...but before we take care of Kolima Forest we need to make a brief pit stop in Imil, mainly because now that Mercury Lighthouse is lit and the water’s flowin’ the town’s healthy again and the weapon and armor shops are open for business. So I spent a good chunk of my 6000-odd coins on updating everyone’s gear, then stopped by the sanctum for a quick scene where Mia breaks the news to the two kids that she’s going to be traveling with Isaac for a while, and they reassure her that they’ll look after Imil in her stead. Then it’s south back to central Angara, and when we pass through the ever-shoddy barricade we can see that the three stacked tree-people are now scattered all over. Mind reading one of them reveals that apparently Saturos knocked them over in an angry pique as the group came through here, and they’re worried that one of them’s going to be washed away by the river. Using Move to get her out of the waters gets us some psychic thanks, and we can continue on to Kolima Forest.
Upon returning to the heart of the forest and speaking to Tret we’re prompted to use an item. Sprinkling the Water of Hermes on him causes the surrounding forest to become a much more vibrant shade of green, and the great tree spirit awakens and declares that life flows through him once more. Laurel is revived from her reverie as well, and she remarks that Tret did not always have this terrible power. Once Tret lifts the curse on Kolima he says that while he was angry that they took their axes to his forest, he didn’t become lost in his rage until those strange gemstones fell from the sky and lodged themselves in his branches, and Garet immediately figures that he means Psynergy Stones. Looks like there was some Fridge Brilliance regarding that one inside his trunk! What’s more, Laurel confirms that they’re not the only ones that this has happened to: many of the monsters that we’ve been fighting were apparently just normal animals that were transfigured by the falling stones, and a new, evil forest has sprung up to the south. If we’re going to be traveling south, which naturally we will be, Tret urges us to move swiftly before the area grows more dangerous, and he and Laurel bid Isaac and co. farewell, thanking us for our help and wishing that our “roots dig deep and our trunks grow high”.
So with the curse lifted everyone in Kolima has been restored to their human states, though they seem to be under the impression that it was a bunch of massively-muscled, bearded warriors that saved them rather than three teenage boys and a girl. Oh well. We can use the usual town conveniences now, and one guy in particular mentions some sort of secret he’s keeping - apparently he’s hiding something in the woods. You’d think that he’s referring to a secret treasure chest in Kolima Forest of something, but no, he actually means a generic patch of overworld forest that’s way out towards the west, closer to Bilibin than Kolima. If we hit A whilst standing in the middle of this patch of foliage Isaac finds a pair of Turtle Boots lying on the ground. These things give you a slight Defense increase when equipped in exchange for halving the character’s Agility, so no thanks. To the sales’ bin it goes. The three people who were turned to trees at the barricade are naturally all right as well, and the one that we pulled out of the water, a girl, will give Isaac a Hard Nut as thanks. If you didn’t save her only the two other guys will be there, lamenting her fate and wondering if she could’ve been saved. Bastard.
Returning to Bilibin shows that it’s a much happier town now that the curse has been lifted and the poor sap at the front gates has been returned to normal. McCoy apparently even stood up to his wife for once and ordered construction of her personal palace halted! As such when we go and visit his palace...the guards immediately proclaim that we’re under arrest. What.
...however, it turns out that the lord just really, really wanted to see us before we buggered off for another town, to actually thank us for lifting the curse despite his shortsighted objections. So we’re told that as a reward we can pick one thing from the castle’s treasure keep, and we’re taken downstairs to, what a second, I distinctly remember NPC dialogue stating that McCoy was going to give all the palace’s treasure to whoever lifted the curse, not one piece of it! Miserly bastard. Anyway, we’re presented with four chests (we can even see mare just beyond a set of bars for crying out loud!) and each one contains an upper-tier healing item and I’m going with the one containing a Water of Life. After that we can say goodbye to this town for good. McCoy’s a cheapskate, but at least he hasn’t done something like plunging the continent into war. That would be a dick thing to do. Anyway, back east we go. Following the rough road past Kolima takes us to the easternmost tip of Angara and shortly after looping back west we encounter a raised drawbridge. The drawbridge is controlled by a guy from Kolima, so we wouldn’t be able to proceed on past here before completing Mercury Lighthouse and healing Tret - a slightly less literal iteration of a Broken Bridge than the one we encountered earlier.
Beyond the bridge we take our first steps into not-China. A relatively short distance away we can find the new forest that Tret spoke of and given the geographic chokepoint it occupies it’s clearly a dungeon. However before we tackle that there’s another new location right nearby that we should visit first: Fuchin Temple, where the local monks are deeply concerned about the eerie forest that just sprung up on their doorstep, viewing it as an ill omen. The head monk, an elderly man with rather wild hair named Nyunpa, has gone into a meditative trance over these events, and has been sitting within the temple in this state for several days, with the monks fearing that he’ll never wake up. Indeed, trying to talk to him produces no results, but apparently the guy’s either an Adept or just sufficiently zen-like, for attempting to read his mind has him suddenly spring awake and recognize us as the ones who are pursuing “them”. However, to continue our pursuit we’re going to have to pass through that forest, and none know the secret of doing so but he. Luckily for us though he’s willing to tell us the secret if we pass a test, which involves exploring a Cave Behind the Falls on the temple grounds. Fuchin Falls is a brief little dungeon where the main goal is to find a key item called the Dragon’s Eye that we need to set into a statue of...you guessed it, a dragon. This illuminates an invisible path, and we could actually skip the majority of the dungeon since the path is actually there from the start rather than spawning upon activating the statue, but doing so would have us miss out on the Jupiter Djinni Zephyr, which boosts the team’s Agility. The third Jupiter summon is Procne, which in the Golden Sun verse is apparently a big, energy shot-spewing bird monster rather than a nightingale. The ultimate prize of the cavern? An item called the Orb of Force. Showing this to Nyunpa has him say that this orb contains the power of ki, which is really a Psynergy called Force. The secret to traversing the forest, he says, is to use this power to draw out its creatures, and then instead of fighting them as we are wont to do, let them go and use them as a guide through the maze. So with that, we are done with Fuchin Temple and ready to tackle Mogall Forest.
Also of note, during that little dungeon Isaac hit Lv. 13 and learned the spell Ragnarok. This spell’s unique in that its damage calculation takes physical attack power into account, so despite Isaac being a warrior-type character it doesn’t really fall off like most of his other offensive Psynergy as we get further into the game. Plus it’s one of the game’s most famous spells, as its animation involves a giant energy sword flying into one enemy and sending lots of fancy particle effects shooting every which way. Garet learned a similar, less flashy-looking spell earlier during Mercury Lighthouse called Heat Wave.
Mogall Forest is set up like a typical The Lost Woods sort of dungeon, but it’s really incredibly straightforward. The majority of its screens are small areas with multiple exits and one big ol’ hollow tree trunk, and upon entering the forest we see a giant monkey of sorts leap into the hollow. Equipping the Orb of Force allows us to use the eponymous spell and shoot an energy blast ahead of us, rattling the stump and causing the ape to leap out and run off - incidentally revealing the proper way to proceed. Rinse and repeat for most of the dungeon; occasionally there will be multiple trunks and apes to blast and sometimes they’ll attack instead of running away. Also there’s a side area that reprises the log rolling puzzle from Kolima Forest and contains the very useful Venus Djinni Quartz, which can revive a character at 50% HP. It doesn’t have a 100% success rate, but it’s good to have what is basically a renewable Water of Life on hand. The third Venus summon is the earth mother goddess Cybele, appearing as a gnarly tree/frog creature that spits out vines to entangle and damage enemies.
When we reach the final screen of the forest and turn our backs to it the final stump starts to tremble and quake. Turns out that after spending our entire hike through the forest chasing and killing monkeys, momma’s pissed!
Killer Ape
HP
- 1000
- Weak to Fire; Resists Wind
- Ransack - Deals moderate Earth damage to one enemy.
- War Cry - Deals Wind damage to one enemy and may stun them for one turn.
- Douse - Deals Water damage to two/three enemies.
- Debilitate - Attempts to lower two/three enemies’ Defense.
- Bind - Attempts to seal one enemy’s Psynergy.
After Saturos the Killer Ape is a fair step down, it doesn’t even have as much HP! Ransack is about its only dangerous attack since it runs off of Attack and the Killer Ape has plenty of that, but it only hits one person so a Ply can heal that off easily. Also it’s really weak to Fire, to the point that the Kirin summon can perform on-par with Cybele despite being only a two-Djinn summon rather than three. Yeah, not much else to say on this one.
Winning earns us 460 EXP, 1500 coins, and the Douse Drop.
The Douse Drop’s another utility Psynergy key item. Douse’s effect is to summon a little rain cloud to dribble some water before us, and we won’t be using it to solve puzzles just yet. As the Killer Ape demonstrated, Douse can be used in battle unlike all other utility Psynergy, and is actually the first in a series, its stronger versions being known as Drench and Deluge. It’s not that strong a spell line though, and none of our party members learn it naturally: you’re going to have to change classes for that. Plus even if you have the Douse Drop equipped, you won’t be learning Drench or Deluge unless you were in one of those classes that naturally knows the line anyway. On to our next destination!
Soundtrack
- Wintry Imil
- People who get snowed in are gonna hate this one.
- Happy Towns
- Otherwise the "Generic Towns" music, though we've actually already visited most of the places where this plays.
- Oriental
- Because from here on most of the location music is more varied and unique from location to location.
