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Randalor posted:I wonder if that line was something changed while they were working on the game (or unchanged while they changed her store). Why say "I'm thinking of closing" when you've already closed up shop? Or does she start saying that earlier on, and they forgot to change the dialogue after she closed up shop (maybe to something like "Sorry, I'm closed. I'm just packing up"?) No, she just says that for a couple of seasons and then after, she's gone entirely. Your guess is as good as mine, but it is a bit annoying when you see her still there but refusing to do anything. 
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Aug 18, 2022 16:55
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Just marathoned this thread. The game is absolutely wild, and those animal designs are bizarre as all get out. …not quite as bizarre as Eternal Santa Hell, but still!
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Aug 19, 2022 04:55
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I have just finished recording the last few hours of gameplay for Scenario C, and I can happily announce that there were no further "issues" and that I was able to collect the full 120 species as I hoped to be able to do! So we can all breathe more easily now!
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Aug 19, 2022 23:07
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Hell yeah, 100% completion of this extremely normal game can't be easy but you did it and I can't wait to see it.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:28
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So you unlocked the secret D Scenario, where you play as Nek and actively gently caress with Ken through the previous 3 scenarios before the ending reveals that all the scenarios form a horrible Ouroboros loop, and Ken is Nek and Nek is Ken?
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Aug 19, 2022 23:44
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Randalor posted:So you unlocked the secret D Scenario, where you play as Nek and actively gently caress with Ken through the previous 3 scenarios before the ending reveals that all the scenarios form a horrible Ouroboros loop, and Ken is Nek and Nek is Ken? Absolutely I did.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:45
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Yeah, I like cars and basketball. But you know what I like more? Bananas! -- Frankie Muniz Last time, Linda and Ken finished all the quests, including the stag beetle and the pteranodon egg! So, today seems like a good time to focus largely on hunting. Our goal at the end of today's episode is to have captured over 100 species of animals! While most of the remaining species can be captured normally, there are still a few "tricky" ones, so we should definitely get on with it! So there's definitely going to be a lot of jumping around in this episode as we visit various places where we have still "unfinished business"!  We start in Minago, where we have a short chat with this lady here.  We proceed by going into the well, again.  Down in the underground, we are chased by a group of fish!  "Green Fish", to be exact. Yes, this is another of the undiscovered species that we'll give a name to later on! As you can see, other than that, nothing really special about them. I should probably mention that this whole idea of "naming" new animal species was not present in the PC Engine version. There they already had their expected names. Here they are in the PC Engine version:   But our real destination is this little grove to the left of ken. Like Flora Jam above ground, there is one such area down here too.  It's called Fontana...  ...and, like Flora Jam, it's also not nearly as complicated to navigate around as it looks on the map.  There's this chest here (I've already opened), which contains an irrelevant consumable. The other chest on the right is only really accessible via that staircase. It must be something good, right? Well, we'll see. In the meantime, let's keep exploring.  Looks nice here, but those "green fish" are a bit annoying.  The only other thing of note here is this waterfall. Of course... ...you can slide down!  There is one new species to be found here, though, which you can already see on the screenshot. Let's see what it is!  This is pufferfish (fugu)! As expected, they have a number of poison based attacks, being as it is that that's what the real life fugu are well known for. After sorting this out, certainly our next step is... ...to go behind the waterfall!  This leads to a small cavern.  There is another new species to be found inside here!  Let me introduce you to... "the flying animal". We'll name it later, but personally I think this one is pretty obvious what it should be named! Further inside...  ...we find one of these fancy pedestals with three chests. The left one contains the extra large golden nugget which we will of course sell. The right one contains a weapon, the flying animal sword. It is actually a bit stronger than what we have, but it doesn't hit all enemies, so... The middle chest, however...  ...finally gives us the last ring that we needed in order to complete the four pairs and gain all the extra abilities for Linda and Ken! They sure do hide these rings well! Anyway, that's all there is in this little cave, so going back outside...  ...there's another chest here next to the waterfall. Ken found the crown of N'Kemol. Another crown for our collection! If only we knew what they are for... Spoiler alert: figuring this out will be almost the last thing we do in this scenario, so there's still some time until then. Anyway, let's head through that little opening next to the chest.  It leads to another small cave!  There's another chest here. It contains a fugu gimlet, a weapon presumably constructed from one of its spikes.  Finally, a staircase. Can you guess where it goes?  Well, at first to more staircases, but finally...  ...it leads right here to this chest!  The game is literally trolling us with this item now. I have no other explanation. But either way, that's all there is to be found in Fontana, so let's head out.  We'll pay a quick visit to the animal expert in Minago, in order to give a name to our two new species. Thus "the green fish" will become piranha, and "the flying animal" will, somewhat unsurprisingly become the flying squirrel! After our little "Fontana adventure"...  ...it becomes Winter 1996. The time sure flies. So the next thing we want to do is head back to Minago again...  ...or, more precisely, to Linda's house.  Because that's where we find Ken's mum on the last stop of her tour of Neo-Kenya!  Ann and Hume have nothing new to say at the moment, so we'll head out. Now it's the time to visit a couple of areas which we haven't been to in a while, but where we have still a bit of a job to finish. First we'll head to Lina Valley.  Or rather, we want to head into the cave here again.  First, we have an animal to find!  Around the cave, you will run into stones on the ground, such as this one. Looks just like an ordinary stone, and most of them are, however for some of them, if you touch it...  ...turns out it's just a pair of bears in disguise! Here's what they used to look like:  After defeating the bears, I remember that there is one thing I mentioned about this cave, but never actually showed. So let's do that now.  If you follow a somewhat complicated route...  ...up and down the stairs...  ...eventually you find this little isolated area with a tent! Going inside...  So, as it turns out this is a dealer of illegal drugs. I've mentioned him at some point long ago, close to the beginning of the game, but I forgot to show him. Anyway, if you choose the last response... So he sells a "luxury item" for 60G, a "medication from rumours" for 120 G and "that thing" for 1200 G. These are all those performance enhancement drugs we've seen before. For example the last one is "Vigour III", which is quite funny as that one has such severe side effects (85% probability to leave you paralysed in battle) that it is much better to actually use it on enemies. In any case, we don't have a use for him at this point in time any more really, but in case you want somewhere to buy those drugs, here is your friendly neighbourhood dealer who will be happy to sell them to you. By the way, if you choose one of the first two responses, then he pretends to not know anything and will not offer to sell you stuff. With this, we are done in Lina Valley. Our next stop will be all the way down south.  First, just a quick stop in Laguna Lodge.  Turns out, it was not just talk. Nek and Sachiko have already left the planet.  And so has Dr. Emory, too. It means that we now finally have access to that chest there, but the result turns out to be disappointing. It's just a consumable item which removes status effects. Status effects are generally not a big deal in this game to begin with so... we'll never use it. Our next stop is to go down to that place called The Sand Hole (you know, where the scorpions live!), to pick up the last couple of species from there.  In here.  First of all, here we can find...  ...some armadillos!  Heading deeper, we of course find, sitting in their little, uh, sand holes...  ...scorpions! As before, make sure to not get fooled by the "fake scorpions" that are also found in this part of the world.  Check out that fake scorpion rushing to attack Ken! Also, there are three chests here. One is empty, the second contains a large golden nugget and the last one contains the champions medal. Honestly, other than needing to pay for travel until you get the air free pass (not hugely expensive at 28,000 G), money is never a huge factor in this game--you can earn more than enough by simply selling extra animals that you don't need. In this, and other ways, the game really allows you to be much more self-sufficient than in other games, especially considering that for example you can make any piece of equipment yourself, simply by using caught animals. There are NO secret weapons that can be found anywhere--any weapon you can simply craft if you want.  Interesting bit of scenery, but as you can see it does not have a teleporter.  Another one of these, elsewhere in the cave has a chest on it. The chest contains (please don't laugh) ANOTHER WHITE BEASTMAN STATUE! The game really truly is trolling us with this thing now. I mean ok, it does sell for 33,000 G, so I guess if you're somehow short on cash despite everything...  This staircase looks a bit important?  It leads to another chest... which contains another beastman necklace this time around. So not quite as valuable an item as you would expect. But we'll take it, sure. By the way, in case it's not been clear until now, those four statues around the chest represent the four "creatures" linked to the four pairs of "rings of power". With this we're fully done with Sand Hole and can now leave. We can go and immediately use this necklace.  If we take the tunnel eastwards from Battle Park, just a few steps to the south...  ...is one of those places where we can put the necklace on a statue.  If we step on the teleporter, it takes us...  ...it takes us to a small, nondescript cave, where the only thing we can do is go outside.  This is kind of in the middle of nowhere?  So this is all the way up north, so I guess if you want to quickly get there, although you can simply travel to Eterna and walk to the west instead. Unlike the beastman statues (and also, spoiler alert, the crowns), these necklaces are not essential for finishing the game with all species collected, so you can simply ignore them if you want. Anyway, returning south to the ark...  ...we find that it is now already Spring 1997!  As always, we'll check the calendar.  This time it's Elizabeth. I actually can't remember if we've already seen this one. I think not. Our next destination is again Battle Park.  On the way there, we will have a short chat with the bird line employee. It's been a while. I guess if you don't figure it out, here you get a bit of a hint to look under the building (like we already did).  Anyway, we'll take the shoot service over here to the east. It's where that place named Xass is located which we already visited recently.  There was a guy here in the tent mentioning to us before how some years ago he saw a female tree frog here in the cave. The tree frog situation has been going on for a while now, so I think you'll agree with me that it's finally time to get that sorted out.  If you head deeper into the cave (it's only a small one), you might run into a group of tree frogs if you're lucky.  And if you're even more lucky, said group might just contain a female, like here (although it's definitely not guaranteed!). You can go out and back into the cave to "reset" the enemies if you want to try a few times to see if you can get a female. However, luckily, this is not necessary, as even if you don't find it here, there is another place (I will mention it when we get there--we haven't explored it yet) where they are plentiful and appear regularly, so as long as you make sure to explore all dungeons in the game, the chance of missing a female tree frog is basically 0%. Anyway, that's at least that thing ticked off now. By the way, note that the "sex change" ability is exclusive to females, which means that even if you do accidentally find them somewhere on the overworld, they might still "disapper" before you capture them!  Since we don't have much/anything going on today in the way of plot, we'll just chat a bit more with some Bird Line employees.  But, all right. Our next (brief) stop is in Paraside.  We're going to harass this guy in his room! Huh, well, ok good to know. If you recall, hermit crabs generally pretend to be rocks, so does that mean that turban shells do the same? But where? We do still need to find them. This is actually one of the slightly weirder situations regarding finding a particular type of animal, but more on that next time. For now, we'll make a quick hop to Koshikata one last time.  If we head into the hotel...  ...we can talk to the singer here. Not really sure what to say, except that we're done here and won't be coming back any more. We'll now head back to Ozport.  Although we're not actually going inside. Instead...  ...a few steps to the southeast is one more of these.  Here we can use one of our beastman necklaces to get ourselves teleported to...  Uh, well, that doesn't look like any place we've already been to, that's for sure. Let's go outside for a second and have a look.  Huh, it's a skyscraper. Let's check quickly the map, to see where we are.  Well, that's certainly far away from anything up there in the far north-east. The place is actually reachable by walking, but this teleporter saves sooo much time when you're at the ark (the teleporter is at R-11). Otherwise you could use Bird Line to Paraside at W-10 and walk from there. Unfortunately despite it's somewhat "grand" appearance from the outside, there's not really much to this place. it actually only has three floors plus roof and basement and there aren't really any interesting items to be found (most chests just contain small amounts of money). The two animal species found here are also not endemic and are easily found elsewhere. It's also an annoying teleporting maze inside with closed doors that you have to use switches to manipulate. There's however one reason you HAVE to come here which we'll see in a few minutes. Bearing in mind the above, I'm going to present a somewhat abbreviated version of our journey to the top (and bottom). Anyway, going back inside.  Inside, next to the teleporter, there is this staircase. Also not the coloured door in the bottom right of the screenshot.  Downstairs, there is this room. Interacting with the four statues of different colours changes which colour doors will be open in the rest of the tower. We can turn on the third statue in order to explore a bit first.  This opens the door which gives us access to this chest. It only contains 623 G. However, notice that there seems to be another teleporter on the other side of the wall to the left. This is the real reason to come here.  Most of the tower looks like this. Here you can also see what I mean by choosing which colour doors will be open.  Other than that, mostly you have rooms like this with a teleporter and sometimes a chest. This one has 430 G.  Or this one with with 480 G. There's even a couple of empty chests lying around.  Eventually, we get to the roof where there is a nice garden.  Cool water fountains, though. Here on the roof, you can catch two animal species.  Bees!  Also, cabbage white butterflies! The second and last kind of butterfly present in the game. These guys are a massive pain to capture due to their tiny HP pretty much no matter what level you are. One strategy which works is to use either Linda's "fire carpet" ability which literally changes the ground into lava and does a small amount of damage in every turn and then just wait them out. The somehwat annoying part is that they have an ability ("screaming paranoia") which is kind of like "confuse" in Final Fantasy. This may make your character attack them and thus fail to capture them due to too much damage. However, we have also that ability, so that's another option to make them literally "kill themselves" in this manner. Also, the "champion's certificate" is the lower tier award in hunter fights in Battle Park. Anyway, now we go back to that room with four statues.  We'll now activate the fourth statue.  After a bit of navigating around, we get to this room. We'll employ the old trick from games like Final Fantasy IV and similar...  Go through the door...  ...and literally walk around the building!  Hey, a hidden staircase!  The staircase finally leads to that other teleporter we saw at the very beginning!  The teleporter finally leads to this place! Finally, we can activate our last two rings! This, indeed, is the only actual reason to come to this tower.  Ken absorbed the power of Adamade! Maximum HP +4, Maximum BP +7, Attack Power +5, Defence +6, Speed +3 In addition to that, Ken also receives an ability, "The Gold of Adama", which is a full heal for the whole party.  Linda absorbed the power of Adama! Maximum HP +5, Maximum BP +4, Attack Power +6, Defence +4, Speed +7 In addition to that, Linda also receives an ability, "The Light of Adama", which is also a full heal for the whole party. With this, we are done here and don't need to be visiting this place again.  And a good thing too, since it's already Summer 1997! Before we continue with our hunting, I want to show you something. We'll head quickly to Eterna.  As we're getting a ride, the Bird Line employee has a warning for us! Huh, heavy snow, you say? Where have we heard that mentioned before? Could it be that we'll finally be meeting the mysterious snow monster? (Spoiler: not yet. There are additional criteria we need to fulfill.)  Anyway, if you go to Eterna to the cherry trees room (by the way note how they are no longer blooming but are now green because it's summer--this game sometimes has crazy level of attention to detail), you can get another ribbon flower; I believe it's one per season. From now on, you can use it simply as an item in battle. If Linda gets knocked out, the flower will simply revive her like you would expect. Ken getting knocked out still means you "die" and get healed back in Hardia while losing some of your captured animals to "make room" for your own body in the backpack. Anyway, that's all I wanted to show here, so now let's go to our real destination for the moment, which is G-Factory.  As we step to the Bird Line counter, we are again given an announcement! Huh, does that mean we lose the Bird Line service in 1998? Not exactly, but what actually happens, we'll discover in 1998!  For now, we find ourselves outside of G-Factory.  On the eastern end, there's this very oddly shaped island in the sea. You are right to be suspicious, because... ...if we throw some meat, the island will approach us and it turns out...   ...it's actually a pair of whales! I mean they do look like a piece of land, so it's an easy mistake to make. (By the way, check out the cool looking advanced beastly form of Linda and Ken over there at the bottom!) In case you are wondering, you don't have to use meat, Linda's "animal cry" ability will also work and so will pheromone spray or anything else that makes animals chase/come to you. Strongest, yes, but it lacks in speed, giving us a chance to deal with them before they can do too much to us. Only one group of whales may appear in every season except summer (when there are none); the group will usually contain one male and one female, but sometimes not. If you don't get both to appear you can either try in the next season or alternately just reload the game and try again. The actual formation of the enemies is not decided until you trigger the battle. Anyway, just buff yourself and go all out basically. And if you ask me how the heck are you supposed to know to do this, well, your answer is as good as mine. I guess you're supposed to be intrigued by the unusually shaped island and try to do things with it? Or perhaps notice that the island is not there in the summer? The game really really wants you to explore every single centimeter of the world, doesn't it? Anyway, while we're here, we'll head back west...  ...to Swallowm.  Here we can get ambushed...  ...by a bunch of owls! This also concludes everything in Swallowm. We'll head back outside.  Finally, one more species can be found wandering around.  I'm actually glad I've saved this one almost to the end. Because any other animal design would completely pale in comparison. These are reindeer. Yes. In any case, that concludes all species from the West Area, except one. Why except one? We'll see later today! So now it might be a good time to take a break from hunting. Last time, we spent some time on training our wolf, so let's put that to use by heading down to Dogy Figh and participating in some dogy fighs.  We just go inside...  ...and talk to this guy. First he can explain us the rules. So it's basically dog vs. dog. Here too, like always, you can't issue commands to the dog, so it will do what it does. However, you can "throw in the towel" by pressing the X button and stop the match. Of course it means you lose all the prize money collected up to that point. Ok, let's give it a try. The game asks us to choose who will compete, we of course pick our wolf Natsu whom we have trained last time. We go straight into battle.  Interestingly, the game designers made some special dog designs which ONLY appear here in the arena. But this is a fight we easily win, in any case. After each battle we get the option to cash out or to continue. Of course we continue. In general the enemies will be harder and harder as we go. The game continues to use here the sumo wrestling terminology, so "top division" is in Japanese a reference to "maegashira" in sumo. I know almost nothing about sumo, so please forgive any mistakes!  I'm not showing every rank as some designs do repeat.  Also as you can see, the monetary rewards for individual battles are hardly even worth the mention.  Now we are in the top five! So we proceed into the next battle.  The fourth ranked dog is referred to as "komusubi", which is the fourth ranked wrestler in sumo. Of course, this is another sumo tradition where have special "ring names" (shikona) which get inherited over time by different wrestlers. So natsu gets to inherit the name "Yamato" at this time, written as kanji! Unfortunately, we can't choose the name ourselves, but atleast we get to use kanji finally! Anyway, on to the next battle!  Third ranked, in sumo terminology "sekiwake". Also, we win, of course. Next!  We also win against the second ranked dog ("oozeki"). These names are a bit of a joke. "Suzumushi" means "bell cricket". Our final battle.  And we win this one too against the first ranked dog ("yokozuna"). Our wolf is female anyway, so "Minami" definitely fits. But this is basically it. Again this is all a bit of fun, with no influence on the capturing. However, it does mean that your dog/wolf/etc. now gets a monthly salary of 20,000 G which is way more than what Ken is getting (Ken's salary is just level x 100!). All right, back to hunting! Just a few more for today!  By the way, it's also now Autumn 1997.  We'll head underground for a bit, using this teleporter near Battle Park.  It takes us to this area here. Yes I know there is a cave entrance also here, we'll go there next time. There's a particular species we want to catch which appears only here. They do have a propensity to masquerade as trees, so it's a bit hard to see them. However, using again Linda's ability to imitate animal calls... ...it will make them show themselves.  Somehow, these are antelopes. No, I also have no idea what in the world is even going on here. To be clear, technically these are supposed to be serows, which is a goat-antelope sort of thing animal native to Asia, but honestly in this case I think we can keep it simple since they are closely related anyway. (But watch me get super specific about something just a bit later today!) But check out the PC Engine version:  I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute, but aren't these...? Yes. Yes they are. This is what reindeer look in the remake, except they are different colour. Well, check the "extra" section at the end of today's episode for more details about what's going on here. Our next species is found nearby...  ...mostly in the water.  This is "the star-shaped", another unidentified species. Of course we'll name it later. Is it just me or do we coincidentally have some of the weirder looking animals on the list today? Anyway, we'll get out of here back to the surface...  ...and use this other teleporter in the lake east of Dogy Figh.  This is also an unnamed species...  ...for the time being, know as "the little". We'll give proper names to both of these in a few minutes. But for now, we'll again head back out. It's time to address the blizard situation.  One of the services you can get on the phone is satellite weather. Checking the weather right now tells us the following:  So, looks like good chances of blizzard in the north (and I will never stop complaining that the game refers to it as "west").  We head over to Eterna...  ...where it's clearly snowing heavily (although it's a bit hard to tell on the screenshot, but trust me on this). So it turns out, after you capture all other animals in the West Area, AND it's a heavy blizzard like this...  ...THEN you can finally meet the mythical snow-monster! But this is for sure one of the situations where you DO NOT want to go in blindly. You have no chance of surviving even the first turn. You MUST approach the animal from behind--this gives you a guaranteed first turn instead of them. So let's see what we're dealing with here.  Probably don't need to tell you that these are in fact panda bears. Their HP is not super huge, but they have pretty ridiculously high stats otherwise. The reason I mentioned you need to get the first turn is because one of those stats is speed. So the first thing you need to do is buff your speed up by using Linda's "Water of Haraba" ability. This gives Linda +166 in speed and Ken +123. Linda also transforms into her strongest beast form which additionally gives her +133 in speed and +176 in attack and +172 in defence. After this, Ken can also transform into his most powerful beast form and gain +153 in speed, +199 attack and +175 in defence. At this point Ken can start attacking with his normal attack.  The ultimate beast forms of Ken and Linda still look awesome! But anyway, at this point the battle is basically won--sure pandas still have some nasty abilities, but let's say if you don't get spectacularly unlucky, the battle is basically won. The main thing was to get all those buffs in before the pandas can have a turn. To speed things up, in the second turn Linda can also cast "Flame of Zia", which gives a further attack boost of +163 to Ken and +145 to Linda. At this point we definitely shouldn't lose. So basically you want to avoid them using "war cry" on the first turn before you are fully buffed, more or less. After that it's not so bad if you boost your stats as described above. Take note of how much they sell for, though. Of course the problem with this is that pandas are considered Class A, so they can be only sold to the illegal trader in Nebul. The problem with THIS in turn is the he's most likely already left the planet by this point. However, as it turns out, panda meat also sells for like 1 million a piece and meat you can sell in any shop! So you can just process them into meat and sell that, for a very similar result if you need money. We'll need still a couple of million, although that's not for anything mandatory. Nevertheless, I will catch a few more pandas to sell (or at least their meat). Well, all right. It might be quite hard to believe, but we are done hunting for today! So let's just head quickly to the animal expert in Minago.  As for "the star-shaped", it's kind of obvious that it should simply become "the starfish". As for "the little", well, it's pretty obviously some kind of a cat. So, uh, let me introduce you to the sand cat. It lives in and around the Sahara desert in Africa, but it's better known for the fact that it's the kind of a cat where adults look like kittens and kittens look like cuter kittens! I mean, just look at them: Also, who wants to see more sand cat kitten pictures? Well, here you go. So with this in mind, I think we'll call "the little" as "sand cat" from now on! All right now, finally...  ...let's hand all of this in at the ark! Oh and by the way, remember how I showed you at the very beginning of the game how the captured animals are kept in pods like this:  So you might be wondering, what do we do with the whales, since they are so much bigger? Well, turns out...  ...they get nice big water tanks to be in! Anyway, as we finish registering the animals...  Of course, Linda is basing this on the "official" requirement of 100, but as for us, we still have a little bit to do. For now, however...  ...the friendly robot confirms that we're indeed at 103 out of 120! So today episode might have been a bit disjointed, but it was necessary so that we can now go towards the ending in a more relaxed way with the last few captures and also last couple bits of plot. I hope you enjoyed seeing all these weird looking animals today, though!  So, since we stumbled today a bit on the fact that PC Engine antelopes look the same as the reindeer in the remake, except for the colour, I wanted to talk a little bit on that topic. Well, two topics really, related to the animal designs back in the PC Engine original. The first is the odd thing (for me), that there are actually a few palette swap pairs of designs. For example, we've seen previously the sea slugs, and here's what they look like in the original version:  So that's all fine and good, they look the same in the remake. But then later you run into some giraffes (which we haven't seen yet in the remake), and they turn out to look like this:  So that's literally a palette-swap. The same situation happens with antelopes and reindeer and a couple of other pairs. I have no clue why they did this, since if the remake fits comfortably on a single CD, even including prerendered video cutscenes, then there's no reason why the original shouldn't be able to do the same when the graphics are lower resolution with fewer colours. Incidentally the only palette swap in the remake is frogs/tree frogs and that one even makes a bit of sense to begin with. The other thing is this. I've mentioned a few times how some animal was newly added in the remake. But in fact there are a few which were present in the original but were REMOVED in the remake and replaced with some new ones. As it turns out, these are mostly a couple of gimmick ones, such as this monstrosity:  "The Hand". Or this monstrosity:  You guessed it, "The Stand"! But then, some were simply removed for reasons unknown to me, such as this one:  The hedgehog. So there you go. I put this in the extra section because there wasn't really any other good place to put it in!  The list is going down quite substantially!
 Some design sketches of the ark:
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Aug 23, 2022 22:36
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Visit the lady on Ozsat in 1999 to hear the rest of her story.
Figure out how to capture aye-ayes. Apparently they can disguise themselves as humans.
Explore the "untrodden wilds".
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Reindeer, holy poo poo. This has been an exciting game!
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Aug 23, 2022 23:17
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The hands are weird, but... the stand is way weirder somehow
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Aug 23, 2022 23:26
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For how terrifying the PC Engine versions normally are, the Green Fish look really cartoony. Also the Reindeer sure are a thing huh.
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Aug 23, 2022 23:55
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Again, call me controversial yet brave, but I'm on Hashtag Team Reaper. The animals of Neo Kenya are nightmare creations and should not be allowed to spread across the universe.
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Aug 24, 2022 01:22
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The Flying Squirrels should have been named Frank, they look like Frank's to me.
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Aug 24, 2022 03:53
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The Hand and The Stand are unsettling, sure, but imagine seeing a flying vagina dentata and thinking yes, that's a butterfly.
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Aug 24, 2022 05:50
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Well obviously the PC98 game was a previous cycle, but Hedgehogs, Hands & Stands didn't get on the arc. I agree that the Piranhas look creepier in the new game; PC98's are just way goofier. Kind of a fun turn around on that. The Whale is so cool! Definitely my favorite of the critters, I think. I assume they look the same in PC98, but could we still see them just to see it rendered in the old style?
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Aug 24, 2022 15:30
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Gosssshhhh the PCE ones look so horrific and cool hahaha
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Aug 24, 2022 16:35
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rannum posted:The Whale is so cool! Definitely my favorite of the critters, I think. I assume they look the same in PC98, but could we still see them just to see it rendered in the old style? Oh believe me I would have definitely shown them if it were possible, but... as it turns out whales are one of the additions in the remake. They were not present in the PC Engine original! Sorry!
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Aug 24, 2022 20:14
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Unless... all of Neo-Kenya is on a giant whale 
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Aug 24, 2022 21:05
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Randalor posted:Unless... all of Neo-Kenya is on a giant whale No, it's on top of a turtle, with four elephants in the middle.
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Aug 24, 2022 21:51
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 Last time, Linda and Ken made a big push to get ahead in animal collecting, so they now sit at already 103 out of 120! Let's continue then for those last few!  We start this episode just as it becomes Winter 1997.  We'll begin by visiting Ken's house.  Turns out Ken's mum is here. I guess she must have finished her tour of Neo-Kenya?  Maybe not... But either way, he's gone.  We'll stop by the Ranger HQ to have a chat with Ben!  Among many things it does well, the game also creates a great feel about the life during the last few months on this planet! However, as for us, it's morphin' time, by which I mean we need to continue our collectathon. For this, we'll head over to Rose Garden as we still have some unfinished business here!  First, we'll head inside...  ...since we can talk one last time with Kevin's mum. So does that mean that she told Kevin about the stag beetle incident, then?  Anyway, our real reason for coming here is to go into the garden and...  ...trigger a battle with one of those horrible roses. Certainly, right now we are more than strong enough to be able to handle it (especially after dealing with whales and pandas!).  Of course, what we really want is for her to summon the grasshoppers. They are already familiar to us, but last time I didn't post the screenshot from the PC Engine version, so here it is now:  Very cool and not at all creepy/horrific!  After this, we head out into the desert as we still have a couple of species that we're missing from here.  First of all, we have these guys that hide in the sand (you can see it just in front of Ken).  Of course, centipedes. They look so silly, especially the males.  And also camels! Let's now make a quick trip back to Ozport!  More specifically...  ...to the wedding shop.  That diamond ring which costs half a million G is now definitely affordable for us! So let's buy it. The salesperson has a somwehat questionable comment about the purchase. Anyway, by "our residence" they mean of course, the ark. We'll find it there later. Just to be clear though: this item does absolutely nothing. It's just there because it's the kind of thing you could buy in a real world.  Next, we'll head to hospico, or rather...  ...to this cave, just a bit east of it.  It's that place where hermit crabs can be found masquerading as rocks. But we also heard last time that story about even the beastians having a hard time telling apart between hermit crabs and turban shells when they are in hiding!  So, now that we know about this issue, when we see a small rock on the ground (ignore the worm)...  ...it will sometimes also trigger a battle against turban shells instead! Finding turban shells is kind of weird and I don't really have a good explanation. The only conversation about it is really the one from last time, but at least it gives you a pretty direct pointer what to do, so I guess it's not actually a problem. By the way, if you go back to the ark...  ...this guy standing in front of the hut has a bit to say. Yeah, we know. It's been going on for a while already, but this is where you can get an explanation why merchants are disappearning, if you haven't figured it out yourself. It's kind of an interesting concept that you slowly lose access to shops and services in the last part of the game.  Coming outside, it's already Spring 1998.  As always, we'll check the calendar...  ...but again, it's one we've already seen.  We'll head again through the Battle Park tunnel...  ...and then through this teleporter back into the underground.  I've shown this cave last time when we were catching antelopes, but now we'll actually head inside!  This place is called Gapia and it's important because there are several endemic species living here that you can't find elsewhere. One of them is in particular a massive pain. However the animals you see jumping around on the screenshot are not one of the endemic species. Those are just tree frogs. Both males and females are abundant here and easily caught. So if you haven't found a female tree frog yet, then you can just come here and capture one in about 5 seconds. Of course, that's not what we're here for, therefore let's proceed.  Oh, hey, what are you?  Ah, right, sea cucumbers! As if we need more white beastman statues! Interestingly, they don't even look so different from the real ones. Here's an actual photograph (from our Earth) of one species of sea cucumber which seems to have inspired their in-game design: By I, Marrabbio2, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2416061  And then we start our usual up and down the staircase dance (or perhaps, up the down staircase?)  As you walk through the dungeon, you might see these flowers along walls.  The are literally called "dog eaters" so you don't really want to have dogs in your party when you fight them. On the other hand, there's not really a good reason to fight them, since they can't be captured. Also, they just sit next to walls, so just don't run into them, mmkay?  Interesting setup here with two staircases next to each other.  Although their destinations are separated by a wall!  If you camp overnight in these sandy kind of looking areas...  ...you will definitely get invaded by some giraffes. As we can see they are definitely NOT extinct like Bronco was claiming. So, if we go back up and...  ...take the other side of that double staircase, let's see what we'll find.  After a short walk, we find a... surprising teleporter! But where could this one possibly go?  Here we are, on the other side. Let's see...  Oh, hey, it's an ark... another one.  This one certainly looks a bit worse for wear. But, well, we're here now, so let's go in and have a look!  Yeah, this place has seen better days for sure.  Uhhh... Ok, let's first check the "hand in" room since it's right there.  This place seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. However, if we approach, we do get a message. Sure we'll do it, but you might as well not since all you get is a pair of cicadas. They are easily found in several places in the underground, so this "gift" is of dubious value at this point. Well, ok let's see what else is around.  The registration room has also seen better days.  The pods where animals would normally be kept are also not functional and mostly fallen apart/destroyed. Let's head to the top deck where the bridge and crew quarters are. First we reach the crew quarters, but...  Well, that's a shame. Let's head a bit further forward to the bridge.  Obviously, we have to try. There's a weird sound, but...   But then... I guess it was probably just a bit stuck then, huh? I mean, go inside?  Inside is clearly also non-functional with most of those "beating" hearts missing or dead.  But somehow there's a chest here in the corner. Ken found the crown of N'Bell! Oh hey, here's one more crown, who would have expected to find it here, huh?  Surprisingly there's also a chest in the other corner, but... Ken found a white beastman statue! Yeah. It's literally a joke at this point. I'm not even sure if there's anybody left on the planet to sell it to! (Obviously you can come earlier than we did, but still...) In any case, there doesn't seem to be anything else to be found here, so let's make our way back out. As we do so...  Well, sure keep telling that to yourself, Linda. But I'm pretty sure you already know that it's not so simple. As far as theories, knowing that there are time shenanigans involved, we can easily conclude that this is potentially a remnant of a previous time loop or something like that that has been hidden here in the underground for a long time (hence its state of disrepair). Kind of like an archaelogical find that was buried under the layers of civilisations that have existed over time.  Anyway, a few steps away from the ark, there's also this. Looks like some sort of a door, but this one is, at least for now, impassable. So we'll have to figure something out for that before we leave the planet. So, we'll use the teleporter to get back to the "normal" part of the cave. There's still more animals to be found here.  First of all...  ...these guys here.  I suppose it should be pretty obvious that these are anglerfish. And trust me, they are just as annoying as those in Outer Wilds. The annoyance is not really because they are going to kill you, since they are definitely not going to be doing anything of the sort at this stage. The annoyance is that, well, if you check the screenshot, you will see that they are all female. So we have here a bit of a similar situation like with tree frogs, except this time it's the males which are difficult to find. Unfortunately, this time also there is NO place where they are found in abundance, like female tree frogs can be found here. Oddly enough, this absence of male anglerfish, is somehow a bit realistic. The situation with male anglerfish and their existence is even on our Earth exceptionally weird and so, unbelievably, this situation about them being difficult to find is somehow not actually random--let's just say that even on our Earth finding a male anglerfish is not a question with a straightforward answer! The sex life of anglerfish is deeply disturbing. So, what options then remain for obtaining a male anglerfish? Well, one option is to put your faith in the RNG and keep trying to fight animals here in Gapia. The sea cucumbers have the ability to summon into battle animals of other species, so this is probably your best bet if that's what you want to try. There is however, a much easier way (if you know it). So for now, let's just catch a few female ones, and then we'll see about the rest in a moment. Before we leave the cave, there's just one more species to be found. If you make camp, sometimes you might get ambushed by these:  This is yet another undiscovered species, for the time being known as "the strange guy" So, now we can leave the cave and deal with the anglerfish situation. As it turns out, if you hatch a shiny egg in the incubator in Ozport, you have a 7/8 probability of getting an anglerfish (the other 1/8 simply gives you nothing). Of course that can still be 50/50 male or female, however, that still means like 7/16 probability of getting a male which is still pretty reasonable. The incubator can hold 8 eggs at a time, so if you put in 8 shiny eggs, chances are pretty good you will succeed in getting a male. Of course, by saying this, we have just moved the problem, because then the next question is, how does one obtain a shiny egg? Well, again, as it turns out, the easiest way to get a shiny egg is to... dismantle the female anglerfish.  So first, we head to Nebul (the only one who seems not to have left the planet yet) and dismantle all our extra anglerfish to get a few shiny eggs. Then...  ...we head over to Ozport...  ...to the incubator service. Here we'll hand over all our shiny eggs. The eggs won't hatch until next season, so we can leave for now and come back later to see the results. So we'll head over to Minago quickly...  Of course, we want to give a name to our newfound species. So "the strange guy" will become simply a slug.  And with all of that going on, it's no wonder that it's already Summer 1998. There is now exactly one year left! So let's head back to Ozport to see how our anglerfish eggs are doing!  Well, at least one of our eggs has produced a male anglerfish, so looks like we're good here! But seriously, go to wikipedia and read about the situation with male anglerfish. It's way more insane than you think. Also, while we are in Ozport...  ...let's go again through this little passage.  It leads, of course, to this pool of muck...   But it also allows us to catch some catfish! All right now...  ...let's head back into the underground for a bit.  We're heading to this place over here. It's the famous Melt Pot where we went previously to collect some hot poop! There's a couple more species we can find here, to finish the work.  Everything is full of lava!  However, soon we find our next new species... they look kinda big.  Somehow, dragons. To be fair, we have been told that there is a legend about their existence. Although it was I think somewhere in Scenario A when Ken's mum mentioned that, so it's been a while! They are also pretty strong, but so are we, so this poses no particular difficulty. Incidentally, if you happen to be carrying hot poop with you, then the dragons will actively chase you. So I guess that means that they are the ones who eat red flowers and "produce" said hot poop! So now, try not to laugh, but here is what the dragons looked like in the PC Engine version:  Hilarity ensues. Anyway, we have one last species to find in this cave!  Ah, here it is! Can you guess?  Yes! It's "the horned guy", another undiscovered species! Certainly also on the stronger side, but again, not really a match for us at this point. Before I forget here is the awesome PC Engine version:  This is actually the last unnamed species you can find in the game, so as always...  ...let's head to the animal expert and sort that out. So "the horned guy" will of course become cattle. And now, to finish off, let's head to the ark...  ...and hand all of this in!  Finally the robot confirms for us that we are now at 114 out of 120. So we still have six species left to find, and we'll do that next time in the final episode of Scenario C! So, as promised, although we didn't need to use it in the game, today as an extra, we'll have a brief look at how the auction house works in this game! It's actually pretty simple.  So the auction house is over in Nebul (because it's not actually legal!) and it's accessed by going down this staircase.  There are a few people here to talk to. So let's start with the guy standing on the left. Male anglerfish do indeed appear for auction, but usually for quite a lot of money--this is of course, completely not needed, because as we've seen it's quite easy to obtain them, but if you don't know how... And then the guy with the cane, sitting on the sofa. The guy standing in front of the "stage": And finally the woman. In order to start the auction, you can talk to the animal trader. And then we get into it!  After this, you are shown the "offering" and can start bidding.  All the data is shown on the screen, and this time we're bidding for 6 female ants. If you want to bid you can press the circle button. There are other computer controlled participants, too, so any time anybody bids, the time is extended by 5 seconds (so like a real auction, no last second snipes here). If nobody bids during that time, then the last bidder wins. You can certainly get some rarer species here, but mostly it will cost you a lot of money. But if you're playing the game blind, it might be useful to come here and at least see what animals pop up, so that you can at least try to find them yourself somewhere! Auction house also closes at some point before the end of the game when the animal trader who runs it leaves the planet. So don't expect to be able come here in 1999 to get the one last mssing animal! Finally I should mention that no, you cannot offer your own extra animals for auction. But honestly, the game pretty much showers you in money, so... Anyway, that's it for the (illegal) auction house! Almost nothing left here! As you can see, we're really not going to find out what the crowns are for until the very last moment!
Look! Walk on the wild side!
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Aug 27, 2022 21:05
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Finding that old ark makes you wonder how many times they've been around the block. Outside of the obvious answer indicated by the amount of scenarios.
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Aug 27, 2022 22:29
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Oh the Giraffes are very fun designs. Couple a cool guys right there. You can really start to feel the vibes as the planet empties by this point, and the anxiety as you only have a year left to get those last couple animals. Imagining getting to this point and not having 100 yet. I wish the music changed at this point. There's not going to be very many people left moving forward, and you're scrounging around in a rush to get the remainder...it'd add some fun melancholy to it. I really like it when games do something like that
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Aug 28, 2022 03:33
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rannum posted:I wish the music changed at this point. There's not going to be very many people left moving forward, and you're scrounging around in a rush to get the remainder...it'd add some fun melancholy to it. I really like it when games do something like that I know that there are games that add instruments to a main theme as the game goes on, but is there any that remove instruments as the game progresses? This would be a good use for something like that, start off with a full lively orchestral score, then slowly remove instruments as the years go on until mid-97/start of 98, all you're left with is a piano or violin providing the overworld music as the cities have mostly emptied.
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Aug 28, 2022 11:34
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Randalor posted:I know that there are games that add instruments to a main theme as the game goes on, but is there any that remove instruments as the game progresses? This would be a good use for something like that, start off with a full lively orchestral score, then slowly remove instruments as the years go on until mid-97/start of 98, all you're left with is a piano or violin providing the overworld music as the cities have mostly emptied. Majora's Mask's Clock Town music gets more and more frantic as the cycle progresses, but I've never seen (heard) anything like you described. It would fit this game extremely well, though.
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Aug 28, 2022 12:22
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Randalor posted:I know that there are games that add instruments to a main theme as the game goes on, but is there any that remove instruments as the game progresses? This would be a good use for something like that, start off with a full lively orchestral score, then slowly remove instruments as the years go on until mid-97/start of 98, all you're left with is a piano or violin providing the overworld music as the cities have mostly emptied.
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Aug 28, 2022 16:10
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The PC engine dragon's are adorable. Chickensnakes  Since time shenanigans are pretty obvious at this point, I'm curious to see what kind of twist the game will put on it. Well, more of a twist then meatship watched over by the digitalized spirit of your father locked in a timeloop can be.
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Aug 28, 2022 16:14
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I think it's a lovely troll that the one piece of data that survived the untold eons of time that ship's been sitting there is just a common animal and not some super rare exclusive poo poo. Or an animal you have no chance but watch go extinct as there's no way for you to catch it before it does so.
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Aug 28, 2022 16:18
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I appreciate the original male grasshopper faces overshooting "weird insect" and ending up at "cartoon dog." The female grasshopper and the revised sprites show that wasn't intentional, and I'd gladly take the rest of the changes, but I feel the weird dog face works so well in the "well this weird alien is sort of like a grasshopper, call it a grasshopper" naming scheme. The more initially confused you are by a Linda^3 design-name combination the better.
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Aug 28, 2022 17:09
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If you let the clock run out, does it stay at winter '99 forever until you choose to leave, or do you get an actual Game Over?
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Aug 29, 2022 01:02
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DACK FAYDEN posted:If you let the clock run out, does it stay at winter '99 forever until you choose to leave, or do you get an actual Game Over? i think i vaguely recall reading you get a special game over scene if you blow the time limit or smth but i dunno if its actually a Thing?
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Aug 29, 2022 01:56
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DACK FAYDEN posted:If you let the clock run out, does it stay at winter '99 forever until you choose to leave, or do you get an actual Game Over? Booky posted:i think i vaguely recall reading you get a special game over scene if you blow the time limit or smth but i dunno if its actually a Thing?
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Aug 29, 2022 14:38
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Well, show it when we get there, then!
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Aug 29, 2022 14:41
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The game seems pretty well-paced for you to barely cross the finish line in this scenario, and for 100% completion to really require you to know what you’re doing. I know I’ll say it again, but thanks so much for showing off this weird little gem.
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Aug 29, 2022 14:46
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Yeah, this has been an absolutely fascinating game.
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Aug 29, 2022 14:59
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The Lord of Hats posted:The game seems pretty well-paced for you to barely cross the finish line in this scenario, and for 100% completion to really require you to know what you’re doing. I know I’ll say it again, but thanks so much for showing off this weird little gem. Some of the stuff seems like it could be streamlined, I think you could probably optimize the routing to be done with a few years to spare if I'm recalling most of the quests properly. Or at the very least, do a lot less ping-ponging across the planet.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:09
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Randalor posted:Some of the stuff seems like it could be streamlined, I think you could probably optimize the routing to be done with a few years to spare if I'm recalling most of the quests properly. Or at the very least, do a lot less ping-ponging across the planet. It is true that the path we took could absolutely be optimised a fair bit; however, if you want to collect all 120 species, you definitely cannot leave before 1999 for reasons I will show in the final update.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:19
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Is it the Aye-Ayes?
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Aug 29, 2022 15:26
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Zereth posted:Is it the Aye-Ayes? Not only them, there's one other species too.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:57
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Ah yes, realizing the Ark is a species and picking a fight with the arks that are sitting underground until you manage to capture a male and female specimen.
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Aug 29, 2022 16:04
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Geemer posted:Ah yes, realizing the Ark is a species and picking a fight with the arks that are sitting underground until you manage to capture a male and female specimen. sorry this idea is too reasonable for Linda^3 and therefore the true answer is much, much weirder (you have to hatch ark eggs first, obviously)
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Aug 29, 2022 16:12
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ivantod posted:Not only them, there's one other species too. Is the meteor actually a sentient creature that rains its young down upon the planet before it strikes, and you have exactly one season to catch a male and female Meteorite?
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Aug 29, 2022 16:43
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