Game:

Loren the Amazon Princess (2012)

Duration: 0:00

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Before going forward with the story, I pull up the party screen to show off Draco and Dora’s stats and abilities. As noted, Draco has Fireball I currently, and the Elementalist tech tree has similar abilities in Water, Earth and Air that we can buy. There’s also “Phantom Form”, which makes the caster ethereal and thus much more difficult to damage. Stat-wise, he’s currently at 8 Strength, 8 Skill and 16 Will. Dora’s at 10 Strength, 16 Skill and 5 Will, and her Hunter tech tree has numerous bow-and-arrow themed attacks in addition to her current Camouflage I skill. Once I’m done with that, I close the party screen and return to the story. Our group has gotten three rooms in the inn, one each for Dora, Draco, and Loren. Saren, being Loren’s servant and bodyguard, is sharing her room, and Loren prepares for bed. Notably, though, before she can take her top off she sees that Saren is looking in her direction. Since we picked the Romance dialogue option with Loren earlier, Saren is now basically crushing on Loren and thinking about how gorgeous she is. She naturally snaps at him to look away and he quickly obeys, but he’s still hopeful that she can potentially see him as more than a mere slave. That’ll be a key subplot as the story goes on.

Night falls, and everyone goes to sleep. In the middle of the night, though, Saren’s woken up by a strange noise, and sees Loren already preparing for battle. Attackers are coming to their room, perhaps as an assassination attempt, and Loren scolds Saren for not waking up before her—he is supposed to be her bodyguard, after all. Regardless, he likewise prepares for combat, and we enter combat. Notably, the game warns us that after this fight, we’ll quickly enter a second and retain any damage from this one, so we’ll need to keep that in mind. For this first battle, our opposition consists of three Bandit warriors, one of whom is Level 3 and the others of whom are Level 2. These guys have a number of Warrior tech tree abilities they can use against us, including Battlecry (it can Scare party members, lowering their stats) and Push (which forces a party member from the front row into the back). Their health is also on par with ours since we’re playing on Hard difficulty, and they have a 3-to-2 numerical advantage. But they can’t heal damage and we can thanks to Saren, so I’m confident we’ll be okay. I have both Saren and Loren begin by concentrating attacks on Bandit B (the Level 3 one), while Saren casts Heal as necessary. Hilariously, on two occasions the enemy Pushes BOTH party members into the back row, which causes them to instantly come into the front row as if nothing happened! We finish off the Level 3 Bandit, and then focus our attacks on Bandit C. Both Loren and Saren take significant damage during the fight, and every so often one of them gets pushed into the back row, but Saren’s Healing keeps everyone going and I simply move Pushed members back into the front as necessary. Eventually Bandit C goes down, and then we double-team Bandit A to finish him off.

At the end of the battle, I’m pleased to note that Saren leveled up to Level 3. That means not only can we enhance his stats, but he’ll go into the next battle full strength despite the penalty mentioned earlier. Loren’s not so lucky, but she’s only down two health points, so that’s about as ideal a scenario as we could ask for. Since Saren’s at Level 3 now, we can’t purchase a new skill from the tech tree—we only get those every other level—but we can still allocate three points to his Strength, Skill and Will numbers. I put 2 into Skill and 1 into Will, then continue the game. Draco and Dora rush into our room having heard the ruckus, but Loren tells them that we’ve taken care of things on our own. Unfortunately, she spoke too soon. A second group of enemies begin to slowly teleport into the room, and when they appear it’s clear we’re in trouble. It’s a group of Goblins led by a shaman that Draco recognizes immediately—it’s Grob, the same Goblin leader who captured him earlier! His magic is apparently quite powerful, so we’ll have our hands full fighting him and his friends. Luckily, Draco and Dora will also participate in this fight alongside Loren and Saren, which evens the odds quite a bit.