Things have got
even worse for Aktemto since we last visited.
Aktemto was never exactly
well-populated, but now it's a ghost town: House of Healing, soup kitchen, everything's abandoned.
There is no hope, there is no salvation, everyone will die.
As ever, it's our responsibility to unfuck things...
...but this time, we're mostly too late.
The monsters on the first two levels haven't changed. Nara used to fear these, but now she's got the Metal Babble Armor.
Down on the second level, we find a survivor! He's running around in not-quite-circles at incredible speed, which I guess is how he stayed ahead of the Weretigers.
I had to box him in with the rest of the party to get him to hold still long enough to talk. On the plus side, "help" is exactly why we're here.
Last time we were here, we found a man sitting by these gravestones, patiently waiting to join his friends in death. I don't see a corpse, so I guess he came to his senses. Grim, but I'll take all the wins I can get here.
This is where we found the Gunpowder Jar, next to the two desperate treasure hunters, way back when.
Give them this much credit, they got a lot done: there's a whole new level down here, every bit as big as the first two.
And it is
lousy with dead ends. Which I guess is realistic, but how did they know which way to go? Was something
calling to them?
It wouldn't even be the first time we've seen that device; the evil well, from all the way back in Chapter 1, did the same thing.
OH SHIT A MONSTER
Oh. Fair enough.
(and no, there wasn't anything hidden in that weird inlet)
OH SHIT A MONSTER
Not pictured: the one remaining dragon rider killing Taloon with a burst of scorching breath, then finishing off Alena with a lucky crit. Jessica truly is our one-woman TPK Prevention Service. "Hard as nails" and "can raise the dead" just combine really well.
This level is a sort of Greatest Beatdowns compilation, reprising all the worst monsters from the game to date...though in a rare act of mercy, no Beleths. Dragon Riders and Necrodains, mostly, not that that''s not enough.
As we get further in, we start meeting some new monsters - Esturk's forces, presumably. Ryverns poison you, Eigerhorns freak out when they take damage (see right), Chaos Hoppers like to turn your party members against each other, and Maskans suck. I think the DQ4 designers allowed themselves one non-diabolically-dangerous enemy per dungeon, and I definitely appreciate it.
There are *lots* of monsters wandering around down here. Most are hostile, the encounter rate is insane, but a precious few are too busy looking for Esturk to bother with us.
So many dead ends.
We can tell from the tables and chairs that this is still the human miners' work.
The next level down, likewise. The place is flooded with monsters
now, but they didn't build it.
After another hundred or so encounters and two trips outside to restock, the party finally comes upon a dying human, lying beside a small opening.
As soon as he meets someone to brag to, he dies.
: I wish we'd brought Cristo along; I never know what to say at times like this.
: You say, "Let's kill the ones who did it."
: Yeah, okay.
For that matter, I'm starting to regret saying so many mean things about Cristo. The giant yellow pteranodons keep poisoning me, Nara
never learns the Antidote spell, and I'm almost our of herbs.
The Aktemto miners broke into a vast underground space - "breached the caverns", if you will.
As in Dwarf Fortress, the caverns sometimes contain ancient structures created long ago by strange beings.
Unlike Dwarf Fortress, though, they're not necessarily malign. This particular one contains a healing tile! Thank you Lord God, I'd forgotten about that. Presumably it's for the monsters' benefit (they've been down here thousands of years, after all), but we can exploit it, and the high encounter rate, to grind like mad if we want.
I do not want; it's no fun showing off a final battle that takes four turns.
Not
all the ancient structures are malign, but that doesn't mean
none of them are. This is it; the palace of the Ruler of Evil.
And more dead ends, of course.
Like Necrosaro's Palace, Esturk's Palace is pretty tasteful. Powerful monsters have a human sense of aesthetics, I guess.
Treasure. Mostly gold and Small Medals.
Which incidentally is a little disturbing. Small Medals, here, in the Evil Palace That Time Forgot? How old are these things? Why is the Medal King collecting them, and why is he hooked up to a continent-spanning set of Travel Doors that, oh by the way, also leads to Monster Island?)
Jessica gets stronger, Nara gets faster. Probably the monsters were saving these for the Ruler's resurrection, so we get to improve ourselves and screw him over in one move. Double bonus!
A little more wandering takes us to the balcony overlooking the entryway.
The leader of Necrodain Pack #88 was wearing some special armor. It's cursed, of course; it doesn't do anything *really* bad to you but only Jessica and Ragnar can use it. Ragnar's stuck cooling his heels upstairs, and Jessica's Zenithian Armor is better, so...
Treasure! The chests to the south hold a Small Medal and a Mimic (which, luckily for us, doesn't cast Defeat and randomly wipe out the whole party. It can happen!)
But what's that guarded chest to the north? Surely
that's not the Ruler of Evil...
: As long as he lives, so shall we!
: Kill your leader, steal your treasure, got it.
Deeper into the castle, through a disused-looking side passage...
I'm skipping over many, many uninteresting battles. There's not a lot of tactical opportunity here; you just have to kill the monsters before they hurt you too badly. The two hard constraints are the healers' MP (Nara and Jessica)...
...and our supply of Antidote Herbs. If either store runs dry, we hit the Outside/Return button, heal up, and try again.
The passage leads to a tower...
Which leads to a throne room.
Esturk's attendants give us a chance to retreat.
Jessica demurs. Not pictured: the other tiger monster - I guess he ran away? All credit to him for having more sense than most of the monsters who meet Jessica.
Taloon sees no reason to hold back. This is what happens when the King of the Rhinos meets the King of the Arms Merchants.
So what happens when the King of the Monsters meets the Legendary Hero?
...wait for it...
...yeah, he doesn't even bother to get out of bed for her.
Looks like Necrosaro got some bad information.
...but there's a reason he's known as the Ruler of Evil. He's the most dangerous enemy the party has faced so far,
even asleep. Those waves of light hit the whole party every turn; if they take out Nara, our expedition ends right here.
But Nara keeps up the healing for once, Alena scores a pair of lucky crits, and soon...
We manage to attract his attention. Oops.
Once he wakes up, the situation immediately takes a turn for the worse. That's not a even a crit; he's just got out of bed, and
already he's powerful enough to kill Nara in one swing.
We have to end this quickly. Esturk's next attack will kill either Taloon or Alena, the one after
that will kill the other, and then Jessica's stuck in a damage race with the world's most powerful evil being.
But Alena's beastly double crit was decisive; after one more round of attacks, the Ruler of Evil falls dead.
Learning experiences.
Yep. No resurrection bullshit this time, the Ruler of Evil is Dead For Real. He got one attack (while awake, anyway) and zero lines of dialogue. His one attack killed Nara, granted, but she's been resurrected with no trouble.
We Win. Everyone's just standing there, basking in the moment, when suddenly:
Shit. This guy. Killed Alena's father, killed Jessica's everyone, planning to literally kill all humans. He's like some kind of reverse Taloon: the Most Evil Monster in the World.
From a human perspective, anyway. From a monster perspective it's been a shitty couple of months. Necrosaro killed the legendary hero, and that was great, but since then it's been all downhill: the Lighthouse freed, Balzack dead, Keeleon dead.
And it turns out he didn't kill the legendary hero after all. Worst month ever.
On the other hand, in a way that's good news; now he knows who's responsible for the recent string of disasters. All he has to do is kill her before she's recovered from her fight with Esturk, and he can wipe out humanity unopposed.
On the gripping hand, she's the Legendary Hero. Can he take her? He's got his trusty armored lieutenant by his side, but she's got three friends (even if one of them's in pyjamas). 2 on 4; would he win? Will he ever get a better chance?
The moment stretches, until suddenly:
Now it's Necrosaro's worst month ever.
Necrosaro might be my favorite villain out of all the old-school RPGs. This moment is why.
It's been a long time, so I'll recap: long ago the elfin woman Rosa was captured by humans and "treated badly", in this game's early-90s-Nintendo parlance, because she shed ruby tears when she cried. A young monster named Saro rescued her. We don't know how he sees her exactly - as a sister? As a lover? - but he cares for her very deeply. So he spirited her away to a town now known as Rosaville, far from any human influence, and installed her in a high tower with a deadly guardian. More: he took her treatment as proof of mankind's irredeemable wickedness, and swore to destroy them all. She doesn't want him to do it, but he knows it's necessary. She's his heart, his treasure, and the source of his resolve.
That's who just got kidnapped by humans.
This would normally be the cue for Necrosaro's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. His life's philosophy was just confirmed in the worst way possible, and his worst enemy - who
also happens to be humanity's exemplar - is standing just a few feet away.
So of course he drops everything to go rescue Rosa.
He's not killing all humans out of nihilism, or boredom, or anything like that. He wants an orderly world and for that, humans have to die. He doesn't feel badly about that any more than you feel bad that someone killed all the bears where you live. Humans are dangerous, he thinks, and even if they aren't causing trouble right this second you still don't want them around. That's what Necrosaro was born into: a world ruled by bears.
Jessica sees things differently, though, and not just because she's one of the targets of Necrosaro's Great Genocide.
This sequence really goes out of its way to drive home how
similar humans and monsters can be, in this world: same tastes, same architecture, and, it turns out, the same impulse to protect their loved ones.
Or look at Jessica and Saro. We know now that they're both on quests for revenge: Jessica was
raised to kill the Ruler of Evil, but with Necrosaro it's
personal. But look how differently they interpreted that common vision: Jessica vowed to kill Necrosaro; Saro vowed to end humanity. It's the difference between a heroine and a villain - or, if you want to be generous, the difference between a vigilante and a serial killer.
And now you know why Necrosaro is a better name than Pisaro. Saro -> Necrosaro symbolizes, crudely but effectively, Saro's new genocidal determination. Saro -> Pisaro symbolizes...what, exactly? Saro's love of math? His love of urine?
Anyway. The Return spell doesn't work here, so the party has to get out of Esturk's Palace on foot.
Which turns out to be for the best - otherwise, what with all the excitement earlier, we might have forgotten about this! Esturk is dead, so his minion is dead, so...
...we can claim the prize. It was in Esturk's tomb all along!
Awesome. Our job is half done, and soon we'll be able to fly.
Assuming we can get out of the palace! Esturk's many minions haven't broken and fled, or anything like that. They're just swarming around leaderless; if anything, the encounter rate is
higher than before. But the extra XP is nice, and after one battle in particular:
Here's Jessica, learning one of the weirder spells in the game. Remember the Imposters from Necrosaro's palace, who could turn themselves into copies of your characters? This spell lets Jessica do the same thing.
Let's try it.
Jessica's a heavy-armor-and-big-sword type of fighter; it's how she was trained, it's what she's comfortable with. Alena, for contrast, has spent the last five levels slaying evil in a leotard, a stylish hat, and a pair of earrings. Jessica
has to know what that's like.
And so!
The first thing to notice is that Jessica can no longer cast spells. Alena can't use magic, so until the spell wears off Jessica can't either. If she'd transformed into Nara, say, she'd have Nara's spell list instead of her own. I believe Taloon's special attacks are copied too, but I've never found out, because...
...the second thing to notice is that non-boss battles in DQ4 basically never last longer enough to make Transform worthwhile. Jessica would have made two attacks, just like Alena does...but as it happened, the real Alena acted first and beheaded the dragon.
With her earrings what the hell
Back in the Aktemto mine proper, the Outside spell
finally starts working again.
Now, where was that hot-air balloon inventor?
: Actually, before that, we should see if we can do something about the Rosa situation. Even if she's Necrosaro's sister or whatever, she's still a kidnap victim.
A fair point. First stop, Rosaville:
No bad information this time; Rosa is definitely gone. The party heads upstairs to look for clues:
The kidnappers left Rosa's Slime friend alive! He points the sticky blue pseudopod of blame towards Izmit.
The kid from before corroborates. Damn.
If we can trust the Slime's testimony, the kidnappers headed west, presumably by sea. But as it happens we don't have to guess: we have the Return spell and can search the entire globe in a few hours.
And so they do. Jessica runs out of MP halfway through, and has to turn Return duty over to Mara. But it turns out not to matter: there's only one clue, and it's in Izmit:
No one in town knows anything, but apparently there's a new dream in the inn. Team Jessica has already searched everything that's reachable by Return spell, so the time spent is worth it.
If there's even a clue...
oh no
no no no no no
He has the name Necrosaro, this isn't a vision of long past like the last one...
He doesn't bother waiting for an answer:
There's no special sound effects or images, they just vanish, one by one.
Dragon Quest 4 prints text to the screen one character at a time, like there was someone typing the lines out as you play. Usually it's almost instantaneous because I have the message speed set up all the way, but Rosa's dialogue here comes out bit by bit, in heartbreaking slow motion.
Rosa's last words.
Will he hear them? Will he listen?
Nope. The bears ate Rosa and now they must burn, everything up to and including her wishes be damned.
Well.
: We're always one step too slow. Alena's father, my parents, and now Rosa...
: We were in time for Esturk.
: And for the people of Keeleon.
: And for the princess of Endor, and the King of Stancia, and lots of other places besides. It's that tricky
confirmation bias again.
There was going to be a "We Defeated the Ruler of Evil, We're the Best Heroes Ever" party; now no one's in the mood. Fair enough, but didn't something
else good happen recently?
Ah yes. In Riverton, if you've forgotten, we met a man who thought he build a flying machine, a balloon, if he could just find a canisterful of the right kind of gas. But the Ruler of Evil stole it all during his last rise, and if there's any left at all it's in either his old palace or his tomb, so to find any you'd have to get in to one of the two evilest places on Earth and how could anyone possibly
oh wait that was us we did both those things yesterday. And finding it was,
at best the fourth most exciting thing to happen that day.
There was a Yes/No choicebox, but I don't know what it said because
never turn down the power of flight.
Again with the completely ridiculous false choices.
Even if you say no, the balloon salesman knows what's what and refuses to relent. Shortly:
!!!
One short, extremely unrestful night at the inn later:
It doesn't look like much, I know. Maybe literally; it's the thing two squares left of the ship, which is the white thing a little north of the shrine, which is the thing surrounded by mountains. I go away from NES graphics for a few months and my mind just completely forgets how to interpret them; it's all random lines and swirls of chaotic color, like what a baby sees in its first minute outside the womb.
Not too exciting now either; no mode7 in the NES era. Even so,
we're flying baby! Right over the mountains!
So where to next? For a while now we've been getting hints that it'd be useful to go to Zenithia, see if there's any civilization left in the sky, but we don't know whether the Path to Heaven even
exists or where it is if it does exist. Also, we're still missing the Zenithian sword, which legend says we'd need to open the way.
Where might it be? We've scoured the earth pretty thoroughly and come up...well, not empty-handed, but short one sword.
You may recall that the Treasure Map, which we picked up in Haville four Chosen Ones ago, has a big pirate-treasure-style X in the middle of this mountain range.
In other words: right on top of this oasis.
Next time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4:
A strangely shy damsel in distress! Treasure! The best shop in the game!
Also: apparently I completely fucked this thread's poll at some point, and now it can't be changed, at all, ever. So...just post your votes for who stays behind to the thread, I guess? While you're doing that, I'll finish editing the earlier posts so all the images work again, maybe fix a few of the more egregious typos, that sort of thing.
Also^2: I seem to recall that a few of you had played or were playing the DS version. How did it handle Rosa's final scene?
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