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Or it could be one of the strangest places to find an Earthbound reference
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Jan 12, 2019 23:19
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The Dark Id posted:
Oh, wait. Wrong franchise.
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Jan 13, 2019 00:01
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The Dark Id posted:Naturally, I try to grind out more Earth Element Soul Energy on a whim because my flight got canceled until tomorrow and get three Earth element dudes in a row and finish getting to max level in ten minutes. Nice! Where did you get the last few? Of off those stupidly rare enemies in the ancient ruins. More relevantly, How many other places were there to grind for earth energy? I don't remember having problems with earth energy when I did my playthrough, so I suspect I got lucky or did some grinding in China. At least it's Earth that's the difficult one to grind for, and not fire or something.
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Jan 13, 2019 00:04
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Shei-kun posted:Drakengard! Drakengard isn't the kind of franchise where we have to worry about the fickle whims of RNG, and thank god for that. I blame GDQ personally.
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Jan 13, 2019 00:09
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DiggleWrath posted:Drakengard isn't the kind of franchise where we have to worry about the fickle whims of RNG, and thank god for that. I blame GDQ personally. That is more because there is a limit to how many blades they can stick in you rather then any actual sense of mercy.
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Jan 13, 2019 00:10
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So are Tissues some kind of Japanese game show prize joke or something? They are in FF7 to from the golden saucer rail shooter or battle square too.
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Jan 13, 2019 05:44
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Being given tissues is apparently just a thing that happens.
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Jan 13, 2019 06:07
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Alaan posted:So are Tissues some kind of Japanese game show prize joke or something? They are in FF7 to from the golden saucer rail shooter or battle square too. Packets of pocket tissues are given out with advertisements on them on street corners everywhere in Japanese cities. They're generally useful to have, because Japanese public toilets don't have anything to dry your hands with after washing up.
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Jan 13, 2019 06:08
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Also just general hygiene and the kind but simple gesture. There's probably a joke about them eating up precious inventory space in other games, reflection how inconvenient it can be to carry them if you don't have a bag with you, but you're too polite to turn them down when offered. I don't think I can play a Yakuza game without getting oodles of pocket tissues
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Jan 13, 2019 06:18
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Random people on the main roads just stand around and hand out tissues in every Yakuza game I've ever played. I think Japan has a tissue-based economy.
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Jan 13, 2019 07:32
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The idea behind it is similar to the idea behind matchbooks or whatever. Random flyers or whatever will be instantly discarded but if you give someone something mildly useful they're more likely to hang onto it. Tissues just because the de-facto for this in Japan.
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Jan 13, 2019 12:19
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Req.Martyr posted:Also just general hygiene and the kind but simple gesture. So THAT'S why I keep getting those loving inventory cloggers in Zero...
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Jan 13, 2019 19:49
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Never did the pit fights myself in the past, mostly too lazy, but if I ever manage to snag this again maybe I will. I tend to try and switch out party members frequently to keep em decently leveled so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for me if I ever play again.
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Jan 13, 2019 20:33
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DiggleWrath posted:Nice! Where did you get the last few? Of off those stupidly rare enemies in the ancient ruins. More relevantly, How many other places were there to grind for earth energy? I don't remember having problems with earth energy when I did my playthrough, so I suspect I got lucky or did some grinding in China. This reminds me that I still do not have the complete monster list in Nier Automata 
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Jan 13, 2019 21:50
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DeafNote posted:This reminds me that I still do not have the complete monster list in Nier Automata Or the complete fish list!!! I wonder if machine life tried copying fish because they were trying to get the power of the android-destroying mackerel.
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Jan 13, 2019 22:11
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 This is an addendum to the previous update.  Music: Graveyard Moon .jpg) I had my flight canceled earlier and the next one available to my destination not being around until morning until the following day. So I found myself with a whole mess of time to kill and decided to grind out the remaining Earth Elemental Soul Energy required to unlock the last wayward Level 3 Fusion. I tried my hand at the Ancient Ruins and... promptly got four Sweepers (the big green slime monsters) in a row, filling up Earth Elemental Soul Power to the max in roughly ten minutes. So goes the fickle mistress that is RNG. .jpg) .jpg) With that accomplished, we can now venture to the graveyard in order to challenge the last remaining Fusion. We didn't want all Level 3 Fusions solely for completion sake. I mean, we did but having them all is also a prerequisite to unlock the final sidequest in the game. So... .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) It's just a wolf dude but it's got white fur now. After all that trouble, I'm not dignifying it with a description of its leveled monster fight. Yuri shot Demon Rays at it until it died. It healed once so he had to shoot one extra Demon Rays. The end. We received Lobo's Soul. Do you want the mythology for Lobo? Here: It's "wolf" in Spanish. The lore is deep. .jpg) The one time I'd be OK with wasting some time grinding out some crap because I'm having my day wasted anyway and it's the one time RNG is kind to me.  .jpg) Moreso than most Fusions, this looks like some monster of the week that would get sorted out in a low budget Super Sentai series. I do kind of like the concept of yelling at someone to be healthier and it works. That's more than you get from most American medical plans. But beyond that, this thing we're never going to use again after this mini-update has...
Music: SSC - Special Short Cuts .jpg) For completion sake and being able to fully take this Fusion out back and shoot it like Old Yeller, we'll go ahead and grab its [????] Skill. .jpg) Lobo gains Strike, a 72 MP Earth Elemental attack that damages all enemies. So what does Strike entail?  It summons a giant rock and throws it. That's it. That's the whole attack. The description claims it's a "meteorite" but... boss, you're just summoning that rock with magic. You ain't got any certification that rock hails from space. That poo poo is straight from the desert of New Mexico for all I know. Get out of here peddling that carnie poo poo, Lobo! You're not foolin' anyone! .jpg) Lackluster final Fusion aside, we've gotten all the Fusions leveled to maximum any way you cut it. We're nearing the end of all the optional content in the game!   Lobo Render - Kamen Rider villain of the day rear end looking busta. The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 00:28
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The Dark Id posted:It summons a giant rock and throws it. That's it. That's the whole attack. The description claims it's a "meteorite" but... boss, you're just summoning that rock with magic. You ain't got any certification that rock hails from space. That poo poo is straight from the desert of New Mexico for all I know. Get out of here peddling that carnie poo poo, Lobo! You're not foolin' anyone! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYgJ5oTccWY
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Jan 14, 2019 00:56
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I can't believe Strike was the actual name in the Japanese. Though I have to say it's impressive that the big bad wolf can throwdown a Breath of Fire style Ragnarok meteor at chumps. Oh well, all in a day's work for Yuri.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:33
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Too bad they went with metorite. Coulda had the werewolf whap people with the moon, but you do what you will, game/translators.The Dark Id posted:Sharon evidently as a real drat grudge against Rausan
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Jan 14, 2019 05:36
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Man... All the struggle to get the earth element up that much, and it's entirely underwhelming. Is every playthrough typically going to experience this?
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Jan 14, 2019 05:44
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Guess he ain't enough of a Donkey Kong to dunk someone with the fuckin' moon, so he just uses the replica from the gift shop.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:40
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Glazius posted:Guess he ain't enough of a Donkey Kong to dunk someone with the fuckin' moon, so he just uses the replica from the gift shop.
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Jan 14, 2019 11:07
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Req.Martyr posted:Man... All the struggle to get the earth element up that much, and it's entirely underwhelming. You can avoid having to grind at the end by grinding a little bit in every new area, but the level 3 fusions just aren't that great.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:50
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ultrafilter posted:You can avoid having to grind at the end by grinding a little bit in every new area, but the level 3 fusions just aren't that great. Amon of course eclipses every level 3 fusion, but Amon is not something every player will find. The level 3 fusions are versatile enough to be taken to endgame.
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Jan 14, 2019 16:57
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Materant posted:Amon of course eclipses every level 3 fusion, but Amon is not something every player will find. The level 3 fusions are versatile enough to be taken to endgame. In Covenant there is even a Level 3 Fusion that is actually better than Amon too. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 17:22
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Accordion Man posted:Yeah, the only sidequest I did when I first beat the game was Magarete's and I just used Chernabog and was totally fine in endgame. I feel like the fusions in Covenant were all around more versatile and useful. Or maybe I just liked variety and used suboptimal fusions for the sake of it.
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Jan 14, 2019 19:17
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The whole idea with different, elementally flavoured types of souls was sufficiently bad and impractical that they abandoned it completely for the sequel. Covenant just gives you generic soul energy, usable for anything.
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Jan 14, 2019 20:16
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Really just feels like the important part of the endgame is 'Does Alice have Arc?' Literally every other detail can be brute-forced to whatever degree with the MP/SP restoratives past that.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:22
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Even that can be run around once you have the L3 Light Fusion (making is the only L3 fusion with a meaningful niche really). I'm pretty sure Arc is still cheaper than Yuri's heal-all so it's better to just, y'know, use Alice, but it's an option if somehow she ended up badly underlevelled.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:31
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CmdrKing posted:Even that can be run around once you have the L3 Light Fusion (making is the only L3 fusion with a meaningful niche really). I'm pretty sure Arc is still cheaper than Yuri's heal-all so it's better to just, y'know, use Alice, but it's an option if somehow she ended up badly underlevelled. Not to mention Yuri will typically have a lower MP pool than Alice, and the opportunity cost of turning your best damage dealer into a healbot rather than letting him murderate everything with his fists/eye beams.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:22
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Yeah, Heal-Yuri is something you can do as a stopgap measure when better options have already failed, but in the long run, it's not something you want and especially don't want to have to rely on. Yuri is punchmans, his job is the punching. Making him do anything else is crippling yourself, because you end up wasting more resources just from having the fight drag out that much longer.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:28
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Getting to the end of the game with Alice underleveled seems like it would be difficult at best.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:52
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something you have to go out of your way to do intentionally, given Alice is mandatory for most of the game,
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Jan 15, 2019 04:39
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Be like the absolute lowest level FF7 runs that involve dragging Tifa corpse around 80% of the game.
Alaan fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 04:42
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You have to have Alice at a certain level to make it through the solo fight against Arcane Olga. I guess you could just start dragging around a corpse after that.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:00
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Episode LXXV: Punching a Curse Music: Atmosphere - Blow Up .jpg)  We should probably get back to Rog and see if he's done... err...  ...What were we waiting on again? A teleporter to the Neameto Float. Riiiiiiight! The final dungeon in space. It's a good thing Albert was way off on that seven days thing, huh? Huh. I forgot all about that time limit. Heck yeah. Same till just now. He was way off base! Tch. He was just doing a big baddie speech and pulled that timeframe out of his rear end. They always do that. It's a rookie villain monologue mistake. You gotta throw out a vague declaration like "the end is nigh" or "your doom approaches" and leave it at that. Put a concrete date down and you look like an idiot when it's like... err... how long have we been off farting around? Nearly two months...  Oh geez, really?! That was maybe a bit much... Whatever! The point is Simon was super wrong and there's no use sweating it! Now... we ready to go do this or are we forgettin' something? Well... I know I we should probably try to stop Albert Simon but... I am... a tiny bit concerned about the whole... curse thing... Aww geez! I totally forgot about that! ...Curse? Am I missing something? Long story. Alice might be... a little cursed. I thought we took care of her curse back on the boat ride to Shanghai. It is a different curse. You got cursed AGAIN!?  ...Maybe. Like I said, long story! But yeah! We should probably do something about that, huh? I... would appreciate it....jpg) Much like Koudelka, Shadow Hearts has two different endings. In Koudelka, the ending parameter was a simple matter of "Can you defeat the final boss? Yes or no?" The final boss, Elaine, was the strongest creature in the game outside an optional super boss. Playing the game normally, it's actually kind of unlikely you'd actually beat the thing. And thus, the "bad ending" where the party gets their rear end kicked and James had to sacrifice himself to stop the rampaging monster was the canonical one. Shadow Heart's requirements for its ending rests on whether or not we break Alice's curse before heading off to the final dungeon. It is a wee bit more involved than just grinding to beat a tough boss. Music: Castle of Silence .jpg) Since Calios Mental Hospital got the short end of the endgame sidequest draw by... you know, just having zero sidequests involved with it once the area was completed (outside the rogue Lottery Member) we'll be heading back here to go through the motions of breaking Alice's curse. .jpg) This location has nothing to do with breaking the curse. We just need an area with random battles we can curb stomp in short order. Here or the Blue Castle are the easiest areas to accomplish our goal. .jpg) Calios Mental Hospital is preferable because there is a bed we can instantly and freely fully heal and restore the MP of the entire party. This will come in handy for the next 90 minutes or so of grinding out random battles. We'll get to why we are doing that in a minute. .jpg) So how do we break Alice's curse? Well, do you remember way back when Joshua, the pickpocket kid from the London Rats who later started dabbling in soul trapping fellow orphans, just kind of handed us this mystical grail which he stole from... somewhere? Well, that is the initial prerequisite to getting the curse broken. Given the kind of lackluster rewards in the bonus dungeons, they would have stuck it in there. But no, some ten year old kid handed this plot-critical item to us with zero explanation of its origin. This offers us a hint on how to defeat the Four Masks Curse. Also, I like the implication the only way this revelation came to light was that the entity Death got completely hammered on devouring a bunch of souls (maybe a nice stock of orphan souls from a good year just sailed through the afterlife) and drunkenly told some guy the deal with the masks. According to this the Grail mask weakens the Gold Mask, the Gold Mask weakens Staff, Staff debuffs Sword and Sword... well, I guess Death just passed out for the evening in a puddle of his own vomit at that point. Don't worry about it! .jpg) So with this information in mind, let's get the Four Masks out from Yuri's Mind Palace in the Graveyard and into the material realm. To do that, we must get our Malice meter to the maximum. That shouldn't take too long clowning on the jobbers roaming the halls of this dungeon. Remember, in order to raise Malice in the second half of the game we need Alice to be in the active party. Not that we've kicked her out ever, it is just worth noting. Anyway, as soon as we hit maximum (red) Malice, then the next battle is... .jpg) Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg) .jpg)  Popping Shock!! <snicker> Are we supposed to know who this... thing is? It's an old pain in my rear end. That's not really an explanation, sonny boy..jpg) Remember, the Oath Grail said we should go Grail > Gold > Staff > Sword in order of challenging the masks. The problem is that once Malice is maxed out any of the Four Masks can appear during random battles and there is zero way to force the desired Mask to show up. And as you can see, challenging the wrong Mask makes it cast a permanent (for that battle) Judgment Ring Abnormality which makes the fight a huge pain in the rear end. So what do we do when the wrong mask appears? .jpg) .jpg) Well, we run the hell away! It's technically possible to defeat the masks out of order. But on top of the permanent status ring fuckery, they get twice as many turns and will often just spam SP Lowering attacks on the entire party so you're forced to scrabble around with SP restoration every other turn on top of everything. It is not great... Music: Castle of Silence .jpg) Then again, neither is the grind trying to get the desired Mask to appear. See the trouble with Maximum Malice the one time we actually WANT it is that only the first Red Malice indicated fight is a guaranteed Mask (or earlier in the game Fox Face) encounter. .jpg) .jpg) After that, it is random when they will appear next during a random battle. It is usually 2-3 fights until the next appearance. I had one after another exactly once and had as much as five fights before a Mask bothered to clock in for work. .jpg) .jpg) And again, there is only a one-in-four chance we'll get the Mask in question we're hunting for each time. It took me nearly forty minutes to get the Grail Mask to finally show up. So that was fun. Mind you, it would have taken longer if I didn't just start savestating on the emulator around when random battles would occur and trying to manipulate a different enemy spawn by running into load zones and what not. The first time I played through the game, doing this questline to get the Good Ending took me over two hours of rotten luck. .jpg) Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg) But finally, after many, many wasted battles finally the Grail Mask decided to grace us with its presence. .jpg)  Wh-What is that cup?! M-My strength is...?!.jpg) .jpg) Turns out the Oath Grail itself trumps the Grail Mask. Usually, the Grail Mask would cast a spell that would halve the Hit Area for everyone's Judgment Ring for the duration of the battle. But now that it is mad jacked by this sacred relic we got off a pickpocket orphan, everyone's Hit Area is doubled for the duration of the fight. What a blunder! .jpg) The Grail Mask isn't completely helpless. Just mostly helpless. It can still attack party members to lower their SP by 7 Points. Considering at full strength it would lower it by 75%, that's quite the downgrade. .jpg) It can also cast Dragon's Cry, which is just a renamed version of the highest level Water elemental spell. This only does around 100 HP of damage to the entire party. After the last few optional bosses, that barely registers. .jpg) .jpg) Meanwhile, Grail Mask only has 1500 HP in its weakened state and the party can trounce within two turns of just purely physical attacks. We don't even need to waste any MP on this clown. Music: Results .jpg) Despite being a total pushover now, Grail Mask counted as a boss enemy and gives appropriate levels of Experience and Cash. .jpg) Ah, the western canyon. I've heard much about its stocks of amber. Which western canyon? Don't worry about that. .jpg) Anyway, I'll just skip past the next twenty minutes trying to get the Gold Mask to show up again so we can cut to the chase. Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg) You don't have to. We kicked its rear end pretty easily. Hey! Gahh! I meant the Oath Grail trinket. There are multiple things named Grail. I made an error. Yeah, sure you did. Bah! Face me fools!.jpg) .jpg) The Gold Mask throws rocks at people. That's really all it's going on offensively outside mild SP Lowering. Sadly, we cannot counter-curse it like Grail Mask backfiring. I don't think a reduced sized Judgment Ring has an opposite that can be exploited for a gameplay buff. .jpg) Gold Mask does possess immunity to all physical attacks. That's fine. .jpg) .jpg) Demonic laser beams and aerial bombing runs? Not so much. Music: Results .jpg) That's two down and two to go. Who knew the answer to breaking a curse was just to punch the curse caster into submission. I mean, other than the fact that's how it worked with both Li Li's Ghost and Fox Face. Actually, I'm not sure why Yuri didn't start punching masks as soon as he heard Alice was cursed. Oh well, better late than never. .jpg) I had to look up what the hell carnelian was supposed to be. Apparently, it is "a brownish-red mineral commonly used as a semi-precious gemstone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker. Both carnelian and sard are varieties of the silica mineral chalcedony colored by impurities of iron oxide." Also, it is very fire resistant! If you're wondering, Mt. Jianghou is not a real place. I'll save you a curious Googling if the last twenty lore entries being jibberish hadn't dissuaded you yet. Moving right along to... Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg) You don't look gold to me. Brown and red, mostly. I mean you will feel my wrath on behalf of the fallen Gold Mask. Thanks, brother! Yeah, I've heard that one before. Bring it!.jpg) This guy just has Hellfire as its highest damage attack. It didn't even bother renaming it something spiffy. These masks are really slipping. .jpg) Staff Mask is the opposite of Golden Mask -- it is immune to all Special Attack damage. .jpg) .jpg) That isn't much of a problem. Yuri? Still pretty good at punching things, as it turns out! Music: Results .jpg) .jpg) If you cannot recognize patterns, each of the Masks is dropping a ring that halves a certain element's damage, though not necessarily the element corresponding to the defeated Mask's element of choice. Also, they are making up area names to make them sound more exotic. There is no Ibara Desert either. One Mask remains... Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg)  You OK over there, Staff Mask? He punched a hole in my face. My eye is connecting to my mouth now... Heh. Yeah, I did. You fiend! You will pay for that!.jpg) You'd think the Sword Mask, being the final of the quartet, would pose the greatest challenge of the Four Masks. But no... He just does a middling Wind element attack and has no immunities to any manner of our party's attacks. .jpg) .jpg) Needless to say, it doesn't go well for the final mask. Music: Results .jpg) .jpg) Now while I'm all in favor of bringing back the guillotine and getting down to business beheading some aristocrats, let's maybe not take the clearly haunted and/or cursed ring along with us here? I don't care if it halves Darkness damage. That just seems like a drat liability. .jpg) At this point, we've accomplished the first step of this quest to obtain the good ending and can now depart the Calios Mental Hospital forever. But... there is one thing worth showing now that the Four Masks have gotten their poo poo kicked in. We're still at Maximum Malice and that hasn't stopped the summoning of the Four Masks. Only now... .jpg) Music: Thorn of Mind .jpg) They're a broken shell of their former selves. Quite literally... .jpg) .jpg) ...they have exactly 1 HP. Any single attack will send them packing. If you're some obsessive completionist going for 100% Enemies filled out for the Library because you have to get that .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) What I didn't mention earlier is that the broken version of the masks immediately replaces the full strength ones in the maximum Malice pool. So there's still a one in four chance of the desired Mask showing up, you just wasted your time further by one-shotting the wrong one every subsequent time. But that's still a wasted random battle that only made the process longer. There are not best design decisions all around tying the Good Ending to copious amounts of RNG bullshit. It's kind of enough to make you want to just skip it. Music: Graveyard Moon .jpg) We are NOT quite done locking in the Good Ending of the game. There's a very easy to miss step that had me very confused the first time I played through the game and attempted to get the good ending. .jpg) It is essential that we return to the Graveyard after we defeat all Four Masks. Remember that tiny gravestone that appeared around the time Alice got cursed? Well if we look at it now. .jpg) That's definitely what's carved on the tiny tombstone. That's probably concerning... But now Yuri has knowledge that something is still up with Alice's curse. This might be important information in the very near future. .jpg) .jpg) While we're here we can sort out Alice's Malice build-up for the last time just so we don't continuously get harassed by 1 HP clowns pissing away everyone's time for the final stretch of the game. .jpg) That's it for this step of breaking Alice's curse. Tune in next time as we finally return to Nemeton Monastery and see what Roger Bacon has been up to in the time we've been out sidequesting for the last twelve updates as Shadow Hearts continues! The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 22:10
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I never thought I would call a living mask a pushover, but there we go.
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Jan 16, 2019 00:49
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I do like that the masks get new models for after they get their poo poo slapped. This early in the PS2 era, they could've easily just not bothered.
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Jan 16, 2019 01:06
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Majora's Mask they ain't
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Jan 16, 2019 01:14
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I actually managed to do this without a guide my first time through and I must have been real lucky on RNG because I don't remember having to actually work for it. What's even funnier is that I got the good ending of this game without really trying after I had beaten Covenant and got the good ending.
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Jan 16, 2019 01:31
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