Dragon Quest IX finished

Bringing everyone's level up to 45 did the trick. I finally beat Corvus. Dragon Quest IX is over.

Looking back, the shape of the successful final battle was weirdly by the numbers. 

It had its first act, in which things were going well for my party of Minstrel, Thief, Mage, and Priest. Then, the second act rolled around when Corvus recovered his HP and his MP and it reached a climax after Corvus knocked out Nizk the Minstrel and left everyone else with just a few HP. Finally, the third act kicked off with Peridot the Priest successfully healing everyone over the course of a few turns and then climaxed with the final blow to the big bad. 

I know that much of the battle wound up as it was largely because of chance, but still. Its shape is perfectly that of a grand cinematic battle. 

Unfortunately, the game's ending doesn't share that quality. 

After a pseudo-anime sequence in which Corvus is appeased and reminded of his true Celestrian nature, the standard RPG "what are they doing now?" scenes play over the credits as each major area and character is revisited. Scenes that are rendered in the in-game graphics. 

What makes this so disappointing is that it feels like the developers forgot to replace the in-game graphic scenes with their animated counterparts. Unless, simply because it directly involves a dragon (and this is a Dragon Quest game after all), Greygnarl's fight with Barbarus was meant to be the only animated cutscene.  

Overall, as an RPG, Dragon Quest IX is, for the most part, a bog standard J-RPG.

Its story is interesting, if spread a little thin from the start of the fygg quest to the discovery of Corvus. Actually, the game's characters are much more interesting than most of its story events. 

The game's job system holds potential for those who don't mind grinding as a matter of fact, but is quite frustrating for those who would rather grind with broader goals in mind. 

The game's music is quite grand, but lacks variety. 

And the game's combat system is simply that of a classic turn-based RPG.

Anyway, despite the shortcomings listed above outnumbering the game's strengths, I find myself interested in the promise of the post-game's being its "mortal" phase. It feels like a shorter, perhaps deeper, adventure is about to start.

Yet, I can't say I'll be dedicating myself to finishing what's left on the Dragon Quest IX cartridge before moving on to something else. I have other Dragon Quest games to check out after all, not to mention other games that are much much shorter than this grand adventure proved to be.

Like Full Metal Alchemist: Duel Sympathy.

Grinding in grottoes with bruising bosses

Dragon Quest IX's grottoes have a strange difficulty curve. In one found through following a map called "Rock Mine of Doubt Lv.29," the monsters you encounter change thrice.

At first they're throwbacks to the early part of the game, then they're the sort that give about 300 experience points each (whereas monsters in the Realm of the Mighty give about 1750 per group per battle), then the boss is a machine with two attacks per turn.

Attacks that do damage ranging from 50 to 120 HP.

When party members have about 200 HP a piece a one-two punch from this boss just leaves them reeling. If my healer has a miss timed turn, one character - or the whole party - could wind up dead. Balancing on a pin like that makes for a tricky fight.

At least there are some Metal Medleys lurking in this grotto. So level grinding isn't impossible, just drawn out.

Writing of balancing on pins, though, I think that my party could get through the fight with Corvus at this point. And, not that it isn't fun, wrapping this game up sooner rather than later is definitely something I'm keen on doing.

Seeking hidden grinding spots

After my second attempt on Corvus went even worse than the first (since he was much more aggressive), I've decided to sit back and grind for a bit. But, rather than just going on a prolonged metal liquid slime hunt, I'll be exploring another of Dragon Quest IX's features: the secret grottoes.

These hidden areas are found through the use of various treasure maps. Those grottoes that I've been in so far have been laughably easy, but there are some that promise much more challenge and much greater rewards. I imagine that eventually they'll get to the point where even the regular enemies give decent experience and something of a challenge.

However, I'm not going through all of the game's secret grottoes. That would add way too much to my time with this game. Instead, I'm just aiming to get all of my party members from level 41 to level 45. I've alchemized the Rusty Sword found in the Realm of the Mighty into Erdrick's Sword, but that wasn't boost enough. So I figure that once the whole party's reached level 45 they'll be much more prepared for the game's final story-related battle.

As long as Corvus doesn't end up as aggro as he was in my most recent attempt.

Dragon Quest IX's still got some fight in it

Well, Corvus doesn't quite follow in Zoma's footsteps, but his final form still overwhelmed. Two attacks per turn and quite powerful ones at that.

So it happened like this.

After a few more oddly easy mini-bosses and more climbing I reached the game's big bad: the fallen Celestrian Corvus. Dragon Quest IX's end was in sight.

My party first fought a semi-Celestrian, semi-demonic Corvus. In this fight I was forced to shift tactics since he regularly used a technique that nullified my stat boosts. So my troubadour, thief, and wizard attacked while my priest healed. This fight went well. A fine success.

Then my party was pitted against the dragon Barbarus. Another steady battle, one in which my old stat-boosting strategy worked perfectly. The only problem with this fight was that it took a toll on my party's MP.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Dragon Quest IX's quick save feature seems to trigger a bug that breaks the Goddess Ring. This accessory is supposed to recover its wearer's MP with every step he or she takes. But after loading quick saves this power, more often than not, de-activates. Unfortunately, I was working off of a quick save.

Nonetheless, I had curatives to spare so I bolstered my party's MP and then faced Corvus' full demon form. Without bothering to manage my in-battle inventory beforehand. Who needs a Yggdrasil Leaf (this game's revive item) when two characters have the equivalent spell?

I'm convinced that is just what decided the fight.

My priest, my party's steadfast healer fell first. My main character and troubadour tried to sing her back from the brink of death, but with no luck. Not before he joined her there.

Then the battle became nothing more than a window onto Corvus' attacks. Interestingly, he flashed no stat-boost nullifier in all twenty or so turns of the battle. The most frustrating moves being a healing technique that recovered 500 HP and another that restored all of his MP.

So, having been the mop rather than the mopper in the answer to "who will mop the floor with whom?" I'm left with three choices. Extend this game's time on this blog with quests and more grinding, things that could well stand to make that final fight a breeze; re-configure my battle inventory and try again, this time fighting much more conservatively (healing every round); or just grind and give it another go.

Considering Dragon Quest IX's fairly full post-game game, I'm drawn to just trying again. Maybe after just one more helping of this game's grinding.

Dragon Quest IX's final dungeon: Underwhelming (despite its transformation)

You know a final dungeon means serious business when it's alive. Dragon Quest IX's is special though since you get to see it come into being.

Once you choose to go to the Realm of the Almighty to finish off Corvus you're treated to a scene in which the once simple architecture of the Realm breaks apart as tendrils and muscle tissue erupt at oblique angles, making it into a strange perversion of a world tree. As is the usual for the game's cutscenes, it's done in the game's usual graphics.

No fancy animation is shown for it (though the transformation would definitely work as a cinematic piece).

But, somehow, seeing the final dungeon take shape before your very eyes in the general graphical style of the game makes the transformation more shocking.

A clean, entirely separate, animation sequence would definitely give much more detail and personality, but showing this transformation in the game's quasi-16-bit, 2.5D style makes the transformation truly look like the work of a greatly powerful being. One that can rend the very ground over which you've watched your characters walk for the whole game and turn it into something twisted and deranged.

Although that powerful being's henchmen are worryingly easy.

The monsters in the Realm of the Mighty tend not to give chase. And those that do don't take more than two rounds to trounce. I took down the second iteration of Goreham-Hogg in so few turns I was left asking myself and the game: Really?

Is this really the game's final dungeon?

I know that there's more to do once the game's story is complete. There are more treasure maps to find and grottos to clear. Side quests are likely to still be accessible, too. But, my characters are sitting at levels 39-41 and it looks like the only challenge the rest of the dungeon will hold is its sheer size.

Unless, of course, it turns out that Corvus took some lessons from this game's version of Zoma (found in a grotto) and attacks at least twice per turn, doing well over 200 damage per attack. But somehow I doubt that.

An angelic archfiend revealed (spoilers below)

That Celestrians are constrained by strict rules makes perfect sense. Angels are considered beings without free will, after all. And so such rules would constrain the angels of the Dragon Quest IX world.

As such, it makes good sense that Corvus the famed and captive Celestrian (who was finally revealed to be the game's big bad) couldn't be attacked when faced in battle because of his senior rank. And after I'd spent a good twenty minutes walking around with the Goddess Ring equipped to refill everyone's MP.

Oh well.

The Oubliette beneath Gittingham Palace was enemy ridden enough to make up for the lack of a boss battle. It's narrow twisting halls also made it difficult (but not impossible) to avoid fights. But I can't see the newly renovated Realm of the Mighty being bigger than the Oubliette. Unless in his ascending to this game's high heaven, Corvus radically redesigned the Realm of the Almighty.

Finally standing at the precipice of Dragon Quest IX's end I am faced with a question. It's the same question that faces any gamer at the end of an RPG. Should I barrel onward or take a step back and do some quests and such to (eventually) get the game's best equipment?

This game's definitely reminded me of Radiant Historia with its limited (though well-composed) music. Maybe its final boss will be just as much of a pushover.

Grinding through Goresby-Purrvis and Godwyn

Once again, all it took was gaining a single level all around and Goresby-Purrvis went down. With a fight, but nonetheless. I chalk most of the victory up to my new strategy, however (mostly because everyone who reached level forty didn't get any skill points for their trouble and so nothing new and powerful was learned by anyone). 

First there's the assist duo. Thoth, my wizard, increases the party's speed and then attack power while my priest Peridot heals and boosts defense. 

Then there's the attack duo. My thief Kleftis (weirdly tank-like) attacks or heals my main character Nizk. Nizk, always uses the "Falcon Slash" ability since it attacks twice (and after all the magic buffs he hits for around three times the damage of a single strike). 

Keeping this setup running and using Coup de Grâces as they came up saw me through the fight with Purrvis.

And the bout with the the Gittingham big bad himself, King Godwyn. 

Not to mention the battle with bad King Godwyn's second form as well. 

Though being levels 40, 40, 39, and 38 (Nizk, Kleftis, Thoth, Peridot) no doubt helps, I think my strategy is doing more than grinding ever could. And this, using the game's stat-boosters to concentrate attack power in a few select characters, is definitely the way to play. Dragon Quest IX's combat is purely turn-based after all.

RPGs like Chrono Trigger, where there's less time to make decisions about stat-boosts cut back on the players' ability to do so. 

RPGs like Tales of Phantasia, where the battles play out like arcade fighting games, include such abilities usually only for the AI controlled characters. In doing so, these games release the player from having to actively use them in combat and thus release them from case by case strategizing for the most part. 

But purely turn-based games like Dragon Quest IX are much more contemplative. Having finally figured that out, I'm now ready for the last leg of the game. And surely that's what's coming next. 

Grinding for metal slimes

Level grinding in RPGs is a curious thing.

Across the board, in just about every J-RPG, there's a location (or a handful of them) where tough or special monsters reside. Monsters that give you several times the experience points other monsters do.

Games that do this well, like Breath of Fire II and Chrono Trigger, have these monsters dominate or stand out in these areas.

Dragon Quest IX doesn't quite do the same, though.

The best way to level grind in this DS RPG is to seek out metal slimes. However, the tricky thing here is that metal slimes of all variations have a considerable tendency to flee. Not to knock your block off with some ultimate attack. Not to instant-kill one of your party members. But to run away. When this happens there is no way to save the fight as in the other two scenarios, you are simply forced to restart your hunt.

And sometimes it can be quite a hunt. Metal slimes will sometimes show up with other monsters, but most reliably you need to find them on their own. Even then, they're just as likely to run.

The slimes' tendency to run away can be very frustrating.

But, in The Bowhole at least, the non-slime monsters can offer around 1000 experience points per fight. Considering most of my party members need about 20,000 points to level up, that means I'll need to go through about 20 fights. That's not terrible, but it still makes for some pretty intense grinding.

I'm still hoping that I'll run into a heroic slime or two.

Grinding into Gittingham

So the next phase of Dragon Quest IX requires me to go to Gittingham Palace. Since a convenient doorstep stop has been created for the Starflight Express, that's an easy enough task. So easy that I figured I would do some dawdling first. I had recently found a key that can open any lock, after all, and there were doors that needed opening.

After opening those that I could remember, I got back onto the game's main track.

So I show up at Gittingham Palace's gates and see two guards on the door. I was geared up for a relatively easy fight. Instead, however, one of the leaders of the Gittingham Empire appears when you near the palace: Hootingham-Gore. Then he challenges you.

This is like going to fight Magus in Chrono Trigger and having him challenge you after the iconic cutscene of the exterior of his castle. Although that game does an exceptional job of evenly pacing out your characters' levels with its difficulty curve.

Dragon Quest IX does not do the same.

Hootingham-Gore threw out Frizzles and Swooshes like a pitching machine throws out baseballs, and his flanking guards swung their halberds for never less than 30 damage. Not expecting a mini-boss before the dungeon even started, I was not only taken off guard I was taken out. Reduced first to my two party members who have no means of reviving the others, and then to my powerful (in one on one encounters) thief, my party crumbled then and there on the doorstep of Gittingham Palace.

Realistically, should I have expected a different outcome? No. Not at all.

Since the journey to Upover, the game's not offered any direct means of level building.

I could've left the prison break for a session to grind around the Gittish Empire or elsewhere. Or I could have done some grinding before or after going to the Realm of the Almighty. But since Upover, I've only been facing a series of bosses (mini and otherwise) without the monster-filled, and subsequently level-boosting, dungeons they usually go with.

Because I'd been facing this string of bosses I had no real sense that I needed to level up before heading into Gittingham Palace.

And maybe I don't, but I have a full quest queue so why not kill two mecha-mynahs with one stone?

Heaven's no place for animation (spoilers below)

Things are slowly drawing to a close in Dragon Quest IX.

Having been to the Realm of the Almighty (this game's heaven) only to find it empty and in ruins it became obvious quite quickly that something was up. The trip wasn't a total wash, however, since it lead to the revelation that Yggdrasil, the world tree that the Celestrians tend to, had been the Almighty's only daughter, Celestria, all along. 

Oh, and that the source of the destruction of heaven is to be found in the revived Gittish Empire. Of course. 

But what I found most interesting amidst all of the plot development and cutscenes were those scenes' style. Like almost all of the other cutscenes in the game they're all rendered with in-game sprites. It seems that even a visit to heaven isn't enough to merit another hand drawn animated scene. Though there's a brief five second animation of Celestria's transformation into Yggdrasil. 

That scene leads me to believe that there's more. Maybe they were cut from the final version of the game for legal reasons. Maybe they're only unlocked after some sort of "New Game+" is started. But a five second animation isn't something that just gets made and tossed into a cutscene. 

Setting Celestria's transformation in such a style definitely makes it stand out. But it also begs the same question that the animated scene of the dragon fight does: Why aren't all of the game's cutscenes animated?

Playing along a straight line

As it turns out, one can simply walk out of the Gortress.

After experiencing a day's labour (or so the title card told me), your guide and neighbour in the cells, Sterling, asks if you're interested in an escape plan. I chose "No" to see what would happen, but have a sneaking suspicion that it made little difference.

When the next day arrives, there's an attempted hanging and that is the rupture point among the prisoners. With all the guards distracted you're free to go - Sterling even tells you to leave the Gortress and "Zoom" out to where you can meet up with the rest of your party. And because this is a prison break you can just come back whenever, I guess.

Seriously. You just walk out of the Gortress, have complete control and then Zoom away to Stornway (or anywhere). I probably could've re-gathered my party and run some sidequests and rested at a few inns before heading back to find the prison break still in progress. Whatever happened to maintaining a sense of urgency?

Since being forced to go it alone to see Greygnarl, I've been wondering why this solo portion of the game just didn't work. I think it's because there are no stakes.

It's been years since I played through it, but Earthbound's Magicant section (where Ness is alone) is what I would call a successful solo section in an RPG. Your character develops, picks up a new technique, and no doubt gains a few levels in the process. Plus, there are actual stakes.

It's possible to die while in Earthbound's Magicant, just as you could anywhere else. But, unless you force your way forward without the rest of your party, there's no time during Dragon Quest IX's solo section where you're really at risk of being wiped out. Although you would probably pop your clogs if you tried to fight the monsters around the Gortress alone.

All in all, it seems like Dragon Quest IX can be represented by a straight line. There haven't been battles that are difficult outside of those that pit me against bosses just at the edge of my party's own power, there haven't been major changes in gameplay (outside of sidequests), and the job system is prohibitive of smoothly changing them mid-game.

But, I did just discover that pressing the shoulder buttons rotates the camera. That's sort of cool.

A disappointment with dragons

I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when "Dragon Warrior" equipment gets mentioned in Dragon Quest IX. That was the original North American name for the franchise, after all. However, its use in the game (at least up to where I am now) is strange.

Greygnarl gives you this equipment when it comes time to ride him. At first this is just to get to the Gittish Empire, but then his age-old rival Barbarus the black dragon shows up and you and Greygnarl fight him instead.

This is where the use of the equipment, and more particularly, your riding a dragon - a dragon! - gets strange.

The game shifts from its general style to the hand drawn anime style seen in the game's intro sequence. There's still some dialogue, but the entire fight is a cutscene in this style. It's really quite impressive. But it's an odd choice.

If this cutscene is an animated sequence, then why aren't any of the other cutscenes that we've seen to this point in the same style?

Because being a dragon rider (or even a Dragon Warrior) is totally badass, why make a fight while on dragon-back a cutscene instead of a minigame or special combat of some sort?

What makes me wonder why this isn't a battle you play is the fact that the game requires you to drop off all of your party members before going to meet Greygnarl for the second time. Such a requirement gives the second visit to Greygnarl a feeling of great significance. It is something that your avatar - the game's main character - alone is fit to do. There's an incredible sense of being chosen.

But chosen for what?

To put on some admittedly cool looking armour that nonetheless makes your avatar look generic?

To initiate an animated cutscene?

The fact that such a sweeping change to the way that you play the game leads to a part of it that involves very little play is just disappointing. It's a design choice I can't quite figure out.

Much like how the game designers decided to leave all of your items, equipment, and gold with you when you subsequently wind up in the Gittish Empire's Alcatraz - the Gortress.

I can't decide if I should play along or just try to bust out.

Overpowered at level 34?

Dragon Quest IX continues to strive for a quick pace. After climbing up the volcano called Magmaroo to see Greygnarl (and discovering that he's a dragon), you fight off some goons from the Gittish Empire.

Ah, the Gittish Empire. After a game full of English dialects and puns, this send up of the British Empire comes as no surprise at all. From the looks of its soldiers, though, it appears to be an empire of undead creatures ruled over (at least in part) by an anthropomorphic owl. That adds some bite to the satire, I think.

But the game's combat isn't as polished as its dialogue writing is.

Beating the dragon Greygnarl with relative ease with a party of characters ranging from level 31 to 34 makes old Greygnarl seem less than spectacular. The fact that it's possible to go to the inn and church between the fight with Greygnarl and the fight with the Gittish soldiers really takes away from the situation's urgency, too.

Yet, despite the ease of the last few fights I've been through, I can feel the endgame starting. There's one more major spot on the map to venture to, and apparently all of the McGuffins just need to be recovered. Oh, and I suppose your tutor's motives for handing the fyggs over to the Gittish Empire need to be found out as well. But that seems secondary to simply getting them back.

Story as distraction from combat

Dragon Quest IX is actually pretty compelling when the plot's happening as you play. It feels much more like you're making actual progress rather than just wandering around.

That's not to say wandering around the game's world map isn't fun or interesting in and of itself, but there's definitely a sense of things moving forward when you keep running into cutscenes. And when the prices of weapons and armor pass into the 10,000+ gold range.

Part of why I'm grateful for the game's story having kicked in again is that it distracts from the grind of combat.

Dragon Quest IX isn't really an RPG that requires a lot of strategy when it comes to battles. Attack the enemy hard, watch your party members' HP and heal them when it's low. During boss battles, do the same, but throw in some stat-boosting spells to hit harder and to be able to take more hits.

So far elemental weaknesses are minimal and the benefits of exploiting them seem limited. Grouping the monsters into families (demons, dragons, insects, etc.) is definitely neat, but basing weaknesses on those families is meaningless.

Hiding this information in the game's bestiary (accessed through a sequence of menus) doesn't help matters either.

I would make a comparison to Pokemon and how easy it is to guess type and then know weaknesses, but it's hard to say just what all demons are weak to (crackle magic, since it's ice and they're fire?).

At any rate, the route to Upover winds around and around so much you'd think it were the last town in the game. All this talk of the Gittish Empire suggests otherwise, though. I know I've sailed past a mountain-locked land before, and that must've been it.

Well, onward and upward.

An attack of plot

True to form, Dragon Quest IX plays on like all classic JRPGs. As soon as you've gathered the MacGuffins they're stolen away and you need to go retrieve them. In this instance, as you return to the Observatory with your seven fyggs you're hijacked, give them all up, and then are completely devastated.

Well, for the sake of the plot at least. 

Thankfully, the game doesn't force you to restart your party after you come crashing down from above. Nor does it force you into an entirely different class all the way back at level one. You wind up in Wormwood Creek and the game just resumes. 

Though that's how Dragon Quest IX rolls. The story comes in whenever you're at the connective parts of it, but there's far more game than is encompassed by its plot. The game's story asserts itself every now and then, but in a way that makes it appear as remote from the actual goings on in the physical earth as that planet is from the Observatory. 

But back to Wormwood Creek. 

There's a lot of talk of dragons around that town. This topic's so popular because of the dragon involved in your incident, sure, but I think there's more to it than that. 

While sailing around Dragon Quest IX's big ol' world I noticed a few places that were inaccessible without some way to travel through the air. 

The big plot point right now is that Wormwood Creek is the town meant to keep the town of Upover and its Hero of the Heavens safe. Said hero rode on a dragon in the legends about him. As something of a legendary hero myself, perhaps a dragon will come my way in the game, too?

Finding the missing fygg

Apparently going to Swinedimples Academy before Gleeba wasn't my first move out of order. There's a fygg hiding on the way to Bloomingdale. It's atop the Heights of Loneliness, among the Zere Rocks.

The thing is, I never would have figured this out without a guide.

When I first went through the area on my way to Bloomingdale, with dreams of a ship running through my head, I found the entrance to the Heights of Loneliness. But I turned back, thinking that I'd check it out again after I'd levelled up some and bought better equipment. In the end, I did just that - only over a much longer period than originally intended.

But what makes this fygg so hidden?

The fact that it's not related to or near any town or place with a save point. All of the other fyggs are. So what makes this one so special? It's almost as if the developers just needed a seventh fygg and so they came up with something and tossed it in between two major centers in the game.

Speaking of which, my memory of NPC banter suggests that hints about this fygg were almost non-existent. Were it not for the lone man waiting around near Mason's cabin you'd never even know that its owner had gone up the mountain and then deduced that you were to follow.

In an RPG that features a world map broken down into smaller maps that could still give other RPGs whole overworlds a run for their money, is hiding a fygg like this good design?

Or did someone drop the ball on this one, leaving Dragon Quest IX with a weirdly obtuse, plot-centric destination?

A post playthrough Super Mario RPG assessment

The 90s was the golden era of 16-bit console RPGs. You had your Final Fantasy titles, your Secret of Mana, your Lufia games, and, for those unafraid of emulators, Tales of Phantasia.

But, a little late to the scene, riding on the shoulders of giants, came Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

This was the game that got me interested in the RPG genre to begin with. From there I moved onto those Final Fantasy games and Lufia titles, and the masterpiece that is Tales of Phantasia.

But I first played this game (several times through) almost twenty years ago, now. As such, you'd be right to wonder whether the game holds up or not.

After spending a weekend working through it with friends, I can write confidently that it does. For the most part.

Graphically, the sprites based on 3D-models still look clean and neat (with the exception of monsters like Belome).

Aurally, the music and sound effects have all the charm they do in the other Mario games.

Story-wise, the game is still compelling since several characters and elements of the Mario world are explored for the first and (alas) last time.

And, as far as the gameplay is concerned, Super Mario RPG offers a fine blend of JRPG standards (turn based combat and side-questing for secret areas and items) and Mario-inspired mini-games and platforming.

Though, the game's platforming is much more difficult than I remember. Mostly because the game's isometric viewpoint doesn't lend itself to easily judging distances and depths. Were it possible, warming up with some Sonic 3D Blast probably would've helped.

But Super Mario RPG really shines in its minigames' integration with the main game. Most of these games are played through at least once because of some relevance to the story. Placing them within the structure of the game as a whole keeps you from needing to do any serious backtracking to retry them. The minigames' accessibility also makes the game's world feel much tighter than those that are spread out over expansive world maps.

The cost for that tight world design is high, though. There's little exploration involved in Super Mario RPG. Just as when I played the game as a kid, in this recent playthrough there were a few instances where the crook of a wall or the texture of a rock suggested that something lay just beyond it, if only you had some of Link's bombs or Samus' roll ability.

However, beating an RPG crafted by the masters of the console RPG golden era, SquareSoft (known now as Square Enix) in a weekend (approximately 20 hours) is otherwise unthinkable. Were there an expansive overworld in Super Mario RPG, rather than a node system, much more time would be spent in travel. Not to mention, time spent fighting monsters during that travel.

But that's Super Mario RPG's greatest strength.

Even though when you know what you're doing it's a fairly short RPG, it's an RPG of small, manageable numbers.

At level 22, equipped with the Lazy Shell and the Quartz Charm, Mario doles out 500 damage per turn against the game's final boss. No more than fifteen turns of that damage alone ends him.

Your characters' HP isn't likely to climb much higher than 200.

The game pools together your party's MP into a number that maxes out at 99.

For whatever bizarre reason, you can only ever carry a maximum of 999 coins. If you do so, you'll never be left with less than 300 coins after upgrading all five of your party members weapons and armour.

These relatively low numbers make the game supremely manageable and conceivable. These qualities make the game a welcome reprieve from other more expansive RPGs (like Dragon Quest IX, or the downright intimidating Xenoblade Chronicles), while also offering a ready amount of challenge in its hidden content. Not to mention the infamous achievement of winning the Super Suit for executing 100 consecutive Super Jumps on a single enemy.

So, though the challenge may be set outside of the main game, and the experience as a whole is short in comparison to other RPGs, Super Mario RPG's rich blend of its name's two key elements locks it firmly in place as a great classic of the 16 bit era of RPGs.

What comes after Batsureg?

Well, it should have been expected. The next boss was just another bash fest. Even with its magic barrier, Larstastnaras proved to be no match for my group of four.

However. Now I'm really feeling the consequences of playing this game out of order.

It's entirely possible that the people of Batsureg wouldn't give clues for the next fygg anyway, but this seems unlikely. In a game as expansive as Dragon Quest IX I expect there to always be a hint hidden within NPC dialogue.

Since it's unclear where to go next I've taken to my ship.

Sailing around has landed me in the area of Wormwood Creek. Here, the entire town refuses to interact with foreigners. There's definitely a major sidequest here since what the people of Wormwood Creek do say suggests there's a way to break the town of its xenophobia. All of which is backed up by an inscription found at the edge of a canyon.

Now, the question is: Am I heading in the right direction?

I get the feeling that this part of the game (though in a hitherto unexplored part of its world) is extra. This feeling probably comes from the obscurity of it all.

A town that rejects foreigners?

An area that's mostly open space?

It just feels too far flung to be part of the game proper.

As always though, I won't know until I play further in. (And as long as I ignore most of what one of the linked pages mention.)

A welcome surprise

Dragon Quest IX has up and surprised me.

Chasing after Batzorig, the son of Butsureg's chief, doesn't immediately result in a boss battle. Instead, you're lead to his mother's grave. There, her spirit reveals that you need to get her son some Bodura Grass so that he can reveal the enchantress Sarantsatsral's true form.

So the boss here, if there will be such a thing, is lined up to be Sarantsatsral herself.

Upon first encountering her, it was clear that she was not what she seemed. But my guess then was that she was a fellow Celestrian; that she was an angel like your main character. That's still my guess, but evidence is mounting against that being the case. Her sapping the confidence and courage from Batsureg's chief and his son alike is particularly un-angelic.

At any rate, this much narrative in the middle of the hunt for a fygg is a welcome change to the game. All of the other fyggs were usually delivered by accident or after a battle with whatever had eaten the fygg in question. Also, more often than not a dungeon is placed between you and the one who had dined on the divine fruit.

That the process for getting this fygg varies the formula is very welcome. Perhaps as much for what it is as for its being entirely unexpected.

Boss anticipation

So after Dragon Quest IX's hip hop priest (the cleric in Batsureg (a.k.a. Yurts-ville)) comes grinding.

On my way to meet up with the son of the town's chief, I got into a few battles and noticed something amiss. I couldn't follow my own strength standard of being able to beat a group of three enemies or more in one round (using three physical attacks and one attack-all spell). So the Bad Cave was visited for its metal slimes and everyone managed to gain a level.

One gained level isn't the result of a particularly large amount of grinding, but I'm eager to get moving into the game. There's the promise of the next boss fight being different from the rest, after all. Why?

Because in an effort to boost the chief's son's confidence, you're to give him the final strike.

Now, this could mean nothing more than that the battle is like any other save that when it ends you see the chief-to-be make the kill. Or, it could mean that the son will somehow be integrated into the battle.

I'm not exactly holding my breath in anticipation, but the possibility of a boss battle where stakes and methods are varied is as welcome as the actual appearance of such a battle at this point. Such a thing would make the battles all the more dynamic, and that dynamism has been missing of late in this game.