This castle doesn't have a town next to it. It turns out that this is because the town is built into the castle. As the party enters the courtyard, they hear a loud noise behind them. They turn to look, and the guard calls out a challenge.

Upon advancing, the soldier is blasted across the courtyard and into the far wall. Maxim and the others step out of the way as someone walks in. He has moderately spiky straw-colored hair, wears rust-colored armor and a blue cape, and leads a small army of monsters. "Despair" starts playing.

A man with shiny and very spiky blue hair and wearing heavy armor runs out of the castle.

The music cuts off abruptly.

Bad pun time. さる (saru), as Idura uses it, means "a certain...", but most people would use ある (aru) for that meaning, and there's a far more common さる that means "monkey" or "ape". Basically, our endearingly slow-witted friend misinterpreted さるお方 as, roughly, "esteemed monkey". No wonder he's not taking Idura seriously, if he thinks the guy takes orders from a monkey.

I've tried to come up with something similar that works in English. The NA version's take on this falls a bit flat on the actual misunderstanding, I think.

The music resumes.

The monsters advance and surround the man from the castle.

The following line is peculiar, not just because it only exists in the English version, but also because it's scripted as being spoken by the active NPC, in an event that's triggered by proximity and therefore doesn't have an active NPC. It ends up coming out of Idura's mouth, though whether that's what was intended or not is anyone's guess. It almost seems more like a retort against Idura's last remark. Either way, it feels fairly out of place and doesn't really flow well.

The monsters converge on the man who came from the castle, but he somehow avoids them.

Idura and even the monsters look around, trying to figure out where he went.

He drops out of the sky, crashing into the clump of monsters with an explosive impact, and killing all but a single Jelly (the extremely weak monster from the very beginning of the game) that by some stroke of luck manages to avoid anything worse than being blown across the courtyard.

Altough the expression へでもない (he de mo nai) means "utterly worthless", it literally translates to "not even fart". I'm sticking with a more literal translation here, partly because the speaker can be rather childish, but mostly because he makes a reference to it later.

He starts warping away, but both he and the music are interrupted by the man from the castle.

Similar wordplay to last time. 礼 (rei) usually refers to an expression of gratitude (thanks), but Idura is using it to mean payback, as in revenge.

This time he actually leaves. "Castle" fades back in.

The man from the castle finally notices the one remaining Jelly.

Suddenly, a blond man wearing a fancy green cape bursts out of the castle...

...closely followed by a dirty-blond man wearing a blue cape that isn't quite as fancy, who quickly spots the jelly.

No one ever addresses him by his name in the the NA version, but we know it's Prince Alex thanks to his lines in the game's introduction. Several lines of dialog talking about him but not speaking directly to him also use his name, just not in this scene.

As I noted earlier, "Your Highness", normally capitalized, is the proper form of address for non-reigning members of a royal family. Now that I'm paying attention, I've noticed that the English version does an impressive job of getting both that and the reigning "Your Majesty" consistently correct.

"Joseph" would work just as well, but for whatever reason, I just like the 'f' spelling for him.

His spirit may be admirable, but his combat skill isn't. It takes several seconds of back-and-forth fighting before he finally takes down the Jelly, even though it's presumably hurt to begin with.

Physically feeble Tia can kill one of those barehanded in one hit, and he thinks slaying one with difficulty is impressive? This does not bode well...

Using "I, [name]" for この[name] usually feels overly unnatural and campy, but in this case, I think that's just perfect.

Consistently capitalizing "Your Highness" is good, but titles such as "prince" should normally not be capitalized when used generically like this.

There's brown-nosing, and then there's brown-nosing. How much must they be paying him to say these things with a straight face?

The prince finally notices the man who did all the real fighting.

Prince Alec and Josef go back inside the castle. Heidecker stands in front of the entrance.

Tia didn't do a thing in this scene and was completely left out of the conversation... she's really starting to seem like a third wheel, isn't she?

Maxim goes to talk with Heidecker.

Heidecker starts attacking. Maxim holds him off long enough to get a word in edgewise...

This ends up being something of a catchphrase of his, though he keeps changing what he claims is his next best skill after swordplay. Unfortunately, the English translation doesn't handle the line consistently, making the callbacks less obvious and blunting their impact.

Heidecker heads back into the castle. Maxim turns to Selena.

Casual language again... maybe she's just annoyed...?

Before continuing on, here's a brief scene in the kitchen that I'm only including because it never made sense to me.

Yeah. That translation completely misinterprets the context. Why would any of this have anything to do with Tia's cooking? Her seafood experiment barely got any attention even in Elcid, and it's not like she's tried anything absurd enough to start rumors, like frying Jellies in olive oil...

Anyway, Maxim and the others work their way to the throne room. The people there include Prince Alec and Josef. A soldier reports to the prince.

Heidecker rushes into the room to confront the prince.

Prince Alec and Josef leave. Heidecker looks a bit panicked, then turns to the king.

Heidecker leaves. Might as well talk to a few people before following.

With nothing else to do at the moment, Maxim and the others also head to the northern labyrinth. Speaking of which,