Game 11: Phantasy Star II (Genesis) - Dezo Slow

Things slowed down enough to get some gaming into my schedule. Even so, it's hard to motivate myself to play Phantasy Star II. I've played about 5 hours in the past month and I've barely mapped Skure, plus part of the overland on Dezo. But, let's get back to it now. Maybe, with luck, I'll be done with the game by October.

Off to a new frontier

"Let's make it more challenging," I said, "it'll be fun." Well, it is more time consuming. The battles are taking longer due to tougher enemies, but I'm also doing less damage. I found myself making little progress and needing to recover after one or two battles. It took about an hour of grinding before I could explore past Skure. The robot enemies, which are still around in moderate force, have the highest defense and require the use of magic to defeat in a timely manner. I have found some items that allow indefinite use of some spells.

I've been fortunate to discover that the Snow Crown doubles my defense, and everyone has an item that does 20 - 30 damage. The crown alone has increased my survival rate to a point where I'm comfortably roaming without fear of dying from a single fight while at full health. I still only have 3 healing items, and am wondering if I missed one.

I've discovered three towns, Zosa, Ryuon, and Aukba. I believe there's only a small portion left, and while not expecting to find any more towns, I hope to find a dungeon soon.

My new party is disappointing.

Sean (Hugh), the biologist, only has a single heal spell, Res. He does have one of the most potentially powerful spells though, Vol. I say 'Potentially' because it misses the majority of the time. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but all magic seems to have a small chance to miss, yet Vol has only hit once out of 10 tries. He's not outstanding in any other way so far.

Did that just say 510 damage?

Cana (Anna) has proved to be one of the best characters in my new party. I've got her wielding dual slashers, which hits all enemies in a single group. Robots are proving to be a problem, but I've been told they fade away after a while.

Gotta slash them all!

At this point, I'm really beginning to dislike Shir. She has a random chance of stealing an item when exiting a shop. The drawback, she leaves the party when this occurs. Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, and Shir decides to wander off, forcing me back home on another planet to retrieve her. The gain is a paltry item worth about as much as a single good fight. Beyond that, her tech skills are underwhelming. Her only redeeming quality is a high agility, which allows her to act first or second. She's using the Snow Crown to protect the party before enemies charge.

Not even a goodbye

There's lost lore abound in abandoned Skure. Humans used to live here, but left many years ago due to a leak of poisonous gas. Cats, kept as pets, were still roaming around and it's possible to hear their thoughts with a Magic Cap. I also learned, and found, a fake Magic Cap called Mogic Cap; I was warned to beware.

When talking with the local denizens I heard the same conversations, that Dezo people are the best in Algo. The local shops were prohibitively expensive. I lacked any leads. Luckily I had Sean (the person, not the character) around to give me some hints. The one that helped the most, I should use the Mogic Cap when talking to Dezo people instead of the Magic Cap. Why was this necessary? I'm not really sure, but it cut prices by half and gave me some actual insight for progress. Maybe the Dezo people were the ones that created the fake caps, but that's only a guess.

What, no Dezo women?

Three cities later, I was going to continue exploring near Aukba, but Shir decided it was time to steal again. Two clues: an invisible place that can't been seen or touched, and a strange guy is living in isolation on Dezo(oh, and he never ages). Word of an eclipse-torch blamed for the reason of the accident is also mentioned. I'm expecting a prism to come up soon. It was mentioned in the manual as an item that allows one to see invisible objects.

Session Time: 5h00m (Total Time: 24h31m)