Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga high playthrough log part 2/4

Chateau de Chucklehuck

Chateau de Chucklehuck, to the southwest, is the only other area you have access to for now... This house has a bunch of statues of barrels and fruit, with instructions on how to make chuckola cola... Part of the recipe is you need to tell funny jokes to the fruit mixture until it laughs... The quaity of the fruit + the quality of the jokes affects the quality of the chuckola cola... it starts bubbling...

There's also a statue of "Father of Chuckola Cola, First Generation Chateau Owner - Bubbles"

A barrel maze, kinda reminiscent of the inner polygon maze in Super Mario RPG's sunken ship...

Right after exiting the maze M&L met the thief Popple, and his rookie disciple, amnesiac Bowser wearing a thief mask. This is an easy miniboss battle. Bowser lobs hammers at you VERY slowly...

For some reason, fighting you guys... Makes my gut flare up something fierce...

Suddenly he remembers he can breathe fire... lol so that's how he gets that ability.

Rookie! You bloated idiot! Who took you in when you were dazed and lost on the mountain? Me! You worthless vermin!

Popple and Bowser run away and try to go after the Chuckola reserve before M&L get to it.

Met a couple of french dudes... can barely understand what they're saying.

Reserve... behind Chucklehuck Woods eez a sanctuary no on can touchz! joie de vever of zee woods

They tought M&L the hammer squish ability... When you smash squished Mario again he pops back up like a spring... It's not even trying to make any logical sense out of it. Oh and the ability that turns Luigi into a ground-burrowing mole... There's also a convenient training course set up to make you use both of these abilities right away...

Chucklehuck Woods

This place is pretty big, judging from the map, but it's mostly linear... a fat koopa troopa blocks one of the paths... there's some silly pointless puzzle where you make Luigi burrow into a barrel and then have him stand where he'll get shot and the shot will bounce off the barrel and activate the switch... okay...
Another barrel puzzle, this one's a bit more complex. Just getting up to where the barrel is requires a really well timed spin jump... then you gotta figure out how to jump up onto the barrel with Mario to hit a switch.

This "Fuzzbush" enemy is creepy... it's like a little walking tree that pukes out fuzzies.

Next there's this really ugly tree root monster... Chuckleroot, protector of the woods...

yikes...his body is like, 3 separate pieces...

Both M+L at level 14 now... I've just been killing every enemy I see to get them out of the way, mostly. I still haven't had any difficulty so far.

The purple Chuckola fruit is in a cave.
Chuckleroot's daughter makes me dig up some beans for some reason, before opening the way forward.

Had to fight a wiggler to get the red fruit... you can't hurt it until you turn all the parts of its body yellow to calm it down... and then as soon as you attack its head it gets angry and turns all red again.
M+L have to keep splitting up to open doors for each other to get the white Chuckola fruit.

With that easy fetch quest over, now we can get to the Chuckola Reserve... Popple and Bowser were hiding out in some bushes waiting for us to get the fruits and then they ran ahead of us...

Huh... but where did they go exactly? I followed the path to then end and found an old man, looks like he's been sitting here this whole time telling jokes to a barrel full of fruit...

I built Chateau de Chucklehuck, and I founded Chuckola Cola, Inc. And... I am the ultimate comedian, with the laughing and the chortling and the har har HAR!

He also tied up the two thiefs and hung them in barrels.
Popple:

Th-That's no ordinary soda, see? We can't stand up to such a beverage!!!

Bubbles:

The great Chuckola Reserve is a thing to savor, with the flavor and tang and yum in the belly!

Suddenly, the soda comes alive!

...I certainly wasn't expecting the chuckola cola itself to be the next boss. Occasionally Bubbles comes in and tells the soda another joke to restore its health.

After defeating it, Bubbles makes the ground break, and Mario and Luigi fall into a cave with the barrel of soda, which somehow doesn't spill out at all... Mario falls in the barrel and gets stuck, then you play as solo Luigi and have to get to where Mario is... Luigi uses the barrel of soda as a boat and rides it down the river, which happens to connect to the moat and takes them straight to the Beanbean Castle entrance.

Beanbean Castle 2

Mario now has all of the Chuckola Reserve in his stomach... now he has to puke it out into Queen Bean's mouth...ew

Queen Bean is back to normal, and tells us more about the Beanstar.

The Beanstar is the protector of this land, and it has the power to grant any and all desires... To prevent such power from being used for evil, the Beanstar was cast into a deep sleep... It is said that the voice of a great beauty is required to wake the Beanstar from its slumber.

Well, it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of protecting anything at the moment... maybe putting it into deep sleep wasn't such a good idea lol...

Prince Peasley says he saw Cackletta and her underlings sneak into Woohoo University.

There's also this weird Pipe House near the castle...

A weird grinning black thing comes out of a red pipe to tell us about how green and yellow pipes work. There are nine green warp pipes all over Beanbean Kingdom that connect to each other. Yellow pipes are more like normal pipes that take you below or above where you currently are.
Also next to the Pipe House there's a pointless little hedge maze you can go into with squished Mario. I dunno why this is here.

Beanbean Castle Town 2

The town is much more lively now, and has started to recover from Cackletta's attack. Gathered info from the townspeople to learn that Woohoo Hooniversity is southwest of here..
lol, there's an information shop with a bunch of speech bubbles on display...

Some rando old guy has a lot of lore to bestow upon us...

The ancient Soybean civilization... The age of flying spin-beans, tunneling mole-beans, and fast-moving dash-beans... Yes, all evidence points to this advanced civilization once gracing this land... and as for the whereabouts of the Beanstones, the heretofore hidden treasures of the Soybeans... I have perhaps stumbled across some astounding facts related to this matter. I theorize this: That perhaps the Beanstones were indeed buried and still rest beneath this very town! I desire so greatly to dig this town down to its foundations... and even deeper if I must! Yet how I am to even guess where to begin digging? Where? The mind recoils at the thought! I ask you this: how happy would I be if the two of you were to dig up these artifacts for me? Quite happy indeed! Of course, I could perhaps reward you.

Oh, so this is all for a sidequest...

I theorize that there are actually 10 Beanstones waiting to be unearthed. Yes, indeed.

He also gives use a hint that being short may help find these Beanstones...
Wow, it turns out you can actually complete this sidequest right away and find all 10 of the Beanstones without having to come back later. it's just a matter of slowly walking around everywhere with squished Mario to find the spots to dig with Luigi.

OOOH! You have found all 10 of the Soybeans' sparkling Beanstones! With this evidence, I can now announce my hypothesis...

I don't care about that, gimme

Got a Bros. Rock! Hugely boosts POW & BROS points!
cool, cuz this game totally wasn't way too easy already.

Some other guy has another scavenger hunt sidequest, gotta find the five Beanlets in town and bring them back to him... these Beanlets are like his children I guess? These things aren't hard to find at all. Got a golden mushroom for finding them.

There's also the Starbeans Cafe... exchanged 25 beans for the Woohoo blend.. The power goes out suddenly, and then some Luigi's Mansion ghosts show up.

Professor E-Gadd, the owner of this cafe, shows up to explain that the aroma of this drink has drawn these ghosts here... lol I think it's E-Gadd that attracts ghosts wherever he goes.
E-Gadd tries out the Woohoo blend...

Hmm... A delicately bitter flavor, but one that makes me crave more. This stuff gives me the energy to push my ghost research into a new dimension!

Got the Greed Wallet from E-Gadd... the real purpose of the beans is to make new drinks in this cafe so that E-Gadd will give you new bonus items...