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freshfeelingThe "Let's Play Trials of Secret of Mana 2: Seiken Densetsu 3 Edition" event (benefitting Trans Lifelife) actually ends like... nowish. I guess you'll have to read on to figure out whether I managed to complete it or not! But there's only so much I can discuss today. This update is based on gameplay between December 4th and December 13th.
First: I ended the last update with "...or so I thought!". Well, this is because when I used an SD card to get the images for the last update, apparently my emulator hadn't properly saved so when I next picked up the game it took me back to my last actual sram... which was most of the way through Beuca Isle, at level 15. I had been at level 19! This takes me back to before the class change!
Argh. Okay. I had to replay roughly an hour of the game to get back to the Fiery Gorge. This is frustrating, though it could've been worse.
Once we were finally back to the entrance to the Fiery Gorge, we had to fight Bil&Ben a second time. This battle was pretty annoying when they act as a pair and do rapid-fire Shadow Menaces. That results in rather desperate situations like this one:
But some of our new, class-changed abilities helped out, like an undodgeable full-screen sword attack and being able to heal all party members at once.
Despite that one close call, we won on that attempt.
Fiery Gorge was fine. It's on the short side. Hawkeye was here. That monster lady is named Belladonna in this one. No further boss for now, and we got Salamando.
Next we went to the forest where it's always night, and the town of Mintas. This had some equipment upgrades including a reminder that moogles are also in Mana games.
We ran into the Deathjester and fought Ludgar.
I enjoy the moves where someone rips the screen into pieces and tried to get a screen capture of that but you can't really tell. Ludgar is one of those fights where his special attacks are nasty spike damage, but with some multi-target healing and maybe some Cups of Wishes it's not bad. That might be most bosses in this game, actually.
We won and met Luna.
Next we went to, uh, Wampbwoom Woods.
Here I gained level 22, such that Duran now had four elemental sabers. Every so often I use them in random battles, but they are mostly for bosses, at least for now. Angela and Charlotte don't really gain a whole lot of new abilities.
Somehow, the elder of the village understands Charlotte and tells us Lumina can open a path in the woods.
This led us to the boss, Grapplavine. This is a pretty cool-looking boss. With a few buff items and a Flame Saber in play, it wasn't the least bit hard - although he did knock Duran out right as we won.
Now with Dryad, we were able to find the portal to the Sanctuary of Mana.
The structure of this game having three main villainous "parties" where one of the villain teams sort of "wins" based on your own character choice is pretty neat. Anyway, we need a dragon to get into the portal so we're going back to the boring mountain.
This part of the game actually turns up the cool factor a lot. I had complained about music in the first post, but there's a lot of bangers here. The Flammie music and the Sanctuary of Mana music are both excellent.
Well, two of the villainous teams drop out of the race, we get a Flammie drum, and then I went to Altena because the Crimson Wizard kidnapped our fairy friends.
Fighting wizards is annoying. Also, wayfinding in Altena Castle is annoying! They need to do the thing where they paint the walls different colours of something. It took a while but we got through.
Now we're onto the Benevodons! Since I was already in Altena, I went looking around for the one that lives nearby. The Labyrinth of Ice was actually quite close.
I didn't expect myself to be at the boss so soon, but I was! It was the Benevodon of water, Fiegmund.
Most of these Benevodon fights, if you're uninitiated, are based around some kind of setpiece gimmick - like a Mission: Impossible film or something. This one's pretty cool. He can appear underneath the ice. Angela was still able to target Fiegmund under the ice with spells.
He can still use some nasty attacks from under there.
But we won without issue.
I didn't have a particular order in mind or any other plan, and went to the Chartmoon Tower. It's a very bland dungeon but the fights were okay. We didn't get lost often. This dungeon could've been a lot more interesting if this game had treasure or something.
The end is cool though! Like I said, the Benevodon fights are setpieces, and this is a great one. Honestly, if you're a person that hasn't played Trials of Mana and you think you might, you should probably stop reading since some of these get kind of cool and it's better without spoilers. I'll elaborate on this later, actually, but for now you're warned.
Dolan is awesome.
I don't remember too much about the fight other than I was already buffing with saber spells and items before he appeared. He had one really nasty attack but - perhaps because of the aforementioned buffing - it was an easily-managed fight.
Next I ended up in a forest. I don't even remember what it's called, but it's near the glowing spot near the Wampbwoom Woods. As a dungeon, it was fast and simple.
The Benevodon of tree (?) is Mispolm. He is also cool. I enjoy the music in this fight.
I kept using Dark Force on it because it seemed to be Angela's strongest move. Somehow, despite it seeming to try to reflect spells, it never actually happened. I only later learned from a guide written by MeepleLard that this might be considered a bug?
Perhaps because of this, Mispolm was very easy. Its tendril/vine attack, Barrage Sting, is really cool looking but it wasn't very threatening.
The next time I played I tried to get to Shimmering Ruins. For some reason I thought it would be one of those places that I could just walk to, similar to what I did going from Altena to Labyrinth of Ice, so I started wandering around the earliest areas in the game near Wendel. That was a waste of time! It turns out you just fly into these ruins.
I judiciously used magic to accelerate some battles - or, if not to accelerate them, then to knock the enemies down a bit. I mean, since every spell freezes the action (unlike the prior game) magic makes the combat crawl. Furthermore, Angela's dark class only has very weak abilities to target all enemies.
When I saw Parpotos appearing, spawning from other Potos, I thought I'd spend a little intentional time here because I knew these were the key to early ??? Seeds. I was at level 30 so this wasn't a crazy thing to spend time on now. I wandered back and forth and, having given Charlotte a few extra points of luck, it really didn't take long to get 3 of these.
We got to Lightgazer with little issue. We did the usual protocol of a saber, then some item buffs, and this made much of the battle pretty manageable despite some strong attacks.
This was probably always going to be an easier one for us since Angela has a pretty potent Dark Force spell. It was sometimes funny watching her aim at Lightgazer right at it was appearing or disappearing.
The next one we went to was Dangaard, the Benevodon of... wind?
Again, a very setpiece-y battle, though I think Fiegmund and Dolan are cooler. You fight on Flammie, and Dangaard actually looks kind of small in comparison.
One thing that I found quite annoying about this is that the fight switches back and forth between a head-on view and a side view, and when this happened the battle sort of... restarts? I am fairly sure it clears all of our buffs. It certainly cleared out sabers. This made me use fewer buffs after the first phase transition.
Anyway, we won.
The next one is Xan Bie, which is a quick one, attached in an extra part of the Fiery Gorge that was blocked by flames earlier. We had beaten 5 Benevodons and we were level 32. I was starting to notice that I was often a little behind some of the enemies in the dungeons in terms of levels, but besides when I stopped for ??? Seeds in the Shimmering Ruins it never seemed like I ought to be grinding.
Xan Bie went down very quickly. I don't even know if I really understand this fight. At the end I was like attacking a furnace or something?
Once again, instead of just trying to land on the glowing dot I looked around for the Benevodon of earth for a while, even heading into the dwarf village. Whoops. Eventually I got to the right place and enjoyed some equipment upgrades.
I had been having trouble consistently affording the latest and greatest gear. I may have even skipped a tier of it. When money was tight, I prioritized armor, then weapons in priority order Duran -> Charlotte -> Angela. This is based on both their actual power and the likelihood that they need to attack.
Skipping gear and my somewhat lower levels started to show here. This area, Daria Gem Valley, was legitimately challenging. I came in at level 33 and there were regularly level 40 enemies! I used a good few Cups of Wishes.
Given that I had gotten my ??? Seeds and feeling underlevelled, I decided to push it here and put in some grinding time. Probably at least an extra half hour of it, truth be told! I got to level 37 before facing the boss here.
Land Umber is the Benevodon here. It is kind of creepier than I remember? It was sort of interesting. But using our canned sabers and buff items strat, this was quite an easy battle, especially since he does so much single-targeted attacking.
Well now, this is awkward. We're level 37. It turns out all of the enemies in Daria Gem Valley... and, uh, all of the recent areas are basically gone when you beat them.
I tried going to the Sanctuary of Mana to grind the last bit, but there are no enemies there anymore, either. I considered just going to a pre-Benevodon area like the Frostbite Fields, but the enemies there give like 50 experience each.
I'd really like to gain level 38 to do the class change, but it would take over 200 regular enemies from prior areas to level up! Forget that!
Okay, steps to take. I'll cash in those ??? Seeds. I got a Battler Tag - yup, that's the right one... and an Ash Bottle - yes, that's good... and an Omen Book. Huh. Perfect seed results. I was saving to get prepared for save scumming but it wasn't necessary at all!
(I guess that's good, as I would later learn with Gear Seeds that save scumming in this game is quite cumbersome. I never ended up actually having any success with it.)
I decided to fight in the Jungle of Visions. This area is tiny and you basically need to keep leaving it to respawn enemies, but at least they're all worth a few hundred experience. I got level 38 and went back to the Sanctuary.
Duran changed from gladiator to edelfrei.
Charlotte changed from enchantress to necromancer.
Angela changed from mysticist to magus. I must not've taken a picture of her selecting an Omen Book.
We bought the weapon upgrades in Pedda. I think we're ready for that last Benevodon.
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First: I ended the last update with "...or so I thought!". Well, this is because when I used an SD card to get the images for the last update, apparently my emulator hadn't properly saved so when I next picked up the game it took me back to my last actual sram... which was most of the way through Beuca Isle, at level 15. I had been at level 19! This takes me back to before the class change!
Argh. Okay. I had to replay roughly an hour of the game to get back to the Fiery Gorge. This is frustrating, though it could've been worse.
Once we were finally back to the entrance to the Fiery Gorge, we had to fight Bil&Ben a second time. This battle was pretty annoying when they act as a pair and do rapid-fire Shadow Menaces. That results in rather desperate situations like this one:
But some of our new, class-changed abilities helped out, like an undodgeable full-screen sword attack and being able to heal all party members at once.
Despite that one close call, we won on that attempt.
Fiery Gorge was fine. It's on the short side. Hawkeye was here. That monster lady is named Belladonna in this one. No further boss for now, and we got Salamando.
Next we went to the forest where it's always night, and the town of Mintas. This had some equipment upgrades including a reminder that moogles are also in Mana games.
We ran into the Deathjester and fought Ludgar.
I enjoy the moves where someone rips the screen into pieces and tried to get a screen capture of that but you can't really tell. Ludgar is one of those fights where his special attacks are nasty spike damage, but with some multi-target healing and maybe some Cups of Wishes it's not bad. That might be most bosses in this game, actually.
We won and met Luna.
Next we went to, uh, Wampbwoom Woods.
Here I gained level 22, such that Duran now had four elemental sabers. Every so often I use them in random battles, but they are mostly for bosses, at least for now. Angela and Charlotte don't really gain a whole lot of new abilities.
Somehow, the elder of the village understands Charlotte and tells us Lumina can open a path in the woods.
This led us to the boss, Grapplavine. This is a pretty cool-looking boss. With a few buff items and a Flame Saber in play, it wasn't the least bit hard - although he did knock Duran out right as we won.
Now with Dryad, we were able to find the portal to the Sanctuary of Mana.
The structure of this game having three main villainous "parties" where one of the villain teams sort of "wins" based on your own character choice is pretty neat. Anyway, we need a dragon to get into the portal so we're going back to the boring mountain.
This part of the game actually turns up the cool factor a lot. I had complained about music in the first post, but there's a lot of bangers here. The Flammie music and the Sanctuary of Mana music are both excellent.
Well, two of the villainous teams drop out of the race, we get a Flammie drum, and then I went to Altena because the Crimson Wizard kidnapped our fairy friends.
Fighting wizards is annoying. Also, wayfinding in Altena Castle is annoying! They need to do the thing where they paint the walls different colours of something. It took a while but we got through.
Now we're onto the Benevodons! Since I was already in Altena, I went looking around for the one that lives nearby. The Labyrinth of Ice was actually quite close.
I didn't expect myself to be at the boss so soon, but I was! It was the Benevodon of water, Fiegmund.
Most of these Benevodon fights, if you're uninitiated, are based around some kind of setpiece gimmick - like a Mission: Impossible film or something. This one's pretty cool. He can appear underneath the ice. Angela was still able to target Fiegmund under the ice with spells.
He can still use some nasty attacks from under there.
But we won without issue.
I didn't have a particular order in mind or any other plan, and went to the Chartmoon Tower. It's a very bland dungeon but the fights were okay. We didn't get lost often. This dungeon could've been a lot more interesting if this game had treasure or something.
The end is cool though! Like I said, the Benevodon fights are setpieces, and this is a great one. Honestly, if you're a person that hasn't played Trials of Mana and you think you might, you should probably stop reading since some of these get kind of cool and it's better without spoilers. I'll elaborate on this later, actually, but for now you're warned.
Dolan is awesome.
I don't remember too much about the fight other than I was already buffing with saber spells and items before he appeared. He had one really nasty attack but - perhaps because of the aforementioned buffing - it was an easily-managed fight.
Next I ended up in a forest. I don't even remember what it's called, but it's near the glowing spot near the Wampbwoom Woods. As a dungeon, it was fast and simple.
The Benevodon of tree (?) is Mispolm. He is also cool. I enjoy the music in this fight.
I kept using Dark Force on it because it seemed to be Angela's strongest move. Somehow, despite it seeming to try to reflect spells, it never actually happened. I only later learned from a guide written by MeepleLard that this might be considered a bug?
Perhaps because of this, Mispolm was very easy. Its tendril/vine attack, Barrage Sting, is really cool looking but it wasn't very threatening.
The next time I played I tried to get to Shimmering Ruins. For some reason I thought it would be one of those places that I could just walk to, similar to what I did going from Altena to Labyrinth of Ice, so I started wandering around the earliest areas in the game near Wendel. That was a waste of time! It turns out you just fly into these ruins.
I judiciously used magic to accelerate some battles - or, if not to accelerate them, then to knock the enemies down a bit. I mean, since every spell freezes the action (unlike the prior game) magic makes the combat crawl. Furthermore, Angela's dark class only has very weak abilities to target all enemies.
When I saw Parpotos appearing, spawning from other Potos, I thought I'd spend a little intentional time here because I knew these were the key to early ??? Seeds. I was at level 30 so this wasn't a crazy thing to spend time on now. I wandered back and forth and, having given Charlotte a few extra points of luck, it really didn't take long to get 3 of these.
We got to Lightgazer with little issue. We did the usual protocol of a saber, then some item buffs, and this made much of the battle pretty manageable despite some strong attacks.
This was probably always going to be an easier one for us since Angela has a pretty potent Dark Force spell. It was sometimes funny watching her aim at Lightgazer right at it was appearing or disappearing.
The next one we went to was Dangaard, the Benevodon of... wind?
Again, a very setpiece-y battle, though I think Fiegmund and Dolan are cooler. You fight on Flammie, and Dangaard actually looks kind of small in comparison.
One thing that I found quite annoying about this is that the fight switches back and forth between a head-on view and a side view, and when this happened the battle sort of... restarts? I am fairly sure it clears all of our buffs. It certainly cleared out sabers. This made me use fewer buffs after the first phase transition.
Anyway, we won.
The next one is Xan Bie, which is a quick one, attached in an extra part of the Fiery Gorge that was blocked by flames earlier. We had beaten 5 Benevodons and we were level 32. I was starting to notice that I was often a little behind some of the enemies in the dungeons in terms of levels, but besides when I stopped for ??? Seeds in the Shimmering Ruins it never seemed like I ought to be grinding.
Xan Bie went down very quickly. I don't even know if I really understand this fight. At the end I was like attacking a furnace or something?
Once again, instead of just trying to land on the glowing dot I looked around for the Benevodon of earth for a while, even heading into the dwarf village. Whoops. Eventually I got to the right place and enjoyed some equipment upgrades.
I had been having trouble consistently affording the latest and greatest gear. I may have even skipped a tier of it. When money was tight, I prioritized armor, then weapons in priority order Duran -> Charlotte -> Angela. This is based on both their actual power and the likelihood that they need to attack.
Skipping gear and my somewhat lower levels started to show here. This area, Daria Gem Valley, was legitimately challenging. I came in at level 33 and there were regularly level 40 enemies! I used a good few Cups of Wishes.
Given that I had gotten my ??? Seeds and feeling underlevelled, I decided to push it here and put in some grinding time. Probably at least an extra half hour of it, truth be told! I got to level 37 before facing the boss here.
Land Umber is the Benevodon here. It is kind of creepier than I remember? It was sort of interesting. But using our canned sabers and buff items strat, this was quite an easy battle, especially since he does so much single-targeted attacking.
Well now, this is awkward. We're level 37. It turns out all of the enemies in Daria Gem Valley... and, uh, all of the recent areas are basically gone when you beat them.
I tried going to the Sanctuary of Mana to grind the last bit, but there are no enemies there anymore, either. I considered just going to a pre-Benevodon area like the Frostbite Fields, but the enemies there give like 50 experience each.
I'd really like to gain level 38 to do the class change, but it would take over 200 regular enemies from prior areas to level up! Forget that!
Okay, steps to take. I'll cash in those ??? Seeds. I got a Battler Tag - yup, that's the right one... and an Ash Bottle - yes, that's good... and an Omen Book. Huh. Perfect seed results. I was saving to get prepared for save scumming but it wasn't necessary at all!
(I guess that's good, as I would later learn with Gear Seeds that save scumming in this game is quite cumbersome. I never ended up actually having any success with it.)
I decided to fight in the Jungle of Visions. This area is tiny and you basically need to keep leaving it to respawn enemies, but at least they're all worth a few hundred experience. I got level 38 and went back to the Sanctuary.
Duran changed from gladiator to edelfrei.
Charlotte changed from enchantress to necromancer.
Angela changed from mysticist to magus. I must not've taken a picture of her selecting an Omen Book.
We bought the weapon upgrades in Pedda. I think we're ready for that last Benevodon.
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