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Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4!

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Fjords to Plowshares:
Too sleepy for commentary.  Let's get right to it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4, we reached the town of Gottside, the "place closest to Zenithia" (and closest, therefore, to Master Dragon, this world's God).  Since we're still on the ground and Zenithia's up in the clouds someplace, that's not as much progress as it sounds like.  Even so, we're definitely getting somewhere...



...and Necrosaro knows it; he's ramping up the threat level as fast as he possibly can.  Pictured: the consequences of that.  Good thing Jessica can raise the dead.



East of Gottside, the party finds an isolated shrine.  It seems too short to be a path to the clouds, but there could be a teleporter or something.

: In fact, there almost certainly will be; even if there's a tower, it's not like it'll literally stretch all the way up to heaven.
: Yeah, we'd have noticed that on the way in.  But who were you talking to?



: Ohlookstatues



Indeed, statues.  Creepy, random statues.  And that's all they are; they don't talk, they don't move, they don't conceal ancient treasure, nothing.



Also there's a giant pit.  There's a perfectly good set of stairs over to our left, but why walk when you can leap?



The hole leads...to another hole!  Joy of joys!



That plunge leads them into a room with a strange tile.  No one in the party recognizes it, so they stand on it at once.  Thus:



: An elevator!
: ...so we jumped down an elevator shaft.
: Without even knowing it.
: We rule.



Well, sorta.  It turns out that you're supposed to do this in the other order: jump down the shaft, go down the stairs, grab the treasure.  Mad backtracking ensues, made simpler by the fact that there are no random encounters at all.  None.  I've spent the whole game fighting for my life through lethal dungeons, and the experience of just walking through one, risk-free, is honestly pretty unnerving.  But I persevere, and soon:



: ...the what now?

No one has a clue what it does; even Taloon is mystified.  Oh well, if Taloon can't figure it out then Nara presumably can.



Another round of backtracking, to get the elevator back up to the first floor so that we can jump down the elevator shaft at a lower level.  If you have to ask why we'd do something like that, you haven't been paying attention.



As expected, jumping down the elevator shaft puts us on a long, circuitous path with treasure at the end of it.



Seriously awesome treasure.  The Dress of Radiance is even stronger than Alena's Pink Leotard, and will sometimes reflect enemy spells back on their casters.  Half our opponents are mages now, and that ratio will only get worse as we get closer to Necrosaro.  Alena will wear this dress for the rest of the game.



Back topside, the party shows the Baron's Horn to Nara.  She confirms that it's really magical, but has no better luck working out what it does.



Operation Path to Heaven, take two.  Instead of heading east from Gottside, we head south...



...to a tower!  Could it be?



: I think we're in the right place.



Yeah, definitely the right...



...what?

Oh, right.  Jessica is carrying the Zenithian Sword, but not actually equipping it as such, on account of as how it sorta sucks.  But the mystical voice won't let us in any other way.



Success.  Master Dragon is one dungeon away.



The awful price of progress.  Jessica's out like 30 attack power here guys, it's terrible.

Although actually, once you've got in you can wear whatever you want.  It's like a conference where you have to wear your badge to get in, not like a restraunt where you have to wear pants during the whole meal.



This is a long dungeon, and it's all decorated the same way: freestanding water, doric columns, and lots of intricately woven red carpet.  Clearly designed to impress the hell out of visitors.



The visitors do not look too impressed!  Seriously though, the monsters are for once not all that big a deal.  Beastans are new, but not that dangerous even if they do seem to crit a lot.



The path up the tower is long and winding, weaving between indoor and outdoor scenes.



The dead ends mostly have treasure; a rare exception is seen here.



Walking walking walking so much walking.  We're so far above the ground that it's no longer even visible in our fake NES-era three-quarters perspective.



The monsters give good XP, anyway.  Here's Alena posting absurd stat growth as per usual.



Another long string of staircases leads us to this obviously special spot.



...which is actually not special in any way, the game designers just got bored with the columns-'n-carpets decorating style.

Walking walking walking levels walking AND THEN



...on paper, one of the best armors in the game.  Like the Hat of Happiness, the Bolero restores your MP with every step you take!  It's woman-only, but so is our spellcasting corps so no problems there.  The problem is the teeny, tiny defense power that inevitably leads its wearer getting eaten by giant lions.  It'd be good Mara though, since she can't equip anything better.



High in the tower, we encounter our first and only Rhinoking!  Thinking it might be random boss, I braced myself...



...and then Alena did this twice and it died.  Sorta similar to how the fight with Esturk went, come think.

: I just like killing kings.
: ...
: I had a lot of repressed rage as a girl!
: ...
: which I now feel very bad about, yes, thanks so much for making me say that out loud.



Still further up, we find another special-looking room with nothing special in it.

: Maybe the Zenithians took their treasures with them when they withdrew into the clouds?



The sky is changing color, getting darker and darker as we get higher and higher up.  That's the opposite of what would happen in our world, but then again in our world you can't jump off the Empire State Building and land with no injuries.



But if you thought that meant we were almost done, THINK AGAIN!  It just means a new crop of monsters.  Pit Vipers are tough, and Demighouls do that annoying dodging thing, like Blazeghosts.  As a kid I used to fear these monsters more than any other, because the annoying dodging thing was buggy and could freeze the game.  But Nestopia is not quite a perfect emulator, so we're safe.



New monster!  Bharacks just die, they're not a big deal.

Walking walking walking encounters Lucia a mere inch from death walking walking...



Special-looking pinnacle!  It's been all fakeouts all the time up 'til now, but surely this time...



Wow, that screenshot came out terribly!  I need to give up and start making animated gifs.  Long story short, a cloud is descending from the very heavens to bear us up into Zenithia.  Huzzah!  And we didn't have to walk all the way (quite).  Double huzzah!



: Zenithian architecture looks an awful lot like human architecture.
: Or vice-versa, I suppose.



Mission accomplished.

Ok, time to do the first thing we always do in a new area: step outside and make sure it's on the list of places we can Return to.  Having to re-climb that whole stupid tower would be a bitch and a half.



: Excellent.  The Chosen Ones have officially Gone Everywhere.
: Except Necrosaro's last refuge, and that's probably next.
: Yeah, probably through that cave on the Hidden Contient, but it was surrounded by mountains so I don't -
: Wait a second - since when are we in the sky?



That's right!  The wagon, which we absolutely didn't drag up 12 stories of tower, and which you can very clearly not see 2 screenshots ago, has somehow joined us on this isolated cloud.

: Ok team, I need you to focus.  What just happened?
: ::shrug::
: You've ascended to the heavens!  How could not notice?
: We were busy.
: With what?
: Meditation.
: Thinking about...stuff.
: We were distracted!
: And so was I!

A mystery, eh?  Time to do the second thing we always do in a new area:



Talk To Everyone.  The castle guards (who guard against what, for God's sake?) kick us off.  Apparently "Official Greeter" is a Zenithian tradition too.



The last time something horrible came to life on Earth it smashed Zenithia so thoroughly that they still haven't pulled themselves together.  But how do they know about it in the first place, if they're all the way up here and humans never come to visit?



Again like the surfacers, Zenithians practice weather-based divination.

But don't let the superficial similarities fool you.  Even after centuries of decline, the Zenithians are still wildly overpowered.  How overpowered, you ask?



Surface world: a single mighty World Tree, in the remotest reaches of the world, yields up its fruits according to its own whims.
Zenithia: World Trees are grown in a greenhouse, and their produce is freely available to anyone who wanders by.

Not convinced?  Here's another example:



In the garden under the tower, we run into Lucia again!  She's rehabilitating by the water, which makes sense for someone with severe wing injuries I guess, and meanwhile playing kindergarden teacher to a pair of baby dragons, which really does not.  But maybe baby dragons are gentler than I'm picturing.  Anyway, we stop and say hello, and:



: ?



: ...you're sure this is ok?  I mean, yes, he's a dragon, but he's also a baby, and I -
:): You're the Legendary Hero and the Chozen ones, right?
: The plan is to clash with the world's most dangerous monster in an epic struggle between good and evil, without any kind of prophesied outcome.
:): I have complete faith in you.
: Great  :-\



Meet Doran.

That class name there says it all; Doran's a dragon.  Like our other NPCs we can't control him in battle, but for once that makes complete sense: he's a baby dragon, he's just screwing around, like a kitten the size of a VW Bug.  He doesn't have any magic or equipment, but he's tough, hard-hitting, and can breathe fire.  He fills pretty much the same role as Ragnar...except not as well, because you can't give him a Shield of Strength for free healing.

Jessica's uncharacteristic tenderness is also sound tactics: Doran's getting in the wagon, and he's never coming out.

: Oh how cute!

It'll be fine.



Baby dragons: preverbal.

Meanwhile, Lucia's dwarven assistant clears up a mystery:



So that's what it does.  We have a Baron's Horn of our own, so we can summon the wagon whenever we want - assuming we're someplace where it fits.



Considering that you have to literally be the Hero of Legend to get in the door, that's not at all shocking.



In a ballroom, we come upon some dancing elves.  There's no party or feast or anything, they're just dancing for, I guess, the Elf of it, har har.  Do they have anything useful to tell us?



It turns out that you don't have to be a human - or a monster! - to be a xenophobic dickhead.  That's...valuable information.  I guess.  But doesn't the name 'Lita' sound familiar?



Yep.  These are the same elves that Team Alena robbed way back in Chapter TWo. Which explains why we couldn't find anyone in Elfville to take back the Birdsong Nectar.  Putting Alena in the front doesn't change her dialogue; the elves don't recognize her, presumably because they're too busy averting their eyes.

: And so, Princess Alena's ancient crime went unpunished...
: You know what?  No.
: All we did in that tower was walk in, ok?
: Calling that a theft is just completely wrong; they dropped their Nectar and ran the instant they saw us!
: It wasn't some climactic boss battle with indoor blizzards and elf-punching and Cristo doing a much better job of healing people than he's managed lately!
: :( if only she were wrong...
: We'd have been happy to talk!  'Professor Brey' over here would probably still be talking to them!
: :( if only she were wrong...
: It could have been totally diplomatic!  But noooooo!  Humans are too scaaaary!  If they'd just -
: Let's move on.

A fine impulse, but our next stop happened to be this room:



: Oh!  I remem -
: SH!


:): She's never forgotten the child she left behind on earth.
:): If she saw Jess, she'd cry with joy.
:): Sob....sob....

She tells it like it happened to someone else, but spoiler alert: Jessica and co scoured the castle looking for the woman in this story, and never found her.



But they did find a hole in the sky.

: Oh God I just figured out how we're getting into that cave surrounded by mountains.
: What?  No.  No way.
: I don't know why it's happening or how it could possibly make sense, but it will and it does.  We're going to talk to Master Dragon, and then we're going to jump off of Zenithia, directly into Necrosaro's hideout.



un·du·la·tion
noun
1. an act of undulating; a wavelike motion
2. a wavy form or outline
3. one of a series of wavelike bends, curves, or elevations
4. Physics
4a. a wave
4b. the motion of waves

The translation's been pretty solid up until now, so I'll give the translators this one screwup without ripping them too hard.  Sounds like a wave of evil power burst forth from the depths of hell, tore a hole in the earth's crust, and burned a hole in the sky.  Superb.  And our next mission is to kill the guy who did that.

: So this hole is right above the cave.  There it is.



: Four barriers, all the new monsters, the wave of evil power...it's disturbing that he's managed to do so much in so little time.
: He really was holding back before, for Rosa's sake.
: What disturbs me is the way everyone keeps calling me 'Jess'.
: ...
: It's weird, okay?  Nobody's called me that since...Celia used to call me that.
: Right, so...



: ...a re you going to tell her?
: Who?
: Your moth-
: >:(
: ...that winged woman who told us an interesting story earlier.



: Ask me again in 5 minutes.



Who's ready for an encounter that won't be won't be an emotional minefield for anyone present?



Well tough shit, 'cause you're not getting one!  Let's talk to God:



He's also the guy who talks us through the resurrection process after a TPK, not that he ever claims credit.



Right.  And so?



Damn.

Theodicy's been a recurring theme through this game.  If there's a God, and he's all-powerful, and all-knowing, and good, then why is life so terrible?  Why are there monsters everywhere?  Why are Stancia's people too busy living in fear to laugh?  Why does Aktemto have more graves than citizens?  Why did the people of Santeem disappear?  Why is Rosa dead?

Now we have our answer.  Master Dragon rules a fading kingdom miles above the earth, so far removed from human affairs that no one can even remember the last human visitor.  He wants to save the world, but he isn't strong enough to do it.



But Jessica is.



People all over the world put their hope in God.  We climbed this tower and stood before this throne because we planned to do the same thing.  But there's no escape from heroic responsibility: God puts his hope in Jessica.



"might"



Wait, the power of?



Master Dragon's hope turns out to be worth half a level, give or take.  Not too bad, but there's more:






Master Dragon has unleashed the full potential of the Zenithian Sword.  It is now the most powerful weapon in the game, exceeding even the Sword of Miracles...

...by a whole ten points.  In return, we'd give up the free healing that the Sword of Miracles bestows with every hit.  It isn't a good trade.  Sword of Miracles: wildly overpowered, still living up to its name 15 levels later.

Even so, don't think the Zenithian Sword is useless.  When used as an item, it dispels all the buff spells on your enemies, finally giving us a solid answer to enemies who use Upper and Increase to boost their defense power so high that we can't scratch them.  It's a welcome addition, and Jessica will have it in her inventory for the rest of the game.



Finally, something reasonably low-key.  The Zenithian library seems like a great place to stock up on ancient evil-destroying lore, but it's all written in Old High Zenithian and none of the Chosen Ones can read it.



But we're the Legendary Hero and her Chosen Companions, so the libraries are more than willing to read aloud to us:


"The Secret of Evolution is a method to distort the natural evolutionary process."
"Through the use of this method, unnatural beings may be created."
"The Secret of Evolution is the source of all evil things."
"It must not be handed down to future generations.  Bury it deep underground...."
"....says the book...."

So why not destroy it, right?  Well, their "bury it underground" plan actually worked perfectly, as far as it went:


"The rancor of those affected by it may have led to the rediscovery"

Specifically, rediscovered by Mara and Nara's father Edgar.

: ...

So...that wasn't very low-key at all.  Fine, no problem, let's have another:


"Long ago, Esturk, the Ruler of Evil, created a terrible thing, the Secret of Evolution"
"Esturk used it to evolve into a super being."
"Upon discovering this, the Zenithians, joined by Master Dragon, fought against Esturk."
"After a long battle, Esturk was imprisoned underground."
"Do not wake him.  Do not go hear him."
"...says the book."
"Later it was found that Esturk's Secret of Evolution had been imperfect."
"It didn't incorporate the Golden Bracelet, an amplifier of the evil undulation."

: In other words our problems are mostly Alena's fault, since she's the one who gave the Bracelet to Necrosaro's minions in the first place.
: ...yeah, that one's fair.

0 for 2, time to cut our losses.  Where to next?



Oh.  Right.  We jump through the clouds, plummet a couple miles, and land in the great, gaping exit wound of Necrosaro's superweapon.  That's what's next.

: But before that, are you going to tell her?
: No.  If I knew we'd survive and live happily ever after it'd be one thing, but we've already done what we were Chosen for.  Everything from now on is just a bonus, from fate's perspective.  I don't want to know her for one day, and then...
: But if.
: If we win - and I survive - then I'll tell her everything.
: So long as you took something away from it.
: Definitely.



: Even if I found it in her dresser.  Sorry, Mom.

Next time on Let's Play Dragon Warrior 4: the four barriers, and one more stunning revelation.

Bluerobin:
Shame on Jessica, stealing from her own mother like that.

monk12:
The pull of phat lewtz is undeniable!

EuchreJack:
It's not stealing, it's love.   :P

Sheb:
Sharing is caring after all. And everyone care bout Jessica.

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