[Click here to start from the first progress log]

Before I get into things, I want to take the opportunity to remind everyone that I have zero sense of direction. Despite that, I’ve made it through an astonishing number of in-game mazes without much of a problem. I’m incredibly prone to getting turned around when areas aren’t distinct enough to register as separate areas, though, and this can sometimes become a problem. All of this is a way of leading into the fact that Azure Saga: Pathfinder’s maze that I was stuck in at the end of the last progress log was the worst, most frustrating maze I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

This maze is the death of fun

I spent an hour or so stuck in this maze, saving every time it looked like I was making forward progress and reloading whenever teleported back to the beginning, and this got me to where the video starts. There are two hints that I’ve found in this maze: “the blessing of Iyos comes from the green breezy spring that blows from the east,” and “cold blue is when you go north.” These are worthless hints. The first one caused me to think that the direction/position of the clouds had something to do with which direction is east, but getting into a combat encounter resets their position and they always seem to blow from the same direction. If north and east haven’t been mixed up and still correspond to right and up, however, the two hints sound like they’re telling you to run to the right exit until you see a body of water, at which point you go up. Neither of those two things work. There are clues you have to think about, and then there are clues so vague that they’re no help whatsoever.

I backtracked through the pre-maze area and there’s nothing there to help you. I looked for any kind of hint about which way was forward, but “forward” areas seem to be randomized. That means that going in a single direction from a single start point can lead you to different rooms for no obvious reason, and whatever gimmicky hint exists to show you which exit to take, it was completely lost on me. I spent between two and three hours (which is literally a third of my entire play time thus far) stuck in this stupid maze, dealing with constant random battles that only further disoriented me, and only found the exit toward the very end by save/loading. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I was minutes away from putting the game down and never coming back to it, and this maze destroyed every shred of good will I had for Azure Saga: Pathfinder. That means no more overlooking minor flaws.

Speaking of minor flaws…

Something that’s been slightly annoying up to this point has been how many things are solid. Dungeons are relatively small, sure, but all kinds of obstacles require taking a winding path around them (increasing the chances of a random battle). It doesn’t feel right to run up to some flowers and get stopped like they’re a brick wall.

I know that they can be made non-solid, too, because some objects like this stone block that should be solid have accidentally been set as not-solid.

When I finally got through the maze, a new character joined up and I reached a new village. There were all kinds of interesting things there, such as stat-changing tattoos and arena fights, but what I was most interested in was figuring out fishing. All of my bait had been used up, so I went and spent all of the money I had remaining after refilling my health and mana potions on more worms, only to discover that this pond apparently requires a different kind of bait that can’t be purchased from the village store. The guide text says nothing about there being different bait, so the only way of figuring this out is to either blow your money on worms you can’t use or notice the difference between the little bait icon here and the one from hours and hours earlier that you probably didn’t pay any attention to. There’s also a sign that mentions it being “shrimp eater pond,” (or something to that effect), but this is still needlessly aggravating. I mean, there have been few enough fishing points that you don’t know if the sign are anything more than a name. It’s frustrating, unclear game design.

Going up and down stairs causes this weird effect where Synch oscillates wildly. I had intended to point this out earlier, but it doesn’t show up at 30 frames per second (which I typically record at for games that require longer videos to ensure that everything uploads in time). That meant having to wait until everyone returned to the city to switch to 60 frames per second. There aren’t many stairs in this game.

I found another unbeatable boss

This is a video of some more gameplay, and what’s nice is that there are no spoilers because Synch has become temporarily separated from his normal party members. It’s worth noting that the humor here is pretty one-note, mostly consisting of the others never having any idea what the advanced technical knowledge Synch and Noide sometimes start babbling about means, but it’s enjoyable enough regardless. Synch is also becoming a bit less of a self-serving jerk, which is a nice change. However, the boss fight at the end here is unbeatable, and it would have been really nice if the game had made that clear before I used up some of my valuable items trying to win. I understand trying to tie the story and and gameplay together, but never knowing when it’s safe to actually try to succeed is becoming a problem.

[Click here to go to Azure Saga – Pathfinder log #3]

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