Phantasy Star Game Blog Part IV: To Rescue A Stoner

I take Myau out for a few battles, test his mettle and such. He promptly dies. Thank heaven for nine lives, right? Back to town, revive him and try again. FASTER, PUSSYCAT KILL, KILL! Thankfully, Myau manages to stay alive long enough to gain a few levels, enough that I am reasonably confident that he will also stay alive long enough to rescue Odin from Medusa’s Cave. So we head back to Palma and enter Medusa’s Cave, my first full-fledged dungeon!

That seasick feeling I had in the first cave I entered right at the start of the game is gone, replaced with a feeling of deja vu. Mainly because all the corridors look exactly the same, so there is no way to tell where I have been. Time to get out the pen and graph paper! What? I don’t have graph paper? I thought this was 1988! In 1988, every kid has graph paper! Geez. Well, I scribble some makeshift map on my notebook and manage to navigate the cave with little trouble. Sure enough, we find Odin and use the vial of ALSULIN on him.

Odin is played by Brad Pitt in this film, which shows an incredible amount of foresight on the part of Sega, since Thelma and Louise, Pitt’s breakout role, had not come out at this time. Odin tells me that he is also trying to kill Lassic, which makes Lassic the most popular guy this side of Jack Thompson. (Yes, that joke was pandering to my base.) Apparently, Odin came here to kill Medusa and get the Laconian Axe she is hoarding. Turns out that Laconia is the strongest material in the world. Which explains why that Laconian Pot was so valuable. Which pisses me off because if I knew I was carrying a cooking utensil made out of Sega’s poor excuse for adamantium, I would have totally traded it for something better than a crappy cat with a pun for a name! *Rubs ears soothingly* SERENITY NOW!

Ok, back from my nervous breakdown. Where were we? Oh, yeah. Odin tells me there is a compass he hid in this cave that will help us traverse the forest to the south. Excuse me, one question: WTF??? Why would you hide a compass in a cave that you yourself got lost in? If Odin had not hidden it, he might not have been turned to stone! Just a thought, I know inserting logic into a JRPG would cause the whole thing to collapse upon itself, but I felt compelled to speak out. Won’t happen again. Also, guess what? Odin, like Myau, starts off at level 1, which means if I want him to live up to his name and be a bad ass, I have to do it myself. Why the hell did my brother talk this guy up if I have to send him to the gym before he can be of use???

After finding said compass, we use it to locate a town hidden in the forest south of Medusa’s Cave. There is a man there who has a DUNGEON KEY, which will allow us access to the cave where the cake shop is. Since we need cake to get a meeting with the Governor of Motavia, this is our next target. By the way, the werebats are lovely this time of year. After going four levels deep underground, I come across the cake shop. The guy who runs it then proceeds to apologize for the location. What, were real estate prices just too high everywhere else? And get this: the cake costs 1000 mesetas! There are swords cheaper than that! If he really felt bad about where his shop was hidden, the cake would be free! 1000 mesetas for a piece of cake only makes me wonder what’s in it. And why do drugs keep coming up as an answer for everything weird in this game?

Heading back to Motavia, my awesome and expensive gift earns me an audience with the Governor of Motavia. He admires our courage, blah blah blah, seek out Noah (The last party member; I looked it up) in a cave where he is training and would you please stay the night? So I do. And in the middle of the night, my party has a bad dream where we fight a battle with a Succubus. And by fight I mean get our asses kicked. Thank God it was only part of the storyline. I would have been pissed if this game took on a Nightmare On Elm Street motif where if you die in a dream, you die in real life.

This seems like a decent stopping point for now. Next time, we grab Noah, the Esper (sound familiar?) and see a man about a spaceship in Part V: One Small Step For Man, One Giant Pain In The Ass For Anthony.