My kids got stuck on that part also. I finally have time to play on my savegame since I kinda watch what they were doing it was not hard for me to figure it out but I agree it is quite an annoying maze simply because it's really hard to see the whole picture.
As for shop, there is a shop in Agogo also. When I exit Agogo, I went back to it and do a little exploring. One of the building has a shop in the basement. The merchant was saying something along the line that he hardly have customers.
I agree, those pictures are really way unbalance, I have 30k + easily before I set out for the maze. I also seens my kids stuck in there without any health items (they were understock anyway so if you are understock on those items you can easily get into a bind). I always stock my party up before I go venture out (it's habit from playing all those old RPG games), but I totally overstock on those items since I have gold up the wazoo anyway.
Agree about Viola, my kids and I play co-op when I play (they control the other characters during battle) and Viola is way over power. Her healing arrow heal everyone in range for 800+ while my healer (Polka) barely do that on one character. And yep, none of my kids want to play Polka because she is just suck. (So I ended up stuck with her usually to make sure her level up keep up with other.
It is a really different game than Blue Dragon , but I am more incline to load up Sonata than Blue Dragon at the moment mainly because I like Sonata co-op combat option.
