Set developed by ventuz, guide written by benit149

Hello, and welcome to my guide for Super Hydlide, the third and final game in the ill-fated Hydlide series that was ported to the Mega Drive/Sega Genesis. This title is also known as Hydlide 3: Jigen no Omoide (“Hydlide 3: The Space Memories”) in Japan for the MSX, MSX2, and PC-88. While the Hydlide franchise is credited as the inspiration for future adventure titles like Ys and Legend of Zelda, this game arrived far too late to the West to make a substantial impact, being rather lackluster and dated compared to its more prominent and influential successors. This game concludes the Hydlide franchise’s story, and no future entries were made besides Virtual Hydlide, a 1995 Sega Saturn remake of the first Hydlide.

The objective is to travel through the world of Fairy Land, discovering the source of the influx of monsters and destroying it. You need to find various clues and tools to help you make progress, culminating in some rather outrageous journeys before finally confronting the final boss Kaizack. This task may sound simple, but there are a lot of factors you need to balance out before you can even begin to think about making progress with the story.

My goal for this guide is to explain the most efficient route for you to bulk up your character in the early game, then point out any tidbits I learned from my playthrough to make your experience better. Figuring out the best method of overcoming the game’s numerous hurdles is the biggest challenge of them all, compared to using other guides to help you through the main dungeons and bosses. First, I’ll explain all of the individual factors you need to worry about, then bring it together into an ideal route.

There will be story spoilers from now on! If you wish to avoid being spoiled, please stop reading here!

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GAMEPLAY MECHANICS

Class Selection

Before ever stepping foot into Forest City, you need to create a character. You have a choice between four classes; Warrior, Thief, Monk, and Priest. Warrior is the best class for a newcomer to start with since it has the most balanced stats, but can only learn the first six of the game’s 12 spells. Thief can also only learn the same spells as Warrior, but is a physical powerhouse who can carry way more supplies and gains HP far faster. Thief’s IQ gain is rather poor in comparison (IQ is relevant, which I’ll explain), and their lower Charm stat forces them to pay more at shops compared to other classes.

Both Priest and Monk can learn all 12 spells. Priest is the magic specialist who doesn’t have as many physical attack and defense strengths, but can earn MP far faster than anyone else. Monk may sound great at first since they can use both physical and magical attacks with ease, but their HP growth is the worst of all four classes, making it an option for more advanced players due to how incredibly punishing the late-game monsters are.

To master the achievement set, you will need to make a character for all four classes anyway. They will be saved in separate slots, so you can make these right away. You just need to beat the game with one of them, while the others just need to reach level 8, and either Monk or Priest must learn all 12 spells.

Examining the Floor, and Treasure Chests

The B button is assigned to examining the area beneath the character’s feet. This includes opening treasure chests, where another menu will pop up giving you the option to open it either by hand or with magic. While early game chests will be safe to open by hand, most of the mid- to late-game chests will be booby-trapped, and the only way to disarm them is to use the Learn spell.

Aside from treasure chests, some story progression moments are tied to examining a spot, such as looking at a computer and getting a Space Suit in Lost Tech Palace, or finding the fairy in Kaizack's Lair. Some of these triggers will have an odd chime play when you step on the correct spot, so be sure to have the game’s audio on to hear this cue.

Weight Management

This will be the absolute bane of your existence while playing this game. You might see some nice armor and a sword, buy, and put them on, but then find out your character moves as slow as molasses. What gives? In the status menu, your character has two values: LC, and CW. These are Load Capacity, and Carrying Weight. Load Capacity is the maximum allowable amount of weight your character can carry around. Carrying Weight is simply what they have on hand at the moment, combining the weight of all items and money. CW needs to be lower than LC to allow you to move at normal speed.

LC is improved by leveling up STR, which means farming for character levels will be absolutely imperative when starting a new run. Lightweight weapons and armor will shine far more than an expensive, heavyweight piece of gear. The game even deliberately throws an optional mini-challenge at you where you need to lug around a heavy weapon to a specific spot, examine the floor, and get a significantly stronger and lightweight weapon as the reward for your effort. I didn’t even think about attempting this until I got my Warrior to level 10 in my first playthrough.

Money Management

I said that Carrying Weight represents the weight of all items and money on hand. Yes, money has weight. Unlike every other RPG ever, money is not some invisible weightless thing. It is an actual object that can potentially slow your character down if you have too much of it. Since the amount of Load Capacity you can gain from levels is limited, how are you supposed to manage your money? There are two ways; the Money Changer, and opening a bank account. The Money Changer is a simple tool that you can find near Forest City, allowing you to change multiple $10 bills into $100 bills, and likewise $100 bills into $1000 bills. This can help reduce a bit of Carrying Weight, which can make a surprising difference when in a pinch.

Opening a bank account isn’t so simple. While there is a bank in Forest City, for some arbitrary reason you are not able to open an account with them. You need to look for Subterranean City and open the account at that particular bank. Only then will you have an account available for both banks. The problem is that your character needs a high enough IQ to read some runes on a gravestone to allow access to Subterranean City. I had to spend a large amount of time just building up both STR and IQ for my Warrior before ever opening the bank account, which made weight management an absolute pain at times. Thief has it worse due to its lower IQ, and it is imperative to open an account ASAP, so expect to spend an inordinate amount of time leveling up as a Thief.

You may have noticed a stat in the menu called Charm. This is a representation of your character’s charisma, and affects both buying and selling prices in shops. That crazy expensive piece of gear may have its price reduced if your character has a sufficient Charm stat. I didn’t really pay attention to this much since it’s not too difficult to make money in this game anyway, but it can sometimes make a difference if you’re making a huge purchase and want some cash left over for survival supplies. Again, Thief is the worst class in this department.

At the bank, you can deposit your money and accrue interest each time you sleep at the inn. It is only 1% per night, but it’ll add up as you deposit larger sums. You want to accrue $100 in interest for Investing, and then $1000 for Money Makes Money.

Time Management, Game Saving, and Hunger

There is a day-night cycle in this game, represented in military time, and your character is indeed capable of getting tired. If they are exhausted, their attacks will not do any meaningful damage, leaving them dangerously exposed to being killed if they are surrounded by enemies. You need to have them sleep at the inn by the time it gets dark outside, or alternately use a Camping Gear while out in the field. Camping Gear is almost next to useless due to its outrageous $200,000 price, so inns are the way to go. Just be sure you always have $1000 on hand to be able to use it. The game is also saved when you use an inn or Camping Gear, and your character starts each day at 7 am with their hunger satisfied until 1 pm (1300 hours).

Speaking of hunger, this is another factor you need to deal with. Your character needs to eat every 6 hours. Assuming you faithfully use an inn, they always need to eat at 1 pm, 7 pm (1900 hours), and 1 am. You should only worry about 1 pm and 7 pm since you should be at the inn well before 1 am. If you neglect your character’s hunger, they will gradually lose HP. You can use medicine or magic to stave off death, but the only way to truly get rid of the hunger status is to consume a Ration of Food. This is sold in every town, and has a 500 weight cost for each one. Thus, carry two rations while out grinding or adventuring, and you should be all set for that given in-game day. The rations will be automatically consumed while walking around, so you don’t need to worry about keeping an eye on the clock.

Leveling Up

So you’re farming for experience points, but your character isn’t getting stronger. What’s the deal with that? It’s not enough to just earn EXP – you need to cash it in at the temple, the northernmost facility exclusively found in Forest City. Think of earning EXP as building up a separate type of currency from money. Why is it designed like this? Read the next point.

Unlocking Magic

From Forest City’s inn, go west a screen to find another facility. This is the Magic Academy, and you can exchange EXP to have your character learn six basic spells. The formula for Warrior and Thief’s EXP cost is:

(No. of spells you've learned + 1)² × 50

Divide this value in half for Monk and Priest. The first six spells that Forest City’s academy teaches are:

1. Illusion – spins monsters around to disorient them. I never used this spell, so I’m not sure how effective it really is
2. Antidote – recover from Poison status. Never used this either
3. Time – advances the in-game clock by 12 hours. Only has one practical application for accessing the final dungeon
4. Cure – restores lost health relative to your character’s level. I’d say this is the third most useful spell
5. Learn – checks treasure chests for traps and disarms them. One of the most valuable spells in the whole game, second only to…
6. Move – returns to the last inn slept in. The difference between life and death can be as simple as a cast of this spell. You will need to familiarize yourself with the MP cost so you don’t screw yourself should you do something like cast Cure or Learn at the wrong time. When you find a new town, immediately make sleeping at its inn a top priority so you can add it to your Move list. A huge mistake I made regarding City of Illusion was discarding the Horn needed to be able to access this town. DON’T DO THAT. If you do, City of Illusion will be removed from Move’s list of towns, meaning you’d have to do the whole rigamarole to obtain another Horn, then go back to the town by foot to register its inn back in the list. There was absolutely no information about this, so I had to learn this painful lesson the hard way.

The remaining six spells are found in Heavenly City:

7. Sleep – makes a monster temporarily motionless
8. Slow – decreases the monsters’ movement speed
9. Defeat – damages all monsters on the screen
10. Flash – lights up the entire screen of a dark dungeon for some time
11. Weight – allows caster to carry 25% more weight than usual for a time
12. Invincible – become immune to all damage for a time

Dark Dungeons

Two dungeons in the game – Memorial Cave, and Forbidden Cave – are pitch dark. If you enter either of these unprepared, you will only be able to see the tile your character is standing on. Warrior and Thief are required to purchase a Lamp and either a Flask of Oil or a Flask of Super Oil to provide a little more light. Even then, the illuminated radius is still pathetic, being only one square around for Flask of Oil, or two squares around for Flask of Super Oil. It’s not entirely useless since you can at least see any enemies attacking you.

The item Cat’s Eye can illuminate the entire room, but the effect does not last long, and it costs a lot of money and weight, so it’s practically worthless. You’ll want your eyes glued on a map to help you navigate the dungeon, and to take the shortest route possible. There aren’t any achievements for opening all of a dungeon’s chests, so if a chest contains a worthless item, just ignore it and make a beeline for your goal, casting Move to escape once you’re done. GameFAQs has some good maps available.

Monk and Priest have it easier thanks to the Flash spell. It allows you to avoid using the lamp and oil, thus lightening their load a little bit.

Moral Fiber

If you look in your status menu, you’ll notice the abbreviation MF. This stands for Moral Fiber, and is the alignment mechanic that becomes relevant for one late-game dungeon. It isn’t a terribly complex system, but you will want to do some research. Basically, monsters are divided into two categories; good monsters, and evil monsters. Let’s take the overworld outside Forest City as an example. There are Cannibals (yellow plants) and Minor Slimes that are classified as evil monsters. The Tree Spirits (green plants) are considered a good monster however, so you would want to avoid killing them as much as possible. Another example are the Sarah (blue bird-like creatures) seen in the Spaceship being good monsters, with everything else there being evil. The more evil monsters you kill, the higher the Moral Fiber value will get. Increase it to 100 to get the achievement Fairyland’s Angel. MF is only relevant in the Forbidden Cave, which I’ll explain then.

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WALKTHROUGH

Quite a lot to take in, isn’t it? So you’re dropped into Forest City, but have no clue what to do first. Now it’s time for me to outline a sensible route for you to follow for buffing up your character to handle the later content, regardless of class you’ve chosen. I won’t outline things like how many screens to travel or detailing story progression, as other guides like the one on StrategyWiki will help you out there. All I want to do is to help explain the most efficient route for getting started in a brand new game, as well as potential pitfalls to avoid, so I’d like to avoid being redundant.

First Step: Money Changer and Bank Account

Getting these two things sorted out will be the most important first step. Buy a Knife and two Rations of Food, then sleep at the inn just to establish your save file. Exit the town and stay in the first screen killing Minor Slimes and some Tree Spirits for a bit. If you get a Cannibal or two that obliterates your health, reset and try again – they’re too dangerous for you right now. You don’t need to worry about your Moral Fiber stat at the moment, so some Tree Spirits being killed won’t affect anything in the long run. They also provide the best amount of EXP and money, and are much safer to fight compared to Cannibals for now. Go back and forth between this screen and Forest City, leveling up in the temple, learning spells, buying better gear, and sleeping at the inn when needed. Standard RPG grinding stuff.

Note that to equip gear, you need to go into the item menu and select Use. You’ll see your character’s sprite change in response to what gear you equip. Some pieces of gear are also not made equally, with some being weak but lightweight, while others being so expensive and heavy that they’re not worth it. Your best bets are a Knife, Leather Mail, and maybe a Shield or Helmet if you have enough capacity.

Take care when fighting Cannibals and Minor Slimes since there is the potential of earning Clubs as item drops, which can bog your character down all of a sudden. Stay close to Forest City so you can run back in and sell them at the general store for about $350 each. The item menu does not show the number of a particular item you have on hand unless you select it once to see both the number and total weight. This stymied me for a bit because I had a Club equipped, so I had no clue I was actually accumulating more of them until I started selling them.

Once you’re confident that you can handle the overworld, look for the Money Changer. Once you have it, go back to Forest City and do some more leveling up. You’re paying attention to the IQ stat, and you need it around 50 for the next step. If the gains from overworld monsters are too slow for you, look for Tower of Habel northeast of Forest City and fight some Bula-Bulas (blue spiders) for a little better experience and money. I wouldn’t go too deep into Tower of Habel since it’s a confusing dungeon with some dangerous enemies in later floors. Even if it’s slow, stick to Cannibals and Minor Slimes to stay on the safe side.

After hours of grinding, your character’s IQ is finally around 40 to 50. Now you’re going to head further northeast than Tower of Habel to find a cemetery. You’ll see the first three gravestones, so head north another screen to find more of them. There is a particular formation of three graves in an L shape, with the bottom right stone having some runes engraved on them. As long as the IQ value is sufficient, your character will be able to read them and slide the stone aside to reveal an entrance.

Welcome to Subterranean City. Sleep at its inn to register the town in your Move list, then head east to a facility. This is the bank you want to open your account with, allowing you to use both this bank and the one in Forest City freely. Since you’ve discovered a new city though, that also means more opportunities for shopping. At least get a Broad Sword – it’ll be super useful in Tower of Habel in a way you wouldn’t expect.

Second Step: Tower of Habel

The next objective is to find Heavenly City, which means clearing the Tower of Habel. The great thing about the Broad Sword is that any type of swords have the ability to attack through walls, which means you can grind for EXP here a lot more safely. The enemies on the third and fourth floors may be more dangerous, but you can take advantage of this exploit to kill monsters while being protected from their attacks thanks to the wall. Don’t do any dedicated grinding yet though – this dungeon is absurdly confusing to navigate, and there is a better way to reach the upper floors once you clear it.

Reach the 200th floor and defeat Hellsmoke. Do not go to the edge of the arena, or you can fall to your death! Stay in the center and snipe Hellsmoke when it comes close. After your victory, loot the Cloud Stone, but don’t use the Move spell to get out! Instead, go back down to floor 198, and a new pathway of clouds will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Welcome to Heavenly City. Register its inn as a Move location so you no longer have to go through Tower of Habel to get here. The Magic Academy with the advanced spells for Monk and Priest is also found here. I also recommend buying Life-Water from the store and equipping it as a piece of gear. It will auto-revive you if your HP falls to 0, but the health you get back is very minimal, so be very careful if this happens.

You could advance the plot by going to Water Palace, but why use a dinky Broad Sword to go on adventures when you could use a futuristic Light Saber instead? Yes, this game’s plot veers wildly into futuristic sci-fi territory without warning, but I promise that it’ll (probably) make sense later. Hopefully…

Third Step: Light Saber

Now that you can go to Heavenly City at will, it means you can get the Light Saber anytime you want. However, you need to follow some steps. The related achievement Jedi is also missable, so pay attention. Make sure you can carry something that’s worth 10,000 weight without too much hassle as well. I didn’t do this with Warrior until level 10, so it’s an indication of how tough this may be for anyone but Thief.

Go to the cemetery where Subterranean City’s entrance is, then go north once and east once, and examine the rightmost gravestone. It’s hiding a Silver Sword, a pitiful weapon that is absurdly heavy. However, you need to carry this to Heavenly City’s castle. Once inside, go to the northwest room and examine the far upper left corner of that room to find the Light Saber. Hooray, you’re done with the Silver Sword, and you have one of the two best weapons in the entire game. No more shopping for weapons either, as the other endgame sword is found in a treasure chest. Either sell or discard the Silver Sword and equip your awesome new blade. It only weighs 3000 and shoots your attack value through the roof. It's a massive power spike for this part of the story. Your armor might be lagging, but it’s no big deal when you can one-shot a lot of enemies.

With your shiny new sword in hand, this means you can go back to Tower of Habel through Heavenly City and use the elevator to the 4th floor to farm for experience and money. All of the monsters are classified as evil, so stay in the screen with the elevator and slaughter anything that crosses your path to your heart’s content. Reaching level 15 lets you change your class to Hero, while level 20 is the last level where you gain meaningful stats. Anything beyond that will be pointless.

Step Four: Dragon’s Fang

Had your fun curb-stomping weak mobs? Let’s go slay a dragon then. If you’re a Warrior or Thief, be sure you have a Lamp and either type of oil on hand. If you’re a Monk or Priest, get the Flash spell. Having the Learn spell is mandatory for progression here as well.

In Heavenly City’s castle, you want to walk on the clouds around the outer perimeter of the castle. Make your way either east or west, then north, then head towards the king’s chamber to a section of clouds with a hole. Since you have the Cloud Stone, you can fall down safely to the surface, and you’ll wind up outside the Water Palace’s entrance. Go inside and speak to the king here, who wants a Dragon’s Fang so he’ll give his blessing for you to loot his treasury. Be sure to also talk to a woman here who had lost her ID card, find it in the castle, then speak to the woman again for her to say that she had another card printed, meaning her first card is yours to keep. You need to hang on to this to regain access to Water Palace, or else you’d have to drop through the hole in the clouds again. Getting the ID card is purely optional though if you don’t mind the trip and want to save on inventory space.

With your next task on hand, head to Subterranean City, and go to the lower left area of town. During the daytime, there’s a guard blocking the way to an entrance, and he will disappear when it gets dark. But if you actually try to wait it out, your attack power will decrease because your character is tired. What are you supposed to do?

Simple – use the secret path through the wall. This is one screen north from the guard.

Did I say simple? I lied.

How you’re supposed to know that without any sort of guide or in-game hint is beyond me. I did have an NPC wander through this path by accident, so I guess that is a humorous way to discover this secret. Another option is to use the Time spell to advance 12 hours ahead to get the guard to leave, but I never bothered with that when the path was right there.

Anyway, ignore all of the treasure chests except for the lone one at the far upper left. Examine it twice to discover the entrance to Memorial Cave. This area has the chest containing the Silver Armor for the achievement Free… But Heavy. It’s worthless. Either get rid of it, sell it, or reset. The Magical Mail you find here is much better. None of the other chests contain anything worthwhile other than the Ration of Food, so find the Three-Headed Dragon and kill it, then disarm the booby-trapped chest with the Learn spell to obtain your Dragon’s Fang.

Go back to the Water Palace and give the Dragon’s Fang to the king. He’s happy, so he allows you to take all of his treasure. None of the chests are trapped, so you can open them by hand. For such an avid collector, most of the stuff he has is crap. The only one you really want is Jeem’s Scroll. Once you have it, return to Forest City.

Step Five: One Small Step For Man…

Leave the city and go one screen north, then continue west a couple of screens until you see a lake with three columns. Use Jeem’s Scroll here to make the next dungeon appear, the Lost Tech Palace. You’ve got your work cut out here. You need to reach the third floor to interact with a computer, then backtrack to the chest on this floor to get the Space Compass. You also need to acquire a Space Suit on the second floor. It is mandatory to have one since you will be traveling through space for the next dungeon. Since you’ll be struggling with the combined weight of the Space Suit and the Magical Mail, you can sell the Mail if you want since it’s not the strongest armor in the game – that will be coming up soon. The Space Suit is an acceptable piece of armor for this part of the game, though not the best either since you can’t equip a helmet or shield.

Return to Forest City, offload your junk items and money, then get ready for the wildest section of this adventure. Go south one screen from the town entrance, then continue westward until you see a fissure in the ground. Fall into this large crack and you’ll wind up in outer space. Attempting to reason out this part of the story is an exercise in futility, so let’s just carry on like it’s normal. The Space Compass will be your friend here because each time you use it, it’ll display a beam of light indicating the direction you need to go. It’ll most likely be diagonal for a while, so just keep going. The beam will eventually straighten, so head that direction until you come upon the Spaceship.

Inside, you have two orders of business to take care of. The first is to find the computer in the lower left area that explains your next objective, as well as naming the main villain Kaizack. We’ll cover this particular objective shortly. The other thing you need is the Horn, found in the far upper left corner of the dungeon. If you don’t have the MP to cast Move, you can go to the upper-center area and find an escape back to the third floor of Lost Tech Palace.

DO NOT DISCARD THE HORN! EVER! If you have not read my spiel in the Unlocking Magic section of the guide, you need it to access City of Illusion with the Move spell. Discarding the Horn removes the town from your list, so you would need to go through this whole section again to get another Horn in the Spaceship. That was pure agony for me to figure out, so don’t make that same mistake, okay? You can discard the Space Suit and Space Compass if you want. No more outer space shenanigans to worry about.

Step Six: Brand New World

The information you received from the Spaceship’s computer told you to go to Memorial Cave and walk 7 steps south and 4 steps west to find a special item. Since it’s a bit difficult explaining this part with text, here’s the cave’s map on the top and the precise screen on the bottom. Search that spot to find the Time-Door Talisman, and equip it!

Get out of there and return to Forest City. From the entrance, follow the river to the northeast until it curves west for the first time. The next screen west has the Time-Door to the new dimension. If you don’t have the Time-Door Talisman equipped, you will be warped elsewhere on the overworld, which you don’t want. In the Alternate Dimension, go to the small island in the center of this new overworld and use the Horn.

Welcome to the City of Illusion. Use the inn to register it in the Move town list, and never get rid of the Horn. Very important! So why did we go through outer space and an entire alternate dimension to reach this town? Simply to buy several vials of Holy Water. Like, seriously? But no, it actually is important because if you had done any amount of exploring in Forest City, you would have seen two guards flanking a wall that they call a seal. Since the Holy Water can remove seals, this is your next objective. You want to buy multiple vials to make a couple of quick trips through this sealed dungeon, since you’ll be getting the best sword and armor available at this point. Also have a Lamp and oil, or the Flash spell handy because this is the game’s second dark cave.

Once you’ve returned to Forest City and opened the sealed entrance, you’re in Forbidden Cave. This may sound crazy, but turn around and immediately exit. This actually updates the town’s weapon shop to now include the Fairy-Made Mail, the best armor in the game. Go back in and look for a chest nearby to obtain the Flaming Sword. It’s sad to say, but the Light Saber is outclassed by the Flaming Sword for the endgame due to its long range attack. Since you need all the inventory space you can get, sell the Light Saber and keep the Flaming Sword. Trust me on this one.

If your Moral Fiber stat is not 100, get it there by killing evil monsters before entering Forbidden Cave for the real adventure. Make your way through, interacting with five specific points of light found throughout. Why do this when you could head straight for the boss? The problem is that Valarys has the ability to heal himself to full unless those five lights are disabled. It’s basically a trade-off – you suffer through the whole dungeon to make the boss easier, or bypass this objective and make the boss harder. The choice is up to you.

Kill Valarys, but don’t leave yet. Go to the door you used to enter the boss room and examine the floor for the Statue of Valarys, the last key item needed for progression.

Step Seven: Call of Cthulhu

This part of the game stumped me. Various guides and videos I watched say that you can go to the prison in City of Illusion and speak to one of the inmates to receive an Escape Talisman should you have the Statue of Valarys on hand. Since the final dungeon cannot be escaped out of through the Move spell, this is the only means of leaving. The achievement WARNING – Point of No Return highlights that you will be entering such a point. However, the prisoner never gave me the talisman, so I gave up trying and just played through this part with a save in City of Illusion. There aren’t any achievements for getting this item, so there’s no penalty for ignoring it if you choose to do so. If anyone can clarify this part, please let me know.

Stock up on all of the healing items, MP restoring herbs, and be rested to full before continuing. From City of Illusion, go northeast, then loop down south to reach something that looks like a pile of rocks. Examine the rocks from the south to find a peculiar spot, use the Time spell to advance to nighttime, then use the Statue of Valarys to wind up in Kaizack’s Lair, the final dungeon.

This dungeon was absolute hell for me to figure out. First off, the glass tiles lead to an instant game over if you step off of one into the void. Second, the enemies here are incredibly dangerous. The Zots, Grim Reapers, and Haldorces are the absolute worst, and should only be fought to get them out of your way, not for money or experience. Third, you need to do some errand boy stuff to rescue a fairy before you can challenge Kaizack. No, you can’t try to unlock her prison cell before talking to her. Trust me, I tried. You have to talk to the fairy on the third floor, go to the fourth floor to unlock her cell, go back to the fairy to recruit her, then continue on to the fourth and fifth floors.

Another problem I contended with was whether or not to get the Fairy-Made Shield for anything other than the achievement The Best Shield. It is indeed the strongest shield in the game, but the trouble is that it’s found in a chest past the point of no return, and you have to decide whether to use the weight to carry the shield around or to have loads of healing items instead. After several attempts, I went with the latter, as I found its defensive properties not to be worth it compared to just running through and staying alive with items.

When you finally reach the small room where you’ll encounter Kaizack, heal up to full and change your speed to the fastest! This dramatically speeds up both the hero’s and the monsters’ movement speed. However, there’s an exploit you can take advantage of – Kaizack’s movement is not affected. He’ll still be moving around at the same normal speed, while you can zoom around firing blasts at his mouth and four tumors. This one change alone makes a huge world of difference, as my first attempt on the default speed got me wiped out because I couldn’t fire at Kaizack’s mouth fast enough to prevent him from firing his sure-hit blasts. The fastest speed allowed me to stall his attack long enough to get some hits in on the tumors while sustaining minimal damage. The second fastest speed might be more manageable to control if you find the fastest speed too difficult.

If you don’t believe me, watch this let’s play where I got the strategy. In fact, it’s a good walkthrough to use if you’re still stuck on something despite all of the guides at your disposal.

This is the reason why I told you to sacrifice the Light Saber for the Flaming Sword. You cannot possibly get close enough to Kaizack with the Light Saber to attack his mouth and/or the tumors without risking being swallowed whole by him. Only the Flaming Sword’s projectiles can damage them while keeping you safe at the same time. Yes, the sacrifice really was worth it.

Once the tumors are down, it’s not over yet. You need to jump into Kaizack’s mouth and mash that attack button like your life depends on it, because it does! I even needed to expend a Life-Water to survive the rapid damage before getting my victory.

Hooray! You’ve saved the world… except not really because you just killed its creator, Kaizack. Um… oops? Seriously, we went from high fantasy to sci-fi, to hopping through dimensions, and finally to killing Lovecraftian gods. If you don’t know about Azathoth, this is essentially the same thing. Fortunately, our hero and his fairy friend somehow forge a new world, and all is well from there.

Good-bye, Hydlide franchise. We hardly knew ye.

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CONCLUSION

Congratulations! You’ve made it through a very tough and vague RPG with your sanity intact. How was it? I’d have called it aggravating and quit early on, but once the mechanics started to make sense and I learned through trial and error, I can at least call this one passable. Not fantastic or memorable, but not so difficult that I wanted to pull my hair out like with Shin Megami Tensei. I played this for Cheevomon League, and this is one of the few games I actually mastered, though it’s more because I could do as much as possible with Warrior and finish up with the other classes afterward. I did find the lack of a guide on how to progress through the early game frustrating, so that’s why I came up with this.

Hope it helps you out, and I’ll see you in the next one. Happy cheevo hunting!

Benit149, August 2026