A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Across the Great Sea (Part 1)

 

It's no mine, it's a tomb!

And so the adventure continues. Having found the vault of dragons and getting the hand on the second piece of the rod of law they have been hooked in by Volo to travel to Chult in order to find another treasure in the jungles. They spend three days preparing the departure, getting passage with one of the traveling circus ships and loading it with Volo's books he plans to sell in Port Nyanzaru (which my middle sister realized means something like cat ape which probably is a reference to the Tibaxi catpeople who lives there). Parker has no intention of following them so he sends word to Candlekeep to his college Destinova Blackstar, forest gnome wizard that arrives to Waterdeep on the day of departure. They travel for 21 days across the ocean until the ocean where they face of the giant dragon turtle Aremag who guards the bay, who they are able to convince that they don't have any money, but he warns them that he will have an eye on them when they leave, IF they leave. They then began looking at what they had an they realized they have something like 7 000 gold each... oops!

They enter port and finds the quiet inn and see the bill board with the guides and have to decide where to go. They spend the next day gathering information on what is going on in Chult. They find the tale of the missing airship the most interesting since they see a way to get out of Chult while avoiding the dangers of Aremag. They get provisions to survive 60 days in the jungle, 2 canoes, insect repellent and four rain catchers to make the travels bearable. They also learn that they need a charter from the flaming fist in the fort up north. They decide to head there by themselves without guides since they want to save in on the fees for the guides... I told you they had 7 000 gold each right? Unbelievable cheapskates! The trip to the fort goes rather smoothly really. The only incident is when Destinova looses his rain catcher when a group of flying monkeys fly by them. They get to the fort, pay for the charter and learn that the flaming fist takes a cut of half the treasures they find which spurs them to get the airship even more as well as push away some guides since they fear they will snitch on them. 

So they head back to port, this time experiencing extreme heats causing them exhaustion several times, they find a trio of sea hags near a canoe trying to lure people near the water to drown them. Our heroes hit them with a mage hand in order to see if they really where dead, which they weren't so after that they have been haunted by the canoe over the rest of the days, so from now on the sea hags is after them. They find a tibaxi hunter that tell them to get a guide, a chwinga spirit steals Hope's crowbar and leaves a couple of nuts in exchange. They pass by a group of lizard folk and some red wizard group and a couple of dinosaurs. They only got lost twice while traveling. After a tour of 22 days they have returned to Port and decides to go with the guide Eku after Shalida gave them strange vibes. Which might speed along the game. She will probably hint them towards Nangalore and the spirit Naga and from there straight to Omu, unless they first wants the wreck of the Star Goddess. And here ended the first session.

Overall, I will probably use the excuse of the guide to heighten the encounter DC to 18-19 instead of 16 since it happens to often otherwise for such small things (especially when they don't need to level up since they already are level 9). Another thing is that I got the dungeon master screen for the game and it speeds the game along really well. A miss in accessories on the other hand seems to be the game mat maps you could buy. I thought that would help and avoid using the map in the book, but hex grid is really hard to see making it hard to count the hexes and they are a bit smaller so the little screw that represents the party is just a bit to big, but not with the map that came with the book. The city maps on the other hand in the set works really well. But it's the hex map that I would wish worked better. So if they find the airship and fix it I might let them turn it upside down so that they can see everything. But I also assume they will go the airway towards Omu and fight the gargoyles guarding the city.

Super Mario RPG (Switch)

 

Clash of the Gaming Titans!

Yet another remake, this time of a Super Nintendo game, the very first Mario RPG, made by Square (now Square Enix). Originally not released in Europe until it was one of the first special Wii Virtual Console releases during a certain Japanese holiday and cost a bit more than the usual releases. I got it there and then they released it for the SNES Mini as well. Never finished either version. Only tried it on the Wii Virtual Console, but I fell asleep somewhere after the bow boss. Should probably finish it some day to see the differences from this game.

Story is that Bowser have kidnapped Princess Peach, but as Mario beats Bowser in his castle a gian sword falls from the sky and throws Mario, Bowser and Peach in different directions. Apparently the sword was sent by Smithy from Weapons land as he intends to take over the world. So Mario begins the rescue of the whole world.

First he meets Mallow a cloud boy that says he is a frog. He had a run in with a pick-pocket so you help him and you go back to his father, the frog sage that tells him that he really is adopted since the sage found him in the river so he took care of him. You also meets up with a living doll called Geno that have been possessed by a star entity to find the seven stars to restore the star road (that was smashed by the sword crashing down) so that wishes can be granted again.

I played to much D&D when this is what I think of as star entities.

You also recruit Bowser and Peach in order to stop this existential threat to the Mushroom kingdom and all others. You fight underwater shark pirates, climb to the clouds and fight off a usurper to the throne that belongs to Mallow, you traverse Star hill, fight some dwarf in a tower that tries to marry Peach and so on until you fight off Smithy in his weapon factory. Beat him and you win, a parade is shown and everyone lives happily again. 

It was a fun adventure. The changes made the game go a lot faster. For one, if you time your attacks right you get an area of effect that damage all enemies and that greatly speed up the game. I think that was what broke me last time, that I had to fight every individual enemy in a fight. You also can gather energy to a super attack with all three players in your party either do some buff or healing effect or do decent damage. Otherwise it's seems to be just graphics and music that is changed. Also they added cutscenes that was a bit more cinematic than the in-game cutscenes from the original. Interesting choice not to have any voice acting. You are able to play some post-game stuff and finish up unfinished quests, like what's behind the locked door in Monstro Town... OH NO!!!

I haven't been fooled like this since Final Fantasy V and the damn treasure chest!

Overall, I found it most enjoyable. Finally finished it for the first time. Really looking forward to the Thousand Year Door remake in 2024. Why I mention this is that the Paper Mario was the sequels to this game Nintendo made themselves and you can feel that the first Paper Mario really took a lot of the story like the seven stars and star road and incorporated it into that game. Due to the first Paper Mario being on the Switch as N64-game I have a hard time seeing that being remade. All I'm saying I got a craving for more Paper Mario. (This was of course played well before the announcement of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Remake)

Star Ocean 2: The Second Story R (Switch)

 

SPACE!

Got the sequel to the game Star Ocean I played something like 3-5 years ago. That one was a remaster of a PSP remake of a SNES game. This one is apparently a remake of a PS1 game. So first choice is choosing between Claude C. Kenny or Rena Lanford. I choose Claude first since he was a melee fighter. We begin in space as the space ship Calnus is investigating a planet where they found an energy signal, but the planet is abandoned. The landing party has the Admiral Ronyx J. Kenny (one of the heroes of the first game) and Claude C. Kenny. Claude gets too close to a machine that teleports him to another part of the galaxy where he lands in a forest and rescues a woman named Rena Lanford on the planet Expel. She mistakes him for the Hero of Light that with his sword of light is gonna rescue the world.

Apparently the world is having an increase in monsters and earthquakes the last 3 months since the Sorcery Globe landed on the continent of Ell. Rena was kidnapped by a suitor under the control of a stone that seems to be linked to the Globe so Claude rescue her and both of them set out to solve the mystery of the globe. On their travels they meet the wizard Selene, the unlucky warrior Ashton that is cursed with two dragon heads, the inventor Presis, the... student (?) Welch, the kid genius Leon and the zoologist Noel... I find it rather fun that the characters Leon and Noel is the names backwards.  

After travelling across two continents the gang arrive at Ell and finds a tower. Climbing it Claude finally is contacted by the Calnus that beams him up. He wants to go back, but an alarm sounds as the planet is drifting toward an energy wave that is about to pass by. Claude asks to say goodbye to his friends and back in the tower he drops his communicator and continues up the tower. There they meet the Ten Wise Men, ten individuals that seemed to be trapped in the globe and are using it now to enter the energy field in order to return to their home. Your team is dragged into the energy and find yourself on the planet Energy Nede after destroying Expel. Here you learn that the Wise Men was genetically engineered people to rule the galaxy, but defeated 100 million years ago they were trapped in space until this moment though. You get help in order to prepare against the battle and charges the Wise Men. In the confrontation they use a weapon to rule the galaxy that destroys the Calnus that hovers over the energy cloud, seemingly killing everyone aboard, including Ronyx.

Enraged Claude climbs this tower as well killing all the Wise Men, but the last one, Gabriel are preparing the Symbol of Annihilation in order to destroy the universe since he can't rule it for himself. But our heroes uses a symbol of their own that redirects the power toward Energy Nede and they are transported back to Expel as it is brought back together with its people. Endings dependent on your relationships status between characters, no hint if the Calnus was brought back as well (but I found a reference that the writer let it be up to the players to decide... so of course it came back, they didn't do anything wrong).

Overall, I liked it better than the first game. Didn't get destroyed in battles so either I'm better or I actually understood the level ups and stats progressions on the skills. 40 hours of gameplay and then it allows you to replay it again on a New Game+. Fun to start over with over 100 levels. The graphics are really nice, especially liked the water effects. And lastly, the music is made my Motoi Sakurabi, you know, the Golden Sun-composer! How can it be bad? But I start to hear the similarities between Tales of-games and this soundtrack, but you gotta love the prog synth in the dungeons.