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I've been waiting a long time for the poo poo about to go down. This is definitely the part of 2 I remember the best.
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Feb 8, 2020 22:51
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Big same.
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Feb 8, 2020 22:52
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Did the real-life Anastasia have any interest in photography, that we know of, or was that made up for this game?
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Feb 8, 2020 22:57
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Junpei posted:Did the real-life Anastasia have any interest in photography, that we know of, or was that made up for this game? Maybe not Anastasia specifically, but it was a pastime of the Royal Family at the time. (Click if you want to see a photo of Anastasia goofing off crossing here eyes at the camera while wearing gag false teeth).
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Feb 8, 2020 23:23
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Rasputin is apparently taking notes from Seymour Guado. Crazy hair and talks the talk, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, you realize just how mediocre he actually is.
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Feb 9, 2020 05:09
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Are we talking the same guy? Rasputin's hair is fairly normal, if kinda greasy looking, and so far he's talked the talk and been untouchable when attacked. Plus we haven't even gotten to him putting up or shutting up.
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Feb 9, 2020 05:23
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You'd think so, but after looking at that artbook profile with the hair and mullet, this guy's definitely a Guado fanboi. And the only thing that could make him look favorable after needing to take hostages when cornered and use a smoke bomb to bail at the first opportunity in the palace when before he could push threats aside with his magic shield is that all of the Dune and Stargate chat had a purpose after all. I mean
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Feb 9, 2020 05:35
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I never got the impression that Veronica was domming Rasputin. It seemed more to me she puts on a show for everyone but the moment they're alone she's really vanilla as hell.Xander77 posted:.... Ahhhh, MIS-STER HYU-GAAA!
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Feb 9, 2020 05:59
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.jpg)
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Maybe not Anastasia specifically, but it was a pastime of the Royal Family at the time. (Click if you want to see a photo of Anastasia goofing off crossing here eyes at the camera while wearing gag false teeth). poo poo like that just shows that... they're a really loving family but had absolutely no business running the country.
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Feb 9, 2020 06:26
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Rasputin is definitely not the best improviser. Maybe more of a one goal at a time with plenty of time to think about what to do next kinda person, and if there's some fuzzy bits like "what if those people who escaped show up and stop my assassin", that's fine. No need to obsess on the details.The Dark Id posted:nobles gather to the side and begin clapping and bowings
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Feb 9, 2020 07:22
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Fun fact: the lettering on the cover of that photo album literally says "Фото альбом" which means... photo album.
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Feb 9, 2020 07:54
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The Dark Id posted:Wait, what was the rest of the plan to take over...? It's not like assassinating the Tsar would make him the new Emperor. Was he just going to have Victor stab the entire royal family at different occasions? Was he going to marry the Empress or something? That's not how royal succession works, Greg. After assasination throne would go to Alexei. As he is not 16 yet, his mother would get regency until 1920, giving Rasputin de-facto complete control over the country for 5 years. In that time he can
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Feb 9, 2020 08:42
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Every time the camera pans over this party of clowns is absolute gold.
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Feb 9, 2020 14:55
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Man, that big dumb uppercut is one of the things that got me into the Shadow Hearts series. I saw it in a video on a demo disk and instantly loved it. Ironic considering I played Covenant last.
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Feb 9, 2020 17:37
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Literally all Rasputin had to do was have any other assassin do the hit and that photo wouldn't matter... why are you so bad at this?
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Feb 10, 2020 01:46
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 God, I love Anastasia.
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Feb 10, 2020 02:22
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Rasputin is as bad at improvising as Anastasia’s parents are at judging character and the guards are at doing their job. It’s no wonder Russia is losing the war, really.
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Feb 10, 2020 03:33
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Anastasia being a complete cutesy little poo poo while slam dunking Rasputin in a public forum is very good.
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Feb 10, 2020 05:53
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Episode LXIII: The Night Queen Music: Crisis .jpg) Let's just back up for a moment and review the events that got us to this point. Anastasia, a twelve year old, is the only member of this idiot royal family that sees that Rasputin is clearly evil as poo poo. She sneaks out at night, manages to acquire a camera she commissioned (and a weapon too in case she needs to dirt, mind you) and manages to tail Rasputin without the guy noticing. Out in the open, with an underground crypt literally five feet away where this could have been done instead, he discusses plans with his hired hitman about assassinating the Emperor and said assassination target's daughter takes a picture of this clandestine liaisons. At this point, Victor is just burned. He's not your guy anymore. He's done. Slit his throat and drop him in the river. Instead, Rasputin is terrible at thinking on the fly and jumps straight to attempting to murder the princess. Except, he half-asses that by outsourcing it to his hired goon who in turn outsources that to a dumb bird monster. And he fails. Your hitman failed to assassinate a tween girl. And now a photo of you and your assassin is out in the wind somewhere. Again, at this point, you break Victor's neck and leave his body in an alley. Go get Ewan, The Page or Elio, the Tippler or literally anyone else to be your assassin instead of the SINGLE dude where there is concrete photographic evidence of your involvement within this assassination plot. Hell, it's established you can STRAIGHT UP POSSESS and mind control people remotely. If Yuri showed up and uppercut anyone else's head off too and the assassination is a bust, like it went here, at least you've still got plausible deniability, Grigori. But no. Victor was still your dude. The one single dude you should not have let be the assassin. That is a hell of a goof, Greg. That's a hell of a goof... .jpg) With that all said, we should probably get on top of tracking down Rasputin and figuring out what the hell is exploding. There is only one path to take through the palace and it is quite sure. This is not a repeat dungeon. Thankfully, it seems Rasputin blew his trash mob load on spare monsters the previous time he attacked the palace for no real reason, so we're free of random battle filler during our pursuit. .jpg) .jpg) Ah, the courtyard. The one path we couldn't take last time through the palace due to the ragdolled sentry in front of the door and the etiquette against rolling royal guards the hell out of the way. It's very disrespectful. We quickly discover we are not the only ones who have decided to explore in this new direction. .jpg)  All the troops are going crazy! And it's crawling with monsters outside! Huh? You want something?No, we're good actually. The brothers' stock has not updated (it has in fact downgraded from our visit to Gerome Valley as they're still using their first visit to Petrograd inventory.) .jpg)  All the maids are in hysterics! If you try talking to them, they just scream! What's that? You want a dress?Absolutely not the time for that, Pierre. We're going to use a Tent, save the game and go see what all the fuss is about. .jpg) The courtyard, which is a dead-end except for the rooftop access readily available. Granted, I don't see Rasputin repelling down the wall on the far end. But, you know. There are options. .jpg)  Yuri! Aaah!The pair are rocked by an explosion in the distance. .jpg) Look at that!So what is Rasputin's Plan B now that he has been revealed to have orchestrated the devious assassination plot of having just some guy walk up and stab the Emperor? Remember how I said Rasputin has zero loving chill when he's panicking? Well, his back-up plan... .jpg)  Where was that hiding...?.jpg) .jpg) .jpg) Oh, his fallback plan was to call in his doom zeppelin and just indiscriminately start bombing the city. This guy has gone from "Oh poo poo, I'm caught" to full on scorched earth policy in the span of no more than ten minutes. That's kind of impressive. .jpg)  The city!! Oh... No!! This escalated quickly... Awroo... (No joke...).jpg) ...... <looks around frantically> Where is he?!.jpg) <points to the stairs> There! ...Wait, there is something else. Is that a... deer...?.jpg) Here goes!Oh, since bombing the city isn't quite enough... Rasputin has also unleashed a horde of flying reindeer upon the town as well. Sure, why not, Rasputin. Drop some mustard gas on an orphanage while you're at it and then go poison the water supply for good measure. .jpg) .jpg) These deer harpies are known as Peryton and are Dark elemental foes with a meager 99 HP. They have an unimpressive physical attack string, can cast Evil Born and more problematically Arc Shield and tend to favor setting up combos to maximize their attack output. The Peryton is a mythological beast from the ancient, lost times and land of... 1957 Spain. Wikipedia on Peryton posted:
This might be the most faithful copy and pasting of a bestiary entry that would end up getting ripped off by Dungeons & Dragons yet. .jpg) As for the creatures themselves, the bulk of them decided to bunch up despite having the ability to fly. This was a poor tactical choice on their part. .jpg) Aww! That was too easy!.jpg) Now, we should head upstairs and pursue Rasputin. But, there was a very easy to miss chest we need to go grab. You can see it when entering the courtyard but control is taken away by that cutscene and we're dumped in the middle of the courtyard afterward. .jpg) .jpg) But we do really want that chest. It's got a quite spectacular magic crest inside. Ipos provides Arc Gale aka haste for the entire party. Now that seems like a keen ability for, I don't know, the boss fight that is probably waiting on the roof. Just throwing that out there... .jpg) We are going to equip that crest on someone. But more importantly, the entire party needs to equip Leonardo's Bears. Instant Death might be a severe issue in a few minutes, otherwise. .jpg) With that prep work done, we can now head to the roof. Random battles against more of the Peryton jobbers on the way up to the roof. But that's just a minor delay. Music: Veronica Vera ~ Her Majesty, The Queen .jpg) Petropavlovsk Fortress (aka the Peter and Paul Fortress) is the original citadel St. Petersburg was built around and was used as a prison at this point in time. It's about two kilometers away, directly across the river from the Winter Palace. Like, you can straight up see it out of the window of the palace. So Rasputin's fallback retreat is to just dash across a bridge and stopping at the first place on the opposite side of the river. That's like trying to ace the US President in the White House and retreating to the Washington Monument if things went south. Again, I'm very much starting to suspect Rasputin may be bad at this whole villainy on the fly thing... .jpg) <takes fighting stance> Out of the way, Veronica! That perfume trick isn't going to work twice and we've beaten all your lousy monsters of the week. Your dog killed my dog. Yeah, he's a good boy like that! Awroo!.jpg) I'll see you in hell! You can't match this power of mine, a gift from Lord Rasputin himself!.jpg) Music: Ladder to Heaven .jpg) Oh, uhh... Hello there. I guess this is happening now... So the next stage of Rasputin's intense, definitely not panicking and throwing all the emergency levers at once escalation is to turn his girlfriend into an eight titted, winged hell beast. Sure, I guess that is an option. That is a thing you could do... At least Lenny had the decency to properly transform before jumping straight to the boss fight part. Meet .jpg) Accompanying her are a pair of Peryton and their enormous asses. I noticed it while editing this update and now so too do you gain this curse. Our priority is to immediately kill the two add-on minions before they get a chance to even take a turn. Otherwise, they'll cast Arc Shield on the Night Queen and set up a combo with her and we really don't want that added headache. .jpg) .jpg) Despite being a Water elemental enemy on paper, the transformed Veronica actually has access to every single mid-level AOE elemental spell and her AI is surprisingly good at targeting the elemental weakness spells for our characters as well as hitting anyone bunched up together for good measure. .jpg) In addition to having all the magic, she is quite strong physically with the added trouble of her physical attacks potentially causing Instant Death. Yeah, not knowing about that ahead of time? A little rough. .jpg) .jpg) However, we are decently prepped so after we eliminate the deer baddies, we'll have the party get buffed with Arc Rage, mostly for Yuri (Amon) and Karin, and Arc Gale for everyone to step up their game. Thankfully, Veronica spent all of her DCP on those offensive spells and didn't pack any debuffs or buff negation magic. .jpg) .jpg) If we're lucky, we can maybe set up one four-person Combo to get in some decent damage to speed things up further. But for the most part, more than a 2-3 person combo is the most we're getting in here. And it's mostly not worth it to bother and just stick to independent attacks just due to all of her AOE spells. .jpg) But mostly because every other round, we're likely going to need to heal up folks. As said, Night Queen is quite good at targeting elemental weaknesses and letting low HP members ride more than two turns without getting topped off is a dicey prospect. .jpg) Additionally, this fight drags on long enough that the issue of Sanity had to be addressed. Especially, having Anastasia as a mandatory member of the team. She's running light on the SP front. We can't all be confronting evil wizards and world-ending threats day in and day out to get the sanity up to snuff. .jpg) .jpg) But, as long as we keep an eye on everyone and take an occasional break to address any issues, Veronica's final monster of the week will eventually fall. Music: Result ~ Victory .jpg) Keep your eyes where they belong!Look, Karin, it was hard not to notice the eight boobs on that monster. They had jiggle physics and everything. It was grotesque. .jpg) We get another Magic Crest for our troubles. Do you think it's meant to be Hale Break? What the heck is a Hale Beak...? .jpg) The hell is ylang ylang? Hmm... Cananga odorata, known as the cananga tree, is a tropical tree that is native from India, through parts of Indochina, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, to Queensland, Australia. OK, if you say so. I suppose it makes sense Veronica would drop another Aroma Oil for Lucia. Indeed, it's the last one we get on Disc 1. Moon Oil makes the Aromatherapy concoctions:
Oil doesn't even seem like a real word anymore and these write-ups are only going to get longer. Yeesh. That 100% Critical Hit rate actually sounds pretty drat good. Though, I could leave the rest, frankly. .jpg) We're tagging Joachim back into the ring after this chapter. I feel bad he's nearing Lucia and Gepetto levels after trading him out for Anastasia. Poor guy didn't even make a Level Up on a major boss. .jpg) Tune in next time for the main event! Who is ready to see Amon punch a Mad Monk? The day approaches as Shadow Hearts: Covenant continues.    Video: Episode 63 Highlight Reel   Winter Palace Courtyard Concept Art - Needs more flying reindeer.     Veronica Vera Concept Art - Amazingly, the final version we got is modestly dressed in comparison. The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Feb 11, 2020 |
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Feb 10, 2020 20:55
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I can’t remember- is there any kind of final conversation between Lucia and Veronica? Not that it’s worth putting Lucia in the party to get it, of course. I didn’t know the Peryton was so recent a conceived monster. Thought it had myth roots farther back than 1957. Oh well.
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Feb 10, 2020 23:07
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Anastasia always reminded me of Relm from Final Fantasy VI. But like, toned down to 7
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Feb 10, 2020 23:14
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This party has not even begun to get crazy.
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Feb 10, 2020 23:50
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achtungnight posted:I can’t remember- is there any kind of final conversation between Lucia and Veronica? Not that it’s worth putting Lucia in the party to get it, of course. Nope. Outside of St. Margaurite and the scene added in the Director's Cut they don't interact at all.
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Feb 11, 2020 00:11
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So, Rasputin took the time to set up a giant death zeppelin, a horde of Santa’s rejects, and a fairly strong snake woman transformation for his dominatrix girlfriend, but couldn’t come up with anything resembling a coherent plan for implementing it in case things went eight-tits-up? Man, he was doing so well before this, but he squandered all his villain cred in about ten minutes.
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Feb 11, 2020 00:33
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"The plan has failed, get the zeppelin and the deer monsters" "Why... why do we have those? What was the plan before now?"
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Feb 11, 2020 00:58
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The zeppelin and deer monsters were obviously for decimating the German military after his takeover in order to secure the legitimacy of his new government.
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Feb 11, 2020 01:02
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Is it my imagination, or did Rasputin's textbox name change?
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Feb 11, 2020 01:09
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Geostomp posted:So, Rasputin took the time to set up a giant death zeppelin, a horde of Santa’s rejects, and a fairly strong snake woman transformation for his dominatrix girlfriend, but couldn’t come up with anything resembling a coherent plan for implementing it in case things went eight-tits-up? I know. The Christopher Lloyd voiced Rasputin in that Don Bluth movie had more villain creed than this.
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Feb 11, 2020 01:28
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Tallgeese posted:Is it my imagination, or did Rasputin's textbox name change? It has indeed. Most people reading this blind would be forgiven for thinking that this is accurate here since lore-wise he already has made a pact with Asmodeus, but I don't think we ever get a textbox with the actual Asmodeus-Rasputin and his palette swapped portrait. Shitenshi fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Feb 11, 2020 |
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Feb 11, 2020 01:34
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Honestly I forgotten how piss poor the actual assassination attempt was.
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Feb 11, 2020 01:40
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Honestly, all of you making GBS threads on Rasputin's villain cred are forgetting what genre of game this is
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Feb 11, 2020 02:08
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What I really want to say is a spoiler, but when you find out What Rasputin's Deal Is, you'll all understand why he's actually really bad at being a villain.Shitenshi posted:
Edit because I am bad at timing. cdyoung fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Feb 11, 2020 |
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Feb 11, 2020 02:36
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Barbaria, or the third-tier Fire fusion if you have it, can make the Night Queen (and most other bosses) almost comically quick to end; Energy Charge (next melee attack is powered up), plus Rage/Arc Rage from another party member, will just straight cleave a good third of her health off each time. You can probably just about OHKO her if you slap a Third Key in there as well. I can't remember if it's been found by now, but you can get even more nasty by giving Yuri the accessory to make his Judgement Ring hit zones invisible in exchange for increased melee damage to really snap things over your knee. His strike pattern's are equally-spaced, so you almost have to actively try to gently caress up hitting all five zones if you can get the timing for the first one.
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Feb 11, 2020 03:44
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cdyoung posted:What I really want to say is a spoiler, but when you find out What Rasputin's Deal Is, you'll all understand why he's actually really bad at being a villain. I mean in a simple non-cutscene story sequence. It's easy to say that Rasputin is a poorly organized scrub villain, but then again the guy does have a pretty bitchin warship and demonic power on his hands. It's almost like the whole win over the monarchy thing was just a fallback plan as opposed to his main goal of wrecking poo poo. Caim might even smile at such priorities.
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Feb 11, 2020 04:45
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Shitenshi posted:I mean in a simple non-cutscene story sequence. Well if people know their Demon Princes, anyone who hears Asmodeus would know exactly why Rasputin seems like a scrub tier evil overlord.
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Feb 11, 2020 05:10
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cdyoung posted:Well if people know their Demon Princes, anyone who hears Asmodeus would know exactly why Rasputin seems like a scrub tier evil overlord. I see what you mean. Wikipedia says Asmodeus is the name of an Austrian black metal band. Laaaaaaaaaaaame.
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Feb 11, 2020 07:15
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Now now, in AD&D Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, a greater power, a top tier devil deal maker, and a miles long serpent in his true form. If there is some myth is where he’s lame, that’s probably what he wants you to think, not reality.
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Feb 11, 2020 07:20
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achtungnight posted:Now now, in AD&D Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, a greater power, a top tier devil deal maker, and a miles long serpent in his true form. If there is some myth is where he’s lame, that’s probably what he wants you to think, not reality. Being a named figure in Dungeons and Dragons is kinda like being an evil overlord in an MMO. No amount of fluff can make up for the fact that you've been stomped by player characters potentially thousands of times. I do appreciate that Rasputin wrote up a list of backup plans, and instead of picking one just decided to each plan one after the other.
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Feb 11, 2020 08:15
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achtungnight posted:Now now, in AD&D Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, a greater power, a top tier devil deal maker, and a miles long serpent in his true form. If there is some myth is where he’s lame, that’s probably what he wants you to think, not reality. Oh yeah, my first exposure to Asmodeus was through those D&D lore books. The real Asmodeus isn't half as badass as D&D Satan but being one of the seven princes of hell is still a pretty cool title.
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Feb 11, 2020 09:13
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Rasputin is a fully appropriate villain for this party.
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Feb 11, 2020 14:03
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