recent (as of the 1850s). As of twenty pages into this section, Mackay is up to the early thirteenth century and looking at Roger Bacon.

Though, having read the play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay which is about Bacon, it seems that it could have also been about Albertus Magnus and his apprentice Thomas Aquinas. Mostly because the play's centerpiece is Bacon's animated, question-answering bronze head and Magnus and Aquinas apparently brought a bronze statue to life. A living statue that the two men set to doing menial household tasks and that was, according to Mackay's report, so chatty that Aquinas smashed it to bits. I wonder if the statue ever shrugged and sarcastically remarked "It's a living" while it was up and about?

The other thing that's grabbed my attention from the first few alchemists that Mackay's covered is that he's pulled a lot of his information from French sources. I know that Orleans in France was a center for magical practices, but even so, is there some propensity towards the wondrous unknown in France?