Legend of Legaia - Part 2 - Dungeon 'n Drake

 

Look at dinky little Vahn

Welcome back to the Legend of Legaia playthrough.  Last time: we got introduced to the world of Legaia, our main protagonist Vahn, and his new Ra-seru friend Meta.  We also questioned whether or not this game is properly age appropriated!

Today, we explore the world outside our village.  And we are going to start… by going back home!

 

Literally step outside just to go back

 

After leaving Rim Elm for the first time, we can return back for a couple of things.  First off our list: this house is now an item/equipment shop.  You probably won’t be able to buy everything here at the moment, but it’s still a good idea to suit up with what you can afford.  BUT, before we even do that, check the drawer upstairs.  Remember that drawer I mentioned back in part 1?  Well, now we can open it, and we can get ourselves a Point Card!

Cloud: Hold on... this wasn't part of my flashback.

  

The Point Card is a pretty great item.  With each item or equipment we purchase, 5% of its price gets converted to points for this card.  We can redeem those points into an attack when used in battle.  The damage done is – as you would expect – equal to the points accumulated.  I suggest saving this for a tough boss.

Defeat your enemies with CAPITALISM

 

With that out of the way, buy whatever you can with the money you have.  By the way: in the previous part, we got Mei’s Pendant for rescuing her.  We can equip it as an accessory.  It’s a pretty decent accessory that raises max HP by 10%.  Not bad!

Nice item description; couldn't have said it better myself

 

One more thing of note we can check in Rim Elm.  There’s a regular looking tree on the left side of the village, near the ocean side.  What happens if you check it out?

 

 

Given the video title, I think things will end well :)

…Lesson learned; do not mess with bees.

It is possible to fight off those bees, and we do get something good out of it.  Just… not at our current level.

But with that all done, let’s actually start our journey!

 

Press L1 to open this up

 

As we enter the overworld, here’s a neat thing we can do: we can bring up a map of the world by pressing L1.  There seems to be a point of interest to the west of us (the blue circle).  We’ll also be encountering some enemies ahead.

The mookiest of mooks.  Currently working with a therapist about its kleptomaniac habits.

 

Gobu Gobu is a pretty basic enemy.  One nasty thing it does is that it can steal an item from your inventory.  I’ve had these enemies run off from me, so take them down quickly should they take a valuable item!

I don't think you'd want to touch this blob with your bare hands

 

Green Slime is a slime.  Good description there.  One gimmick it can do is split itself into 2.  I’m not sure if it halves its HP by doing that, but it’s still a pretty easy foe to take down.  Unfortunately, you do not get extra EXP for beating up extra slime clones.

It was gonna be named Evil Butterfly, but they did not have enough space fill it in

 

Evil Fly is an evil fly.  One thing you’ll notice is that it’s an aerial monster, meaning it’s immune to any low attacks.  This monster also has a Phosphor attack, which has a chance to poison you, so be careful of that.  Good news is that status ailments recover after battle.

 

Now entering: Hunter's Spring

 

We finally reach our destination.  It turns out to be a huge spring.  A group of hunters greet Vahn upon entering.  They tell us of a traveller who arrived to this spring not too long ago (he’s the guy in different clothing), and we should listen to his story.

 

You know that guy's special - he's wearing different clothes!

The traveller is named Lezam, and he hails from Drake Castle.  He was sent by the king to warn Rim Elm of the incoming mist, but was caught by a seru and transformed into a monster.  But thanks to the Genesis Tree, the mist was pushed away, and he returned to normal.  He asks Vahn to save Drake Castle, as it is currently engulfed by the mist.

So, we got our next goal, but before we leave: check the right side of the spring; you’ll find a fountain that will fully restore HP and MP!

Sweet - free healing spot

 

Take note of this healing spot, as we can use it as often as we like.  I recommend doing some grinding at this point.  At least to the point where we can buy every armor and weapon back in Rim Elm.  Yeah, another thing I remember about this game is that it can get pretty grind heavy.  We’ll get creamed easily if we try to rush through Drake Castle at this point.  Once we enter the mist area, enemies will start coming in groups, so be careful about that.

Now entering: Drake Castle

 

We follow the river and reach Drake Castle, but before we head there, let’s check to the right.  It seems to be a water gate.

please don't mind the chest in the river, tempting it may be

 

Unfortunately, we can’t really do anything about it, as the water rushing across is too strong to cross, and we cannot close the gate.  So, we’ll have to leave it alone (and that real conspicuous treasure chest) for now.

Back to matter at hand, we enter Drake Castle, and it certainly has seen better days.

no welcoming parade 4 joo

 

To the right of the entrance is a treasure chest containing a Door of Light.  This is generally a good item to carry around, as it warps you out of a dungeon.  We were able to buy these back at Rim Elm, but I wanted to focus more on getting my equipment.

We enter the castle and things look pretty dark.  Literally.

I'm half expecting seru zombies to ambush me at this point

 

Fortunately, this castle isn’t too hard to navigate.  With each floor, we need to find a key in order to advance to the next level.  As we explore the castle, we see human serus locked behind cages.  Meta tries to communicate with them, but to no avail.  It seems the only way to revert them back to normal is to get rid of the mist.

I see treasure over there, I want that treasure over there

 

Oh, right.  Let’s check out the monsters here.

A two-for-one deal!

 

We got a new enemy here: skeleton.  No special attacks, but this enemy is pretty resilient.  It’s especially tougher when they tend to come in groups.  If you haven’t done much level grinding, you may have some trouble here.  Gimard returns in this dungeon, and this is the perfect opportunity to talk about what happens when you defeat a seru with a ra-seru equipped!

The seru sparkles and disappears!  That's the special thing I wanted to mention.

 

That “something special” I mentioned back at part 1 is this: whenever you defeat a seru like Gimard, you may actually capture it!  By doing so, you can now summon it in battle (at the cost of MP), doing some good fire damage.

 

This guy's feeling pretty optimistic about life; he sure ain't feeling down!

The last enemy we can encounter in the castle is the Drake Ghost.  You’ll be encountering these enemies in the later floors of the dungeon.  It’s a little bit beefier than the skeleton, but if you’re strong enough to deal with skeletons, these ghosts aren’t that much stronger.  Do note that it’s floating, so low attacks won’t do anything.  I mean, what are you gonna do, sweep its nonexistent legs?

One more thing I like to show off before we get to the plot: as you level up, not only do your stats increase, but your attack bar also increases in length!  Eventually, you’ll be able to input 4 attack commands without the need to spirit, which is really cool.  But the other thing I want to show off is this: I’ve spirited up to input 5 attacks, but the cool thing is: I can do 2 arts with this string of attacks!

What is this, a fighting game?

 

Left-left-down will execute power punch, and down-right-up will execute charging scorch.  But since the last input for power punch is the same as the first input for charging scorch, I can chain these 2 art commands together!  This is one of the coolest things about the combat in this game: being to make combos like this.

Back to the plot at hand.  We explore deeper into the castle.

This is giving me Bowser's Castle vibes from Paper Mario

 

There are some bookshelves that offer some lore about the Drake Kingdom.  Stuff like how the water was such a valuable resource, a mysterious building built on the northeast, or diary passages of a harvest festival that was cancelled due to the incoming mist.  Nothing too particularly important here.  But as we go deeper, we finally approach the throne room.

Vahn can't even sit on the throne - DISAPPOINT

 

It’s empty, much like everywhere else that isn’t behind a cage.  To the left of the throne is another room.  In it, we find another human seru locked behind a cage.

look at this dummy who locked himself in

 

From the regal clothes it’s wearing, this must have been the king.  And on closer inspection, we can see the key for the water gate hanging around its neck.  We see a chest to the left, and in it is a letter written by the king.  Apparently, he ordered everyone in the castle to be caged during the mist attack and let themselves be possessed by the seru, so that they would not be able to escape.  I get the reasoning behind this, but there’s… well something weird about all this…

In addition, the king writes that there is a Genesis Tree on Mt. Rikuroa, to the north of the castle, and asks the reader (that’s us!) to save them.  We got our new goal, but before head any further, there’s another room to the right of the throne we should check out.

Cue the RE2 safe room theme

 

It’s a safe room.  The door is apparently strong enough to withstand attacks.  This is another healing point, so let’s take this opportunity to rest here.

Meta communicates with us as Vahn sleeps.  He explains to you… pretty much everything I talked about with seru magic.  Geh.

Was expecting lore, got tutorial instead.  Thanks, Meta.

 

One more thing I should add about magic; magic will level up the more you use that specific seru.  Damage dealt increases the higher level it gets, obviously, but at a high enough level, it will start dealing special effects.  For example: at lvl 3, Gimard can now debuff the enemy’s attack.  It’s not particularly useful in this dungeon (since I can 1-shot every enemy here with magic), but it’s something good to have nonetheless.

 

We wake up, fully rested.  Use the save point to save (the floating blue statue in the corner of the room).  But before we head out, there’s a chest with a very important item in the other corner.  In it is the Fire Book I!

 

Heck yeah, now we cookin'

By using this book, it will teach Vahn a new Hyper Art: Tornado Flame!  Hyper arts are exactly what you’d expect: a stronger art move.  But instead of being performed as a last attack in the string of commands, it executes immediately.  Also, it costs more AP than your regular arts, but the damage it does is absolutely worth it.

By the way, just a headsup: this ain’t gonna be a 100% playthrough (or at least, I’m not aiming it to be such).  Any treasure chest I don’t show off will be because the items you get aren’t worth talking much about.

At the last floor, we open the way out to the north side of the castle.  And with that, I believe we will stop here for now.  Next time: we head to Mt. Rikuroa to find the Genesis Tree!