Dalaam Versus Zeal
Notice! This article may contain spoilers for Chrono Trigger. If you're reading articles, you could probably guess that a lot of them had EB spoilers in them, but CT is a special case so I thought I'd mention it. Now, on with the article.
Dalaam: Everyone's favourite floating island from EarthBound. Home of the playable character Poo, a powerful psychic. Popular attractions include the Mu, the Place of Emptiness; Pink Cloud, the sixth Sanctuary; and the big ol' palace at the top of the hill.
Zeal: Everyone's favourite floating island from Chrono Trigger. Home of the playable character Magus, a powerful magician. Popular attractions include the Elemental Pyramid, which you can't get to; the Sun Palace, which you also can't get to; and Zeal Palace at the top of the mountain.
Coincidence? I think not.
Let's examine the evidence more carefully. In Dalaam, you discover Mu. In Zeal, you discover Nu. Actually, you discover a lot of Nus, but there's only one Mu, and Mu is this intangible thing that you don't really figure out while Nus are just big blue heads with little arms and legs and some hair. That's not very good evidence, is it?
Here's something else to consider. Zeal gets blasted to shreds by Lavos and falls out of the sky, while Dalaam never gets attacked or knocked around or anything. I have concluded that this is because Zeal is "bad," while Dalaam is "good." Now consider the phrase "nice guys finish last." I'd say that having your island fall into the ocean counts as pretty darn far back in last place. Does this mean that Zeal is nice, while Dalaam is mean? Does that mean in turn that nice is bad while mean is good? Or does it just mean that "nice guys finish last" is untrue except when sung by Green Day?
I'm going a little off-topic here, but don't you hate it when someone starts off with a nice friendly idea, like comparing two similar areas from two different games, but then takes it to a silly extreme? I think that's kind of dumb. It's like saying "I would prefer to act stupid and make people laugh than actually present a cohesive and interesting argument." That's only half-true in my case.
In Zeal, everyone has magic powers. But in Dalaam, only Prince Poo has any psychic power, except maybe his master and a few other unseen denizens. This seems unfair until you recall that in Zeal, the average level of magic used by the citizens seems to be pretty tame; the most magic you can ever tell a non-royal Zealite has used is when one of them senses your aura. I'm sure that other Zealites are using similarly mundane powers, such as Hedge Clipping (2 MP) and Levitate Another Tonic From The Fridge To My Hand (6 MP.) The average citizen of Dalaam has no psychic power at all, but Poo has more than enough to compensate - Starstorm, Teleport, and Healing Omega to name a few. You might argue that the royal family of Zeal has amazingly strong magic that could best those powers, to which I bring two counter-arguments:
1) Except for Magus and Schala, the royal family of Zeal never succeeds in using their powers to have a lasting effect on their enemies, since they're bad guys and bad guys don't win in RPGs. Magus can use his powers to fight Lavos if you recruit him, and Schala does that one teleport thing in the Ocean Palace, but Poo has both strong attack powers and Teleport, so he does balance them after all.
2) Poo's powers come from within, whereas all the magic in Zeal comes from Lavos. When Lavos kicks Zeal to the curb, everyone loses their magic (except for Magus, who loses his powers but somehow gets to regain them.) Poo can use his funky powers because he's a good guy. Note how Magus can't regain his powers until he's a good guy too.
Technologically speaking, Zeal is far more advanced than Dalaam. The cities of Zeal are large, glittering palaces, full of books and recovery springs and stuff. The Zealites built boxes and doors that withstood the pressures of time to emerge again as many as 14,000 years later. In Dalaam, they're still living in huts, for heaven's sake. Zeal has (or rather had, since the whole point of the trouble was that Queen Zeal went nuts and screwed it all up) an actual system of government with Gurus and prophets and things, while Dalaam seems to be stuck in a one-monarch feudal system. If Zeal and Dalaam went to war, I think Dalaam would be hard pressed to win, although they probably would in the end - see above about how bad guys never win in RPGs.
I was going to talk about the Earthbound ones versus the Enlightened ones, but someone else already did that. Recent turns of circumstance bring about this thought, though: Square is coming back to Nintendo after all, which is kind of like the Earthbound and Enlightened living together again. Another stupid coincidence! If only I could find a quote about sending Queen Zeal petitions and having them become successful...
You probably didn't notice, but I was keeping score for both Dalaam and Zeal throughout this article. The final score is Dalaam 5, Zeal 6. Given the choice, I would rather live in Zeal, up to about the point where it gets sliced up by a shower of needles.
Notice! This article may contain spoilers for Chrono Trigger. If you're reading articles, you could probably guess that a lot of them had EB spoilers in them, but CT is a special case so I thought I'd mention it. Now, on with the article.
Dalaam: Everyone's favourite floating island from EarthBound. Home of the playable character Poo, a powerful psychic. Popular attractions include the Mu, the Place of Emptiness; Pink Cloud, the sixth Sanctuary; and the big ol' palace at the top of the hill.
Zeal: Everyone's favourite floating island from Chrono Trigger. Home of the playable character Magus, a powerful magician. Popular attractions include the Elemental Pyramid, which you can't get to; the Sun Palace, which you also can't get to; and Zeal Palace at the top of the mountain.
Coincidence? I think not.
Let's examine the evidence more carefully. In Dalaam, you discover Mu. In Zeal, you discover Nu. Actually, you discover a lot of Nus, but there's only one Mu, and Mu is this intangible thing that you don't really figure out while Nus are just big blue heads with little arms and legs and some hair. That's not very good evidence, is it?
Here's something else to consider. Zeal gets blasted to shreds by Lavos and falls out of the sky, while Dalaam never gets attacked or knocked around or anything. I have concluded that this is because Zeal is "bad," while Dalaam is "good." Now consider the phrase "nice guys finish last." I'd say that having your island fall into the ocean counts as pretty darn far back in last place. Does this mean that Zeal is nice, while Dalaam is mean? Does that mean in turn that nice is bad while mean is good? Or does it just mean that "nice guys finish last" is untrue except when sung by Green Day?
I'm going a little off-topic here, but don't you hate it when someone starts off with a nice friendly idea, like comparing two similar areas from two different games, but then takes it to a silly extreme? I think that's kind of dumb. It's like saying "I would prefer to act stupid and make people laugh than actually present a cohesive and interesting argument." That's only half-true in my case.
In Zeal, everyone has magic powers. But in Dalaam, only Prince Poo has any psychic power, except maybe his master and a few other unseen denizens. This seems unfair until you recall that in Zeal, the average level of magic used by the citizens seems to be pretty tame; the most magic you can ever tell a non-royal Zealite has used is when one of them senses your aura. I'm sure that other Zealites are using similarly mundane powers, such as Hedge Clipping (2 MP) and Levitate Another Tonic From The Fridge To My Hand (6 MP.) The average citizen of Dalaam has no psychic power at all, but Poo has more than enough to compensate - Starstorm, Teleport, and Healing Omega to name a few. You might argue that the royal family of Zeal has amazingly strong magic that could best those powers, to which I bring two counter-arguments:
1) Except for Magus and Schala, the royal family of Zeal never succeeds in using their powers to have a lasting effect on their enemies, since they're bad guys and bad guys don't win in RPGs. Magus can use his powers to fight Lavos if you recruit him, and Schala does that one teleport thing in the Ocean Palace, but Poo has both strong attack powers and Teleport, so he does balance them after all.
2) Poo's powers come from within, whereas all the magic in Zeal comes from Lavos. When Lavos kicks Zeal to the curb, everyone loses their magic (except for Magus, who loses his powers but somehow gets to regain them.) Poo can use his funky powers because he's a good guy. Note how Magus can't regain his powers until he's a good guy too.
Technologically speaking, Zeal is far more advanced than Dalaam. The cities of Zeal are large, glittering palaces, full of books and recovery springs and stuff. The Zealites built boxes and doors that withstood the pressures of time to emerge again as many as 14,000 years later. In Dalaam, they're still living in huts, for heaven's sake. Zeal has (or rather had, since the whole point of the trouble was that Queen Zeal went nuts and screwed it all up) an actual system of government with Gurus and prophets and things, while Dalaam seems to be stuck in a one-monarch feudal system. If Zeal and Dalaam went to war, I think Dalaam would be hard pressed to win, although they probably would in the end - see above about how bad guys never win in RPGs.
I was going to talk about the Earthbound ones versus the Enlightened ones, but someone else already did that. Recent turns of circumstance bring about this thought, though: Square is coming back to Nintendo after all, which is kind of like the Earthbound and Enlightened living together again. Another stupid coincidence! If only I could find a quote about sending Queen Zeal petitions and having them become successful...
You probably didn't notice, but I was keeping score for both Dalaam and Zeal throughout this article. The final score is Dalaam 5, Zeal 6. Given the choice, I would rather live in Zeal, up to about the point where it gets sliced up by a shower of needles.
