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ivantod posted:Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I think you're doing an absolutely killer job OP! I can't imagine wanting anything more--but if I had to ask it would be a little more PCE stuff if at all possible? I don't know how possible it even is
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Jun 30, 2022 14:39
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One thing that I think would be helpful would be to periodically do kind of a... world status update? The LP has been fantastic, but I have pretty much completely lost track of what is where, or where you've noted things we're going to come back to later. Just like "Here is this quadrant, these are the towns and currently notable locations in it, here's what we've done there, here's what our current to-do list is like".
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Jun 30, 2022 16:19
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The Lord of Hats posted:One thing that I think would be helpful would be to periodically do kind of a... world status update? The LP has been fantastic, but I have pretty much completely lost track of what is where, or where you've noted things we're going to come back to later. Just like "Here is this quadrant, these are the towns and currently notable locations in it, here's what we've done there, here's what our current to-do list is like". Waffles Inc. posted:I think you're doing an absolutely killer job OP! I can't imagine wanting anything more--but if I had to ask it would be a little more PCE stuff if at all possible? I don't know how possible it even is
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Jun 30, 2022 17:10
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The only thing I want from this LP is a sequel to Linda³, but I know that's a little beyond your ability, OP.
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Jun 30, 2022 18:11
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 Remarkably we are even quite closely related to fruit and vegetables. About half the chemical functions that take place in a banana are fundamentally the same as the chemical functions that place in a human body. -- Bill Bryson Last time we left Ken and Linda a bit of in the middle of a sidequest, just as they were about to pick up some turtle eggs to bring back to the Broncos in Battle Park! So let's continue right where we left off! Actually before we start, a little bit of trivia that might have escaped your attention. Linda's surname is actually different in each scenario. In scenarios A and B, the game makes a point of telling it to us over the course of the story. Thus, we find that in scenario A, her name is "Linda Aurea", whereas in scenario B, her name is "Linda Banning". In scenario C, the game does not tell it to you directly, but since Ken and Linda are married in this version of events, you could potentially assume that she took Ken's last name (which is Challenger). Therefore her full name in scenario C would be "Linda Challenger". So when we look at it, we can see that the first letter of Linda's surname always corresponds to the letter which designates the scenario itself: A, B and C. That's a pretty neat touch that many people probably miss entirely! Anyway, now back to our turtle eggs!  I guess let's pick up a few?  After picking up a few, nobody comes chasing after us... so let's try making our way out then!  On our way out, we run across another new animal species, just causally flying about in the cave. Let's see what it is!  So, these flying creatures are northern sea lions (a.k.a. Steller sea lions). Yes, I know, that's like oddly super specific, but that's how it is! In Japanese the game refers to them as トド as opposed to アシカ (which would be regular sea lion). So yeah. The latter version of sea lion is not even in the game at all! Anyway, these guys are definitely not a joke and will gladly obliterate you if you give them a chance! In particular, at the level that our characters are, it's an absolute necessity to use some kind of restraint or debuff against them, since on top of everything else they tend to appear in large groups of 6 or more. In my case, I found that using "smelly fart" works well to make this fight easier. Obviously you also want to use a beastman transformation which gives you the most extra attack without sacrificing the defence, in order to more quickly deal with their high HP. Considering that mostly it was relatively clear sailing in combat so far, this one might surprise you with a sudden difficulty spike, especially compared to other species inhabiting this cave! By the way, the PC Engine version looks similar, but just a liiiiiitle bit freakier:  After this...  ...we're done here and can leave the cave. The weather outside is not great, though, but what can you do. So let's head back to Battle Park and see what we get as reward!   Ken has big eggs snatched away from him!  She works on making the soup and then...  She goes over to her husband... The husband tries the soup...   He goes down into the basement, and we follow him.  So this is an interesting choice here. Although they are not all in easily accessible locations, in general these all can be caught without specific preparations (unlike e.g. what we had to do with swallows). In particular, hydras can be found in Samakia simply by letting them ambush you overnight (although we haven't yet done so). Also, as it happens, we'll catch us quite easily some snakeheads (a species of fish) just later today. In the end, one option to take is to simply take whatever has the biggest sale value, and more or less that's hydra. So we'll take ten of each of hydra and basically go and sell them all. You could keep one of each for the ark, but there's no reason since they can be easily caught as I've already mentioned. So when you think about it, it's not really a particularly interesting reward really. He says this no matter what you choose.  Again as we start to leave, he stops us... Now you want pteranodon eggs? More interestingly though, it seems that somewhere on this planet there are also still living animals from the time when dinosaurs ruled on Earth... well, or at least whatever their Neo Kenyan version looks like. But where?  On the way out, we stop by to talk to Louise again... Well, looks like we have a new quest then?  Checking the quest screen confirms that indeed we do. We "simply" need to bring some pteranodon eggs to Bronco at Battle Park. Good news is that unlike the turtle eggs, this time we have full four years time to do it--so pretty much until the end of the scenario! All right, well, we don't currently know where to find a pteranodon, so let's continue with our other tasks. First off, I want to go and sell those hydras. But they are a Class A protected animal, so we'll have to go over to Nebul so we can do it illegally.  You might recall that the Bird Line to Nebul is not initially open. In order to open it, you have to talk three times to one of the Bird Line employees in one of the cities in the starting East Area. But the question is, which one? In fact there's few enough of them that you can simply brute force it. But the real truth is that which person it will be is really determined based on the name of the dog that the girl gives you at the beginning of the scenario. There are only about six different names her dog can have, and each one corresponds to one of the Bird Line people. So if you don't want to try them all, you can find a cheat sheet, I guess. The "real" way to do this is to find an NPC which straight up tells you which person it is--the only problem with this being that... said NPC is actually in Nebul itself, so you would have to reach it normally first before you can find out what she says! In any case, after opening the Bird Line to Nebul, we'll briefly head over there.   First we stop by the animal trader to unload our hydras. This brings us to a comfortable spot money-wise of over 300,000 G  The other thing is, Nebul of course is one of the places which has an animal dismantler. We'll dismantle our ant queen! Well, isn't that something? If you dismantle the ant queen, (first time) you get another one of those biblically-named rings! Good thing we tried this, since there's no other way to get this particular ring except by doing this!  On our way out of Nebul, we can quickly stop and take that exit in the bottom left...  It leads to a balcony with this person on it... Good advice for life in general, I suppose. Anyway, we head back to Hardia, and as soon as we exit to the outside...  ...it becomes Summer 1994. There is now exactly 5 years left until the meteorite impact! While we're around, there are a couple of teleporter spots here where we can use some of our beastman necklaces.  One is right next to the ark.  This teleporter leads to...  ...Marblepolis, of all places. You might recall that this was the first time we came across an inactive teleporter, all the way back in Scenario A. There was another mystery here, a few of those odd blue domes/capsules, which we haven't been able to do anything with. Going back to the ark, though...  ...just a little bit to the north, there is another teleporter.  This one leads to...  ...that place called Daicave which like a really big cave ("dai" means big Japanese). We don't really need it right now, but we might use it for a quick exit later on. Returning back to the ark for a moment, we'll head very slightly southeast of it.   Here is the Karagoram cave.  Here we find the scientists who are trying to get the cave to fill up with water again, in order to revive an extinct species. But unfortunately, they are running out of budget.  We'll give them a cool 100,000 G! That's nice and good, but I'm definitely more interested to see which animal species might be revived from those dry eggs that just need water to grow! All right, now that that's all sorted, let's pick up our next quest. It's true that we have already two outstanding quests, but we don't seem to be able to do anything about those yet. So let's move on to the next one that we CAN do something about. This one is actually quite fun if you do it the right way.  Let's of course start by listening to our next message from a quest-giver! Right, so looks like the guy who "revitalised" Koshikata needs our help. Could it be that something has happened to the tiger's claw, the symbol of the city? (Spoiler alert: yes!) Our next stop, then, is Koshikata!   Once there, we'll head straight to the mayor's house. As mentioned the current mayor is the son of the guy who rebuilt the town (the guy in a t-shirt who seemed upset last time). But we've been called by his father, so that's who we'll talk to. Are you all right, sir? You don't sound too well, honestly. Ken learns the "camouflage" ability from Poliska! As it says on the tin, if you use this ability then you will be temporarily not visible to animals. So any species that might chase you will no longer be able to see you and will stop chasing. Might prove useful in certain situations. Also, as you can see, none of these abilities could be learned in scenarios A and B. Only now do we truly get to experience the full extent of the game. Talking to him a little bit more yields another tidbit. All righty then.  Checking our quest list, it just reiterates that we should find the town's symbol, the tiger's claw and bring it back to Poliska. The time left is 1 year and 3 seasons. We'll get on this quest straight away. But, actually, there is a bit of an interesting situation here. We need to bring a tiger's claw weapon. But ultimately, it's just a weapon. Which means, it can be made from 10 male tigers, right? Well, yes. In fact, there are multiple ways to solve this quest. One of them is indeed to simply go and catch 10 tigers (which is not so difficult) and synthesise the weapon from animals. In fact, you could have just asked Bronco to give you 10 tigers and you'd already be done with this quest right now! However, if you don't want to do that, there is also the second way to do this. An upcoming quest has multiple possible outcomes, and one of them gives you the tiger's claw as reward. So you could do that quest first, and then bring back the weapon. This isn't really recommended since another outcome of that future quest gives a much better reward so it would be a shame to waste it on getting just a tiger's claw. So, then, we're going to go and catch some tigers, right? Wrong. We'll take the third option! There is also a tiger's claw available to be found in a chest in one of the dungeons. Getting to it is a lot of fun, so it would be my recommended way of dealing with this.  For this, we need to head down south which of course means catching a flight to Dogy Figh!  East of Dogy Figh...  ...we also get a message notification as we are walking around.  We catch a couple of hippos on the way. But where could we be going, you might ask? Well. Some time ago we've been told about a bandits' hideout full of traps that is apparently located in the northeast part of southern area. That seems like a viable place where a stolen item might be found, right?  Here is the place we're looking for!  This place is called Coral Collana ("collana" means necklace in Italian). So let's explore it and see what we might find.  Just a staircase leading up, it seems.  Climbing up, there is a staircase leading down the other side, but also a sign with some writing on it! The sign says: The chest in the back is empty, so there's no point in opening it, ok? -- García, the great thief Ah. So he likes to play games then.  Indeed, there is a chest here, and if we open it, it is indeed empty. So let's leave it closed as the sign says. We'll simply take the other staircase down.  It just leads to anotehr nondescript part of the cave.  Eventually we get to another staircase going down...  ...and then back up to another part of the cave.  Here, there's another staircase down and another sign, which reads as follows: The same way you do with the toilet door, you should do with these chests--don't leave them open! -- García, the stickler for etiquette  Two chests, empty. Leave them closed, I guess. We'll again follow the next staircase down.  Sure, let's keep going...  ...only to reach another staircase up!  This leads us to the third sign! It reads: Postmen always wet their boots twice! Actually, just kidding (lol)! -- García, the humorous This one is a little bit harder, but it will become clear in a second.  Three chests this time. There is a mention of number 2, so...  ...let's do like this.  Then we can continue down like this.  We reach this staircase leading down. If we hadn't done the chests right, it would have looked like this instead:  Thus, blocking our way forward. Hence the hint about wetting the boots but actually not. Anyway, let's proceed down!  Eventually we reach another sign. It reads: There is a pitfall ahead. Don't you think I'm being really nice right now? -- García, the kindhearted  Only two chests here. The first one is empty, but the second...  Oh, nice! Not only that, but also... ...we fall through! Well, the note said so, right?  We fall in a little bit of a dangerous situation, though. Here you can use either camouflage, or throw some meat if you have it to distract these guys. This is another new species which we'll check out in a moment, but first...  There are two signs here! The first one says: Let's learn Japanese! Turn to page 28! Red is 赤. Yellow is 黄. Green is 緑. Blue is 青. -- García, the studious Of course in the actual game, this joke is reversed and teaches English. But this is the best I could come up with! Anyway, the other note says the following: You're too busy To appreciate the changing seasons. No time left at all. -- Garcius, the haiku poet I love this last one, but I'm going to have to take a moment to explain what's the joke. Actually the whole joke is really in the signature. Up until now, the name García was written simply by using katakana, as would normally be done in modern Japanese, as ガルシア (Garushia), so nothing out of the ordinary there. However in this last one, the name is signed as 我留詩亜 instead. As I'm sure some of you know, the practice of writing foreign names/words in katakana was not always so prevalent, and even in the early XX century the names would at least sometimes be written instead by using the kanji for their phonetic value only. And so the word 我留詩亜, if you use purely phonetic values of these characters, can be pronounced exactly as Garushia, same as it was with katakana. So the idea is, I guess, to give it a more old-fashioned feel like it's a poet from centuries ago. I have tried to mimic this by using a vaguely "Latin" sounding version of the name García, since a few centuries ago, this was not an uncommon thing for people to do with Latin often being a sort of lingua franca, at least in Europe. Note however that I got this deliberately wrong: the proper latin version of García is actually "Garsea", but that didn't sound "Latin enough" to me, so I Latinised it by using a stereotypical "-us" ending! Bonus: In 2017 they made a special promotional video for the Great Ace Attorney game where the "modern" Phoenix meets his ancestor. At some point in the video they start making jokes exactly on this topic. You can watch it here (I have added the timestamp for the relevant part). All right, after a clearly way too long of an explanation for such a small thing, let's move on!  Clearly these fish (?) do not belong to any species we've seen so far, so let's catch a few!  These are snakeheads, which as you will recall, was one of the options for which animal to get from Bronco. As you can see, they are very easily found down here, so getting them from Bronco is a complete waste. Yeah, so they also have the "desperate attack" ability, which essentially adds a large part of their defence state into the attack stat. So the attack will be quite heavy, but they will be exposed with reduced defence after. Also not how they have the ability to eject one of our party members from the battle. If this is linda (or dogs) then the battle continues. If this is Ken, then the battle ends immediately. I should probably mention that Linda does also have by now that ability. As mentioned, probably next time I will go a bit more into details about the abilities as I feel I have neglected that part a bit. They, too, used to look just a liiiiiiiitle bit freakier in the original:  But, let's see what else is here.  After dealing with this, we can see that there is still a way to go here. We won't take the staircase up, but instead we'll check out what's down the hallway.  It leads, first of all, to another sign on the wall. This one reads as follows:  Well, that's mysterious (or not?).  On the other side, there are some doors, but only one has a panel of sorts next to it. If we examine it...  Checking back to what that last note said, it clearly gives the arrangements for these lights (green/red). The letters SSAW correspond to Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (the previous notes told us to consider the colours and seasons). Since right now it happens to be Summer, then we'll use the Summer arrangement of colours, like so:  This of course, opens the door and we can pass through.  Now we still need to get to that door in front of us. There are wolves in the rooms to the side, and if the security cameras see you, they will come in an fight you. You can avoid it by sneaking along the wall. But, as it turns out, we do want to catch a couple of wolves for the ark...   After catching a pair of wolves, we need to go back out to reset the situation, and then...  ...we can sneak through by hugging the wall.  Then we get attacked by these dudes. Seems like we've been here forever? What you answer is completely irrelevant, because:  And you just have to fight them! There are several fights one after the other. Luckily we're high enough level that this is not a problem.  Over here to the left is Mr. García himself! If you give the second answer, he will take all of your money. But either way...  ...we go into a fight! After you defeat him, if he took your money, you get it back. After the fight, we can also check out that chest in the corner: Ken obtained the key to the safe!  We can use the key over on the other side, where there are four more chests! The first chest contains 3,100 G. The second chest, contains a clam shell, a piece of equipment. The third one has the leopard sabre, a weapon. Both Ken and Linda already have a clam shell, so we can just sell this extra one. And then, the last chest:  Finally! It took a little bit of time, but we finally found what we were looking for! And now tell me, why would you go and make a tiger's claw from 10 tigers when you can do this other thing and infiltrate the bandits' hideout instead? Right? Honestly this whole thing is just super fun to do. However, we can definitely head back to Koshikata now.  Oh by the way, when you're leaving, make sure to hug the wall again so you don't get attacked by wolves. Ask me how I know this.  Anyway, here we are back in Koshikata in front of the Mayor's house.  After entering, we get some news from the son... Ken received the red beastman statue! Oh-ho, so our collection of statues in various colours is growing, huh? I don't even know what to think about this guy.  Over here we can talk to his wife and daughter. And the daughter... Well this quest kind of ended with a whimper... So let's not end on this note for today. Instead, we'll go and have some more NPC chat before we finish. Let's head to Nebul, where we haven't had a chance to spend much time yet and see if anybody has anything interesting to say.  First we can have a chat with the guy at the left luggage counter. Unfortunately, with all the nice QOL features this game has despite its age, easy inventory management is NOT one of them. You only get 32 slots in your inventory, plus another 32 in left luggage... and that's it. In addition to that, perishable items like plants, meat, poop, etc. can't be given to left luggage so you have to carry them with you. And in addition to that, the items of same kind DO NOT stack. So if you have e.g. 5 potions, well, that's 5 slots of your inventory gone! There is however the function to "drop" the items you don't need, after which they're gone forever. But it can be a little annoying sometimes, since sometimes you have to pre-plan or even drop a consumable item in order to be able to pick something up. For those who played the original version of Demon's Souls, it's a bit like going into 2-2 and eventually realising you'll have to make more than one trip in order to be able to pick everything up that is lying around in that level!  Let's head down into the business area... First we'll talk to that person that is just barely visible on the left side of the screen.  We'll also have a chat with this person in what looks like a kitchen?  You might remember that this town is kind of "upside down", i.e. all buildings have entrances on the roof! Let's talk to the person on the bench. Well, this is nice, but at this point Linda can do wolves and much more than than (eagles, dolphines, etc.). So this might be useful if you want to use it before Linda gains the ability. Nevertheless, we'll find Jill in a bit and just see if she has anything to say. Let's head down into the bar...   Let's talk to this gentleman here... And the other guy to the left... Yeah, that's definitely the kind of attitude that always seems to be prevalent... That door in the bottom right corner is a "dressing room door", and therefore it can be opened with the key we recently got.  However, there's nothing here, other than the ability to get up on the stage. So let's move on. By the way, have you noticed actually how many of these keys you can't even get at all in scenarios A and B?  Next, we'll make a stop at the hotel.  First we'll talk to this hunter here. We can also certainly bother the person in the room behind him. Man, so many people give you hints about swallows. Luckily we don't need to remember this one since we're already done with that whole story.  Downstairs is another room. I'm sure you've noticed the room with two chests there. It can be opened with the storage room key. The first chest contains a big golden nugget, and the second... well, see for yourself:  Oh, a white one now, too? Huh.  Going back outside, we can talk to this pregnant lady here. People keep talking about this thing... we'll definitely have to figure it out sooner rather than later.  Next on our list is this person here. We didn't, but let's say we did. So this is what I was talking about previously, this woman tells you how to open the flight to Nebul. Of course, since there are less than 10 possibilities, you can just spend a few minutes and talk to all of them until you find the right one. Or alternately you can google for a table telling you how which person to talk to ties in with the possible names for the dog the girl gives you at the start.  Over here in the corner is another tent...  There is a woman sitting on the bed... So this is the wolf girl. For now, we don't need to do anything here, since anyway Linda can train wolves and for free too. So let's move on.  Finally, there is this well hidden guy here. Uh, let's see what he has for sale, then...  Well, that's certainly an unexpected list of items for sale... He sels a smooth egg for 6 G, a tissue for 2 G (which is useless as far as gameplay is concerned), a tablet of Vigour II for 120 G (I guess you can try that for some random stat increase in battles) and also... a white beastman statue for 66,600 G. Does that mean we could buy another white beastman statue? But I thought they were one of a kind? Well, turns out the game is a bit cheeky here. The white beastman statue is not part of the "set" with all the other colours, but is instead a useless item which just takes up space. This applies also to the one we just found a few mintues ago. So spending the 66,600 G on this would definitely be throwing the money away. In fact, not only that, but...  ...the other white beastman statue we just got from a chest, I'm just going to sell it to him for 33,300 G! It's the only use it has, to be sold for money! I also sold the big golden nugget to him for 12,200 G. Not a bad deal for a few minutes of work! All right, I think it's time to head back to the ark now and hand in everything we picked up recently!  After that, checking in with the robot...  ...we find that we're currently standing at 59 species collected out of 120, so pretty much at the halfway mark. Not so bad, I think. Anyway, that's definitely been quite an adventure today, so let's stop here for now and we'll see where we go next.  So as mentioned, I will add kind of a rough "to do" list of various taks we might need to get around to tackling at some point during the remainder of the game. I've added here a few things which I could remember also from before, and also I will mark for each task whether it is something that came out of NPC chatter, or it's a part of a quest, or something else ("other"), e.g. if we want to figure out the purpose of an item or something like that. So here is approximately what we have on the list at the moment:
I think that should about cover most of the things, but let me know if I have forgotten to put anything on the list.  Just a typically weird one of Linda today! ivantod fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jul 3, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 22:12
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Find a place with lava where we can get some hot poop which could be used to revive the cherry trees in Eterna. 
Go back to the place where they are digging for water and see if they managed to restore the water and to revive the dormant eggs of as yet unknown species.
Find a way to catch pelicans. Apparently they appear to people who have no money. Also, where would we look for them?
Find the use for all the beastman statues of different colours.
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That list helps a lot with keeping up just how many things the game has set up.
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Jul 3, 2022 01:20
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What if her maiden name in scenario C was "Cube"
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Jul 3, 2022 01:39
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TurnipFritter posted:What if her maiden name in scenario C was "Cube" Her birth last name doesn't actually change between scenarios, her situation does. In scenario A, her parents divorced so she has her mother's last name. In scenario B, they're back together so she has her father's. And in scenario C, she married Ken and presumably took his last name. They actually thought this one pretty well, it's technically consistent between scenarios while still allowing her to have a different last name that fits the scenario's letter.
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Jul 3, 2022 01:51
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excellent translation of some of the more cultural specific jokes!
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Jul 3, 2022 08:21
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Blaze Dragon posted:Her birth last name doesn't actually change between scenarios, her situation does. In scenario A, her parents divorced so she has her mother's last name. In scenario B, they're back together so she has her father's. And in scenario C, she married Ken and presumably took his last name. You know, I never actually thought that far about this, but when I think about it now you're absolutely right. Yet another clever little touch in a game absolutely full of them!
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Jul 3, 2022 09:33
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Today in phrases one never thought they would read:quote:a place with lava where we can get some hot poop which could be used to revive the cherry trees Loving this LP. It's just weird enough where I'm hooked and want to see what's coming next. Thanks for playing/translating!
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Jul 8, 2022 04:48
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 Always take a banana to a party. -- Steven Moffat Last time, Ken and Linda solved a couple of sidequests, among them rescuing a stolen "tiger's claw", the symbol of Koshikata. Although we have a couple of outstanding quests, it seems we're not able to do anything with them at the moment. However, we have a message to listen to that's still outstanding.  In addition to that, as we're standing around...  ...we receive another new mesage notification! So let's go and listen to the first outstanding message immediately.  Well, we have met Natasha in the previous scenario as the lawyer who was handling the inheritance for Mr. Orman, after he was assassinated by Emory or one of his Sachiko clones. Let's go and see what she's up to in this version.  Here we are in Dogy Figh. I will definitely never get tired of that name.  We head straight to the Orman family residence area.  As we're walking to where Natasha is, this guy in blue shirt interrupts us. Ok, sure.  Anyway, Natasha is here, as always. If you refuse to do the job, it's possible to haggle with her for a bigger reward up to 50,000 G, as a matter of fact. There is actually another part to the reward which the game tells you nothing about, thus enticing you to potentially choose a sub-optimal (for the player) outcome of this subquest. More on that as we go through the quest. Either way, we have a new quest, so let's check it out.  So our new quest is to "settle the inheritance dispute". The task is to locate Taro's collar and to bring it to Dogy Figh, either to Natasha or to one of the three Orman children. So let's head out.  First we can stop by the nurse...  As we try to leave, we're interrupted by Orman's daugther Pomerania.  Before we leave, we should also check in with the guy in blue who asked to talk to us! So this is what I was mentioning last time. It's possible to also get a tiger's claw as a reward from this quest, as long as you bring the collar to this guy. However, as we already know, tiger's claw can be obtained in better ways, so this would be a waste to begin with, but you'll see later today actually how much of a waste.  As we continue to make our way out, we're also interrupted by Beagley, the first son. We've talked about Taro and Jiro before, and so this guy will give you Jiro if you bring him the collar. This is also a waste, as there are other ways to improve your dogs so that they can win the championship. We already have this in our to-do list to tackle at some point. So these are the four options you have in this quest--depending on who you give the collar to, you will get a different reward. The rewards are all exactly as specified, except of course for the secret extra reward you get if you give it to Natasha. Before we leave, we'll talk to a few other people to get some hints where we might want to go looking for Taro. Luckily, it's summer, so there are more people around at the moment.   Or this guy here. So it seems that most people point to Dark River as the location we should look at. However, if you pay attention, you will see that also they are very specific that he would walk all the way through to the south exit. Nurse also mentions Orman hunting for hydras and sea urchins. So the true location is really Samakia, a few steps away from the south exit of Dark River, where, incidentally, also those two species may be found. We'll head there ultimately, but there are a few things to take care of while we're here.  Like over here at the bank. If we're going to be hunting for pelicans, we should not have any money on us, as García told us.  Thefore, I deposit all our money into the bank. Luckily pelicans only care about what you have on your person, so you can safely leave the money in the bank while looking for them! You might notice also a "well dressed" lady sitting on the sofa there. Let's first talk to the guy at the reception. Needless to say, this is one for our collection of biblically named rings, and in fact this is the same one that was temptingly offered for sale at the Ozport wedding shop. However, they were selling it for "market value", so we could never afford it. Let's talk to her, maybe she'll be willing to give it to us?  Well, right now our money is in the bank, so I guess 0 G? I'm sure nobody expected it to be quite that easy, right? Anyway, like everything else, let's put this on our list. Anyway, before we head out...  ...let's listen to that other new message! This one is from Nek. I love how many of the creepy/weird situations from previous scenarios are turned around in this one as a jokey reference! There will be an even better one later today! We should really now head out to Samakia and get this sorted. Samakia is located in the southeast in that part of the continent which is blocked out by the mountains. In order to get there, you can walk through Dark River, or you can do as we do...  ...and use the teleporter in Holy Hole which we opened some time ago.  As we make our way out of Holy Hole, there is another message notification!  As we make our way to Samakia, there are a couple of species we can catch here.  For example, the cockroaches, which we are already familiar with!  A bit further along, we find a bird species which, however, is unfamiliar to us so far!  Needless to say, these are, in fact, pelicans! Well, that was easy, we didn't even have to go into a cave to look for them! Pelicans are also a new addition in the remake! Definitely not very dangerous at this point in time, though.  After this, we make our way to Samakia.  Inside, we find out that these guys who sometimes camp out here are back again!  Let's talk to this guy first... Ken received Taro's collar! Well then, that was easy. I mean, poor Taro, but still it was easy. Well, "easy" when you know where to go, slightly more difficult if you need to figure it out. Considering that the time in this game is constantly ticking when you're not in town, I have a feeling that a good way to have played this game back in the day on a physical console would have been to keep multiple parallel save files, so you would have one main one where you do everything the most efficiently when you know how, and a bunch of others used simply for experiments and searching. Luckily, in yet another show of mercy, the game allows you to have plenty of save slots, so that's not a problem. We can now head out, but before we do so, we'll overnight in Samakia and let ourselves get ambushed by hydras!  They still hit pretty hard, but we can manage. After catching hydras, before we continue with our quest(s)...  ...let's quickly head into the ark to hand in the newly caught species.  This brings us nicely up to 62 out of 120, just over half. While we're here, I make a short stop in Hardia to take our money back out of the bank. We've caught a pair of pelicans, so we no longer have to worry about not carrying any money. Oh and by the way, in case anybody was curious...  ...here's where our characters are currently at, level-wise. Anyway, now that we have the collar, we need to decide who we want to give it to. As explained before, if you look at it at face value, giving it to Natasha seems like the worst deal. However, let's do it anyway and see what happens.  However, before that, since we're in the area, I realise there are lot of eagles here. I want to upgrade our weapons a bit while still reatining the ability to hit all enemies at once. Therefore at least for now, we'll switch to using the eagle saber. For that we need to catch 20 male eagles so we can make two weapons for Ken and Linda. I take a few minutes around this lake to do that.  As I was going about that, it also becomes Autumn 1994. But no matter, let's go talk to Natasha.  Ken hands over Taro's collar to Natasha. You can haggle with her again, and get it up to a maximum of 50,000 if you want. Ken received 20,000 G! Ken received Adamade's Ring! And there it is. If you take one of the other "better" rewards (i.e. give the collar to someone else), then you lose out completely on one of this ring. There is no other way to get it except as reward to this quest when you decide to give the collar to Natasha! To be honest, I don't see this as especially unfair, since it's easy enough to save your game just before and see what happens in each of the four options you have. Well, I'm not fully accurate here, really. There's a fifth option. You can simply not give the collar to anybody and instead sell it. In that case you get 80,000 G for it. We can hear a bit more from Natasha... Seems like all of these people pretty much suck, so at least we got something out of the whole thing. Anyway, we're done here for now. Before we proceed with checking out our next message, there is one of those little events going on in the world that you can miss if you're not in the right place at the right time. The right time is, of course, now, and the right place is Ozport, or more precisely, the downstairs bar. So let's head quickly there!  Turns out, there's a new duo performing here! Let's talk to the guy at the table first, to find out more about this. Ah, so that kind of act. Also regarding the names, I'm not exactly sure if Soeur stands for anything (other than meaning "sister" in French), but Peeco is most likely a reference to a Japanese talent personality of the same name who often appars as part of a double act with his identical twin brother Osugi since the mid-1970s. Anyway, let's talk to Soeur first. After making a selection, you will simply hear again one of the two songs from the closing credits from the first two scenarios. They are the exact same versions as heard over the credits. Anyway, talking to Peeco: Of course, this was the "keyword" which brought linda back out of her "trance" in Scenario A! And that's all. It's really just a silly little bit as part of "things happening in the world", but which doesn't really have any further significance than that. However, there's one other thing we can do while we're here.  First let's check out that notice by the door. ❤❤ A CHEERFUL WORKPLACE FOR YOUNG LADIES ❤❤ Floor ladies wanted! Experience preferred! Ozport Hotel bar "Limelight". Amusingly, this advert is written almost entirely in kanji, even going so far to write "limelight" as 来夢来人. Like last time, here too, characters are used simply for their phonetic value with no regard to the meaning. Leaving that aside, we've been told that the key to this door has been lost. However, the key to the safe we obtained last time in García's lair can be used to open it!  Inside are, of course, two chests. Let's open the first one. Ken obtained the storeroom key. And the second one... Ken obtained the key to the memories. So this locked room has two chests in it and both chests simply contain... more keys! Yes, despite the odd name, the second item is really simply a key that opens a door. In fact, we'll just go and use it right now!  We're going to Linda's house in Minago!  On the first floor was this locked room here which looks like it's just being used for storage. It can be opened with the "key to the memories". If we look around...  It's an item that goes into our inventory. We can examine it: The book about Earth The book contains pictures of Earth which Linda showed Ken many times when they were children. So it's just the book that Linda was reading in the prologue video. It's just a small easter egg and has no other purpose in the game. Hume and Ann have nothing new to say, so we don't need to talk to them.  On our way out we can check the news bulletin. N.K. NEWS BULLETIN The late Liberty Orman's estate was inherited by his wife Natasha (22). The total cash value of the inheritance is said by sources to be over 60 billion. While we're here, we also have a new message to listen to! It's from Ben! Haha, this is almost identical to the message he sent us in Scenario A, when Linda lost her memories! The only thing is that the name is changed to Sachiko! Allrighty then, let's head over to Hospico.  Before we see Nek, we can get still a couple more tidbits from NPCs here.  Like this pregnant lady here. Not quite sure how that is supposed to work, but let's just move on...  ...to the roof, where this elderly gentlemant seems to be stealing the underwear that supposed to be drying here! I mean, he's clearly holding someone's bra in his hand! Remind me again why we came here to talk to this guy? Well, let's just go and see Nek.  He's in the same hospital room that everyone else always ends up in!   They swap clothes, so that Ken is now wearing the Santa suit.  We will indeed, but first...  ...let's equip our new eagle sabre on Ken for a nice increase in attack power.  And the same for Linda, of course.  Laguna Lodge it is then.  Inside, we find Emory in his lab.  And, Emory launches into a big story...  Obviously, as far as the game is concerned, this is a new quest.  Our task is to "rescue Sachiko", and as mentioned, we're supposed to bring the data disk and the 100,000 G and wait in front of the payphone at the G-Factory entrance. Surprisingly we have basically until the end of the scenario in 1999 to accomplish this. For the reasons which should become obvious later in today's episode, you almost definitely want to get on this immediately, rather than wait that long.  G-Factory it is. As we wait here, soon the phone rings. Obviously, we'll pick up.  Next stop is Paraside. Like in G-Factory, the phone soon rings. As before, in order to get to Garex, the simplest way is to travel to Dogy Figh and the use the "shoot" service directly to C-21.  Right here. You can even see it on the map.  Anyway, let's go inside.  Before we go and find Sachiko, let's explore for a moment. If we go under the roof of that half-ruined building in front of us...  ...there's a staircase that we can descend on here.  It leads to two chests. The first chest contains an armadillo drill, a weapon (it's actually weaker than what we have). But the second...  We certainly seem to be amassing quite a collection of these! If only we had an idea what they might be used for!  Anyway, having done that, we can head over to our true destination, which is here in the corner.  This is the same place we've visited in the last scenario, so we'll simply take the lift down, as usual.  And then one more floor down...  ...and I guess we've found Sachiko! You can go a bit back and forth with him like this, but then... Having no choice left, Ken puts the disk and the money on the table.  The kidnapper takes the things.  He starts running and takes Sachiko with him!  But is then pushed back by Nek suddenly appearing.    Both Ken and Beatray are hypnotised and start spinning in place! Ken stops spinning, meanwhile Nek turns to Sachiko.   In the tradition of turning the events from previous scenarios into a joke, we now also have the situation where hypnotised Linda thought Nek was Ken turned into a silly little sketch like this! Well, all's well that ends well, and with Sachiko saved from the kindapper, it really is finally time to have the wedding ceremony. For this we'll proceed on to the church in Minago!  While Nek is waiting there, the priest addresses the guests. Sachiko and Emory enter.     Emory comes over to Ken and Linda and gives them something... Ken received the black beastman statue! Oh, hey, another coloured statue! Unlike the white one, this one belogs together with the others. Spoiler alert: we will actually finally use it in just a couple of minutes!  Then Hume gets up.   Finally, the priest decides to attempt to continue the ceremony!  But before she can answer...  ...our friend, Dr. Oid jumps out of the well!   Ken and Linda approach.   Dr. Oid continues, unfazed.  And he just kicks them into the well.  Luckily, there's a ladder! As we're going down, Linda has a silly comment, though.  At the bottom is what looks like just a normal cave. If we explore a bit, we find a staircase leading further down.  Going down...  ...we reach a room with an inactive teleporter. But this time there's no statue to put the necklace on! We can still examine the pedestal though. There is a black pedestal here. Do you want to position the black beastman statue on the black pedestal? Yes / No I mean, it would be stupid to say no, right? Ken places the black beastman statue on the pedestal.  Somewhat unsurpisingly, this activates the teleporter. But where does it lead? This seems a bit more serious that the teleporters we encountered so far?  Here we are at the destination. Let's go out I suppose. How bad can it really be?  Huh, well, that's interesting. The red thing is where we just came out of... Let's check our navigation device.  That... definitely doesn't look like any part of the planet we've visited so far. Allrighty then. By the way, I wanted to say to definitely check out the music link above. It's probably the best theme in this game and certainly my favourite. It's pretty awesome actually. Well then, take care and see you next time! We ticked off a couple of bits today, but there are also new ones, so...
Today, Ken and Linda wearing matching outfits. Obviously, this one is from the PC Engine era. ivantod fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Jul 15, 2022 23:05
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At least Nek and Sachiko got to marry each other in spite of...everything...
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Jul 15, 2022 23:30
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An entire other map hiding? 
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Jul 16, 2022 03:57
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If you'd fought a boss rather than getting kicked down a well I'd wonder if this was a Dragon Quest homage. I'm guessing that this is the "Underground Eden" that kept getting brought up? At least, that's the only thing I can think of that ties it to something that as already on the to-do list.
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Jul 16, 2022 04:43
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ivantod posted:
 This game. Just when you think it's done...
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Jul 16, 2022 05:18
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Hahaha oh my god this game
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Jul 16, 2022 14:40
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This game (Also the npc you kept saying has a blue shirt has a purple one, am I going crazy here?)
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Jul 16, 2022 16:07
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So we finally found the Beastians. Let's see what's up.
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Jul 16, 2022 16:28
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Eopia posted:This game Could just be an issue with someone's monitor/display. Sometimes dark mode fucks with colors in images too.
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Jul 16, 2022 16:58
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Randalor posted:Could just be an issue with someone's monitor/display. Sometimes dark mode fucks with colors in images too. To be honest, I also suffer from a mild amount of colour blindness, so confusing blue and purple wouldn't exactly be so unexpected because of red component in purple. 
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Jul 16, 2022 17:15
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poor sachiko gets kidnapped and then a weirdo jumps out of a well, rushes through her vows and kicks her new in laws down a well
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Jul 16, 2022 18:09
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when we warped to the new area im like 90% sure the world 3 theme from ff5 just immediately popped into my headrannum posted:poor sachiko gets kidnapped and then a weirdo jumps out of a well, rushes through her vows and kicks her new in laws down a well poor sachiko... 
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Jul 16, 2022 22:00
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In retrospect, I probably should have anticipated that they couldn't cram 60 more species into the areas we've seen, even with weird conditions.
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Jul 16, 2022 23:42
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Well uh things just happened Genuinely impressed at the sheer level of things to see in this game!
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Jul 17, 2022 03:46
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 When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but you have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste. -- Shigeo Shingo Previously, Linda and Ken attended the wedding of Sachiko and Nek. The wedding was kind of interrupted by our ethnologist friend, Dr. Oid, who it seems to have found an entrance to the underground. Ken used the black beastman statue to open a teleporter leading to a completely new, as yet unexplored area!  And so, here we are. This is the map of the new area, as we've already seen last time. One interesting thing to note that there are several areas on it which are completely cut off from the rest by mountains and other things--for example if you look in the northwest, you will see several such parts of the map. We'll figure out next time what we can do to deal with those, but for now... I don't know about you, but it seems to me that there is some kind of interesting looking structure in the northeast. So let's head there first!  As we walk there, we pass by something red and glowing on the left--could it be lava? If so, maybe we'll soon find a solution to getting some hot poop to revive the cherry trees in eterna. As you can also see on the top right, we can expect to find here a good number of as yet unseen animal species, and in fact even some as yet completely unidentified--we'll see in a future update what this means.  Soon we reach a structure, which resembles exactly an Aztec-style pyramid, with a big staircase in the middle and the actual entrace at the very top. Here is a real one from Mexico: They look basically identical. But enough of that, let's head inside.  That's certainly something. Let's keep going inside.  Just a staircase leading down...  ...and then a teleporter.  And then we get into a... teleport maze! Oh, joy. So I think there is something similar in Final Fantasy IV, but basically the goal is, as you might expect, to choose the right teleporters in sequence which will lead you to the end. The things are complicated slightly by the presence of that animal there. We won't tangle with it just yet as it can definitely one-shot us if we're unlucky, and to make matters worse they will also actively chase towards you. To change the luck a bit to our side, we can here happily use Ken's newly acquired from the last time "camouflage" ability. This will allow us to pass unnoticed by them.  There's one of these in each dungeon "cell", alongside four teleporters, one in each corner.  Sometimes you get a bit of a break in the form of a narrow corridor where you're not actively chased by those guys.  After a bit more of this...  ...we finally reach our destination!  Here we find those pods, similar to what we use to store the animals on the ark. There is also what appears to be some sort of a control room here. Also a bunch of robots that we can, as always, talk to!  Interesting. There are a couple more robots just here next to us, so let's see what they have to say.  What are you two doing?  More robots! Is it just me, or did it suddenly get chilly here? Well, either way, there are still more robots to be found.  I'm also trying not to think to much about those animal parts piled up in the corner there. Nevertheless, we can also check out the control room we saw earlier.  There are also a few more robots here, but they don't have anything quite so profound to say. Interestingly, these comments from robots about populations numbers etc. are a bit randomised so they vary each time you talk to these robots.  Before we go completely nuts here, we find the next teleporter!  It just leads to a narrow corridor, which leads (predictably) to the next teleporter!  Well, this is different.  And of this, I don't even know what to think.  But suddenly, a hologram flickers into existence. Wait, what. The hologram addresses us in that same disembodied voice we've experienced while flying the ark in previous scenarios. But suddenly it changes to a normal voice!  Since you can't hear the voice acting, I just want to make clear that the tone of this conversation is friendly and insults are only meant in a joking/affectionate way.    Warning, wordplay joke incoming! It's of course not easily translatable. When Gene says "amazing power", the subtitles actually say "amazing features". The game has done this a couple of times before so I'm sure it's not just a mistake. And anyway it's not uncommon also in Japanese writing for authors to sometimes use one kanji, but to add to it furigana from a different word as a bit of a wordplay, so that's what's going on here.   I guess it was just a thing that was possible to do somehow?  And then...  ...just like that, he's gone again. Well, certainly, we can say that there is even more questions now than before somehow, even though we just supposedly got some kind of an explanation. Well, no matter, there's certainly lots more to explore and find on this planet, so we'll get there. I know you're curious how this looked in the PC Engine version, so here it is:  But, while we're here, why not do also some capturing.  And by this, I mean of course literally right here where we are. What did you think?  We can catch here some ladybirds! Despite the low HP, they are actually one of the strongest "enemies" in the game, with high attack and defence power. So you are definitely encouraged to use debuffs on them and buffs on yourself, to even the odds. But actually I have a bit more to say about the logistics of the whole ladybird situation. Because, honestly, it's probably one of the most unfair bits in the entire game. Well, on the whole, the game mostly plays surprisingly fair, but not here. Let me explain. First of all, this right here is the ONLY place you can find ladybirds in the world. There will be only one "group" per season... if they even appear at all--because they only have a certain probability of even being here in the first place. What this means is, that you might come here, listen to this whole conversation, and then see nothing else around and just leave. While you CAN come back to this place any time you want, it does involve going through teleporter maze every time. Since they only appear here underground, you don't really get any hints from the NPCs about it either. And well, there is actually one other option to get a pair of them. If you take a smooth egg to that incubator room in Ozport there is a 1/16 chance of getting a ladybird. I mean it's on the low side for sure, but not super low, so it might be worth a try. The smooth eggs aren't available as an item lying around in the world, but certainly the egg shop in Ozport sells them, so you could in theory buy 8 at a time and take them to the incubator. There's just one small problem with that. You're probably not likely to reach this place before around 1994 or so. And so, if you don't find the ladybirds anywhere else, you might finally decide to go and buy some smooth eggs at the Ozport egg shop. But, here's what you might find at this point in the game if you go there:  The owner is not there! Why is the owner not there? Well, I mentioned how as time passes, more and more people leave the planet. This includes the shopkeepers, and slowly one by one the shops will get closed and will you no longer have access to them (this is the ONLY egg shop on the entire planet--various eggs can be found as items in the caves, but NOT smooth eggs, you have to buy those here). By 1994 or so, you start to notice already this effect, and while the different departure times of various people are not fixed, it can definitely happen already at this point. So then what is left? Well one option is to hope they appear somehow for sale at the auction house. They are certainly class A protected animals, so it's going to cost you, but ok, at least money can be earned somehow in this game. (This reminds me that we haven't visited the auction house at all, so I will add it to my list just for fun, since we don't really need it). And then the final option is, well, you might recall that ladybird is one of the species we could get from Bronco as a reward for his quest! So I know I said at the time, just get the hydras for money, but really, it's probably best to just get the ladybirds instead and save yourself all this trouble. In the end, I would say this is probably one of the most unfair situations in the game. Luckily, as I said, this game tends to play fair the majority of the time, so situations like this one are few. But that's enough talk for now, so let's just have a look at what they used to look like in the PC-Engine version!  And now, let's get back to the game!  For now, we'll just step on this teleporter here.  It leads to one of these places. You might recall that we've already seen something like this in Marblepolis, back in scenario A. The two pods have a slot on the front, but we had nothing to insert into it back then. Let's try now.  Ah! So I guess that's what those are for. Ken absorbed the power of Yabasade! Maximum HP +5, Maximum BP +4, Attack Power +6, Defence +4, Speed +4 So, we get some stat increases from whatever that creature in the pod was! But you might be wondering, is that really all? I mean, we went to some trouble to get these rings, and all we get is some stat increases? Well, no. For some reason the game doesn't tell you explicitly, but if you check Ken's battle skills, you find this:  Turns out, he also got a new skill. This one is called "Earth of Yabasa" and is a powerful attack which hits all "enemies" on the field. And this time, when I say "all", I mean literally all, on all four sides and not just those in front of us. So this is actually pretty powerful, much more so than any of the abilities we have so far. Not how the game doesn't even tell you what the ability does, it's just marked as "???" in the lower box! I guess it's left up to you to try it and see! On another note, you can see three as yet undiscovered abilities in this group, and this tracks with the fact that we have more rings of this type. If you have been paying attention to the names also, you might have noticed they come in pairs with similar names. So let's make a "reasonable assumption" that the other half of a pair is for Linda, and check out the other pod here!  By the way, note how the other pod is now empty, after we have "absorbed" the power of the creature. Anyway, let's see what happens after Linda inserts her ring. Linda absorbed the power of Yabasa! Maximum HP +2, Maximum BP +5, Attack Power +4, Defence +7, Speed +3 In addition to this, Linda gets an ability called "Moon of Yabasa", which is a big heal for the whole party! Not bad. So in the end, there are a total of eight rings (four pairs), so all that's left to do is find the rest of them and also find the places where we can use them. Well, one place we already know of, it's in Marblepolis so we'll check that out soon. As for the abilities, they have cool animations in battle, so I'll show off these in a video later. Getting back via the teleporter to where we were...  ...there's even a chest here. Let's open it.  Oh, come on, game, really? That's what you give me? Oh well, at least we can sell it for 33,000 G...  We're done here for now, so let's step on this other teleporter here.  It takes us to a place we definitely want to come back and explore later, but for now...  ...we'll just make our way back out. Surprisingly, the whistle ability works even down here too, so we can quickly go back to the surface. Don't worry, we'll be back shortly.  In the meantime, it's now Winter 1994. Time is definitely ticking and we still have like 50 species to catch!  Well, let's head over briefly to Minago and read the news bulletin! N.K. NEWS The wealthiest newlyweds in the galaxy! The wedding of Mr Nek Green and Miss Sachiko Emory took place in Minago Church. Mr Nek is the adopted son of the former president of Green Pharmaceuticals. Miss Sachiko is the daughter of the inventor Dr. Emory. Their combined net worth amounts to around 8 billion G!  In the church, we can talk to Dr. Oid, but he has not much to say. Not an invigorating conversation, really. However, if we head over to Linda's house...  ...we can talk to Hume!  We'll go down to Laguna Lodge eventually, but for now let's clean up some smaller tasks.  Just east of Hospico, there's a small cave (but really small, just one floor).  It's called Yamapit--"yama" means mountain in Japanese so maybe it's supposed to be another bit of wordplay? In any case, in one of these tents...  ...we find a ranger! Ken obtained Ranger HQ basement storage room key! So if you come here, you randomly get another key! Well, ok, let's use it--so we'll head to Ranger HQ.  First we can talk to the lady sitting at the desk. And then the woman in blue... Unfortunately, she has no special dialogue, no matter what you choose... Beatray is really here and definitely still spinning! Unfortunately, nothing we can do... he needs Nek for that.  Back to our task... after unlocking the storage room, we gain access to two chests. Let's open them. Ken obtained 520 G! Ken obtained tiger's claw! Yeah, firmly in the "not worth it" category. Although the lady did say that there's only junk in the room! But I suppose this is yet another way to obtain the tiger's claw--there's a fair few of them lying around in the game, huh?  Upstairs the ranger lady has funny comment... Sure. Anyway, let's move on. Our next stop is Battle Park.  We can listen in to this woman's phone conversation... The Beagley guy continues to be ridiculous... But the reason we came here is because...  ...this is the next stop on Ken's mum's tour of the planet!   In the basement of the farm building, there is this locked door, but since last time we have the key to open it, so we can see what is in that chest! Ken obtained beastman necklace! Neat. We'll use it as soon as we find a teleporter. Our next destination is another tiny cave. In order to get there...  ...we'll take this tunnel leading east from Battle Park.  Thanks to it being winter, this whole area is covered in snow...  ...which means, that of course, we can now catch some polar bears. In this world, they are simply a kind of a cat. Like penguins, they can only be found when it's snowy season. They are also a species added for the remake.  But anyway, we're going to this place.  It's another small cave with tents, this one is called Xass.  Again, we can talk to the person in the tent! Linda learned from Moloch the ability to lure animals by imitating their cries! So if you have trouble catching up to an animal that is running away from you, or things of that sort, you can use this ability to make them come to you. As we've seen already, most of these "field" skills are more of a situational nature and not generally required to be able to finish the game. Of course, if you give wrong answers above, then you don't get to learn the skill! And he just runs off!  In the other tent, there's also a person. Well, in any case, female tree frogs are already on our to-do list, so... we'll take care of it at some point.  So I go to Bird Line counter to get a flight to Dogy Figh, but am then informed that I am their 100,000th customer, and therefore I will be awarded an Air Free Pass and a flower bouquet! This is a thing that can happen in the game, I think the probability is 1/128 any time you use the Bird Line. The flower bouquet is a useless item, and the air free pass we already have, so we gain nothing from it at this point, but perhaps it can be useful if you don't know how to do the money trick at the beginning of the game. Anyway, on to Dogy Figh.  Actually, we're really going to Laguna Lodge. First we'll go into the side building and check in on Nek and Sachiko!    I guess they are really leaving the planet soon... Well, ok. Let's head over to the main building...  ...and have a chat with Emory. Man, I wish he would stop blocking access to that chest.  "Neko" means "cat" in Japanese, so this is a reference to Dharma Cat (Daruma) doll that he has there on the table! It's a bit sad to see them go, but we should prepare ourselves as this planet will only become less and less populated over the course of the rest of the game. But what can you do. So we start to leave, but are stopped by Emory.  Again, unfortunately your choice of response doesn't make a difference in dialogue! But we are ready to leave now. I don't know about you, but since we're already down here, I thought we might go and finally take a look at the abandoned hotel! The hotel is situated on the west coast of the southern continent, so in order to reach it, we'll head back to Dogy Figh...  ...and take the tunnel leading west. There is a hunter here who has an interesting tidbit. Ahh, yes. That story of the kid whose father works in Flora Jam. I'll add it to our list, but it's interesting to note that even on the "overground" there are still places which we haven't yet been to! Anyway, let's continue on our way.  On our way to the hotel, we take the opportunity to grab another species.  The mantises.  Anyway, here we are. We know that the hotel is infested by crows, but that shouldn't be a problem, so let's just go inside.  Well, this place has definitely seen better days! It also makes it a bit difficult to navigate because of course our characters can't step over an ankle high stone. There are multiple items to be found in the hotel, so it's more about figuring out a way to get to them. So even here in order go get to that staircase in the middle, we have to go all the way around the outside.  This takes us to the second floor. But we'll keep going up to the third.  There's a chest there, but we can't quite get to it because of the rubble!  So we'll head across the walkway that connects the two sides of the building. Hope it's safe...  Yeah, that chest is also blocked by the rubble! Can't step over it. However what we definitely CAN do is fall through that hole there.  Now, from here we can take the staircase up and...  ...it brings us straight to that chest! Ken found champion's belt! Fine, I guess. We'll just sell it to that guy in battle park. From here of course we have to go back down.  On the other side of the lower floor is another chest... Ken found 2 G! Really?  Anyway, we'll take the stairs back up again from here.  And again up to the next floor. This whole place is kind of a maze which more or less has one path you can take.  Here we can go outside on a small balcony. It's true that there are a lot of crows in the hotel. But...  ...two other species can be found here.  One of them are vipers. As always, they looked just a bit more sinister in the PC Engine version.  Now, let's see...  Ah, here is the other species we need from here (although they can be found elsewhere too).  The amazing looking gorillas! I'm literally not even going to try to figure out what is up with their heads. Although their basic shape is actually unchanged from the original release...  ...the colours in the PC Engine version are certainly something else! Now we can continue our exploration of the hotel.  We'll return inside and head back again to the other side over a walkway.  Then take the staircase down again.  And uh, what have we here? Seems like a bunch of nests. Turns out we can examine them, actually. Mostly they are empty. But in one of them...  Well then. Seems it was worth it to come here. Looks like the lady from Dogy Figh had the ring stolen by the crows! You know how they say, crows like to steal shiny things? This is not actually true in real life, but sure let's go with it. Anyway, finders keepers as they say, so we definitely won't be giving this back since we have a good use for it. To continue we can simply fall through that big hole there.  We get to another chest. Ken found 1420 G! Really game, you shouldn't have! And since we're on ground floor, we can just leave now. And let's finish for today by heading to the ark...  ...and hand in what new species we have.  Checking in with the robot, we confirm that we're currently at 67 out of 120 species. Looks like a lot... but we still have to somehow find and capture over 50 species! And the time is not standing still--it's almost 1995! But anyway, next time we'll explore more the secrets of the underground, but until then have fun and take care! Again, it's two steps forward one step back!
Today we have a model/colouring guide for some of the side characters.
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Jul 24, 2022 23:37
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Poor Ken's dad. Died, got brought back to life but it seems like half his mind is taken up by the god program so he's only kind of half wawre of what he's even doing, and he's got no one to talk to and barely has time to talk when he does. cool jacket tho
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Jul 25, 2022 00:35
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The plot twist of "God" being Ken's adopted dad is... actually, that's pretty good. So the entire plot is just a perpetual cycle of "Mass extinction event saving as many species as possible->modify surviving species to survive in the new world->mass extinction event..."?
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Jul 25, 2022 00:45
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Yeah, I kind of love it?
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Jul 25, 2022 01:37
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The time limit feels like it would be pretty stressful.
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Jul 25, 2022 07:10
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Mzbundifund posted:The time limit feels like it would be pretty stressful. Yeah it can be a little bit. We're playing on "normal" difficulty and the difficulty selection screen describes it like "just the right amount of tension". If you want it to be more stressful you can play on hard or very hard difficulty! But in reality it actually isn't so bad, since you have some ways to mitigate the issue a bit. You can get the "air free pass" or use the "shot" service to allow you to travel between towns and to dungeons without having to spend time walking on the overworld and so on. Also, you can make use of the fact that when in dungeon the season won't change until you leave, so you can leave some longer exploration sessions for the end of the season to maximise the useful time. Of course, the game allows you to have multiple save files so you can also make use of that to explore around and then reload the save and do things in an efficient way now when you know what to do. So there are ways around it. Of course, if you're talking shops getting closed over time and such, then yeah, that's a problem but not much you can do about it.
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Jul 25, 2022 08:51
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Gosh the deal with the Ladybirds sounds so frustrating! Love this update!! I appreciate you showing us the PCE version of Dad
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Jul 25, 2022 11:59
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I have no idea how anyone would ever 100% this game blind with all the time limit stuff/very strangely located animals. It's not like any individual bit is too stressful but they add up and you only have to miss one!
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Jul 25, 2022 14:04
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I have no idea how anyone would ever 100% this game blind with all the time limit stuff/very strangely located animals. It's not like any individual bit is too stressful but they add up and you only have to miss one! The intent was probably you'd play Route C multiple times. There's a lot of interlinking parts and time limits. A & B help with easing you in, letting you figure out various methods and getting about half of the monsters and things to watch out for, but there's still a lot to do in C so you're probably meant to take notes see what you did wrong and then do it again, but better.
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Jul 25, 2022 14:20
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Is that really the only place to find "wild" Ladybirds, and there's no hint that they're found there? That's... that's just a dick move from the developers at that point.
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Jul 25, 2022 15:40
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Randalor posted:Is that really the only place to find "wild" Ladybirds, and there's no hint that they're found there? That's... that's just a dick move from the developers at that point. Yeah- beyond a missing slot in your animals-collected list, is there any hint these things exist?
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Jul 25, 2022 15:57
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I mean, there is the VERY odd quest reward and a small chance to get them from smooth eggs or the auction house, but that's... very much a dick move. "Did you pass on the one quest reward and they didn't spawn the one time you were talking to GodDad? gently caress you, Gachapon time."
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Jul 25, 2022 16:02
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Sum Gai posted:Yeah- beyond a missing slot in your animals-collected list, is there any hint these things exist? They're listed in the sheet of animals you get from that farm subquest. imo, if you were doing that sidequest and didn't know these existed, they'd probably stick out in terms of animals you haven't seen yet. I could see a "casual" player seeing them and just picking them up if only because you might have already known how to get the others so may as well take the new one. e: yeah so this is the selection Hydra / Snakehead / Tree frog / Carp / Tiger / Ladybird Some are definitely rarer than others, but you've probably stumbled on most of these in A & B, if not already found. So while it's definitely still a dick move to have them so rare and not give a hint to them, I do think it's reasonable to see this unknown name and pick it without knowing the context. rannum fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 17:01
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rannum posted:They're listed in the sheet of animals you get from that farm subquest. The game is just a little bit smarter on this than it looks. In Scenario A when you go to fight Hume in G-Factory, there is one of those computers there which gives you animals from cryogenic storage. It gives you actually a pair of ladybirds (it's not there in Scenario C, so you can't do that). So knowing about their existence even before the farm sidequest shouldn't be an issue. As for the selection above, other than carp (which only exists in the underground), the others you're likely to have encountered for sure over the course of Scenario A or B. If you're playing the game blindly I guess you might be likely to keep a list, so at least you will probably know what you're missing. However the location where they appear (and this is the ONLY location) is definitely on the more unlikely side, so it's questionable whether you'd ever come back there over the course of the game. In the end despite some small mitigating factors, I still think this is a surprisingly unfair moment in a game which plays fair for the most part. I had a bit of a look at some guide websites and generally they all suggest to just get them from Bronco when he offers it to you, since the consensus is that of all options on that list, ladybirds are generally much bigger pain in the rear end to get than the rest.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:38
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the consensus is that we are all rude dudes who don't visit our ol' man often enough 
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Jul 25, 2022 17:44
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