Curate of Curiosities

Previously on MARDEK, we gathered our party in preparation for robbing Belfan's elemental crystals. Along the way, we confronted the fantasy TSA, leaving us free to warp between the two continents unmolested.

With Legion in our party, we can now carry on with a subquest in the Lifewood. First, we need to take a detour through the dream world.

Remember the lost monastery from Deliverance? It's something like that, but instead of going inside to join the Yalort cult just for the sake of it, you do so to help someone who is already a devotee of Yalort carry out a mission on behalf of a stereotypical voodoo priest.

I'm not bluffing about the voodoo priest, by the way.

Remember how Legion has four souls inside him? One of them happens to have been a monk devoted to Yalort, and thus knows the password to get inside it. However, he's lost his faith after whatever caused the monastery to get lost and locked behind a path through dreamland, so you need someone with faith in him, like, say, a paladin acting in his name, to open the door for him. How a player is meant to figure out that you need to bring him on their own is beyond me.

That said, like in Deliverance (I think), there are plenty of undead foes for our paladin to smite. Good thing he still has his undead-smiting skills from chapter 2.

You even fight an undead priest at the end, with a similar overworld sprite to the one in Deliverance. Although here, it actually attempts to tie into the greater plot: when you defeat him, he tells you about how many years ago, a rock fell from the sky, and its influence drove the residents of the monastery insane.

Now, back to the crystals.

After finishing the Water Temple's annoying switch puzzle, we reach the temple's guardian. Yes, she does looks familiar, but unfortunately, Mardek is a bit of a dunce, as has been established previously, and we didn't bring any of the party members who would conceivably recognize her (namely, Donovan, Sharla, and maybe Vehrn)

As you would expect, she mainly uses water-elemental attacks. In Aeropolis, you can buy pendants that protect against each of the natural elements, and since they only cost 300 gold a piece, there's no reason to not have them on each of your frontline fighters when facing her. Of course, you don't want to go overboard with resistances, because she also has an attack that deals more damage the more the target resists water.

Another thing, the theme that plays when you fight the Guardians is a remix of the Guardian battle theme from Deliverance. Like everything else in MARDEK that has a direct counterpart in Deliverance, it sounds far more epic than its predecessor.

And with that, the crystal of Water is ours. No special elemental traversal powers for us, unfortunately.

Oh, taking away the crystal drains the temple of its vitality. If this is what happens when it's out of its place for five seconds, I'm not sure what will happen once the king has his hands on all of them.

And of course, Clavis is here to lecture us on how we're disrupting the natural balance of the universe or something. How did you even get down here? We're underwater!

Our next stop is the Crimson Peak, home of the Fire Temple.

We already thoroughly explored this dungeon to get one of the ingredients for Meraeador's little pet project, so all we really have to deal with is the temple. But look, the World's Saviours are here, and their quest has led them to seek out the elemental crystals as well, From their track record, though, I don't see them being able to come close to claiming the crystal.

The Fire Temple consists of a hub area and four side chambers. Each of them has one of the World's Saviours staring mindboggled at a Soul Cage, which they obligingly step aside to let you have a crack at.

And after that, you have between two and three minutes to run back to the hub room. Do this four times to open the way to the guardian.

Like the Water Guardian, the Fire Guardian is ridiculously easy to wall. At least the Water Guardian had some elemental coverage because she's Emela. Him? The only non-fire elemental attack he has is a few basic physical attacks, which could spell bad news for Elwyen (or Solaar or Meraeador if I bothered to bring either of them).

Right after you claim the crystal, the World's Saviours rush in, whine about how we got to the crystal first, and then attack us.

They might be the most difficult boss battle we've fought in this chapter so far. The main issue is Aalia, their healer. She will always use her first two turns to put up both defense buffs on her party. Vennie is annoying with his status effects, but poses very little threat. Bartholio hits hard with his physical attacks, but that can be easily dealt with. Bernard? Since you fight them right after the Fire Guardian, you are likely to have your fire-resistant equipment on. Unfortunately, some of the most readily accessible fire-resisting equipment also comes with a weakness to water, which Bernard is more than happy to take advantage. What's more, his physical defense is pathetic, but he counters all physical attacks with a powerful health drain, leaving magic as your only option to deal with him.

Two temples down, one to go.

Oh no! Muriance didn't go straight after all! Who could have seen this coming?

Of the elemental temples that we've explored in this chapter, it's this one that reminds me the most of Deliverance. Of course, it's still a far cry from the cereal box mazes dotted with uninspired minibosses that that game had. Instead, you have to do a bunch of Simon says minigames to unlock the way to the crystal.

For no particular reason, I would like you to notice the name of this enemy.

Now that we're this far into the adventure, I feel it's time that we actually get to know our party members. Good thing this chapter has a party chat function.

Of course, we shouldn't neglect the alien that's taken up residence inside our hero. He was one of the rulers of their home planet, who kept peace and order throughout. One day a meteor fell from the sky, driving them insane. Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like what happened with the Lost Monastery.

Now for Legion, As I've mentioned before, he has four souls inhabiting his body:

• Baron von Doomkill, a stereotypical evil overlord,
• Deena, a shaman and one of Gloria's precursors,
• Marvin, who is depressed,
• and Bostolm, one of the priests who served at the Lost Monastery. His main trait his is (justified) deathly fear of pixies.

Chatting with them reveals that when they all died, they entered a realm called the Antilife, formed from the doubts and dissatisfaction that they felt in life. Also, one of them tried to beat up the god of death and failed.

Oh look, it's the Earth Guardian from Deliverance. So is this just the place that's an almost complete retread?

Nothing to say about him. Just bring earth resistance, and pound him with air attacks.

Ever since the start of chapter 2, Muriance has had this almost single-minded obsession with gathering the crystals. Is he really about to let He's harder than the Guardian, but easier than the World's Saviors, even with the bandits backing him up.

The Air Crystal is safe in Aeropolis, but we won't be getting it. Two royal guards named Smalls and Chunk (get it, Final Fantasy reference) want Mardek to come to the castle immmediately.

You know, back when I was younger, and more tolerant to epic, 30-hour long RPGs like this, I would be a lot more hesitant about just going into the endgame. But now, I just want to be done with this game already.

He doesn't go down as easily as the Guardians did. Not only does he have full-party attacks of multiple elements, but he also can spawn clones of your party members, with all their stats and abilities.

The king is not only dead by our hands, but is also Donovan's father? That came out of nowhere! Maybe this would be foreshadowed if I ever used Donovan at all past the Dark Temple.

And Clavis is back and he's...also Qualna. What? How does this make sense? Then who was possessing the king?

Rohoph seems awfully gung-ho about going after Qualna. You could say that it's driven him insane.

You go through this place called the Astral Tunnel, which works a lot like the Dreamworld, but with monsters made of ether, which is what souls are made of in this universe, rather than imagination. The situation seems like the reverse of chapter 2's finale; there, Moric was attacking Belfan from his high-tech UFO, which you board to fight him with your full party, while here, Qualna's trying to escape back to his home planet through a spiritual parallel dimension, while Rohoph, still puppeteering Mardek, gives chase.

At the end, you face Qualna, who's using this realm to make his way back to his home planet. Realizing that he's cornered, he tries to reason with Rohoph, but to no avail. Trying to stop someone hell-bent on killing you is one thing, but when they think they're saving you in the process, it becomes even harder.

I'm not sure if there was something wrong with my equipment setup or anything, but the very first time, he nuked me before I could do anything. That aside, he's not quite as hard as the king, whom he may or may not have been possessing earlier. The one major wrinkle is when he summons clones of Mardek, not unlike what the king did. Makes me wonder why he was so accepting of the notion that he would die at Rohoph's hands.

Rohoph just went back on his word. How dare he. Appropriately enough, Qualna's last words are calling him an asshole for it.

And into the Hebrew crystal prison he goes. Guys, I'm not sure if Rohoph's supposed to be the good guy here! At least Moric was an actual threat with his undead army, but Qualna? Possessing the king aside, the only way he interacted with the people of Belfan was through the Clavis persona, and all that talk about keystones was just a way to warn Rohoph about the path he was taking.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, there's no need to worry about a power struggle, as Donovan is now king. More importantly, apparently nobody figured out that Mardek had an alien ghost inside him this whole time.

But there's no time for fussing over plot reveals or obsessing over the moral ramifications of our actions, our groupie's taking us on a date!

If you ever wondered what Shakespeare would look like in this game's sameface style, then wonder no more.

Hmm. Something tells me that I've seen you before. Like, back in chapter 1.

I'm not sure why you're surprised. There were plenty of zombies back in chapter 2, and they weren't a problem back then.

While Qualna was the climactic boss fight for this chapter, this is the chapter's actual final battle. This is the first time that the World's Saviours will be accompanying us. Aalia has all of the healing and support spells that she had when we faced her (and remember that this game runs on the Final Fantasy rule that healing spells damage undead) while Bartholio has...an attack that hits harder than usual.

After mopping the zombie up, we find out that Bernard sicced him on the actors because he's racist.

A masked warrior with long blond hair comes up to them and brings up how he was separated from his best friend. Nope, no one that we've ever met before.

Wait, what are you doing? She's our bard! Why are you trying to chase her away?

Abandon our friends? But they're the reason that your mad crusade has even made it this far! I understand that there's this moral ambiguity behind what you're doing, but at least you could try to be grateful!

Meanwhile on Anshar, the Governance de Magi is less then pleased that Qualna's attempt at diplomacy has failed so utterly. Running out of options, they decide that their next course of action is to send Gaspar, the furious, fire-elemental member, to deal with him next.

And that was MARDEK. i may or may not have mentioned this before, but the initial plan was for there to be eight chapters. Unfortunately, none of the planned chapters past this point have ever materialized.

However, he did write plans for the rest of the game, which were sold, along with the game's soundtrack, as a bonus feature for the Steam version.

Now, for my thoughts on this game as a whole.

From a gameplay perspective, yes, it still holds up. The mechanic where you press a button while attacking or defending to add different effects does make things more engaging.

The plot? Yes, it is still a vast improvement over his previous games, yet I still feel that it leaves something to be desired. Yes, I get that you're paying homage to Final Fantasy, and maybe I'm just starting to get burned out on the genre, but there was very little about it that actually held my interest. It seems like Cornwall came up with the one interesting thing about it--the dynamic between the dimwitted knight and the increasingly overzealous alien using him to kill off his former comrades--by accident.

Of course, 16-year-old me didn't really care about it--it was all about the journey. And to its credit, the game does do a good job of feeling epic for a browser game. It's understandable that fans see it as Cornwall's magnum opus. But as we'll see, he himself saw that there was plenty of room for improvement.