Phantasy Star II: The Legendary Journey Continues...
So I've got my characters more or less figured out, have them equipped with bombass ****, and even picked up a third party member, so I'm feeling pretty good. Then I try the first dungeon, which is a nameless structure on the standard RPG overworld and after a couple abortive attempts at lower levels with worse equipment I'm finally making headway, but Jesus Christ these dungeons despise human life. They are sprawling, featureless mazes made of endlessly recycled sameness with nothing to help me get my bearings and even at this early stage in the game have numerous warp squares that send me to a random spot somewhere in the dungeon from which I have to pick up the pieces of my life and figure out how to live out the remainder in relative sanity. Dungeons even have this weird overlay from I guess the ceiling that's crisscrossing pipes with blinking lights that throws off the visual geometry of the rest of the map making it even more confusing.
But I'm making the best of it even if I have only a tentative grip on where the **** I am at any given time. Luckily I end up wandering over and over and over the same spots again and again and again until they almost become familiar so now it's just a question of whether my healing resources will hold out until I reach the end. Luckily they do and I find what I have been searching for for the last hour: "SMALL KEY". There's another structure to the south that I couldn't get into earlier so I figure this must be to that, and since there's no warp square to send me to the beginning of the map I decide forgo using my "ESCAPIPE" and walk out while looking for a couple locked chests I'd seen along the way. I find them, leave, and go to the next structure having seen almost nothing in the way of plot things.
At my destination I try to open the door with SMALL KEY but am met with a message I'd completely forgotten: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Now I remember, some guy at a village said there might be DYNAMITE at the first dungeon. So... WHY THE **** DID YOU GIVE ME SMALL KEY AND NOT THE ****ING DYNAMITE?!?!?! I guess there must be more chests I missed, so with heavy heart I trudge all the ****ing way back to dungeon 1 and try to find my way through the parts I was less certain of and after like half an hour find the chest and get DYNAMITE. I am in no mood for this game's **** at this point so as I am triumphantly marching back AGAIN I see ANOTHER ****ING UNOPENED CHEST I had somehow completely missed right the blastark near the entrance.
"No, no, **** you, I am done, kiss my ass, bye!!!" I shout at my TV like a sane person. I do not care what DIOMITE, SIL RIBBON, or amount of MESETAS are in that chest, I am ****ing outtie.
BACK to dungeon 2 and I finally blow up the door and what should greet me but, no, oh no, no no no... another maze. No, not just another maze. The real maze. The maze that the first was kindly preparing me to face. This maze had the same ****ing design, the same ****ing color scheme, the same color-swapped monsters, but with such an added complexity of arbitrariness that made any idea of "finding your way" into an impossibility for all but the most freakishly directionful.
Remember how the Silph Co warp squares in Pokemon scare you when you're a kid cause you're young and puzzles are scary? Well there were stairs and sensible level design at Silph Co and the game told you which floor you were on. I didn't know what floor I was on here. I couldn't even be sure this Byzantine morass of pointless walls and endless warp squares wasn't all one floor. Have you ever been so lost that it starts to feel claustrophobic? When your sense of bearings has been completely severed from your head and the only world you can imagine is what you can see right in front of you? Even behind you has become a wisp of smoke. At this point I'm just walking forward. Is that a branching path? Should I check what's over there before doubling back to see what's down here? At first I do. Then after an hour I decide that **** it there are so many unexplored paths behind me that doubling back is a waste of time. Just turn that corner. Hit that warp square. Reach the end of that long deadend. And for the love of god don't run out of healing resources cause I don't know if I could deal with the despair of having to warp out of here with an item and then do this all over again.
By some miracle I reach the end, some plot stuff happens, and I journey to the next area of the overworld. Walk around a bit, find a city, buy some stuff, nothing plot-related is rearing it's head, so leave and then find another structure.
You can do this. You've got this. Did you see the stats on those new weapons? Your team is a battle-hardened meat grinder and nothing can stop them. Inhale. Exhale. Let's do it.
I enter the structure and there's a door: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."
Wut. But but but I only had the one DYNAMITE. What is-... NO. That guy at the village who told me about DYNAMITE said there were two at dungeon 1 didn't he?
So I calmly walk all the way the **** back to get another DYNAMITE, find it with actually not as much trouble as I was afraid of since that dungeon is my homie now, and blow up the door at dungeon 3. Luckily it's not the same as the last dungeons. Those were brown. This one is green. Nice. Was I more lost here than before? I don't think it's possible to be more lost at a certain point, only lost for longer, and recognizing the passage of time when lost in a maze is problematic. But I do remember thinking "If my healing resources run out before I reach the end I will jump off a cliff" more than before, but then I still hadn't fully recovered my mental faculties from that ordeal so I was probably like shooting fish in a barrel for a sadistic dev taking his virginity out on the world.
Actually finding the end was more a pleasant surprise than a triumph tbh. And then I saw the door. No. No. No no ****ing no: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."
