Earthbound – Day 37

–Day 37–

We do one more lap around the city looking for the Runaway brothers, but it looks like they might be gone for good. Along the way we did however manage to see one interesting change to the city. For some reason there is no longer a crowd around the department store. Sure enough it is once again open to the public. So far, this is the largest department store we’ve seen so far in the game. It has a total of 4 floors, and 7 different stores to shop from. So many different things to choose from, I just wish I had more inventory space to hold it all. I’m honestly still not used to having THIS limited of inventory in an RPG.

Our delight quickly turns to dread as the unspeakable happens. Just as we were about to leave the building, the lights flicker off and Paula is kidnapped by some kind of green tentacle alien. Then to taunt us further, the creatures calls us over the loud speaker and calls us up to the Manager’s Office up on the 4^th floor. We need to rescue her quick. With her powerful PK attacks she really is the powerhouse of the group.

We leave the building for a quick instance to meet up with the Escargo Express man we previously called so we can deposit a few items. That turns out to have been a huge mistake. As soon as we return to the department store we are immediately ambushed by a couple of enemies. If Paula where here they wouldn’t be much trouble at all, but without her Jeff ends up dying almost instantly.

It’s a quick visit to the hospital to revive him, but it’s unfortunately a pattern that repeats itself several more times. We enter the building, get ambushed, Jeff dies, and we have to leave to get him revived. Paula has been gone from the party for a whole 3 minutes and already we’re hopelessly lost without her.

It would take several more attempts before we even manage to make it past the front door and on our way to the manager’s office. Along the way, the creature is constantly taunting us. Not only that, but the enemies are relentless the whole way, often waiting in unavoidable groups just at the top of the escalators.

By some miracle, we eventually make it to the manager’s office like we planned, and the creature has the nerve to be sitting behind the desk like he owns the place. He taunts the party one last time before telling us to go to hell, or rather heaven. Not sure why the sudden shift. It would make sense if he never said “Hell” and it was a type of censorship, but to change it after the fact simply leaves me scratching my head.

The battle against the Dept. Store Spook is definitely a hard one without Paula. Like I said before, she really is the powerhouse keeping the group going. As Ness’ PP depletes and we start running out of healing items, I was starting to think we would end up losing this battle. Thankfully we manage to limp by and defeat the monster and hope is returned.

In his dying breath, the Spook mentions Giygas. So it looks like he’s another servant like Belch was. No wonder he was so hard to defeat. He also mentions Paula, but doesn’t really tell us what he did with her. I had assumed we would get her back once we defeated him, but apparently that’s not going to happen.

As we leave the office, the Photographer shows up at the worst possible moment to take our picture. Please, I don’t want to be reminded of the time we LOST a party member! Come back some other time. At least everything is back to normal, so that’s something to be happy about I guess.

Well, it looks like we’re going to have to rescue Paula now. Unfortunately we continue to have very few clues about where she might be. So let me sleep on this and I’ll see you next time!