We're in the home stretch, now; just one more thing to find before the finale.
Sometimes you get one of these slime encounters without enough slimes to make the King right away.
In that case, rather than trying to attack you they'll just summon backup.
Physical attacks aren't fast enough to stop them; even if Mara, Nara, and Orin could
all kill a slime a round, each, they'll more than replace their losses. Your only hope is to use a multi-target attack powerful enough to kill everyone in one shot, and we don't have one of those.
So, shortly...
(I know it's just one silly frame of animation, but I cannot get enough of that little slime face. He looks so
excited, you know?)
...King Slime! But it turns out that Orin + Mara > King Slime, so before long:
You may remember these guys from chapter 2. Both monster types can one-shot Mara, either with a lucky crit or just by rolling over in their sleep (!?). But we got lucky this time, so:
Mara the exotic dancer, who practices a particularly "hot" kind of magic if you know what I mean, has learned a spell called "Bang". Stay classy, DW4.
Orin and the Edgarssons explore the rest of the continent, but it's useless; there's only one place left that's worth going:
The mining town, Aktemto.
Aktemto has never been a great place to live. Mining towns aren't, as a rule; too much money, too much greed, rough and dangerous characters everywhere, and lots of unhealthy runoff into the soil and water. But poison swamp at the edge of town is a bit much. What's going on?
Oh
Everyone in town tells pretty much the same story. Poison gas starting pouring out of the mine, and it became infested with monsters.
:If you need gunpowder, take some of what's left in the mine.
: Cough...cough...
As an extra kick in the nuts, Aktemto's primary export has been outlawed. That's handy for us, I guess, but it means everyone we talk to here is almost certainly going to starve to death.
With the land and water poisoned, there's literally nothing these people can do to support themselves. It makes sense that the shopkeepers would have it worst; who'd come to a town with no exports?
Officially speaking, the mine is closed. The gates are shut, and probably no one in Aktemto even has the key.
But someone broke down the wall to reach it. A few people are still down there, chasing rumors of a legendary treasure that's supposed to be buried deep beneath the town, the ruins of a civilization so old that even the earth itself has forgotten it. Locked doors, deadly swamp, or poison gas; nothing can stop them from searching for it.
A while ago, someone got so desperate for fresh water that he was willing to wade through the poison swamp. He made it in, but couldn't make it out again. Probably the water is poisonous too, for all that it looks blue and clean.
This section of the game is pretty grim, and it's only going to get worse from here.
Aktemto mine. Reinforcing the grimness of the town above, this dungeon comes with another brutal difficulty spike. It's easy to feel oppressed when your healer keeps dying.
Vampdogs are annoying; in addition to being generically tough, they can incapacitate your whole team with the Sleep spell. Worst of all, their battle sprite messes with my head; something in my brain always tries to interpret their ears as
legs, and that throws off the rest of the image. So obnoxious.
These guys' gimmick, as far as I can tell, is utter incompetence. Maybe there's some awesome technique they're supposed to have and it's just bugged, but all I've ever seen them do is attack for inconsequential damage and get flustered, wasting their turns. They're a welcome respite from the Nintendo Hard-ness of the rest of the dungeon, anyway.
Weretigers don't have any gimmicks at all, they just hit like trucks. Not pictured: that one guy taking off three quarters of Orin's HP with 4 attacks.
One possible path east is blocked by a rockfall. In a real mine, a rockfall almost always means that a bunch of miners were killed; I don't imagine that fantasy gunpowder mines are any safer.
Thanks, DW4. Thanks.
Hey, nice! Something about this area that isn't wrist-slittingly depressing. The Silver Tarot Cards are pretty cool. Nara can use them as a weapon, but they're not very strong; they shine in the special effects you can get out of them in battle. One of which can wipe out the whole party IIRC, so I'll show them off more when we're out of this hellhole.
Down a ladder, deeper into the mine...
...things get even hairier. Mara's "Bang" (which despite its name is actually an effective target-all attack spell) sees a lot of play down here.
Despite that, they still manage to almost kill Orin. This has been a recurring theme; Orin must smell extra-delicious or something because monsters really, really love attacking him. It's better than the alternative but I still feel sorry for the poor guy.
They breathe fire. They don't seem to resist fire. Orin spent a lot of this fight on fire. Fire fire fire.
And just like that, we're back to wrist-slitting depression. This guy's friends died down here, killed by monsters or poison gas or cave-ins or God knows what. Rather than getting on with his life he drug graves for them all, and instead of leaving the deathtrap that claimed all his friends he's chosen to loiter by their bones and await his own inevitable death.
Metal Scorpions are not a big deal. They have good armor, as you'd expect, but Orin can still
lose the will to live and get one-shotted from 55 hp straight down to zero, apparently. SON OF A BITCH.
LET'S TRY THAT AGAIN, SHALL WE?
(Not pictured: the same damn thing happening three other times, twice to Orin and once to Nara. At least Mara, bearer of the Outside spell, always survived)
Down another ladder, past the spot we'd reached before that unfortunate detour into metaphysics, we find the one remaining dig site, and...
...some gunpowder! Hell yeah! Now we can scare the minister, and find Balzack, and get our revenge...
...just as soon as we clear up some inventory space. Fucking Dragon Quest, man.
(in case you were wondering why we can't just blast a hole in the roof, or blow up the Counsel, or do any number of other things the designers didn't want to code for)
We've talked about this some before, but: suppose they
do find something special down here. Suppose the treasure
isn't 100% myth. Then, yay, they'll have treasure...deep underground, surrounded by monsters and gas, in a kingdom with a vicious and unprincipled monarch. Good luck with that.
But we can help with the "unprincipled monarch" part, at least. One cast of Outside and one stop at the inn later, we're ready. Time to put this whole complicated plot into motion.
Last time we were here, I wondered why no one complained about Orin busting open doors like he was some kind of cowardly blue Hulk. Now we know: Keeleon's army just
does not give a shit anymore. Their old king's dead, the new one's hidden, and all the public employees are waiting for this painfully unbalanced state of affairs to resolve itself somehow.
Let's go help with that.
Counsel's room: check.
Mysterious alcove behind Counsel's room: check.
Destabilizing influence: check.
Here we go...
Just as reported, the Counsel flips out as soon as he hears the gunpowder. He immediately takes off running...
...pausing only to fastidiously close the door behind himself...
...then charges headlong down the halls of Keeleon Castle, ignoring the exotically dressed strangers behind him.
After he reaches a particular section of wall, he stops and looks back. If you're in his line of sight at that point, he yells at you and calls the whole thing off.
Otherwise...
...something I didn't manage to capture, apparently. A hidden door opens, he steps through it, it closes again.
But no matter. Now that we know it's there, we can operate it too.
Moment of truth: is this a trap?
Huzzah!
Or, wait, no. There's no trap, but there's no Balzack either; there's a monster on the throne. He's just sitting there and letting the puny humans do their thing, so we'll talk to the Counsel and the one guard (not pictured, off to the left).
The Counsel really is as much of a coward as everyone said. But what about that guard?
Ah. Note that he's not attacking us, demanding that we leave, or anything like that. He's seen the gang of heavily armed strangers, drawn the right conclusion, and decided to stay out of it. This "King" really doesn't command any loyalty at all.
Time to find out what's what.
Oh
shit.
Human to monster transformations are supposed to be impossible. Monsters don't
come from anywhere, they're naturally occurring, like rainstorms or treasure chests. But Edgar was rumored to have been working on something special before he was murdered. Something he wouldn't even tell his own children about. If...
Yep, there it is. Edgar and Orin were researchers, alchemists for the sake of alchemy, but Balzack wanted
results.
So he killed Edgar, stole the Secret, and turned himself into something post-human. Now he's babbling about world conquest.
And oh yes, he's conveniently deformed himself so that we no longer need to put a human face on our enemy.
He's set himself up to be killed as thoroughly as any RPG villain ever has. Let's do it.
Remember this? It works a little differently than I remembered. Rather than indiscriminately shutting down everyone's spells, it accepts a single target. You can turn off Balzack's magic without affecting the Edgarssons in any way. Also, Balzack casts Healall on himself when he's down to about half hp, so it's basically impossible to beat him until you've shut him up. Learn from my mistakes; use the Sphere
immediately instead of halfway in.
But despite that serious tactical mistake, Balzack goes down pretty easily. He's got a lot of HP, but he doesn't hit very hard and his few multi-target attacks are very weak.
Either the Secret of Evolution isn't as amazing as Balzack thinks, or he was just
really pitiful to begin with.
But just as Balzack collapses, another monster appears on the throne-behind-the-throne...
...and drops
yet another plot bombshell.
It's just words to Mara and Nara, but you may remember Necrosaro as the guy who blew off the Endor tournament to
commit genocide in Santeem probably pet a kitten or something.
So far we've caught him meddling with affairs of state on
three different continents, in a plot that's apparently been going for years. What's he trying to achieve?
Well, before we worry about that, M&N have to get out of this alive.
Meet the real boss of the chapter: Keeleon.
Keeleon's pretty dangerous. He gets two attacks per round for ~50 damage apiece, or if he prefers he can breathe scorching or freezing wind over the whole party for another fifty damage each. He's a tough opponent, but with proper planning and strategaah, who the hell am I kidding, two turns later the whole team is dead.
Yes, Keeleon is one of
those bosses.
But he doesn't kill us. Team Apparently Not Going To Get Their Revenge Just Yet awakens in Keeleon's prison. Presumably Balzack has a bunch of fun times lined up and waiting for us in the experiment pit, but there's an important fact about this prison cell that he apparently never learned, and that his demoralized subjects never bothered to tell him.
: You're still young. I'll give you my boarding pass. It's in the chest in the back.
: Escape for me and live.
One more dose of tragedy before the end of the chapter. The old man must have dug this escape tunnel; his "ran out of strength" comment makes no sense if it was like that when he got there. He spent years dreaming of escape, and patiently digging his tunnel, but by the time he finished he wasn't strong enough to make the trip to Haville.
Also: if he's been at this for
years, then he must have been imprisoned before Balzack's time. Apparently the last administration was 100% bastard as well; has Keeleon been the power behind the throne this whole time? That'd explain the castle name, at least.
But we have the power to make things right, so long as by "make things right" you mean "kill the ones responsible". We just have to avoid getting rendered down for parts in Balzack's Maximum Fun Chamber.
This is the way we escape from jail, escape from jail, escape from jail...
...shit. For two solid updates Keeleon's military has been completely incompetent and apathetic. Why'd they have to find their spines
now?
Orin redeems himself. Don't remember the years of cowardice, remember the blaze of glory
(Ok, so I lied, there was more tragedy coming. I think this is it though. For this chapter.)
The sisters run for the hills...
(...which are really abundant around here...)
And ultimately makes their way to the ship in Haville.
The game designers made an interesting choice, here at the end of chapter 4. We just came off of two major action sequences, so normally you'd want to keep the pressure up with a hurried castoff (maybe pursued by Keeleon's forces) and an abrupt transition to Endor - ending the chapter with a bang, basically.
Instead, they make you talk to all the passengers before you the ship will sail, deliberately breaking the tension and slowing the pace. It's a moment to stop and reflect on everything we've done, not just in Chapter 4 but in the whole game so far, before we finally meet the main character and officially start the real quest.
Recent events to the contrary, not
everyone on this continent has a backstory stuffed with tragedy and woe. For example, this guy is thrilled to be heading to what is apparently the glittering metropolis of DW4. It's got gambling and two different kinds of blood sports, so...there's that.
Taloon is well-known and well-liked in the merchanting community. Of course. Also, this gives us a little data about the sequencing of the chapters: these events can't have taken place too long after the end of Chapter 3.
News travels fast, or else we were out for longer than it seemed.
: I don't know what you've been through, but cheer up.
: Good things will come if you live....
"The whole game isn't going to be like the last hour, honest" And thank God for that.
: We came to this country to see our father.
: But my sister says we're going back. I don't understand.
Not everyone's excited. Knowing this kingdom as we do, it's probably...
: Until he's old enough to bear agony and despair.....
...yeah, there that is.
(Now we're really done with Chapter 4 tragedy, I'm sure of it this time)
The bit I missed goes something like "Once you leave, you won't be able to come back to this country". So this isn't a trade ship or a cruise; it's more of a last-helicopter-out-of-Saigon sort of situation.
But they're kind enough to hold the ship for us (DW4 has no tides, and thus no moon, as far as I can tell). There actually is one thing I wanted to take care of, so let's take a moment to show off the Silver Tarot Cards real quick. I was going to do this right after Aktemto, but I got distracted by, you know, the revenge. They have various effects when used in battle, some really good, some really bad. Let me grind up a random encounter and we'll
Huh. Interesting.
I never learned this as a child, but random encounters get turned off after the fight with Keeleon, presumably so that you don't leave the castle, run into one of the calibrated-for-a-party-with-Orin-in-it monster groups, and get slaughtered. Getting slaughtered isn't game over, though - you wouldn't have to redo the fight with Balzack, you'd just wake up in front of a healer - so I don't really get it.
Anyway, the bottom line is the cards will have to wait for a bit. Back to the ship!
Yeah, we got our asses kicked. Yeah, Orin died. But we'll be back, with all those other points of light the prophetess mentioned, and then...
Yeah. And then.
Endor: crossroads of the world.
Next time, on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4:
This is a major milestone for the LP; next update starts the "real" quest, and we're about a quarter of the way through the game. Probably slightly more than that from your perspective, since Chapter 5 will necessarily be somewhat lighter on new characters and situations. So I'd like to take a moment and ask: what's working for you in this LP, and what isn't? What do you want more of?
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