The town of Alunze resembles Elcid in design, and has a European-style castle nearby. "Town" plays in town. Everyone's talking about the big event.

There's also a small casino in town, with a single slot machine and some unusual prizes.

If you feel like gambling, the slot machine takes 1 to 5 casino coins, which you can buy in the casino, with each coin activating a row or diagonal for potential winnings. Hold up to feed it all the coins it will take. Over time, playing the slot machine tends to pay out more than you put in, but, being a slot machine, it's random. Still, if you want any of the prizes, it might be worth it to save, weigh the button down, and come back a while later to see how much you got.

The prize counter in this casino has the Flame Charm, Goddess Statue, Thunderflash Charm, Fury Knife, and See-Through Cape. The spellcasting items might come in handy now and then, while the knife is just a mediocre weapon with a common hit-all-enemies IP, and the cape provides minimal defense but prevents status effects and has an IP with the same effect as the Miraculous item (revive and restore full HP/MP).

There's nothing of interest as far as plot goes, though, so the party continues on to the castle.

The drawbridge is down and the guards are friendly enough. 1-15 "Castle" plays in the castle. The party wanders around, talking to the soldiers.

As Maxim and Tia enter the throne room, they hear a shout from outside, two soldiers rush in, and then the music stops.

I finally decided to do a little research into terms of royal address. "Your Majesty", "His Majesty", and so forth are reserved for reigning monarchs, and all words in the phrase are normally capitalized, especially when used in place of a name, as here. The Japanese term 陛下 (heika) is largely equivalent.

When speaking to non-reigning members of the royal family, the proper term of address is "Your Highness", also normally capitalized. Japanese has a similar equivalent term for that, 殿下 (denka). However, this game never uses it, instead favoring more specific titles such as 王子 (ouji, prince).

1-23 "Despair" begins playing. Most of the people in the room crowd around the crown to take a closer look.

One of the soldiers who burst into the throne room picks up the crown, and the two begin to leave, but a ranking soldier stops them.

He moves around to block them from reaching the door. The music fades out.

The NA version overplays their quirky speech a bit, but it fits. And apparently they're Canadian too, eh? (sorry)

He puts the crown down, and the two "soldiers" shed their disguises. 1-16 "The Greatest Thieves in the World" begins to play, but it's more comical than threatening. The obvious leader, who grabbed the crown, has rather effeminate blue hair. The other one has spiky blonde hair. Both wear similar thief-like clothes too unremarkable to describe in further detail.

Why bother changing Jimmy and Tommy to Berty and Bart? Were these names meant to sound more comical? And why not Berty and Barty?

On a side note, while skimming the Square Enix site for the DS game loosely based on this one, I noticed that they replaced Tommy with a gender flip named ジェミー (Gemmy, or however you want to spell it), making their names even more similar. Which made me wonder... does the English version keep the leader's name as Berty for consistency, and does it then call her Betty to maintain the similarity between their names? Yes. Yes it does. Nicely done!

Several of the bystanders move in to support the ranking soldier.

He steps forward, pulls a lit bomb out of somewhere, and holds it over his head.

He tosses the bomb towards the onlookers, who hastily rush out of the way.

The bomb doesn't explode. It just sits there.

Tommy walks over to the bomb, presumably to take a closer look at it.

Jimmy also moves next to the bomb, which chooses that moment to explode. The blast knocks the clueless thieves halfway across the room, leaving everyone else unscathed. Jimmy and Tommy stagger back to the middle of the room.

The thieves rush out of the throne room, forgetting the crown in their haste. Jimmy runs back in a moment later to grab it and run away again. The onlookers remain too stunned by this display of idiocy to think about stopping them. The music fades out.

With the scripted event finally over, "Castle" resumes playing. Maxim and Tia head out of the throne room, continuing to talk to people in hopes of finding a lead.

Now that I think about it, I'm getting the impression that the prince has a tendency toward wasteful spending, and that's the problem she means.

Interesting, though not a lead. But there's a servant girl who saw something suspicious...

Following the lead, Maxim and Tia head down the stairs. Partway down, they find an unmoving soldier.

Maxim shakes the soldier a few times, perhaps rather too roughly, and he regains consciousness.

The party continues down the stairs until they reach the second underground floor. This section of the castle is poorly lit and in a state of moderate disrepair. 1-17 "Labyrinth" plays down here. A single soldier stands nearby.

Maxim and Tia continue into the castle basement. As promised, there are monsters, and the condition of the building is rather poor, with plants growing in unlikely places and cracks in some of the walls. They reach a dead end, but there's a chest...

...and a sign on the wall nearby.

An additional trick to using the Bomb is that one Bomb will explode immediately if another Bomb explodes right next to it. This can be used to set off chains of explosions. Occasionally, it's even useful.

Maxim tries blasting the cracked wall he saw earlier, opening up another passage. Before long, the party reaches a room with a colored blocks puzzle and a convenient sign on the wall explaining what to do.

The idea is to push the blocks around to line up those that are the same color. Lining up three or more of the same color block causes those blocks to disappear. The trickiest part of the puzzle is that two of the colors have five blocks, making it necessary to eliminate all five at once.

Somewhere in the middle of the labyrinth are HP and MP recovery tiles and a save point. Continuing on, the party comes to a room with four buttons in the floor, a teleporter, and another sign.

With no buttons pressed, the warp point goes to the same room that it's in. Placing a pot on one of the switches will change the destination to one of four other rooms depending on the button pressed. The starting room and one of the destinations give access to blocks that have to be pushed onto switches to open a path from one of the other rooms.

One destination room contains a monster that circles around a central barrier opposite Maxim's movements; getting it caught on an irregularity in the room allows the party to catch it, and beating it gives access to a treasure chest containing a Knife of Light.

One destination room has a maze of spikes, some of which rise when Maxim approaches them, blocking access. This room has a Mysterious Fruit, and going around the outside leads to a cracked wall hiding a Miraculous.

One room has a box on a switch in one corner and an unreachable chest in the other. Removing the box extends a bridge to the chest, but shuts the player in with the switch, leaving the chest still unreachable. The trick is to place a bomb by the box and move away, destroying the box after a delay and letting Maxim cross to find a Dragon Egg in the chest. Dragon Eggs have no apparent purpose now, but they're useful later. Much later.

Anyway, continuing a bit deeper into the labyrinth, the party finds a doorway with a sign next to it.

They have a pair of thieves to catch, so Maxim and Tia ignore the sign and continue through the door. They spot the thieves in the dry water channel. Jimmy is still carrying the crown. "The Greatest Thieves in the World" plays.

Of course, the thieves run to the far side of the channel, where there are two switches in the floor. Maxim and Tia hop down after them.

He steps on one of the switches, raising a barrier down the middle of the waterway, between the two groups.

Tommy steps on the other switch. The sound of rushing water is heard. A moment later, a torrent of water rushes into the side of the channel where the thieves are, washing them out of sight. After a few seconds, the water stops.

Maxim finds a switch nearby that lowers the barrier and lets them climb out of the channel. "Labyrinth" resumes playing. A short distance down the waterway...

Now that they have the crown, Maxim and Tia work their way back upstairs. The basement guard remains oblivious...

...but others are more grateful.

Maxim has four choices for his response...

First, the straightforward but boring choice:

The second choice would make more sense if Maxim was a womanizer, which he doesn't seem to be, but it's still vaguely amusing:

The third answer is just silly. Apparently the script writers had a bit too much... I'll say "coffee"...

And finally, the choice a noble adventurer would make:

The choice Maxim makes only affects the king's response and how much gold the reward is. There aren't any lasting aftereffects, which is kind of a shame...

Now that that's over with, Maxim and Tia head for the far end of the kingdom to continue their journey.