Goblin Slayer Season 2: Episode 2 Review

/ kvasir369

Sometimes someone else’s tragedies are those of your own making.

The second episode of Goblin Slayer Season 2 has aired. The group has their first mission to kill goblins with Priestess in the lead and Wizard Boy joining them. How will the quest turn out?

Find out in my Recap and Review.

Recap

The episode opens with the training camp being built up, with Wizard Boy joining the party led by Priestess. He’s eager to go, but they are clear with him that the first thing they need to do is speak with the client and gather information. He seems put off that the goblin murder has to be put on the back burner but follows them.

In the client’s tent, the Dwarf explains that they sent in a party before but none of them came back and the Goblins are stealing their tools. It’s only a matter of time before they start attacking and they can’t pay much for goblin-slaying missions. High Elf Archer has to remind GS to let Priestess lead the conversation so it counts for her mission.

So Priestess asks if they know where the Goblins are, which nets them a map leading to a mausoleum that Goblin Slayer knew of but was told to never go to when he was younger (remember, his village was once there before the goblins burned it to the ground). She also asks if there was a totem and the previous makeup and rank of the party that went in. It consisted of a group of porcelains and obsidians, with the makeup being a Wizard, an Acolyte Priest, a Lizardman Warrior, and a Priest Warrior. There was also a scout and two of the party members were women, which immediately sends up red flags.

Lizard Priest and GS state they’ll probably find the two women alive if they are lucky, but chances are they were all dead. They also speculate that there’s something else there since no totem means no Shaman, but they didn’t make it back out. There was likely a Hobgoblin and probably around thirty or so regular ones depending on how many the other party killed.

While they discuss that, High Elf Archer takes a breather and explains her role is to scout when asked by the Wizard Boy and they have to place the right people in the right role. Dwarf Shaman, sipping on some wine, states as spellcasters they need to focus on pacing themselves. The kid doesn’t get it and thinks that all they need to do is kill Goblins.

At the entrance of the location, Wizard Boy tries to rush in so they can save other adventurers and Priestess immediately gets flashbacks to her original party. Lizard Priest calms her down and she sets up their formation in two rows of three before covering up their scent. Then the Goblin killing starts.

They clear out the first room with GS and High Elf Archer killing the five there quickly before blocking the doors with wedges so they can’t be swarmed. Priestess then has Wizard Boy abstain from wasting his spell early and tells him they need to take things slowly, which proves to be the correct action as they go room-by-room and High Elf Archer discovers a trap. They discuss what action to take next, but the kid rushes in and ends up falling for the basic trap causing him to scream and alarm the others.

Then they hear a woman screaming all of a sudden and he rushes to the scene. There he finds a woman nailed to a chair with one goblin intentionally hitting it, leaving him to use his Fireball to kill it. Turns out it was bait and he was nearly crushed by a Troll with a bunch of Goblins following after it.

So, he’s screwed and can only yell for the others to stay out since it was a trap. But Lizard Priest and GS rush in any way and start killing them, asking if the woman is still alive. He tries to state he wants to save her as soon as he can, but they point out that they also have two women in their party as they come in and start helping. Dwarf Shaman grabs the entire chair and has him help lift her before they ask Priestess what to do next.

She panics and so GS has to take the reins considering more are coming. He then directs the party with Priestess being told to use Holy Light while the Lizard Priest acts as the Vanguard. The light blinds them long enough for the others to run with the hostage and he takes care of the Troll by throwing gasoline onto it and setting it on fire, joining up with High Elf Archer in his own retreat.

With the casters arriving at what seems to be a dead end, they take a moment to catch their breath. Wizard Boy is left trying to apologize when he recalls how he mocked Priestess but was the one who screwed up. But before he can, GS and High Elf Archer are closing in and the Troll is still alive despite being set on fire.

GS asks for rain from Dwarf Shaman and light from Priestess. The light blinds it and the rain falls over it before GS throws some powder that causes its body to start freezing. He heated its body up and then cooled it down so its hard body would start to crack, as he applied the knowledge from the Ice Treats he got in Water Town to deal with it. That allows them to kill the Troll and then slaughter the rest of the Goblins.

Watching them, Wizard Boy acknowledges that this was partially his fault for being so green but he can’t acknowledge GS. Then, when they go out for drinks to celebrate not dying and rescuing Acolyte, he can only sulk. Lizard Priest tries to cheer him and Priestess up since she still feels bad about faltering.

After they’ve eaten and gotten sloshed, it’s explained that Acolyte is still deciding what she’ll do once she recovers. High Elf Archer states that as long as she’s alive she can still move on, but Wizard Boy points out that people are going to mock her for losing to Goblins. He states that was what happened to his older sister, who had been stabbed by a Goblin’s poisoned dagger and killed, causing Priestess to realize that his older sister was her first party member.

He then falls asleep from being too drunk, while GS decides to head off. He comes across Spearman and Heavy Warrior, who recognizes something is off about him. But he brushes them aside to go be alone and then throws his helmet off, remembering that he was the one responsible for her death in the end.

Review

So this episode picks up after the last one where the group has added Wizard Boy as a guest party member while Priestess is in charge of leading it. The quest is to investigate the goblins within the mausoleum and if possible rescue any survivors of the party that went in first.

Right away, you’re reminded of how the party was competent. Just hearing the information allowed Lizard Priest and Goblin Slayer to piece together the threat. High Elf Archer played her role as a scout admirably, finding traps and acting as ranged support. Dwarf Shaman directed the kid on how to act in a desperate situation and his wide assortment of spells allowed him to provide what was needed for GS to succeed, showing how being versatile was in a caster’s best interest.

In contrast, Wizard Boy and Priestess still have a long way to go.

To start with, Wizard Boy wanted to get started killing Goblins right away and rescuing the people within. But because he was green, he immediately fell into a simple trap that caused him to scream and alert the rest of the Goblins that they were there. And thus he nearly got himself and the others killed.

The fact that he was willing to at least acknowledge it was partially his fault is more growth than you’d expect given his archetype. And he at least tried to apologize. He still screwed up pretty badly though and it’d be a different story if someone got killed.

However, as revealed, his motivations are pretty simple: Goblins killed his sister. At least as far as he knows, she died due to being stabbed with a poisoned dagger. And she was mocked for it by her peers at the Academy, with him having to listen to it over and over.

This ties into Priestess, whose first tenure as a party leader came up short. She started okay, applying the lessons she learned to get information ahead of time, arranging their party formation, and how to proceed within the dungeon as safely as possible. She’s learned a lot over her year with the group.

However, she had trouble keeping Wizard Boy in check, and once the situation turned south she began to panic. At that point, she fell back into a supporter role and GS took over, giving concise instructions. You know her self-esteem took a hit there but what made it even worse was when she realized that Wizard Boy was the brother of the member of her party she couldn’t save. So now there’s a thread tying them together, as we’ve seen she does consider the destruction of her first party something that weighs on her heart.

And as for GS, we’ve seen him constantly applying the knowledge he gains in battle. In this case, if you remember the date episode in Water Town during the first season, you realize that’s when he learned about how to flash-freeze things. Here we see him use it to break through the Troll’s rock-hard skin.

He’s a veteran of five years, where he’s been through a lot and managed to remain calm throughout the experiences he’s undergone. But he’s not immovable. More so considering the death of an older sister to Goblins is something he can very much relate to, and the fact that he was the one who put her out of her misery means that he probably thinks he’s damned this kid to becoming just like him.

Keep in mind that GS knows he’s not someone to be admired. He doesn’t see himself as an Adventurer. He sees himself as a Goblin to the Goblins. And he just created another one of him without realizing it.

No wonder he felt sick in the end.

Differences in Adaptation

This episode starts partway through Volume 6, Chapter 2, and goes through Chapter 3:

  • Part of the reason that they took Wizard Boy on was because the veterans believed he needed more experience and he might have some potential that just needs polishing.
  • The reason that the party before them died was really bad luck combined with a bad decision. They had their gear, had some experience despite being novices, and even kept their formation up. Truth, one of the over gods, just wanted to kill a party that day.
  • The Warrior Priest was a woman in service to the Goddess Valkyrie. The scout was a Dark Elf who chose to be on the side of good rather than evil. The Acolyte Cleric worshipped the Trade God.
  • Even after discovering the Troll, they had the chance to run, but the General acting as their leader felt positive about their chances since they had a means of getting around its regeneration with Fire. He had the front row intercept the Troll and the Cleric to buff them, but ordered the Thief to get ready for a Sneak Attack rather than guard the rear. Goblins immediately killed the General from behind and they got swarmed since they didn’t block the door because that would have cut off their escape path.
  • The Dark Elf died second. He recognized he was stabbed with a poisoned dagger and went for an Antidote, at which point they swarmed him and tore him to pieces.
  • The Lizard Warrior died next, hearing the Acolyte scream and turning his attention back to her since he was in love with her. He got his brains crushed by the Troll, only able to lament it wouldn’t eat his heart as is tradition for powerful warriors.
  • The Warrior Priest died last, shoving Acolyte out of the way so she didn’t get killed as she rushed over to Lizard Warrior and took the club in her place, resulting in her getting splattered.
  • The Goblins proceeded to have the Troll break Acolyte’s leg after she wet herself, intent on taking her prisoner for obvious reasons.
  • One of the prostitutes at the building camp was an Elf dressed in very revealing clothing, much to High Elf Archer’s horror. Priestess was just glad that GS wasn’t paying attention to the woman, for obvious reasons.
  • The Dwarf leading the construction was an important member of the Carpenter’s Guild. It was during this discussion that GS made it clear Priestess was leading, but if there was an emergency he was taking over. 
  • Priestess ruminates after hearing him mention his past she didn’t know much about him, despite them being together for a year.
  • Priestess also asks if the Dwarf had any potions he could spare, and that they would pay for them. They had prepared ahead of time, but she wanted extras just in case. 
  • To elaborate more on roles, GS and Lizard Priest serve as the front-row of the group and so they need to be able to work out a strategy ahead of time. Normally, Priestess handles making sure they have all their equipment and the logistics as the back-row.
  • For her formation had GS and High Elf Archer in the front, with Lizard Priest and Dwarf Shaman in the back. If they were attacked from the front, Lizard Priest and High Elf Archer could switch places easily. If they were attacked from behind, GS and Dwarf Shaman could do the same. She refused to put herself or Wizard Boy in the back row since they would get targeted too easily.
  • The pouches the girls had were perfume pouches, meant to cover their scent. They only had two, while the others had old clothes that already had the scent, which is why the boy had to be covered in goblin blood.
  • What fell out of that trap were the remains of Warrior Priest, her hand and arm so thoroughly minced they looked like they had been put through a meat grinder. The shock factor was meant to get any adventurer who came across it to scream, which acted as an alert for the Goblins. 
  • They then tortured the Acolyte in order to draw them into the room. Specifically, they had been using a stone axe to cut off her fingers.
  • Wizard Boy only had a single use of his spells per day, and he wasted it on that Fire Bolt on a single goblin. So even though he knew that he could have used it to help deal with the troll, he realized he wasted it and should have listened to the others when they tried to warn him. He figured with his last act while alive, he could warn them not to fall into the trap as well. 
  • They also grabbed her fingers with the hopes that they could reattach them if everything went well.
  • The reason the Troll’s body broke was because when someone tried to get rid of a giant rock, they would heat it up very hot and then cool it down quickly. Since Trolls have rock-like bodies or were said to turn into stone in sunlight, he used Saltpeter to absorb the water and heat quicker, making it happen rapidly enough that its body basically started shattering.
  • Goblin Slayer shoving someone was so out of the ordinary that Spearman knew something was wrong.

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