Big deal

The Tower of Ordeals is the location for Chapter 23, a five-level section of the castle, with stone statues that come to life when the sections are entered. As the entire island is sailing over the ocean and won't reach its destination until I distract myself, I figure I'll accept the challenge.

This section is notable because it has fun, new music at the start of every Ordeal, and a symbol splashed on the screen to represent the various disciplines: defence, strength, intelligence, humanity and bravery. They might all say completely different things, or nothing at all, but I'm convinced they are what they say they are.

After each challenge a new piece of kit is given over: swords, shields, speed, that sort of thing. They'll all come in very handy in later battles.

The final challenge is to fight the General himself, and he is difficult (although as I learned near the end of the game, his second in command is even tougher).

After eventually succeeding and learning the new art of how to counter attacks, I head for the exit - only to be confronted by Calista's fiance. He seems really friendly and that immediately got me on edge - and he does two really nasty things: he poisons me via a handshake (final episode of 24 season 2, anyone?) and unleashes a stone Ogre on me. I have just 30 seconds to defeat it before I am overcome with a fatal case of Game Over.

Since I made it to the next chapter, I guess I did what was necessary - eventually. So many retries, but not the most - which I'll explain later.

It's like being inside a Rubik's Cube.

Chapter 22 is eventful. Lots to do - get up, swear allegiance to the Earl, make sure the public knows we're the saviours of radio one the entire kingdom, have an all-night party, visit the castle, discover the entire island can move by itself, discover secret passages, go to prison as a visitor, find the locking mechanism that keeps the island from moving.

It's the latter part that is the most fun.

Being told about the secret staircase means I can travel deeper than the prison and find a mysterious portal that leads to some kind of other dimension - which in actuality is about half a mile to the left of the castle.

Once inside, there is a Rubik's Cube-like structure with doors and stairs high above us and along the walls, but only by standing on a central platform can the entire structure turn and become accessible.

How my eyes deceived me when the room started turning - like one of those standing cinema experiences. I felt I was falling - but it didn't work for me the next three times I tried it.

Every time a new door becomes accessible, I needed to go through it and attack a shadowy creature that would become solid when I used the gathering. There were servants that were there to make sure I couldn't reach him, and each had different abilities - archers, poisoning the floor, attacking with swords, that sort of thing.

Eventually I reach a summoning floor and decide to level up Mirania - make her catch up the ten levels she missed by not being included in our big battles - and from now on she'll be uncatchable, levelling up before anyone else.

Finally I reach a strange possessing snake, taking control of my party and forcing me to fight them at the same time as the snake - but I can't seem to damage the snake. After a good ten minutes of not-sure-what's-going-on fighting, he withers and dies, leaving me with a hexagonal stone to stand on. Activating the gathering makes the floor power up and the island - the castle and the town - sets sail for a collision with the Gurak on the other side of the ocean.