I finally made it across the bridge! I died a couple of times trying to get the daughter out of the second tower/dungeon. And then I have to admit that I cheated a little. I looked at a map online of the dungeon. I really didn't want to, but I died twice by random encounter! It just sucks so much to put a lot of time into exploring this dungeon, and you can tell that you are only going to live through a few more battles, only to basically get to a literal dead end and have to start all over. After doing that twice I was so frustrated that I looked up a map online. I am not proud of having to resort to looking online to get help but I figure its the equivalent to asking a kid at school for help back in the day when this came out.

So after I get the daughter, Teim, she puts a bag on her head so other people won't kill her because everyone hates her dad, Darum, for killing and robbing people on the bridge. I go and save then make my way up to the bridge. I'm pretty excited at this point I feel like I'm finally going to get to a new area of the game after basically playing in the same areas for this whole first part. As I was walking up to the bridge I was thinking about the fact that my characters can't do anything while moving around the map. I can't swing my sword or punch someone or do any sort of movement other than walking. I don't know why I was thinking about this but it set me up for a big surprise. So I walk into the bridge and just after I was think about the fact that my characters can only move and I have very little control over them, the game basically goes into a cut scene. Darum walks up and says something and then Teim, still covered up, goes to confront him. And then he just cuts her down, and while I'm still in shock over that he goes and blows himself up! I just kind of stared at the screen for a bit because I did not see that coming. First of all I've been trying to get Teim since the game started and after working for hours and hours and all the frustration of the dungeons and random encounters I finally get her, and then shes just gone after all that work. And then I can't even get revenge or yell at this guy for killing his own daughter he just blows himself up. I kinda thought that they might end up in my party. I was looking forward to having the bad ass killer guy being on my team.

I was a little disappointed that the area on the other side of the bridge was basically the same as the area that I was just in. Maybe it was a little naive to think it would be drastically different, but after spending so much time trying to get across this bridge I was looking for some sort of pay off. I was looking forward to new enemies to fight and to a certain degree they are there but its a lot of the same stuff. The enemy I hate the most is Blaster. Hes the purple fluffy blob thing that hits everyone in one attack. Hes why I died so often in the second dungeon trying to get Teim. So the grass isn't much greener on the other side of the bridge but I did get to a new city and that meant a new team member. Amy joins my group and at first I really didn't know what to do with her. She was so weak I bought her all of the best armor I could. I think its very interesting that after you have to level up all of your characters to get to this area that they give you a brand new character thats so weak. It totally throws the balance of your team off. Everyone else had over 60 hit points, I think Rudo was almost at 100, and she has only 12 or something like that to start with. It was annoying at first but I think that maybe one of the reasons they did this as opposed to making her at least close to the skill level of your team at that time, was so you could get the thrill of leveling up. At that point everyone was leveling up so rarely that it was nice to see some progress in someone.

Theres not much to say about the BioSystems Labs that I havn't already said about the other buildings/dungeons. Random encounters are even more annoying when I'm simply lost, trying to figure out how to get through this place. The overlay thing was kinda neat and cool the first couple of times but now that novelty has worn out. Thats just annoying now. It just makes it more difficult to get through these dungeons. I did manage to get the recorder out of the BioSystems Labs without resorting to an internet map, which I was quite pleased about. I got the info back the Paseo and the story is unfolding a little more. It seems like such a long time since the actual plot was been mentioned. Its really been since the opening of the game that the plot was really been talked about. After that it was just go get the recorder and bring it back. A few hours of game play later, they let me in on some more stuff about the plot. I could have used a little more of the story as I was going along. I guess I really didn't notice it until they started talking about Mother Brain and the monster escaping the BioSystems Labs and the energy surge that caused the accident that I realized this stuff hasn't been talked about since I started playing. Thats pretty much where I stopped. That seemed like a good stopping place. I'm looking forward to whats on the other side of that bridge, maybe this time it'll be totally different like I was expecting before.

I almost forgot to mention the cool music guy in the new town. I think its awesome that you can select music to listen to within the game. I would have loved this back in the day. That is such a cool feature. It feels kinda like an Easter Egg or a special feature. I hope they do more with that later.