My further adventures in the world of Aquaria. I am enjoying the game quite a bit, but I has taken me far too long to find more time to play it. Anyway, my continuing adventures.
Wandering through the Mithalas Chapel.
Wow. They finally managed to make some enemies that I don't mind going all energy-form on. The... not sure what they're called yet, but evil fish men things are passably nasty looking, but the possibility of shared heritage makes me leery of blowing them up. But when I start meeting giant blobs with laser-beam eyes, my compulsions go away. That thing was rather neat looking.
Also, regarding art direction – The red vines that infest places are truly nasty looking. Especially the pulsating fleshy lumps. Nice also with the dichotomy between the normally brilliant blue world, and the evil red vines. It's funny, normally I associate red with danger in this game, which makes me really wonder about the save-game crystals, since they are rather obviously red. Is this just to make them more obvious? Or do Derrik and Alec have some sinister plan involving them?
Also – there is a lot of weird writing around. I suspect it means something, and part of me wants to copy it down, and play amateur cryptographer. I'm hoping that it will become more meaningful later in the game though. Mostly because if it doesn't, the neurotic side of me will probably make me play through most of it again to see it all. Or check the forums, I guess.
I finally beat the 3rd floating glob of eye-lasers. They got progressively easier as I started figuring out what to do. (Answer: Swim in circles around it and spam energy bolts.) And sure enough, they lay a little more guilt on me for blowing things up, in the form of a cut-scene in which Naija bemoans having to blow stuff up, and enjoying it. Well, at least I know it's not just me being overly-sensitive. The designers clearly WANTED it to be a little uncomfortable.
In urelated news, I finally figured out (from putzing with my icon screen) that the strange device I found before was a “Jelly Beacon”, which apparently draws small jellyfish towards it. It is unclear how that helps me. On one hand, making a healing poultice requires jelly oil, but I draw the line at blowing up jellyfish to harvest their oil. If they wanted me to do that, then I humbly submit that the designers shouldn't have made the jellies so harmless and appealing.
So, back in the cursed depths of the overgrown chapel, I seem to have finally made it to another boss. A giant coral shark thing. First impression – these things would be a lot more threatening if I couldn't just turn on my shield and ignore their attacks while I study them. Not that studying seems to help much in this case. I bounce a bunch of his shots back at him, but even though he flashes, it doesn't seem to do much. I try turning energy and shooting him a bunch, but still nada.
I figure out early on that I can use my “tractor beam” song on the floating stinky fishman, but it's not clear what to do after that. I spend some time trying to make the boss eat him by accident, but the only time that seems to work is if he also eats me, so I suspect that this is more the “how to avoid being eaten” strategy than an actual way of damaging him. Wait, scratch that, he will eat me either way, even if there are no stinky fishmen around.
It seems like blowing the stinky fishman up while the boss is near might hurt the boss, but it's hard to tell. The metagamer in me is pretty sure that there must be something I need to do with the stinky fishmen, (since the game starts me with one, and gives me a way to make more of them) but it's not clear yet what that is.
It takes me a VERY long time to realize that I can turn the normal fishmen that the boss spits out into stinky ones by luring them down by the smelly fungus. I suspect I was supposed to have learned this relationship sooner, but somehow I missed it until now.
One other complaint about this boss, from a layout point of view: He takes too long to get to, whenever he kills me. Every time he kills me, I have to swim through a fairly long tunnel to fight him again. Granted, it has a current in it, so I can go fast, and it's moderately pretty (if rather disturbing) but still. It's that much more time I have to spend every time I die. (And I have to swim a bit further, since there is a “heal to full” potion I need on the way, that I can't save after getting.)
Since I'm still not even sure if I'm hurting the boss, this means that it's turning into a fairly frustrating fight. It would be nice if there were a save-crystal right before the boss room, like there was in the energy temple. Or if there were an option for when I died, that it would start me back out near the place I died.
A thought occurs to me. Maybe I'm not supposed to be fighting this boss yet, because I lack some skill or song. Ok, metagame time: Naija said something similar herself before, but it was in a weird place (a save-game room) and I hadn't beaten up all of the eye-laser-blobs yet, so I assumed it referred to them. Maybe what was SUPPOSED to happen is I was supposed to get this message after killing the eyes, to warn me away from the boss? The save-game room appears to be on the same “map” as the path to the boss. Maybe that message plays when you get to this “map” for the first time, if you don't have something you need?
Looking around, it looks like there are no save points AFTER the one-way current. The only save points on this map both have ways to back out near them. I think that means it's time to go explore somewhere else. Or of not, I might as well go wander around while I try to figure out how to deal with the shark.
Design takeaways I got from this experience:
On my way out, I pass by the ruined tablet that (apparently) proclaims this to be the city of Mithalas. Screw it. I'm starting to keep track of which letter is which. Assuming the tablet does say Mithalas, there are enough characters, and the A repeats in the right place. Notebook started.
Moving on... I meet swordfish for the first time. I discover that they don't like me. I also discover that if I'm towing a big rock, I can hide behind it, and they bounce off and get hurt, and I laugh. I also discover that if I drag a big rock through a school of fish, it kills them and turns them into fish oil. Who knew rocks were so useful? Somehow I feel less bad smooshing fish with a rock than I do blowing them up with my mind.
More exploration later.
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