originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/162097...
First thing’s first: I have some Munny, so it’s time to go back to Cid and upgrade the Potemkin.
to be honest I find the less defensive parts that are blank white prettier than the ones with borders, but ah well.
There are two destinations left: one is a five star battle rating, the other, six. Probably best to go in increasing order. (Edit: There’s also the 0.4km^2 wood, but we’ll do that later).
But first, another tourney! This time, Leon and Yuffie (that was her name!) are the boss at the end, per the scoreboard. That will be cool :) There’s a third scoreboard, still blank, and presumably at the end of that one I get my rematch against Cloud.
Leon and Yuffie was a fun fight, anyway. Lots of frantic rolling was needed. Healing magic is really handy, though. In a boss fight I am usually hitting the boss enough to recharge my mana and get more than enough heals. So it wasn’t nearly as resource-stretched as Cloud.
The next world is Atlantica. For a moment I thought that meant we were going to Atlantis: The Lost Empire which was one of child!Bryn’s favourite films. But actually I think it’s The Little Mermaid, home of Ursula the Sea Witch, who’s one of the Disney villains in the Council we haven’t seen much of…
It’s hollow, which is kind of cool. Fortunately, Donald Duck has an underwater breathing spell.
…it’s actually a merson spell! Sora becomes a dolphinboy, Donald becomes an octoduck, and Goofy becomes a turtle-dog. I blame @lethargyspecialist somehow.
The swimming system is reasonably intuitive. You swim in a plane, and use two buttons to raise or lower the plane.
In this area, the Heartless take the form of jellyfish. Ariel’s your temporary party member here (how come all the party members are Disney rather than Final Fantasy characters?)
The area is full of clams, which open either to being hit, or having a specific spell cast on them. This does not seem to be considered assault, suggesting clams - unlike other undersea fauna - are not considered citizens of Triton’s kingdom. Conveniently, I can still cast fire spells underwater.
We visit Ariel’s Grotto. It’s full of the gains from looting shipwrecks. She does not, at least, seem to collect the actual skeletons of the sailors.
Outside there’s a puzzle to raise a chest that’s gotten stuck in a hole. The solution isn’t obvious, so onwards, to Triton’s palace!
Triton denies the existence of a keyhole, and Ariel is grounded (or possibly seaed), which she promptly ignores.
Some evil eels show up. You can tell they’re evil because their faces are all scrunched up and they have different coloured eyes. :/
People have written dissertations on the subject of coding and Disney villains, but it’s particularly unpleasant in The Little Mermaid. Ariel is good because she’s waif-thin and perpetually charmingly feminine; Ursula is evil because she’s not these things. It’s… awful. But you all know this already.
Anyway we ride on a dolphin! Donald Duck is a hat!
At this point, we’re supposed to be searching for the Keyhole, but with no indication on where it actually is or rather, where we need to go to progress the plot. I swim through the level and back, with nothing much happening except killing some Heartless.
In the end I looked it up, and the solution is to grab onto the other dolphin in the previous area.
That takes us to a shipwreck, where there is a shark, which attacks as fictional sharks always do, and dies pretty quick after unloading an entire mana bar of fire spells into it. Anyway, we find a macguffin, then swim back to Ariel’s cave and stick it in another macguffin.
At this point, Triton calls us out for violating the Prime Directive. Uh-oh, Triton. If meddling is bad, I think we’ve meddled quite a bit already. Meddling has basically been the entire game in fact.
Apparently, the Keybearer ‘shatters peace and brings war’. Hmm…
Ursula arrives on the scene. In this case, she doesn’t offer for Ariel to see the surface, but other worlds. New party member?
Not so much. Ursula betrays Ariel, stages a coup, etc. etc. Time to find her and boss fight her! Wherever the heck she is.
Given our habit of allying with whoever we first meet immediately after entering a world, it’s damn lucky we’ve never accidentally sided with the Heartless faction. I guess with Disney’s coding, it’s not hard to pick the ‘good’ side.
Ursula does not seem to be at the shipwreck, the undersea garden or Ariel’s grotto. …actually, correction, no, Triton says to check the shipwreck again.
It turns out I had to kill the shark before investigating the wall. Ah.
I found some friends!
Ursula is a pain to fight. You have to cast the right spells on her cauldron to make her vulnerable. The only way to regain mana is to beat up her two eels. Straightforward enough, but the targeting system is so unwieldy that by the time you’ve got your intended target selected, conditions have changed and you want to do something else. And once you do disable Ursula, by the time you target her and swim over to do some damage, she’s back up after one or two hits.
Then after we beat her, she swims away, we get a new party skill only useful once, and Ursula becomes huge and tries to eat us. Is this just… the fetish level?
I mean, honestly. Transformation, tentacles, giant woman, vore? There’s probably an entire section of DeviantArt dedicated to this single level.
Next stop: Winnie the Pooh.
Comments