I did a small bit of unlocking in Mario Kart Wii today and got Birdo and another bike, but the majority of the day was spent getting back to Suikoden V. I first finished recruiting Sorenson, which involved shutting down the revolving bridge, and had what is probably the first actual challenging boss fight of the game.

After that we were off to Lordlake again, where we had to figure out some way to restore the water. Raja said that we had to deal with the Hatred Fortress that was damming the water, and the beavers might be able to help. I headed to the Beaver Lodge, but they didn’t want to get involved, though one of them joined our party. The tactician sent me to some ruins along a nearby lake instead, to meet someone she knows, and after another duel and a tough boss fight there we discovered that the lake was actually an artificial dam, created by some ancient civilization. Outside, we ran into Viki, a teleporting mage who’s shown up in other Suikoden games, and she joined our little army and will help out a lot by being able to teleport us to important spots.

An alternate plan came together, to open up the sluice gate in the lake and flood the fortress, but we had to lure the soldiers out first, and a naval war battle commenced. It was an easy one though, since the enemy ships didn’t move until you got within a certain range, making it easy to pick them off individually. The water was released, the fortress was destroyed, and Lordlake was restored and joined us as an ally.

An unexpected set of ruins was discovered in the now-drained lake, and we decided to make it our new headquarters, probably for the rest of the game. The people I’ve been recruiting all show up here now, and the mysterious woman in black that we’ve run across before also showed up again, but she’s being tight-lipped. Getting the headquarters also allows for recruiting more people, so I finished up by spending a while running around and recruiting a whole bunch. It took a while since some of them required grinding a bit for levels, but at least I’ve got a decent amount of cash and some good equipment now.

And I’m now 31 hours in, and still only in chapter 6 of 14…