Wanting to get out of time wasted Hell, I walk out of Fort Dragonia, quick travel through Mt. Pyre, and get on with the show!
Off the northwest coast of mainland El Nido, sails a ship. I...park my boat alongside the larger vessel and head to the deck. It’s familiar, in a way, but also a lot more colorful. Topside, I find various vacationers enjoying their cruise. There’s nothing up here for us, so we make our down. Eventually, we find the captain. It’s Fargo! In this timeline, he’s not a pirate, but an entertainment provider.
We walk in on him having a conversation with a mermaid named Irenes, a woman with a German accent, complete with excessive umlauts. It’s all backstory about Fargo loving the demi-human sister of Irenes, Zelbess, who this Fargo would name his ship after. Fargo and Zelbess have two children, Nikki and Marcy. Familiar names, ya? Zellbess died somehow, and Fargo changed. He could have been the man who united man and demi-human, but instead, enslaved them for his entertainment cruise. The mermaid takes her leave, just before Home World, Nikki shows up and asks to access The Grand Slam, where The Marbule Sage is working at. So Nikki and I are kinda working together here. Nikki wants to learn a song because, regardless of world, Nikki is a rockstar. Nikki discoverers that his dad is Fargo because he recognizes a dresser. He then gets nostalgic about how his dad used to be cool and then leaves because he’s no longer cool.
We ask for our own access to The Grand Slam, but we’re denied. However, since Fargo is a man of entertainment, he offers us a chance. All we have to do it beat him a game of roulette, regular roulette, not Russian. Below the Captain's Quarters is a casino. There we meet a few regulars, including a man named Sneff, before they're kicked out, and we let the spinner go. As long as we don’t land on South, we win. But, if we do, Fargo gets our crummy little boat. Is it okay for us to gamble military equipment with a conman? Anyway, we lose.
We then wander, aimlessly, until we find Sneff in the middle of a magic show. He’s a magician who can make people float, be stiff as a chair, and turn people into cats. We wander around some more and see, below the casino, a man descend from stairs to the ceiling. Our Scottish lad, Zappa, thinks something is fishy. We return to Sneff, get turned into cats, and climb those secret stairs.
It’s all rigged! The table is tied to a man twisting a handle who can stop the roulette wherever he wants. We manage to steal the handle while the user sleeps and try our luck in a fair game. I got lucky and won on the first game, but I was stuck here for an hour once back in the day. Farge then grants us access to The Gand Slam, as well as our military property back. With access to the Sage, we go down to the Slam and talk to the disgraced leader.
This part is strange. The Sage rebukes us for our human greed with wanting to go into the Dead Sea, despite Lynx being a demi-human. If we say we don’t want to use force, he doesn’t help us, but if we beat him up, he’ll give us the key. The key is a fiddler crab. Nikki then enters, gives his plea about trying to change his father, and, through a whistle, learns the song of Marbule.
As we leave, we return to the casino and see Sneff on a hot streak. He won enough money at the table that he can pay off his debt to Fargo. He tries to say farewell to his co-workers, which include Peppor and Solt, but is unable to as he’s grown too attached. Instead, he joins the party.
Back on the world map, we use the Fiddler Crab and watch as the mountain range to the Dead Sea parts, revealing an entrance. We step inside, and Radius gets shocked to see the Evil Sword Masamune! Trying to venture past will drive us insane, so we must turn back. Radius gives us the history of the sword, or at least what little he knows of.
He and Garai, Glenn and Dario’s father, have been training together for decades. Dario is also ten feet tall for some reason, but that's never brought up. One day, they discover the Masamune in the Dragon Falls. Radius removes it and, because of his jealousy towards Garai, Radius kills the giant. The Masamune has become a sword that feeds on the negative emotions of its wielder and, in this case, caused the old man to fatally strike his long time friend. Garai is buried, along with his Holy Sword Enlanzer, at the Isle of the Damned. The Enlanzer is also the only way to cross into the Dead Sea.
The Isle of the Damned is to the northeast and looks like it’s made entirely of bones. Fire Lanterns and flying skeletal birds are the enemies that inhabit the place. On a small cape at the end of the dungeon lies a grave marker to Garai. As Radius mourns, the giant body of Garai attacks!
We have the new hardest boss in the game! Take note that, despite being dead, Garai is a white innate character. It means he hits Lynx harder and eventually kills him. He also hits hard in general and ends up taking some revenge when he kills Radius, as well. The only character still standing at the end is Zappa, barely alive himself. Serge has now missed on two boss stat ups. Auto-allocate isn’t wise anymore, and I should probably start manually setting my elements. Auto Allocate barely gave me any black elements. When Garai falls, Radius takes the Enlanzer, and we return to the Dead Sea Gate. Radius uses the sword to nullify the Masamune, and we can now pass.
The Dead Sea is a place frozen in time. Waves have stopped moving, mid crash, and desolate ruins are scattered across the landscape. There’s a shadowy building in the middle, so we make our way there. To reach the building, we must first pass through two sub areas. The first one is a ruined modern day highway. It’s inhabited by ghosts and a boss named Highwayman. He makes Garai look easy. I didn’t even get him weak enough to adjust his battle stance before we wiped me.
Lost and terrified, I travel around to think about my strategy. I return to Viper Manor, and discover a new dungeon beneath it. I explore the sewers and gain nothing to help me. I did get some CurePlus elements as a battle spoil, so I equip them and relish in my new ability to heal.
I adjust my element grid and put as much white as I can, and, through struggle and death, manage to defeat him. I should have looked into how to cure blindness, which was the real problem here. He has a skill he spams that blinds the entire team. Somehow, Radius was immune, so he did the most damage. Zappa was the only guy to die, so I guess it evens out from the Garai fight.
We continue through the second ruin, where Norris finds an old terminal that tells us about Lavos, the final boss of Chrono Trigger. We also infer that these ruins are from 2300 AD. We exit the second stage, walk up to the center building on the Dead Sea map, save...
And call it a day. We’ll tackle this tower tomorrow. I don’t remember what’s in it, but it’s late, and I’m betting it a lengthy climb.
I wonder how the Masamune became evil? It is Frog’s Ultimate Weapon in Trigger and is meant to slay Magus. We know the spirits that inhabit the blade, Masa, Mude, and Doreen are cool dudes, so what happened? In the special scene at the end of the PS1 version of the game, we learn Guardia falls, and the sword is stolen. Who stole it, and what did they do to Masa and Mune? I shudder to think...
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