The Lost Levels is a fitting name for a frustratingly difficult videogame.
As stated in my previous post: depending on where you grew up and/or where you source your videogames, your memory of Super Mario Bros. 2 can be different from other people, simply because Nintendo released two entirely different versions.
Our favorite iconic plumber has an equally iconic history.
Plumber brothers Mario and Luigi are very iconic that they’re actually household brands for almost 40 years now. Even though they’re actually videogame characters and not related to any actual real-world plumbing.
Adol once again finds himself in the most unusual of places. This time, in a cursed prison city filled with monsters straight out of horror videogames.
In case you’re not familiar with the Ys series, let me describe its main protagonist, Adol: He is a fiery-red-headed professional loiterer. Just kidding, Adol is an adventurer. And in every installment of Ys, he finds himself in the most unusual of places.
In Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, he ventures into the prison city of Balduq. And almost oddly enough, becomes a prisoner of that cursed city. Just normal Adol stuff.
Balduq not only houses prisoners, it also has Lemures, monsters born from negative emotions.
Who needs these scrolls when you have Cain?
In the world of Diablo, unidentified items can not be used until they are identified and their true magical properties exposed. Which begs the question: why can a person not wield and swing an unidentified sword when after identifying it, it would still be a sword?
But that’s not what why we’re here. We’re here to talk about a deeper but completely nonsensical — and not to mention, I just made up — conflict between Deckard Cain and the scrolls of identify.
Lather, rinse, repeat in the bravest and most convenient way possible.
It’s not new for games, especially role-playing ones, to make players grind for those extra levels to gain an edge against powerful foes. But the Bravely series made the whole grinding process — so to speak — more accessible.
Wyrmpres 