A Most Ingenious Paradox

I’ve always considered writer’s block to be an immovable object in a person’s mindscape, which brings forth the usual question: what does happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? While it would probably make for a pretty interesting mental battle and a heated physics debate, all it means to me is that I’m going through a pretty nasty writing dry spell. The immovable object is winning, if only because I’m not quite the unstoppable force that I wish that I would be. I’m so irritated that I’m using a paradox as a personal analogy, which is kind of pathetic. All this nonsense aside, my health has been iffy lately, and it has been affecting my ability to write. I’m working my way through this massive writer’s block the old fashioned way: sulking and blaming everything under the sun while getting absolutely nothing worthwhile done. If this doesn’t work (shocker of shockers) I’ll try a different approach in order to get this blog up and moving again. I intend to continue writing, I just need a bit of time to clean up this mental tangle I’m in. Please bear with me.

Disk 4: The Mystic Dragoons (ミスティックドラグーン), Part 4

Hello, my lovely readers, and welcome to part four of The Mystic Dragoons! When last we left our party, they were about to run headfirst into what sounds like the most hardcore boot camp this side of Gureizeru. Alright then, game, if that’s how you want to play it, that’s how we’ll roll. As always, the anglicized names will be given where they were used in the booklet that accompanied the game for ease of reading. The party enters camp, and apparently the Tactical Dragoons have been here before us, because Pamela has given them a heads up about our upcoming arrival. Nice of them to help out for once, even if it’s only to pave the way to our inevitable doom. Now let’s see what Gozetto the New Recruit Killer is all about, although I can make a few guesses. After watching our party get heckled by the soldiers as we pass due to their age and making a few notes in my head for suitable vengeance at a later date, we come face to face with the man of the hour.


It turns out that Gozetto is a rather...interesting fellow.

Gozetto seems nice enough at first, which should have been our first warning. No sooner does he make us feel like we’re slightly less pathetic than the usual new recruits that he gets then he begins using us for gophers. First up: getting him a bottle of wine, and he’ll only drink a particular red from a certain year. Way to run a responsible army camp, chief. But hey, you just enlisted a ten year old, so who am I to judge? So after wandering around town gathering information from everyone, including the people who harassed you (who are now mysteriously pleasant, like they knew I was plotting my revenge), you find out that this wine gathering quest is apparently a long running mission of Gozetto’s. What a fascinating way to run an important military encampment, I reiterate. This wine that he wants is fifty years old, and therefore expensive too. Given that we’re the noobs on the force, he shouldn’t expect us to have that kind of cash. I do believe that we’ve just discovered the source of his nickname.

Apparently the village head is the person to go to for help, as he possess the wine that we need. But he, of course, won’t give it to us, as he has a different purpose in mind for it than giving it to our sadistic commander to guzzle. I really can’t say that I blame him. He’s saving it for his daughter’s wedding ceremony, anyway. He does give us a hint, though, telling us that his daughter goes to Sorisshu’s castle every day. Apparently she has a thing for the lord of the manor. Well, this entire conversation would normally sound useless, but this is a cut-scene in an RPG and he mentioned a place name, so it must be important. Further in the house, you find the storehouse guarded by a man who says that the place is infested by monsters who hate the light. Apparently Pauline, the daughter of the village head, has the magic lamp that will let us tramp around the storehouse and relieve her father of some of his beloved stash. I knew that that random info that he gave us would be useful. Off to track down Pauline for our drunken, unreasonable commander then!

We need to get the wine that is stored in here, but apparently it's dark and scary inside, not to mention monster infested.

When you reach Sorisshu’s territory, you are confronted with his pack of rabid groupies, who freak out when he shows up before them on his dragon. I maintain that they’re cheering for the dragon and not the rider, but that is just me trying to retain the shreds of my sanity in the face of this madness. Pauline sticks out in the crowd like a sore thumb, given that she is about as overdressed as a Disney princess at a five year old’s pizza party. After watching the girls mount a terrifying, but ultimately useless, attack on the giant wooden door to Sorisshu’s manor, the party talks to Pauline. She’s pretty irritated with all of her father’s attempts to marry her off and gives you the magic lamp, no muss, no fuss, telling you to tell her father that she’ll marry no one but Sorisshu. Right. Back to Faruken Camp.

I'll give you a moment to guess which of these rabid fangirls is Pauline.

Finally we can get into the storehouse, but of course it can’t be all sparkles and unicorns, can it? The guard says he doesn’t know if some of the monsters there aren’t afraid of light. Oh that’s just special. But as I’m not surprised by this in the slightest, it’s time to move onwards and get that fifty year old booze for the New Recruit Killer before we become yet another set of notches on his belt. Once again, the path to the end of the ‘dungeon’ is so linear that it is not worth mentioning. That is a beef that I have with this game. There have been no real dungeons so far, and we’re how many hours in? Come on, game, put forth some creative effort! Anyway, when we get to the final room, the magic lamp lights up even more brightly. Apparently it will now help us track down that vintage wine…yeah, I don’t get it either, but I’ll just roll with the RPG logic as always. Of course the light alerts the one local critter here that isn’t afraid of light to our presence, and so we have to fight a boss. Raise your hand if you saw this coming from a mile away. After killing the rather drunken monster, it drops a wine bottle. An empty wine bottle that once contained the fifty year old elixir that we needed for Commander Sadist. There are no words.

After convincing the village head that we didn’t swill his precious fifty year old booze, he decides to let you stay the night, given that it’s late. I like his style. Alf wakes Cliff up in the middle of the night and proceeds to shove him down the well outside. After processing the fact that your baby dragon is apparently made of crazy, you realize that you have shown up fifty years in the past. After grabbing a bottle of the appropriate future-booze from a useful local, Alf buries it in the backyard. I take it back, Alf is smarter than our entire party combined. Cliff makes another well-based time trip, but still hasn’t figured out the fact that his baby dragon has time-based gifts, even after all the evidence laid before him. Since we can’t slap him upside the head ourselves, it’s time to dig up our bottle of wine and move on.

Finally we give Gozetto the wine he seemed to be jonesing for so badly, and I think I truly see why Psy was so amused in my last post. This man is certainly unique in his style of commanding. At least I fervently hope he is, for the sake of every other soldier in Pura-ma. Of course he immediately has another mission for us. I do believe that I loathe him.

What Happens Next: A Summary!

After Gozetto the New Recruit Killer sent the party on their second mission, you make your way through a forest path, where you run into a half-naked man engaging a bear in combat with only his fists. After you ‘save’ him from his pet, you discover that he is Faruken, the guy you were looking for. He takes you to his castle, where we tell him our reason for joining the army. Faruken thinks our quest is righteous and awesome, and so decides to help us get to the capital, Agoni-, where we can learn to fight with dragons. YES! The party passes through a forest filled with traps laid by the Tactical Dragoons, dwindling one by one until Cliff is the only one left. At the end of the forest the party reunites, after helping Pamela and Psy squish a giant spider sent courtesy of Gureizeru. Then Faruken gives the Tactical Dragoons the verbal smackdown that I’ve been dying to give them since the beginning of the game. My new favorite character, hands down.

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I dislike spiders... I did? Excellent.

Once we reach Agoni-, we’re called before the king. On the way we get a pretty good look at the dragons of all the different generals, several of which are hooked to some very bizarre vehicles. Turns out that they recognize Cliff’s surname, so he gets a little recognition for coming from a line of famous dragoons. Afterwards, your party gets to go pick out their own dragons. Again, YES! Then we head out after the generals, and they send us on various missions. I remember complaining earlier that there were no real dungeons in this game, finally we get several, although they aren’t very complicated.

The generals and their rather nifty transports.

You learn some interesting things, such as the fact that Bud is an elf who cut his ears so that he could be hidden among humans, and about the Pure Water that people have been mentioning a lot throughout the game and Cliff’s father’s connection to it. You also take out the man who helped Buran murder your friends and torch your hometown, which is a nice bonus. Everything isn’t marvelous for dragons in Pura-ma by Cliff’s estimation either, and Elmys gets her first glimpse of him via a spy bee, a bizarre little Gureizeru drone. During a mission with two of the Tactical Dragoons, you learn their full names. Apparently both men are named Quinn, and the way that they distinguish themselves from each other is by referring to themselves by the only thing that they will drink. So we’re working with Champagne Quinn and Beer Quinn. Yes, you read that right. I really hope that they came up with those names themselves, and that no mother would actually name her child Beer.

As your ship finally makes its way to Gureizeru, it is met mid-ocean by a ship containing Buran and his army. I know I gave them flack for not being cliché in an earlier post, nice to see them making up for it now. You finally get the glorious pleasure of avenging yourselves against Buran, which is rather satisfying, given how long it took to get here. You take the barrier that surrounds Gureizeru down, allowing dragons to fly over the continent and bringing your vengeful little troop to the country that has been harassing you since the beginning of the game. Unfortunately, during this long battle, the Tactical Dragoons lose Dolby via Buran’s sister, and Buran himself kills Eugo in a final attack against your party. The rest of your party has had enough after Eugo’s death and return’s home to rebuild, and Cliff joins what remains of the Tactical Dragoons. He also gets a pretty sweet armor upgrade to go along with his new status.

Want to know what happens to our rather disappointingly weak new party after they set foot in enemy territory? Well, you’ll have to play the game for yourself. My little experiment with The Mystic Dragoons ends here. I hope that you enjoyed the weirdness as much as I did.

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