Now that we’ve obtained Piers’s ship (unlike many other Cool Ships that appear in other RPGs, this one is never given a name) Weyard opens up a lot. Bringing up the world map we can see that Weyard’s Great Eastern Sea is pretty big and that there’s a big foggy patch right in the center. This is certainly where Lemuria is if you recall the accounts from the previous game of it being shrouded in fog, but we won’t be able to actually reach the ancient civilization until we’ve finished our explorations of the Eastern Sea. For now though, we’re going to quickly turn around and revisit Kibombo for a small bit of unfinished business.
When sailing we can be attacked by random encounters just like anywhere else, beasties consisting of creatures like seagulls, mermen, sea urchins, and so forth with none of them being especially difficult to take down. Felix can disembark simply by sailing the ship up to a beach and pressing A, and it can even sail up rivers if they’re wide enough. That’s actually how we’re going to get back to Kibombo, by sailing up a nearby river mouth to the southeast of the village (there’s also a small settlement on an island nearby called North Indra Islet, but there’s absolutely nothing notable here other than a Lucky Medal that’s hidden within a pot). Once we arrive, we return to the depths of the Gabomba Statue where the Gabomba itself opened up an entrance to the cavern beneath. The reason that we did not go straight here the first time is that it’s normally a dead end…unless you have the Cyclone Chip. The cavern is full of little green bushels of leaves, much like what you’d see in Pokemon or top-down Zelda games, and using Cyclone will generate a circular gust of wind that will blow them away. Doing this can uncover minor or slightly-less-minor items, ravenous carnivorous Mad Plants, or swirled indentations in the floor that can shoot Felix up to a higher area or suck him through the floor to a lower one somehow. All three possibilities are seen in the Gabomba Catacombs, and we can use Cyclone to reach the next Venus Djinni, Mud, which cuts the enemy party’s Agility. Plus now that we have four Venus Djinn Felix can promote to Gallant and gain access to Revive, yay!
Anyway, at the back of the cavern we encounter another miniature Gabomba Statue, which bequeaths onto us a black book containing the magic it promised us on the condition we not tell Akafubu so that he doesn’t lose heart. This book is the third and final class-changing item, the Tomegathericon. That’s a mouthful. The Japanese name for this was the more familiar Necronomicon from Lovecraft’s works, Tomegathericon is Greek for “The Great Beast”, so sayeth the fan wiki, said beast likely being the one from Revelation. It gives access to the Dark Mage class line, notable for several of its spells summoning up a zombie or demon or other monster to attack targets, Dire Inferno and Poison Flow for good Fire and Wind AOE respectively, and the Curse, Haunt, and Condemn ailment spells.
Now, once we return to our ship we can actually head south and enter the strait that runs through the Gondowan Cliffs, but we can’t continue south to the Western Sea where the remaining lighthouses are thanks to a big rocky spire. So it goes. Now this section of the game is very hands off. There are a number of places that we need to hit up, and for the most part it doesn’t matter what order you visit them in. On the other hand, the game doesn’t give the player any indication why they should go certain places, until you enter one dungeon and discover that you’re missing a spell needed to progress in it, and what’s more you’re given no indication where that particular spell or item could be found. A couple more dialogue and story prompts during this section would’ve been nice.
With all that said, let’s sail east. We pass by two more islets that’re just south of the fog patch on the way and there’s not much on either of them, but there is a little lore about the region from the NPCs living on them. The first is home to three generations of a single family of fishermen and sailors, where we learn that the foggy stretch of sea is known as the Sea of Time, and only one sailor, the legendary Yepp of Yallam, has been able to penetrate its turbulent waters. The second one, which is further east and more tropical, has an old man who believes that the warming ocean waters that have been mentioned by a number of NPCs in Madra and Alhafra are being caused by the return of the legendary Poseidon, a being who can only be stopped by a legendary trident. I’m guessing that Poseidon is supposed to be an especially-powerful sea monster that people liken to a god rather than actually being comparable in stature to the Greek deity. The game never goes into much detail. Another old man living here talks about finding treasure in shallows, a hint that if you ever encounter a Conspicuously Light Patch while sailed, parking the ship directly over it and pressing A can net you a goodie of some sort. There’s even one such shallow just a bit west of the islet, and it hides a Rusty Axe. The Rusty Axe is not something you want to equip because it’s comically weak, but there is a way we can restore it to its former glory… Oh, and also there’s a sea turtle chilling out here who’s apparently quite lonely and wants a friend. Keep that in mind.
Continuing east brings us to the edge of Weyard. Literally. You know how in many RPGs if you reach one end of the world map and press on you warp around to the other side? You can’t do that with Weyard because it is a Flat World (or possibly even a Floating Continent). The oceans of Weyard terminate in Gaia Falls, a world-circling waterfall that spills off into nothingness, just an abyss full of nothing but cloud. We can park the ship at the edge of this frontier, but the falls act like an invisible wall so we don’t go plunging over the edge to certain uncertain doom. If we hug the falls and go south a little we find a fairly sizable island snug right up against the edge of the world. Here is where we’ll make out first stop. This is Apojii. I like Apojii, it’s probably my favorite town in the game. There’s lots of vibrant, tropical foliage, white sand, pure blue water, the music is quite pleasant, and it’s just a cool location in general. You’re living on the very edge of the world! How’s that not cool?! It’s likely derived from the Galapagos Islands given that it’s Japanese name is Galapas. I don’t know exactly where the localization team got its English name from. Maybe “apogee”, since it’s the furthest piece of solid land from the mainland, out there on Weyard’s edge?
The two topics of conversation that dominate most of the NPC dialogue are Gaia Falls and Aqua Island just to the south, with at least one man pondering the Fridge Logic of why the ocean never seems to drain if its constantly spilling over the edge of the world. In the center of town is a giant droplet-shaped rock in a pleasing shade of blue that may remind players of the Wind Stones seen on Air’s Rock. Why is this relevant? Because according to the villagers Aqua Island contains Aqua Rock, the second of the Elemental Rocks, and it’s been a rite of passage for islanders to travel there, though no one’s ever been able to uncover its secrets. At the east end of town we can head one screen further to come to Gaia Falls itself, and we can even wade into the water and stand on the very tippitty-edge of Weyard itself! Naturally Felix doesn’t go flying off into the void, but that’s definitely down to Gameplay and Story Segregation given that everyone in town goes on about how violent the local currents can be.
The local shop here is a three-in-one deal that happens to be the first place all game where you can get a Water of Life finally, so there’s that. I spent a good amount of my money updating Felix’s and Piers’s armor (the only gear available here for the girls is a Guardian Circlet) and then headed back over to the Aqua Stone. It seems obvious in hindsight, but when I played through this game for the very first time all those years ago it took me forever to figure out what I was supposed to do here. It turns out that like how we had to use Whirlwind on the Wind Stones, here we’re supposed to use Douse on the Aqua Stone here. Doing so causes a localized rain shower to occur and a rainbow-colored current of magic water (or maybe it’s just oil, who knows, amirite?) flow away, with the world map showing it reaching all the way to Aqua Rock to the south, and several moai-like statues blocking the path move out of the way.
So now we head south ourselves to tackle the second of the Elemental Rocks. Aqua Rock is fairly lengthy but not quite to the same level of madness that was Air’s Rock. It still has the three distinct phases of base, ascent, and finally interior. The blue stone of the exterior is completely awash in water and the landscape is dotted with those moai statues that endlessly pour water into the environs. There aren’t any real puzzles at the foot of the mountain, but when we start climbed we have to be careful to avoid little waterfalls that pour from the statues at certain intervals since they’ll knock Felix right off of the climbing handholds. There’s a big pool of water halfway up that serves as the entrance into the mountain’s interior, but we have to climb further in order to activate two more Aqua Stones first, a process that involves strategically riding certain waterfalls down and then back up the mountain when we trigger a flow reversal. Along the way I find the Mist Sabre in a chest at the peak, and it’s going straight to Jenna because it gives a big Attack upgrade (to the tune of + 110) even though its unleash kinda sucks (Searing Mist, which just damages with Water and maybe deludes. Lame.). The second of the two Aqua Stones generates a small whirlpool or localized undercurrent in the entrance pool which sucks Felix right down into the interior and then spits him out into the dungeon proper.
The interior of Aqua Rock is also not quite as long as Air’s Rock, but I find it’s easier to get lost since while there’s not really much of a central hub area, and progression involves some backtracking here and there. The main puzzle gimmick involves using Aqua Stones to generate circuit-guided paths across bodies of water that Felix can walk on, and occasionally we’ll have to use Douse to fill up moai statues so that they’ll overflow and fill in pools that we can then hop over floating platforms to cross. The two enemies to watch out here for are Lizard Fighter and Sea Dragon as their Water Breaths pack a punch (plus the seemed to love focusing on Jenna in my case…) and they’ve got fairly high HP - Sea Dragons have nearly three-hundred. There are some good pieces of treasure to seek out and grab in here, including another Water of Life, another Tear Stone, and a Lucky Pepper.
Eventually we’re supposed to find a jewel called the Aquarius Stone, and place it on a pedestal before what appears to be a large body of water being magically suspended in the air. This will result in the liquid Mosesing out of the way (complete with the midi-choir) to reveal a door that leads to a chamber not unlike the one in the center of Air’s Rock. Sure enough there’s a tablet within that requests a “wielder of water’s might”. Piers remarks that that sounds like his sort of thing and he steps forward to touch the stone, which bestows upon him the Parch spell. Parch’s description says that it evaporates standing water, but not just any body of water. It has to be light enough that you can see the bottom of whatever it’s filling in for the spell to work. Parch generates a ball of infrared heat that does indeed dry up the shallow body of water it’s aimed at. It’s a lot like a Fire Adept Psynergy spell, come to thing of it, and Dark Dawn actually does have a different Fire spell that’s used for the exact same thing and is functionally identical.
With Parch we can actually double back and use it to find a Rusty Sword to go with our Rusty Axe and get the next Mercury Djinni, Steam (fitting), by evaporating the water within a statue to make a running channel go dry. Steam raises the party’s elemental power, and now we are free to leave the dungeon, dry off, and once again head out on our way.
Soundtrack
- Battle! Ship ver.
- This quite upbeat, fun track is a nice break from the solemness of the default battle theme.
- Apojii Islands
- A tropical paradise...as long as you watch where you step.
- Aqua Rock
- Going from cheerful Apojii to a track like this can almost give one whiplash.
