Earthbound – Day 13

–Day 13–

Now that we’ve finally made it to the Happy Happy Village, it’s time to look for Paula. But first we need to explore the town and gather some information. In general, it’s a nice enough little town with only a few buildings and a small handful of residents.

It doesn’t seem to have an official Hotel or Hospital or anything like that. But there is a house where you can spend the night, as well as a doctor working out of his own house. In addition, the town also has a drug store with some decent equipment.

There’s also an odd house on the edge of town that doesn’t really seem to fit in. For one, it’s red instead of blue like all the other houses. But more importantly, the person inside has a very unique font to their dialogue box. They mention something about a friend in the valley behind Threek, but other than that we don’t gain much useful information.

As nice as the town is, you can’t escape the Insane Cultists that founded it. These Cultists closely resemble KKK members with the exception that their robes are a blue color instead of white. Also they seem to be carrying around paint cans for some reason.

While fighting the Cultists, they will frequently call over more members to join in the fight. Thankfully, they are pathetically weak, doing only 2-3 damage with each attack. Another plus is that they give an incredibly large amount of experience given how weak they are. All things considered, these guys are actually really good to level grind with.

In my exploration I did manage to gain a few key pieces of information. First I found out who their leader is, and what their goals are. It would seem a “Mr. Carpainter” is the leader of the cultists, and for some reason he’s trying to spread peace by painting everything blue. That would explain the paint cans the cultists are carrying around. I’m not sure how well that plan will actually work out, but I guess it’s rather harmless as far as cults go.

Next, and quite possibly more importantly, is the location of Paula. According to the masked person at the edge of town, he and an overweight kid kidnapped Paula and have her hidden her away in a mountain cabin. That’s good to know, now we just need to find said mountain cabin. On top of this, we finally know WHY she was kidnapped. Mr. Carpainter believes she can become the goddess of Happy Happyism and help spread their message.

Before we go and rescue Paula, I really think we need to confront Mr. Carpainter first. That means we have to head into the main building in the center of town and demand to see him. However, I wasn’t prepared for the literal army of cultists inside blocking the path.

Thankfully, not all of these cultists are enemies. That would just be torture. Instead, this building acts more as a maze. At first, there is no clear path to the other end of the room, but many of the cultists are willing to move out of the way if you simply ask them to. You might end up fighting a few of them before finding the correct path, but in general it’s not difficult.

Eventually, we do make it to Mr. Carpainter’s office. Right away I noticed the giant gold statue behind him which has a striking resemblance to the one we saw previously back in the hills of Onett. I’m not sure what connection they might have, but I thought I should point it out. Anyway, talking to Mr. Carpainter reveals that he’s actually interested in Paula and I becoming his assistants. Together we can spread Happy Happyism to the whole world.

As the hero of this story, we of course reject his offer. And as you would expect, he doesn’t take that news quite well. He jokingly suggests we can become his left hand if we don’t want to be the right, but immediately follows this up with a threat. Normally, I would expect there to be a boss battle after this exchange, but I should have learned by now not to expect the normal chain of events from this game.

Instead of a boss fight, Mr. Carpainter strikes Ness with a massive lightning attack. The game is as always very forgiving though. Instead of killing our hero you are instead teleported away, landing just outside the hotel house. It looks like rejecting his offer was a bad idea. I hate to do it, but maybe for now we should at least pretend to go along with his plan.

This deception will have to wait for next time though. So join me again as we once again try to get closer to Mr. Carpainter in our attempt to rescue Paula.