Listen to the Rain

​Phantom Hourglass is the most recent Legend of Zelda game I've played until now, other than about five minutes' worth of Skyward Sword while visiting melishus_b in December of 2011. In preparation for moving to Japan, schoolpsychnerd and I bought a DS--we had a PSP before then, but weren't that happy with it--and several games. schoolpsychnerd picked Puzzle Quest and The World Ends with You, and I picked Final Fantasy IV DS and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I played it almost entirely on the train, as we went to and from Hiroshima City and on the shinkansen throughout Japan, and I thought it was cute and fun. It wasn't until years later that I looked it up on the internet and discovered I was supposed to hate it.

Playing it again I still don't hate it, but the shine has worn off.

The Japanese title reads Mugen no Sunadokei, "Visionary Hourglass" or "Hourglass of Dreams."


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Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• Father James, human disciple of the pidgit-folk.
  • Hundred Wings, Father James' familiar spirit bound into the bodies of dozens of ravens.
• Willow, human treesinger raised in Taira.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

The souldrinker battened on Father James, its claws wriggling, and he struggled in vain as he felt his life force being drawn away. Willow contemplated calling up a wall of vines between the party and their enemies, but eventually decided that having opened the door, they wanted to see what was in the room beyond, so she laid into the souldrinker, hurting it and also slashing Father James across the arm. The soulddrinker still healed the wounds, but more slowly now.

Elaphe lashed out at one of the spiders, and as he was bringing his dagger down, the spider's horns crackled with sparks and lashed out with a blast of lightning! Elaphe staggered, but his aim was true, and he brought the dagger down onto the spider's head, killing it. Amos fired at the souldrinker attacking Father James and the arrow passed through it, causing it to deflate slightly and start leaking a thin, oily fluid. Shining Star drew out her bow and knocked an arrow, then fired at the remaining spider, but it skittered sideways and advanced on Elaphe, who turned and hacked off one of its legs. Amos also drew on it, but the spider unleashed a blast of lightning that knocked Amos off his feet, sending him bouncing off a wall and into the floor in a heap.

As the souldrinker overwhelmed Father James, draining out his consciousness and lowering him to the floor, Willow moved to attack it while Elaphe and Shining Star hacked at the spider. Elaphe killed it with a savage blow, hacking off its head, and then leaped over to the souldrinker and carved it open. With a high keening wail its membrane broke open and its claws stopped twitching, freeing Father James. Shining Star immediately set to work binding everyone's wounds and examining Father James, but as near as she could tell, he was simply unconscious--anything else would have to wait. Once the bleeding had stopped and first aid had been applied, they carefully moved into the next room and looked around with Hundred Wings's help. Much of a corner of the room was taken up with a resinous nest, inside of which they found an egg, and there were several doors out of the room, but they found some money, a few loose crystals, a cord of blue threads bound in intricate knots, a pair of bracers forged of orichalcum with B'rabti writing and images of the Temple of Yarikh on it, and some potions. Hundred Wings dived down on the egg and began to feast, and Elaphe used his bob-omb to blow up the nest before they left. Then they began the long period of walking back out of the Tower.

On the bottom floor, they passed by the assessor's station, who explained the process. They would leave the artifacts and enchanted items they found in the Tower with them and receive claim tickets for them. The next day, they could return and they'd receive a tax assessment for 5% of their value, which they'd have two weeks or until they left Tower Town to pay, and how they got the money was none of the town's business. They handed over all their items, went back to the Roaring Lion tea house, and all collapsed into bed.

The next morning they woke up slightly refreshed, though most of them were still injured and Father James felt like he had been kicked by a mule. After a mug of mushroom beer, Elaphe went to check the markets to find places to sell their gear, while Shining Star and Willow sought out the Fog Chirurgeons, worshippers of an aspect of Phantom who married skill against the undead with healing prowess. The two asked around town and learned that there were two chirurgeons in town in a clinic, and going there they found an old silverback kong and his very young apprentice. They paid for healing--the room filled with fog and the old kong struck them each once directly over the heart--and then explained that they wanted to learn the ways of the Fog Chirurgeons. The elder one seemed to react especially to Shining Star's admission that she was a priestess of Nyahré, and he told them to return the next day. Then, they departed.

Amos went to the same sorcerer that Father James had gone to when they first arrived in Tower Town, the chuzan with white fur and eyes of burnished gold. His bedside manner was just as terrible as ever, but when Amos paid and the sorcerer worked his sorcery, he left feeling much better.

At noon, after reconvening in the Roaring Lion and eating lunch, and after Shining Star looked for the two starfolk and not seeing them, they went back to the Tower and collected their items. Elaphe paid the tax--at one koku, enough money to feed a peasant family for a year--and paid extra for the assessor's analysis of the items. Several items were simply decorative, but the white jade armor would allow the wearer to pass through walls, the blue cord had an air spirit bound into it that would be released by untying the knots, the jade ring had a kinokoko bound into it and the wearer could use the spirit's powers, the bracers would make the wearer's blows more deadly, and among the crystals was a powerful fire crystal that would allow its user to turn into a firebird. Their expedition had paid off.


All that time looting cursed artifacts from fighting warlocks, necromancers, and vampires, and now the party finally has some worthwhile enchanted items they can distribute! Elaphe wants to use the bracers, and I've heard multiple people who are interested in that ring. Though the way Exalted's system works, there's a cost to use enchanted items--attunement reduces a character's pool of motes of Essence, leaving fewer motes to use Charms or spells--so that may determine the user. Willow wants the ring since he's a treesinger, but already over a third of his Essence pool is tied up in his armor and sword, and wearing armor makes his spells more expensive. Wearing the ring and tying up more motes may not be the best idea.

This combat was probably the most dangerous one the party has been in yet. Father James came dangerously close to suffering permanent damage from the souldrinker, and if the first souldrinker hadn't been killed almost instantly, it could have healed up and latched on to someone else. That would have been catastrophic.

Next game is after the new year, and we'll see what the party decides to do then!

I've never played Ultima VII, but I know about its reputation. The truly simulationist RPG, predating games like Deus Ex, where the protagonist could get into hidden places by stacking up boxes by the sides of houses and climbing on them, bake bread, have infinite storage space by picking up the cargo door for a ship's hold, paint a self-portrait, rob the bank blind, earn infinite money through rigged gambling, or bake bread using blood to bind the flour together. These were the kind of interactions that Divinity: Original Sin promised in its kickstarter video, but with more modern design, applied to a turn-based combat engine, and with multiplayer. Moving barrels around to solve puzzles? Getting enemies wet and zapping them with lightning? Doing all of that together with schoolpsychnerd? All of that sounded like a lot of fun!

I was going to say that this was the third game I kickstarted, after Wasteland II and Pillars of Eternity, but it turns out that's not true. There were a few other games in there like Shadowrun Returns and Sealark, but this is the third big game I kickstarted, and one of the ones I was most excited for.

Well, it took us almost two years to finish it, so that may provide insight into what I thought about the game.


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Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• Father James, human disciple of the pidgit-folk.
  • Hundred Wings, Father James' familiar spirit bound into the bodies of dozens of ravens.
• Willow, human treesinger raised in Taira.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

As the shapes rushed toward the sprawled form of Willow, Amos leapt into the room and fired an arrow at the one on the ceiling, but it skittered out of the way and continued advancing. Shining Star called down chains of searing light on one of the shapes moving along the floor, but it too dodged. Father James sent Hundred Wings to scout out the room, and it reported a pipe along the southern wall flanked by two bird-like statues. It also recognized the shapes as shadowcrawlers, creatures that can see in darkness and hate the light. The spirit suggested that they may have come through the pipe into Etemenanki.

Willow rolled away as the shadowcrawlers leapt down on him, taking a superficial wound, and Elaphe ran past the enemies into the room. The party tried to use the light panels on the walls and floating light-seeds from Willow's sword to drive away the shadowcrawlers, but they seemed berserk, ignoring each of the wounds they took and continuing to attack. Even when Amos shot one in the eye, seriously injuring it, it didn't run. It wasn't until Shining Star bound two shadowcrawlers in chains that the third one backed off. Willow couldn't bring himself to kill the helpless shadowcrawler, writhing in the sorcerous chains of light, but Amos didn't have that problem. He shot it, and shot the third one as it ran. The party treated their wounds and spread out to search the room.

There was a large amount of debris scattered by the entrance to the pipe, and Elaphe picked up two small gems, a scattering of coins, and a heavily-gilded sword that didn't seem like it could stand up to actual battle, but would fetch a nice sum if they could sell it. Then, the party debated what to do. They briefly thought about entering the pipe, but eventually decided against it and instead thought to look through the portcullises on the western end of the room. They were all of one piece, seemingly carved of solid wood, and mindful of the possibility of them closing behind them after entering, Amos touched one and chanted a brief bit of hedge magic to set it on fire. Then, they sat down to wait, sitting quietly or resting for an over an hour while the door burned. Father James sent Hundred Wings to scout out the small hallway, and the spirit reported a body wearing armor at the end of a short corridor. Fearing a trap, Father James tossed Elaphe's grappling hook down the corridor and began pulling, and his cautious was proved justified when whips of flame emerged from the walls and seared the body and the rope. Father James retrieved the body using his sorcery, and Elaphe took the jade chain shirt off of it and put it away.

They had explored all the parts visible on their map but they knew there were still other areas, so they went back to the room with the fountain and took the door to the southeast. The corridor went on for about fifty feet and then ended, with a door to the left. Father James tapped it using his arms of wind and eventually pushed, forcing it open. No one responded to the noise, and so they filed in. The room was filled with benches, made from the same pearlescent stone as the exterior of the tower, with a rough-hewn granite altar in the center and something on top of it. After throwing a few stones in and not triggering any traps, the party entered the room and looked around.

Most of the room was empty, but Elaphe found something under one of the benches. A hardened, gelatinous mass, with several lumps of fossilized goo inside, punctured and deflated, that he refused to touch. On the altar was a pair of gloves, white fabric with lines of iridescent thread running through them, but before anyone touched them Shining Star asked them to wait and invoked Nyahré's blessing on the altar. She closed her eyes, glowed with a soft silvery light, and saw-

A series of indistinct figures, standing amidst the benches, chanting in a language she didn't understand.

A figure raising a bowl over the altar and pouring it over itself.

Several figured gathered around the altar, seemingly engaged in a discussion.

A figure looking into a bowl on the altar, and then picking it up and hurling it across the room.

The vision faded and she told the others what she saw. Father James mentioned that this might be valuable knowledge to a sage or scholar of some kind, and since she hadn't seen anything immediately dangerous, Elaphe took the gloves. After a brief discussion and a look at their packs--most of the treasure they found was small and none of them were tired or seriously injured--they elected to keep going.


And we would have kept going except that battle against the shadowcrawlers took much longer than I expected. They kept dodging and, in contrast to nearly every other battle fought over the course of this game, the PCs kept rolling low. It's fortunate that Willow was wearing armor, because the shadowcrawlers clawed him several times while he was on the ground but every single attack after the first one just bounced off.

The PCs actually have a pretty nice selection of loot already, including some stuff that they might use in the future, and they elected to keep going further in. We'll see what else they find, and if their cautious approach will keep them out of danger!

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• Father James, human disciple of the pidgit-folk.
  • Hundred Wings, Father James' familiar spirit bound into a bodies of dozens of ravens.
• Willow, human treesinger raised in Taira.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

The party rode down the ramp around the pipe and spoke to the tower town guard, who waved them through after making they bound their weapons in their sheaths. Elaphe tied an elaborate knot shaped like a rose, causing one guard to take a step back, but then they were allowed to enter. They were in a crowded square, with a tea house on one side under the sign of a roaring lion next to a large public notice board, which Amos immediately went to look at. In Floral, Muskalan, Sarasan, and other languages the party didn't speak among them, there were calls for companions to go into Etemenanki and find treasure, advertisements for businesses, and a call to find a missing child. There was a notice for mercenaries to come to Fontina, and a note half-pasted over it warning mercenaries away and saying that something suspicious was happening there. They took note of a bounty on some gigases that were lairing west of tower town as well as the standing bounty on putting the dead to rest in the ruined parts of the city, and then entered the tea house.

It was quickly obvious that they'd fit right in. The ceilings were high and there was a roaring fire in the center of the room. In the back was a blonde human woman, drinking by herself, and to the left of the entrance were two kremlings and a heavily-muscled frog person playing some sort of dice game. Two starfolk were drinking next to the fire, while a couple tables over a man dressed in a toga with feathered white wings and shockingly purple hair sat with his head in his hands. And behind the bar, wiping down the surface, was a lynel.

Willow ducked out to invoke a quick ritual and returned, his skin shining and flower petals falling from the air around him, and bargained for their stay. The lynel was unmoved by his beauty, however, and they handed over the money for a week's room and board as well as stabling for their mounts. After a quick dinner and ice-cold mushroom beer chilled by the lynel's touch, Elaphe went up to their room to rest, Father James went outside to earn some cash through palmistry, and Willow went over to talk to the winged man. He blearily looked up when Willow approached and gladly told his story: his name was Hemah, and he said he had been cursed by a "vegetable wizard" during in invasion of the "kingdom of the sky," and in response he had been exiled. He hadn't found anything that could break the curse and eagerly seized on Willow's suggestion that he could help, and he called Shining Star over. She quickly determined that the curse on him was not demonic in nature and couldn't easily be broken with her sorcery, but thought that it might be worth asking the starfolk.

As Hemah slumped back onto the table, Shining Star bought drinks for the starfolk and introduced herself as a priestess of Nyahré. One of them spoke Muskalan, and excitedly--and slightly drunkenly--greeted her. In response to her questions, he said he was just a farmer, but that Kimé, the other starfolk, was a guardian-in-training and may be able to help. They gathered around Hemah, but Kimé's efforts were also in vain, for now. Shining Star asked the lynel about libraries, and he said there were various private libraries in tower town and their best bet would be to ask a sorcerer, so Shining Star made a note to do that in the morning. She bought another round of drinks, and as thanks, Kimé cast a spell that cleansed her of all the dust and grime of travel.

As Hemah continued his melancholy and Shining Star talked with the starfolk, Amos slipped out to walk the streets. He saw mostly shops and residences, though he took note of the building with a blazing sun and sand as well as the faerie, the universal symbol for a healer, on the shingle. The neighborhood had the feel of a boom town, all excitement and hope, and it wasn't as run-down and fearful as Rockfort or Gyere had been. He nodded at Father James as he passed him, and eventually made his way back to the tea house.

While he was gone, Willow took a seat at the back of the bar with the woman. After he introduced himself, the woman questioned him, asking him something in Latin, and then asking if he was from Egypt or Libya, and who had been the tribunes when he left. After some back and forth, Willow established that he was from far in her future, from a land beyond "The Pillars of Hercules," and she said that she had been born to freed slaves and made a life for herself in Egypt until the conflict between Marcus Antonius and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus forced her to flee. She lost her way in a sandstorm and wound up in Agarica. She said her name was Valeria, and Willow suggested that Amos had an interest in her. She took it in stride, and Willow took his leave. She also briefly talked to the lynel and learned that, while lynel do not give their names to those outside their tribe, people called him Old Lion and he thought it was fitting.

After meeting up at the tea house, the party went to sleep. The next morning, Father James's wounds burned with a dull ache and red lines were extending from under the bandage up his side, so he knew he needed immediate medical attention. Amos told him about the healer he had found, and after breakfast, the party left the tea house to attend to their missions. Shining Star and the two starfolk went to find a library; and Elaphe, Willow, and Amos went to a market to get appraisals on the Imperium coins from the ziggurat and the crystals they had found in the vampire's lair. Elaphe also bought some potions from an alchemist that promised to increase the senses.

Father James went to the healer after borrowing some money from Elaphe. He attempted to ingratiate himself, but the healer, a white-furred chuzan with shining golden eyes, was incredibly brusque, poking him in the wound, shutting down all his attempts at conversation, and demanding full payment up front. When Father James paid, the healer ordered him onto cot and began chanting. His hands glowed, stronger and stronger, until it filled the room and Father James could see the veins in his eyelids, and the the pain in his wound suddenly vanished. A few more incantations and flashes of light, and the wounds were almost entirely healed. Father James thanked him, but the healer hurried him out and, with a quick "Tell your friends!" closed the door behind him.


Next time, Etemenanki! Or maybe hunting gigases, since Elaphe's player is keen on that. Anything that's corporeal, without a lot of supernatural might, and will bleed when he stabs it.

I like the games that take place in larger cities because they let me show off more of the cosmopolitan nature of WotMK. I deliberately tried to avoid the D&D approach where everyone lives in their isolated kingdoms and there's no cultural exchange or immigration. Tower town especially is an adventurer's dream with a giant megadungeon right next door, so people from all over come there. Like fallen starfolk--Shining Star's player has made it a mission to get them back to the Star Road--or frog people.

I've got a map of part of the tower I've been waiting to use for over a year, so I expect the party will go hunt gigases. We'll see!

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• Father James, human disciple of the pidgit-folk.
  • Hundred Wings, Father James' familiar spirit bound into a bodies of dozens of ravens.
• Willow, human treesinger raised in Taira.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

Bonnie left soon after the snow fell, deciding after discussion with her father that she would return to Chai to continue her orator studies. She rode out with a caravan bound for Chai early in the Month of Frost after bidding farewell to the others, and then set her face to the east. The Green Knight also left a week later, his disciple Drifting Snow in tow, saying that it was the will of the forest spirits that called him elsewhere.

Some time later, Amos was walking through the new-fallen snow in the square outside the temple of the goddesses when he saw another human! A man dressed like a vagabond, playing a shell game for a trio of amanita who clearly did not understand the rapidly-spoken Muscalan that the human was giving his pitch in. Amos watched to see if the amanita would get swindled, but while one wandered away, the others actually won a small amount of money and the other human packed up his gear and left. Amos stood in the square for a while until he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was the human, who spoke in a British accent and introduced himself as Father James, a priest of Mark Twain, a god unfamiliar to Amos. They chatted for a short time until Shining Star stepped out of the temple and saw them, and she stopped to see who Amos was talking to. Moments later, another human stepped out of the tea house on the other side of the square and stopped in shock at the sight of two others from his own world of birth.

After an excited discussion in English between Willow, Father James, and Amos that Shining Star waited out politely, the four of them, along with a limping Elaphe, retreated into the tea house to drink rice wine and mushroom beer and swap stories. Over the next week and a half they got to know each other better and decided to go treasure-hunting. Shining Star and Amos were pushing for a strike against the Dragon Emperor, and while they knew they weren't powerful enough to do so now, they thought that finding more ancient artifacts and then performing a decapitation strike on the Dragon Empire and letting the Dragon Emperor's eight children fight a civil war in the ruins might be their best bet. With winter in effect and snow a yard high, they left on the 17th of the Month of Frost for the pipe that would take them through B'rabt to Rockfort and on to that pipe that led to the jungle.

On the way out of the city, they noticed people staring upward at the sky and turned to see that the Silent Ones were casting off the lines on the floating ship they were building over the Scarlet City. As the party watched, the propellers on one end began to turn and the ship began to move, accelerating forward and then turning in a wide arc toward the north, where it passed out of sight.

The trip to the jungle ziggurat ruins was uneventful. With Bonnie gone, there was no one who could speak B'rabti in the group, and while Shining Star could use the Royal Speech to make herself understood, they found no one who could or would speak back until they arrived at the tea house in the B'rabti town with the pipe to Rockfort. Willow attempted to use his charm and good looks to win them a better price on the room, but the mycon proprieter just glared at him and raised the price. They paid for a few extra days to stable their mounts and in the morning, went through the pipe and out of Rockfort into the wild. As they passed the farms that had been abandoned, they noticed that now they were inhabited, but the inhabitants ran inside and locked the doors at the sight of a group of heavily-armed individuals walking toward them.

The other side of the pipe was a steaming jungle, with a broken plaza leading to a ruined ziggurat mostly obscured by overgrowth, and after removing their heavy winter clothing, the group advanced across the square. While Elaphe and Father James could hear a loud buzzing audible even over the sounds of the jungle coming from somewhere in the canopy, but they didn't see anything and nothing came to attack them, so they climbed the ziggurat steps and entered the top. Amos summoned up a witchlight, revealing a small room maybe twenty-five feet square with a stone bowl in the center, anything in it long since gone, and four statues in the four cardinal directions. One was a turtle, one was some sort of bird, and the other two weren't identifiable. There were stairs leading up and down, and the party took the stairs up first. The room was empty, with a bit of light coming from windows in the crown of the dome, and an obsidian knife in the dust on the floor. Elaphe carefully picked it up and handed it over to Shining Star, who didn't sense anything actively malicious from it. She gave it to Amos, who wrapped it up and put it away. The party went down two levels to a room with four pillars, a pit in the center of the room below the basin in the room above, and no other exits, though they found a half-mask on the floor made of gold and severely tarnished silver. They considered descending through the pit until Elaphe decided to look for any secret doors, and he and Father James's ravens found separate hinged section of stone walls that opened, revealing stairways down.

They descended down a level and began to explore, finding only kong bones mixed with other bones they couldn't identify. The humans heard a low murmuring, like rock rubbing against rock, echoing through the ziggurat, and Elaphe heard a sound of something clicking on stone, but the buzzing they had heard earlier was gone. Then, as they went down a corridor toward another room, Father James heard a message from his raven spirit, Hundred Wings, asking him where he had gone. Turning, he found a rock wall behind them with a corridor curving around to the left. After a hurried discussion, they found the lower end of the pit that led from the room above, and some of the ravens flew door from above, and then flew a rope back up and secured it to a statue. Elaphe held onto one end of the rope and kept an eye on the pit while Amos, Willow, and Father James looked down the corridor. They found a room that might have been a guard room, with some rust on the walls and spearpoints carved like snakeheads on the floor, though the spear shafts had long since rotted away. Amos could see a door at the far end, made of metal and still intact, and with the others' help he forced it open. Inside was a small room with a figure seated on an ivory stool in front of a low table. It was a kong wearing elaborate robes and a headdress, somehow in good condition despite the jungle humidity and with its flesh withered as though mummified. Amos entered the room with his musket ready and saw several items of jewelry on the table just as Elaphe heard the sound of claws on stone behind him, turned, and found nothing there.

He called out to the others and they hurried back to the rope. Father James told Hundred Wings to fetch the treasure, and the ravens brought back two rings, a kong-sized half-mask made of silver and gold like the one they found above, and a gold pendant with a banana tree surrounded by kong glyphs. As the rumble came again, they began to climb the rope back toward the top. They had almost made it when Amos felt the rope shiver, and then it snapped.


This is two sessions together because session twenty-eight was mostly character creation and getting the new characters together.

Elaphe pushed for leaving because while if it bleeds, he can kill it, he's much less confident about spirits or ghosts. And that is a weak spot of this party. Shining Star can fight demonic spirits with her sorcery, but if the spirit is just annoyed that its home has been disturbed, there's not much she can do, and they don't have any other way to affect the immaterial. Shining Star and Amos are pretty keen to keep exploring, though, since they haven't looked around the entire complex and there are still the insects that were making that buzzing sound. Elaphe was pretty excited about the idea of poisoning his weapons.

Next time is in three weeks, when we'll see what happens as the party falls down and the deal with whatever is trying to keep them in the ziggurat!

Originally I wasn't even going to play this on my chrono-gaming march toward Breath of the Wild. It's not a mainline Zelda game, after all. Then I happened to be reading an old interview with Aonuma Eiji that mentioned that there used to be a lot more story in the game about the Imprisoning War before Miyamoto came in, pulled a ちゃぶ台返し and most of the story was thrown out. I saw elsewhere that Four Sword Adventures featured Gufū (Eng: Vaati) as the villain, making it a good lead-in to The Minish Cap. And when I posted about it on Facebook, several people said they had a great time with it, so on the list it went.

I remember reading about it when Four Swords Adventures came out, but while I did have my sister's GameCube, I didn't have a Game Boy Advance, and I certainly didn't have four of them. Of my friends at the time, I think only sephimb had one. Four Swords Adventures sounded like a great game, but even at the time I remember people complaining about the high investment cost, and I lost interest and never actually realized that it doesn't require multiplayer. Dolphin does allow for multiplayer with Four Swords Adventures, but from the minimal research I did, it's a giant headache and anyway I don't have three other people to play with. The game is still plenty of fun by oneself.

The Japanese name just means "four swords" (yottsu no tsurugi +), though it's a little odd. Japanese uses counters for specific objects, like 人 for people, 冊 for printed or bound books, and so on. Long, thin objects, including swords, usually take 本, so I would expect the title to be yonhon no tsurugi. There may be some subtlety in the title that escapes me.


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Wind Waker is one of the few Zelda games I've played and beaten around the time it came out, along with only the original Legend of Zelda and Ocarina of Time. My sister owned a GameCube and kept up with the releases, though she never played the games for that long. She pre-ordered the limited edition--I still have the bonus disc with the Ocarina of Time Master Quest on it--and I'm not sure she ever played it, but when I came home from university that summer, I did. I played through and beat the game without reading any of the online invective about it and I really liked it. I didn't care about the happy, cartoony graphics. That was the year that Call of Duty first came out, and I was busy playing Morrowind and Warcraft III. Something light and happy was refreshing, especially when I spent every weekday at a summer job that I hated and was going to spend the next semester studying abroad in Ireland. At the time, it might even have been my favorite Zelda game.

On replaying, it's still good, but the cracks stand out to me in a way they didn't then.

The Japanese title, as is often true, is simple and straightforward--kaze no takuto, "The Baton of the Winds."


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Warcraft is the series that I've put the most time into. Even completely ignoring World of Warcrafr--my main had something like 450 days /played by the time I lost interest in the game in in 2011--Warcraft III was my go-to game for pretty much all of university. I'd work on a paper for a while, load up WCIII and play a quick game, then go back to the paper. Back in high school, instead it was Warcraft II, and I was good enough that our team placed second in a tournament that the high school games club ran entirely on the strength of my performance. I mean, one of my team members forgot to build a town hall.

Warcraft I, though, I have less experience with. I came into the fandom (as the kids say nowadays) with WCII, so I got used to that game's much more capable interface. I eventually borrowed the install discs from a friend and played through Warcraft I, and then after I beat it I never went back.

Until now.


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I was originally planning to play both Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages together and then write a joint review because I wasn't sure there was enough difference between them to warrant separate treatments. Obviously, now I know that's wrong. They have the same premise, where Link is tested by the Triforce and dumped into a land that may or may not really exist, but beyond that and the basic gameplay conceits of the Legend of Zelda series nearly everything is different. Oracle of Seasons focused on combat and the end result was mostly a disappointment for me, but Oracle of Ages focused on puzzles and that was a much better choice for the format. If I had played this game first and then played Seasons, I might have been happier overall. This is definitely my favorite of the two.

The Japanese title is fushigi no kinomi -jikū no shō-, "The Mysterious Seed -Time-Space Chapter-".



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I'm not sure I had even heard of Oracle of Seasons--in Japanese, fushigi no kinomi -daichi no shō-, "The Mysterious Seed -Land Chapter-"--before I set out on my Zelda chronogaming quest. It was twinned together with Oracle of Ages and released in 2001, the height of my anti-console snobbery. My loss. But the march of time and technological progress means I can go back to those games that I missed and play them now, when I'll appreciate them. Truly, we live in the the golden age of gaming.

Oracle of Seasons is another weird portable entry, starting a trend that began with Link's Awakening and continuing to this day. The mainline console entries, with the exception of Majora's Mask, are the traditional Zelda games where Link fights Ganon and rescues the Princess, and the handheld games are the ones where he talks to a psychedelic winged whale, rides trains, and plumbs the depths of the same dungeon a dozen times. Or here, uses the progression of the seasons to save a land where the seasons have been thrown into disorder.


Link's dancing was already disordered.
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Final met for another game!

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
  
• Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

The party huddled with Black Salted Earth in the Three Wheat Sheaves, ordered food and mushroom beer, and planned. Black Salted Earth went over the situation--Gyere was again terrorized by a vampire who now was even attacking people in their homes, making the old advice to stay indoors useless. She mentioned that they had already considered the obvious suggestion to assemble everyone in the town square at noon, but the refugees and farmers from the surrounding countryside made it impossible to keep track of who was in town. Shining Star and Bonnie consulted a moment and suggested that the vampire might be a shedo, a group of vampires who could assume the forms of those whose blood they drank and who were vulnerable to silver's touch. That led to some more outlandish suggestions--wear silver rings and shake everyone in town's hands--and then they asked Black Salted Earth to send for Sigeferth and ring him into the discussion.

He arrived moments later, ordered food, and with Bonnie translating into Sarasan the party filled him in. He was troubled by their story of the vampire attack in the wilderness, mentioning that he had once hunted a brood of jiang in Sarasa, but they had been half-feral and the Veiled Ones had been able to flush them out into the sunlight. An intelligent jiang and a shedo working together was a bad sign. He hadn't seen anything, but said he would keep a look out, especially now that he had a description of the jiang. He asked if any of them could scry and try to find the necromancers they were looking for that way, and Shining Star said she could not, but that they should consult the old amanita who had helped them look into Old Three Eyes's disappearance, so that was their next destination. The seer asked if they had any items from the person they were looking for or something affected by their sorcery, and they handed over the old sword they had found on the battlefield. The seer performed the ritual, lighting candles and pouring water over the sword, and then their hand tapped the table and slowly moved a handspan westward.

With some idea of where to go, the group made final preparations. Shining Star and Bonnie sought the aid of Gyere's healer and performed surgery on Elaphe, trying to make sure that the wounds he received from the vampire wouldn't lead to permanent disability. After several hours, and with the aid of Shining Star's hedge magic and Bonnie's alchemy, Shining Star was satisfied that Elaphe would recover, and they all went back to the tea house to rest.

Amos and Sigeferth went up to the roofs to scout out. They didn't speak a common language, but with Sigeferth using the Royal Speech and Amos pantomiming, they were able to have a brief conversation about where Amos came from and whether he had ever fought a vampire before. They didn't see anything during their watch, and some time after midnight Amos went to bed.

The Green Knight rode in patrol down through the village, and when he heard the sounds of combat he approached the southwest wall. He asked the militia captain what had happened, and in broken Floral the captain said that there had been a few walking dead but the militia had taken care of them. Seeing the assembled crowd, the Green Knight made a speech about the glories of the Way of the Forests and the downfall of mortal civilizations. Then he turned to go and he was halfway down the street before he realized the someone had actually listened to him. A young female chuzan, brown-furred, clutching a spear and a wooden shield and wearing homespun undyed wool. The Green Knight didn't speak Muskalan and the chuzan didn't speak Floral, but through the Royal Speech he was able to learn that she did mean to follow him and he had finally acquired his first disciple. Flush with success, he returned to the tea house and went to sleep, though he had sure to caution his disciple when she climbed into the bed that the things built of mortal hands were all impermanent.

The others were shocked to find someone else in the room when they awoke. Elaphe had dagger out almost before his eyes opened, and Bonnie let out a shocked squeak. She asked the chuzan's name--Drifting Snow--and bundled her off to the baths with some soap after noticing that she hadn't taken a bath in probably days or weeks. The Green Knight explained himself while she was gone, and while the Shining Star and Bonnie were dubious, they weren't going to stop Drifting Snow from following them, and they certainly weren't going to let only the Green Knight talk to her. They welcomed her when she returned from the bath, and she followed as they checked in about the village--no vampire attacks the previous night--and then mounted their horses and rode out into the rain.

They left Gyere heading west, past some abandoned farms and a few still being worked and watched over by wary-eyed farmers with bows close at hand, scavenging food from the ripe fields. Elaphe took some of the trow weapons, a sword, spear, and shield, and gave them to Drifting Snow to use. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head, but Elaphe just waved it off.

After midday, in the middle of a small copse of trees, they came on a pipe standing alone. Bonnie asked Drifting Snow if she knew anything about it, and the chuzan said that she had heard of a pipe that led to somewhere warm and overgrown, like a jungle, and this might be it. That piqued Bonnie's curiosity, and over the objections of the rest of the group she went down the pipe. It did indeed deposit her in a jungle, steaming hot, in front of a plaza overgrown with weeds and small trees between the stones. In the distance, rising out of the jungle, was an immense ruined ziggurat. Bonnie returned and excitedly told the party about her find, pushing the treasure angle to try to get them interested, but Amos pointed out that they were chasing necromancers and on a timetable. Bonnie marked the pipe on the map, and they pressed on.

Before dinner they found the remnants of a campfire, but the rain had washed away all the tracks. The Green Knight used his sorcery to speak to nearby plants and learned the necromancers had gone north, and after half an hour Amos managed to pick up the tracks again. They kept going through the night, guided by Amos, until they saw a campfire in the distance with figures milling around it. They set up campfire in bowshot range, without a fire, and waited for the dawn. During the night, Amos saw figures continually milling around during his entire watch, and the Green Knight noticed someone setting up some object on the edge of the firelight, but the others did not seem to notice them and the night passed without incident.

When dawn came, we stopped for the night.


The Green Knight's endless speeches finally worked! His player even spent XP on the Followers Background to cement her loyalty, so she'll stick around and earn XP. Though come to think of it, Henchman might be better for that, though she's starting from a lower base. "Subsistence farmer" is a classic D&D start for an adventurer, but the combat ability of a farmer is pretty low. She might have Melee 1, or more likely, Melee 0 (Spears +1). And Survival 2 (Farming +2)

The next session won't be in five weeks, barring a sudden cancellation. I was expecting a hunt for vampires in Gyere, but the players surprised me again. Next time, a fight against necromancers and the walking dead!