Romancing Saga 2, Part 2: We Have Always Lived In The Castle

So Leon and company are in a dungeon and just kicked the thoraxes of a pair of Bees that came up on them. Let's see what other trouble we can get into.

I find that the Y button allows you to dash, but limits your field of vision to this small circle. So a nice, careful saunter it is! Interesting mechanic, though.

These squirrel-dog things can actually pick up your scent and trail you, far as I can tell. But they're not that hard to kill. Now, the lizards running around here are actually troublesome- they keep knocking Therese out, costing her one of her LP. As I recall, you can't be revived anymore once you run out of LP, but I forget whether that's permanent or just until you've rested. And I discover that yes, like Final Fantasy II, the characters that take the biggest beatings gain HP. We find a treasure chest with a Crysknife in it, so I guess there are Fremen around here somewhere. And inexplicably it's a necklace. I give it to Therese, which gets her Defense up to 6. Everybody else in the party has something in the 20s. So it's little wonder she's the most-often killed so far. A little more wandering results in my finding...

A treasure chest with 100,000 Crowns! Which seems to be the money here! Nice! But this isn't reflected on my status screens so I'm assuming this is a key item. That blue thing there is one of the evil bunnies from the intro. Not a terribly tough fight.

These are Gels. I have to kill the front row first, except for Therese who is using a bow. But we're doing almost no damage so let's hope Leon's mojo is enough to get us out of this. Luckily I discovered that Gerarl has a healing technique that's free. And as we fight, a lightbulb appears over Bear's head and he learns one of his own! Leon's one Magic attack, Light Ball, hits everything and kills two out of four. We find some other attacks, like Therese's Id Break Bow technique, that work pretty well as well.

After the fight's over we leave the cave and end up on a map screen. Hey, there's Avalon! That's what the bard was singing about, so let's see what's up over there.

Happy, heroic music is playing. Leon strides through town towards what I'm sure is a castle- the castle's always at the top of the town in these things. Some kids start following him.

Hey, Leon's the King! Or so it seems. The person who was sitting on the throne when Leon got here is apparently Gerarl's brother if I'm reading correctly. Gerarl might even be Leon's son, but I'm not 100% sure yet.

This shrouded figure enters, and Leon dismisses Gerarl and the new guy. A brief conversation later, I'm playing Gerarl and I'm free to wander. Monday, we explore the castle!