When we last left our intrepid hero, Brian, he had just defeated a powerful burglar and returned peace to Dondoran. Now, the gate he couldn’t open in the forest should be unlocked. After going back to the inn to save the game and talk to Shannon one more time, Brian heads back to the forest.

To be completely honest, there wasn’t a ton of plot advancement this week, so I don’t know how long this post will end up being. I played for approximately the same amount of time as I did last week, but most of the time was spent walking through fields and leveling up. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some stuff to talk about though, so here we go.

After getting out of the forest, I’m presented with another large field area. There’s a dock at the far south end of the map, as well as another forest to the west. Considering we started in the north, I decided to check out the forest first, as I would reach it first. The enemies in this field are significantly more powerful than the ones I was fighting last week, but the same basic strategy continues to work. Just beat the monsters with Brian’s stick, then use all of his MP for healing, then walk to refill the MP. Repeat, survive, and level up.

After reaching the forest, I immediately found a big lake. I ran around it in both directions, fighting enemies that were even stronger, but I never really found anything. There’s a couple spirits to find, which I guess is the correct term for the elemental upgrades you find just out on the field, but otherwise there wasn’t much here. It’s entirely possible that there’s stuff I didn’t see, but the fights in this area were actually starting to get kind of rough, so I returned to to the field and ran towards the dock, getting into a bunch more fights along the way.

At the dock, there’s a boat and another inn. Once again, we find our good friend Shannon, Is she just going to be at every inn? She talks about going to the kingdom of Larapool, so I’m assuming that that’s what we’re up to to. I save my game and head to the boat. The captain comments that someone who looked just like me been on the boat recently. Oh right, I was looking for my dad! After walking below deck, uh, nothing happens. I turn around and head back above deck and find that we’ve apparently arrived. No fake shaking around or text box to imply that the boat was moving, we’re just here. The captain explains that the wind has stopped, so we’re not going to be able to sail any time soon.

I move through yet another new field area until I reach Larapool. It’s a pretty impressive town, with several bridges leading to different buildings. The important thing is going to the inn, again, and talking to Shannon. She also talks about how the wind has stopped and that we’ll need to recover the wind orb to fix things. This inn is pretty big, and I decide to go upstairs. There, I find a tall blonde woman named Leila. She explains that demons have escaped, apparently because of the wind stopping. She says that she, like Brian, is a magician. She will be using her powers to protect Larapool, but Brian is going to have to help everywhere else. Wow, thanks.

After heading out, I honestly got pretty lost. After running around for a long while, I eventually found a house next to a bridge. In the bridge was two guys who claim the bridge is out and they can’t fix it until Brian deals with this whole wind and demons thing. I take a look at the bridge and it looks perfectly fine to me, besides a closed gate on the other end. Not really sure what needs to be fixed, but whatever. I get lost for another good while until I finally find myself at the entrance of a cave. The map calls it Cull Hazard. This is where I stopped for the week, we’ll see what’s going on in there next week.

As of right now, I’m fairly neutral on Quest 64. I’m not going to tell you that it’s some amazing lost gem of a game, but at the same time, I also don’t think it deserves the “worst RPG of all time” labeling I constantly heard about it when I was growing up. It seems to be a perfectly serviceable game with a few genuinely impressive features and a pretty boring story. There’s still a ways to go though, so we’ll see how I feel by the end.

And before I end this, let’s go over our current stats. I’ve currently played for four hours and twenty-one minutes, my earth element is level 24, water is 8, and both fire and wind are still 1. See you all in a week!