oh man i totally forgot there was a passing time mechanic in this... the second dungeon is a different forest, also newly teleported in from another world, where we have to go track down a doppleganger of one of our party members. on our way out of the village a little exposition blurb mentions that Giant Butterflies show up in the northern forests in spring time*, so if we take too long to complete the mission, the monster line up might change on us. I really like this idea but I have no clue if it'll persist meaningfully throughout the game, or be a feature that just kinda gets forgotten about, or under utilized.(like if the monster rotation isn't actually unique and just shuffles around things we'll have already seen)
Really loving these little dungeon illustrations that show up with their title cards. So far they're a little same-y but I can't wait for us to get to some of the weirder or more exotic locales.
Anyway, we are technically in a different section of the same forest as before, so no surprise that Spider Hoppers, Thorny Mushrooms, and Googly Seeds are back. But we've also got Googly Tree Buds now alongside their seeds!
There are Fanged Baboons, although they're weird armless baboons.... i guess we just aren't going to question that... The Geldi Monkey, which seems to hang out with the anatomically questionable baboons, which... i guess makes sense? Im not sure what the word "Geldi" here is referring to, possibly the German geld, meaning "gold" referring to the color? A mistransliteration of Goeldi/Goeldii, which is a type of marmoset? an even more off base attempt at gelada, which is a type of baboon? Dunno...
Venus flytraps and the like are subtropic swamp plants, baboons are African savanna and light woodlands, and the geldi are in fact just very angry marmosets then those would be native to South American rainforest... not that the world here is directly analogous to Earth, but the general habitats aren't really similar.
We also get Saw Kingfisher, a neat tropical looking bird with a saw-like beak, hence the name. Despite the name not all Kingfishers actually do hunt fish, although that's obviously what they're known for. Plenty species also live away from major water sources and prey on insects. Real life Kingfishers are actually really pretty birds, but these things in game are kind of an ugly mess of a design. :/
It's also the first "black beast" enemy we fight, although the term seems a little erroneously translated; I assume it was meant to read as "dark beast." The color palette is a real bad darker version of the basic monster, not "black" at all really, and frankly it's not even a good recolor, as it looks like they just through a dark multiply layer over the original texture. Although the little anime cutscene actually does depict it as a shadowy blob with a purple aura, rather than just a miscolored bird.
I hadnt mentioned but this ds game had little anime cutscenes and BOY O BOY did they not age well. actually i remember them looking bad even when this first came out. the file compression is a mess and every frame is a artifact ridden disaster. Which is a shame because it's all really fun looking otherwise.
Anyway the Black Beasts/Black Monsters/"Renegades" are monsters from other worlds who can apparently only be defeated by people from their own world, or our heroes who've been initiated by magical means. This isn't actually at all important, because our entire playable cast will qualify, which is a shame because it might have been interesting to occasionally run into enemies that we just can't beat and have to run from, or that everyone can damage but only certain party members can finish off.
Going into this i thought this dungeon might be longer, but it was pretty short and the "boss" was just the dark Saw Kingfisher. If these early dungeons stay kinda plain I might skip blogging any of them until stuff gets interesting... We'll see...
*I forgot about this but I went back to futz around on the world map until the season changed. For one it took WAY longer than I realized. There was no way on earth to have accidentally let enough time pass for this to be an issue, and there appear to be no such giant butterflies at all actually.