As I said last time, I was about to enter the Tower of Doom in Grandia, but before that, I had to go back to the village to advance the story for a bit and, more importantly, to teach Rapp a spell element. I decided to go with Wind for now, but I’ll end up teaching him all four of the elements eventually, since Rapp is one of the final four characters.
The “monster” Rapp is talking about would be the Lainian Milda.
As soon as I got to the Tower of Doom, I got introduced to another awesome temporary character, who’s basically a replacement for Gadwin – Milda of Laine. According to Rapp, if you anger a Lainian, you’re as good as dead. Well, this one was really angry. In fact, she was so angry, she immediately attacked the party, but this time, it went a lot better than with Gadwin. She was relatively easy to defeat and she ended up joining the group, since she was there to destroy the tower to.
Milda can’t learn any spells, so I won’t be making any hard decisions about that. She also doesn’t have a lot of skills. What she does have is pure damage. Because of this, I gave her Justin’s Chain of Gems, which allows the wearer to attack three times in a single combo, basically increasing the damage output by 50%.
I’m still learning new moves, regardless of low experience gains.
The Tower of Doom wasn’t hard, probably because I’m still outleveling the area. I don’t know how exactly this happened, but since Virgin Forest, I barely get any skill or spell experience and most enemies die within a single area attack. I still gain a few skill levels thanks to generous SP and MP usage, but it slowed down to a crawl.
I had to get through several levels of the Tower of Doom and found some minor loot, but I didn’t get any mana eggs this time. That’s fine though, because it’s quite obvious I’ll get more than enough by the end of the game, so I’m in no danger of any of my characters not having all of their skills and spells.
Grandia’s story is full of “convenience”. it works! The Spirit Stone protects the group from certain doom.
Once I got to the top of the Tower of Doom (I just love saying its name), I got to enjoy the shenanigans of the three Garyle officers again, while founding out that the Garyle forces are breeding monsters. I ended up fighting one of this monsters called Gaia, right after finding out it was responsible for turning Rapp’s village to stone. It would have ended up turning the party to stone as well, but Justin’s Spirit Stone protected them.
The fight was long, but not hard at all. After it was done, the monster turned into a sprout (?) and Justin picked it up to take it back to the village. I guess I was the only one here thinking that wasn’t a good idea, because the village elder didn’t seem to have a problem with it and actually took it from Justin to examine it. Of course, the same night, with Leen leading them, the Garyle forces attacked the village to take back the sprout. At this point, a major revelation happens – Leen is an Icarian!
This raises so many questions!
How? Does that mean Leen isn’t Feena’s sister? Does it mean Feena is an Icarian to? These questions remain unanswered for now and since my memory about it is a bit hazy, I don’t want to say something that might turn out wrong later. In any case, the sprout was gone and it was time to go further east, towards Laine. For that, I had to cross the Zil desert and get to Zil Padon, Guido’s home town.
I immediately went to the desert and soon found a great new accessory for Justin, to replace the Chain of Gems I gave to Milda. The Energy Ring restores SP through normal attacks, to a greater degree than the Medal of Yore I previously used. This means Justin will be able to use his awesome moves more often, making me even stronger.
Get your finger out of there. That’s nasty!
The Zil Desert also contains the entrance to the first optional dungeon of the game – The Soldier’s Graveyard. I’m pretty sure I skipped the optional dungeons on my first playthrough, so I decided to explore it this time, just for the fun of it. I was also kind of hoping I’ll get more experience and stronger enemies in there, but the first few battles after the save point didn’t look promising. In any case, this is where I stopped playing.
