Hello

This time, the keyword is romance games, and I wanted to look back on some of the memorable couples that appear in Nexon games.

MapleStory has such a large cast of characters that it only feels natural for quite a few couples to emerge among them, and of all of those, I ended up writing about the three pairs that have stayed with me the most.

And because of the nature of this topic, I should say up front that this will inevitably contain spoilers for anyone who has not seen these stories yet.

Yuta and Camila : Childhood friends

Yuta and Camila are residents of Henesys, and while they do not have especially major roles or overwhelmingly emotional scenes, they still remain one of the representative couples I remember because of a famous quest involving the Glass Marble, which is even mentioned again in the World Archive.

This quest is probably remembered less for the Glass Marble itself than as the so-called pig picture book quest, and it plays out as you deliver Camila’s Glass Marble to Yuta; with its oddly memorable maze and its random reward, I imagine anyone who has done it even once still remembers it at least vaguely.

The Glass Marble appears once again in a later quest as well. In the ruined Henesys of Future Door, you can see Camila and Yuta as adults, now married.

Even there, Yuta brings up the Glass Marble and calls it something precious, and I liked how neatly that earlier quest was woven back in. Of course, since Future Door is not reality, this is not something that literally happened in the story... but looking at the kind of people they are, it is easy to imagine the two of them marrying and living well together all the same.

Outside the story itself, Camila regularly appears at the center of cosmetic item revival events and can practically be seen as Henesys’s main NPC, whereas Yuta has nothing like that at all, so next to her his presence feels faint enough that it would not really be an exaggeration to say he is far less prominent.

Drang and Phyllia : Human and fairy

Drang and Phyllia are residents of Magatia, and you encounter them through Magatia’s main questline. Their story is quite well known among MapleStory players under the title <The Missing Alchemist>, and even their personal circumstances alone are deeply tragic; beyond that, Magatia’s story as a whole reveals something dark and suffocating at its core, yet it is also remembered fondly because it is so well put together.

You can read the full story script here, and even if you take the time to read everything carefully while playing through it yourself, it should still take less than an hour.

Drang and Phyllia fell in love and married, but because Drang was human, he became troubled by the thought that he would die far earlier than his wife, who was a fairy. And once Phyllia became pregnant and they were expecting a child as well, he began a series of experiments and investigations in the hope of extending his own lifespan so that they could remain together for life.

That inner torment comes through especially well in Drang’s notes, which you can read during the quest itself.

In the course of all this, Drang learns of the connection between Magatia and the Black Mage, which only deepens his anguish. In the end, he uses that knowledge to attempt the lifespan-extension experiment that had been his original goal, but the result does not unfold as intended, and he vanishes from sight. Magatia, meanwhile, keeps completely silent in order to bury the truth that only Drang knows. Phyllia, unaware of what happened before or after, simply waits with their daughter for Drang to return.

In the end, Drang does gain the eternal life he was seeking, but he also loses his memories. Even in that state, though, he is still shown carrying medicine for his daughter Kiny and giving roses to Phyllia, which suggests that some trace of the memories from his human life still remains.

After that, the quest comes to an end with neither of them knowing who the other is, and personally, I still find myself wishing that some later piece of closure might be added in which Phyllia learns the true identity of Humanoid A.

Von Leon and Iphia : King and commoner

Von Leon and Iphia were once the king and queen of Lion King’s Castle, and by the time Von Leon first appeared in the story, Iphia had already passed away and Von Leon himself had become a ruined man.

It seems the full story of these two was only laid out in detail and properly brought to a close relatively recently. I did not know much about them either, since for the longest time I had only seen Von Leon in that hollow, broken form as a daily boss, along with Iphia’s appearance in the entry quest, but once I looked into everything, both characters felt far more compelling than I had expected.

Since the theme of this post is romance games, if we look only at the content that tells their story, then the first meeting between Iphia, a commoner, and Von Leon, a king, can be seen through the Commander’s Chronicle in <Dimensional Library>. I seem to remember Iphia’s common birth being mentioned before, but this is where it is shown clearly in detail.

After that, Von Leon, who had once ruled his kingdom successfully, appeared only as a ruined figure after losing everything, including Iphia, to the Black Mage. Then, through the A/S added to the Arcane River story, a final epilogue was given to him, and his story was at last allowed to reach its ending.

After the Black Mage’s death, the power Von Leon had received from him disappears, and he too dies, but only then is he finally able to see Iphia, who had remained by his side for hundreds of years even after death. The two speak, and they pass on together, bringing the story to a happy close. There is something ironic in the fact that he finds true happiness only in death, and yet, considering the circumstances these characters had been made to endure, it felt to me like the best happy ending this story could possibly have reached, which is why it left such a deep impression on me.

Thank you for reading.