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Still waiting for the dog to get a giant arm.
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Jul 29, 2023 13:40
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| # ? May 29, 2024 00:15 |
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Death Dealer posted:It still kinda blows my mind that Kabuki had his own fighting game and that it's the only one to have ever gotten a release outside of Japan. I think I saw that game getting played at a mystery fighting games tournament? I only realized it because of this, but Kabuki and Kikugorou were both selectable characters. I assumed it was some kind of tengai makyou fighting game, but who knows.
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Jul 29, 2023 16:05
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Geizt posted:I think I saw that game getting played at a mystery fighting games tournament? I only realized it because of this, but Kabuki and Kikugorou were both selectable characters. I assumed it was some kind of tengai makyou fighting game, but who knows. Tengai Makyou: Kabuki Klash, released in 1995 on... Neo Geo:  Despite the name, it actually features Manjimaru on the cover. The Japanese name has nothing do with Kabuki, so I guess that's where the discrepancy comes from lol. I guess this is the only game to get released because it's the only one that wouldn't have required extensive localisation work for western audiences.
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Jul 29, 2023 16:22
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 So last time Manjimaru and the party arrived at Inaba province which had been overrun by sand. No orchids, but we did manage to enter the local Root Clan castle and defeat its ruler Madam Barbara. It all went rather quickly this time, even Madam Barbara was just barely even mentioned before meeting her. Her husband, Duke Pepe, did manage to escape, but that's ok, we probably will never see him again (heh). Anyway, after obtaining the holy sword no. 4, we realised that we still don't have any idea where the matching dark orchid might be. So we continued on our way to the border crossing at Shikano village where things quickly got weird with the mentions of ANOTHER castle and its somewhat unhinged ruler. Also I should give you a warning. There's going to be some pretty hardcore tonal whiplash throughout this episode, so be prepared. In any case, Manjimaru, Kinu and Gokuraku now find themselves in bridal outfits while being led to the said castle by the village elder!  It's cool that they actually went through the effort of making special character sprites for this situation!  Well, this really seems to be a castle here, huh. I will also point out that it blocks the way west on this path. So we may not have a choice here. In any case, what I'm really trying to say here is...  Before he drops us off, the village elder has some final words: And with this, the village elder leaves, and we can enter the castle.  At the castle entrance, we're greeted by one of the captured villagers. After this, he moves away and we can come inside. Two points though: at this moment you can definitely exit the castle and go explore somewhere else if you want. You're not locked in to this path. And second, if you come here before talking to the elder, then the guard tells you to go away and talk to him first. So you can't enter here before putting on the bridal clothes.  Looks pretty reasonable inside the castle. You might notice some graffiti on the walls. This one in particular says アホ, meaning "fool" or "idiot" in Kansai dialect. I have not really mentioned this specifically, but this game is set in the "lower" (southern) part of Japan (as opposed to the first game which was set in the northern half). The kind gentleman who let us in has some more to tell us.  In various places in the castle you will find these barrels of sake, which will replenish you health fully every time you use them. Of course, in the remake versions of the game (GC, PS2) this was changed into something non-alcoholic. Here we can also see another wall graffiti, バーカ, which also means idiot/fool.  The door you can see on top is the one that would lead us towards Izumo province. But, as said, first we need to deal with the ruler of this castle.  But for now, we'll just go one floor up!  Here, we're approached by three sages. To be clear, not THE three sages, these are just some other random three sages.  Bando is the old name for Kanto (Tokyo) region where the first game was set. And then, it turns out that thing behind him is actually...  ...a large TV screen that slides up from the floor! Well, indeed, let's watch the film!  At this point you are all wondering what the heck is even happening here. And well, I'll just tell you directly: this is all a massive callback to the first Tengai Makyou game. To put it briefly, it's a bit like this. In the first game, Ziria (the main character) and his party are mostly fighthing against the Daimon cult, of which MANTO (without the 2) is one of the members. So here he is in the first game:  And then we have the "upgraded" MANTO-2 version here in this game, and in fact this character then proceeded to appear in various incarnations across all subsequent Tengai Makyou games, essentially as a recurring joke. He's always portrayed as quite stupid and being manipulated by some higher power for their own purposes.  Let's talk to more people here. That's not really what they say, the correct phrase in Japanese is "don't chase after those who leave you" (去る者は追わず), but the joke is that the phrase that he said (猿ものは追わず) is pronounced the same, but means roughly, "don't chase after monkeys".  (By the way, that red and white thing on the wall is a Japanese festive curtain thing called "kouhaku maku".) Hm. What's happening here. That chest looks awfully suspicious! But we have no choice... Opening the chest causes a monkey to appear!  But oh boy can he talk. So yeah he does seem to have a bunch of tubes and wires connected to his back... I guess that must be the power-up device he's talking about. But would that not make it difficult for him to move around? Well anyway, let's see what happens.   I mean, it's a boss fight... I guess? But like... he's tied up and how would he chase after us? So...  ...I'm just going to use this command here. Literally, 突破 means "break through", but in this game it's same as the "Escape" command in other JRPGs. Let's see...   Ok, good, I thought that might work. Real talk now: if you want, you CAN fight this battle. But that power-up device does work, and will give him an attack that does 999 HP damage to one character! So, you can try and it is possible, but it won't be easy. But for us, we'll just be on our way. Except...   Here we go again... sigh.   And it's a boss fight... but this time actually. Except he's broken free of his power-up device so can no longer use it! But this is pretty easy(ish). His attack and defence are not super strong, so mostly just go all out. This is a good time to use the "king's strength" spell to double your attack power for Manjimaru and Gokuraku and basically just do whatever. His regular attack does about 40ish, but you do want to make sure that everybody is healed to around 200 HP at all times. Why? because of that "fool's spell" that he keeps mentioning. Unfortunately, there's no special animation, but it does have a great description text in game: "suddenly out of nowhere a large number of horses and deer appears and hits XX for XX HP!". Of course this only works because the characters for "horse" and "deer" are used to "phonetically" write the word "fool", as explained last time. But jokes aside, this will hit one character for around 170 HP so it's not a joke. Other than that, there's not too much danger here as his spell will actually most of the time simply fail to cast anyway!   Oh god is there going to really be a next time. Not sure I can handle it.  Over here we have now a proper chest in which we find... Manjimaru obtained the fire extinguisher key!  The key opens this door here which is on the same floor and leads to a couple of people and a staircase.  Let's first talk to them. All right, let's go up the stairs.  Huh, that looks like some kind of an elevator shaft...  Ah, of course.   A boss fight?  Nope. (Well, unless you really want one.)    A boss fight (again)? This time, yes. But it's entirely the same as last time, so we'll skip over the details.   This is starting to get annoying.  Let's just open this chest here instead? Manjimaru found Fool's Big Shoes!  This is actually a piece of equipment for Gokuraku. It gives him +5 in agility compared to his previous equipment. Nice. Let's continue up the staircase.  Aha, let's see what he has to say. No "boss fights" here, so we can simply proceed up.  We can talk again to the guys here. And then... Manto shows up again on his lift.   Oh, man. What now. A boss fight?  Nope. No boss fight this time.  After this...  ...he retreats back down again on his lift. As for us, we'll take the stairs again to the sixth and final floor.  All right, let's see. What now.  He comes up on his lift again... but as we were informed, the lift stops a little short!  And finally, this whole nonsensical ordeal ends not with a bang but with a whimper. He's just stuck here and we're, just like that, done.  On the way back, we can talk again to the guys.    On the bottom floor, we're met again with the guy who greeted us at the entrance originally. That's a good question.  But we're done and can now be on our way.  Finally, we're back outside. That was completely ridiculous. Before we continue, though, let's see what's going on in our villains' lair!    All right, finally we're back to our regularly scheduled programme. Before we continue, let's quickly check the map.  Ah, I guess that must be the island they were talking about there. Well, we'll figure it out at some point, I'm sure. For now, let's make our way to Matsue, as we were instructed.  Before we go to Matsue, looking quickly a bit south from our position, there is another one of those border crossings, but this one too is blcoked by the orchid roots on the other side, so it's not passable.  This is Santoku pass, but inside there's only an inn and a general store and not even any people to talk to, except the two vendors! So we'll just be on our way  Crossing over this bridge, there is a road sign we can read: North: Matsue village "Our dolls are perfect gifts for children! -- Ashimoto Doll Shop, Matsue village Ugh, those Ashimoto brothers again! Well, let's just go and see.  Ah, here it is on the coast.  As usual, let's start by talking to the welcoming committee! Oh game, sooooo subtle here. Ok, well, this is not going to go how it seems it will right now, but still.   Uh-oh...  As always, let's check out some houses, too...  Here we have a mother and the kid. First the mother. Oh, you can see the orchid far in the northwesth, huh? We'll have to investigate that.  As always, there are a few people in the inn! Man, sand, lava, hurricanes, we've got everything! By the way, this place has a "left luggage" office. Since the money stealing insects do operate in the area, for now I'm going to keep the majority of our money in storage while we're out and about. It's a hard earned money and I'd hate to lose it to such weak enemies! Continuing our tour of the village...  ...as we approach this big building, things start to happen!  Robots of some kind? To be precise, 46 of them, and yes, I counted--the game shows you every single one walking by! And then to make the matters even worse...  ...they are followed by the (this time actual) three sages! What is going on here? Before we investigate further, let's finish talking to the villagers. Like that guy standing over there. Kojindani is actually a real archaeological site in Japan in Izumo area. Stuff has been found there from dating from the new stone age, through the bronze age, all the way to the beginning of the iron age. Mt. Kahiko, on the other hand is, as far as I can determine, not an actual real location. Although it's worth noting that the "ka" part is written with kanji that means "fire", so maybe that has something to do with the lava.  So, uh, this is now the second time that "pulling the island" has been mentioned. It does seem that this is what we'll need to do at some point. For now, if nothing else, we are missing the fourth person anyway, so this could hint at the reunion with Kabuki happening sooner rather than later, perhaps? Well, we can hope.  All right, that's everything, so...  ...let's check out what's in here.  Ah, those two behind the counter are certainly Ashimoto brothers... so let's talk to the other guy standing there in the middle.  There is also one more person upstairs... So I guess we're lucky that we only had to watch about 46 of them walk past and not all 100!  Anyway, back down, let's talk to those Ashimoto losers. First the one on the left. I mean, yeah! Well, ok, a few things here. First of all, when we talk about "clay figurine robot", we're really talking about "doguu" figurines. Those are clay figurines found in prehistoric archaeological sites in Japan. They looks like this:  dogu -> By World Imaging - Own work, photographed at Ueno Museum Tokyo, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11976021 As you can see, there is certain similarity with the robots we saw earlier. Except of course the robots are much larger versions. The other thing is, "ume kokeshi" (梅こけし) is a type of Japanese wooden doll, usually without arms or legs. The "ume" version typically features a plum blossom design of some kind ("ume" means plum). Here is an example of what they look like:  Talking to the other Ashimoto brother:  Well, let's see. I guess well buy this ume kokeshi doll, it's only 2300 ryo. The robot costs 100,000, but it's sold out anyway so even if we had the money, we could not buy it. The other item for sale here is "Smiling Fukusuke Doll" for 3000 ("fukusuke" is another type good luck doll thing in Japan, this one looks like a large-headed dwarf). ANd the final item for 600 is "infernal ball". This one can be useful for situations where you want to grind money and/or experience, since using it summons a random battle immediately. So instead of walking around to trigger the battles when you want to grind, you can simply use this item over and over instead (it has infinite uses)! So you probably want to pick that up, esp. with how inexpensive it is! All right, we're done here for now. Let's keep going west and see what we find.  I mean of course we first encounter some new enemies. I think due to our escapades with the red chest previously, we are a couple of levels above where you would normally be, so most enemies here are still a bit on the easier side due to that.   But this place looks interesting with that high tower in the back! This is the Tamatsukuri village we've been told about, so let's go in and see what's going on!  Let's check with the welcoming committee here as usual.  Considering we have a dog in our party... it sure as heck does.  This lady will tell us more about the tower.  As a reminder, the phrase "root country" in Japanese is also a synonym for "underworld". Well then, I guess we'll have to decipher it then, won't we?   Let's see about the guests at the inn... Ah-ha. Looks like we found something we'll be able to do if we ever obtain one of those robots! Ah, who am I kidding, you know we will.  There is also this naked guy in the hot springs pool.  This is on the upper floor of the weapon shop. I feel like the time is getting near to the moment when we finally catch up to him...    All right, time to check out the tower.  There are a few floors to climb.  On the third floor is the locked door with the treasure chests... if we examine it, we're told that the door has a "round slot". As it turns out, this should be a hint to use our "umi kokeshi" doll which is cylindrical in shape to open it! But don't worry, the doll has also another use later. Let's open the chests.  Woah, that's... a lot! It was definitely worth spending money on the doll. It is actually possible to find another doll in a chest for free a bit later in the game, but as usual, I didn't want to wait since it was not super expensive anyway. The other chest has one of those consumable elixirs.  We continue to climb...  ...until we reach the top floor, which does indeed have a telescope for observing the surroundings. It's pointing towards the sea (and the island), so let's have a look to see what we can see!  Oh, now, that's... interesting. It looks like that's the Izumo Grand Shrine on what is now a distant island, but it's been attacked by not one, but TWO dark orchids! So there are actually two of them somehow in the same place... if we could only get to it! (Please excuse the small graphical glitch in the top part of this screenshot. I don't think it's an emulation glitch or anything like that because this is the only place in the game with this sort of an issue.) But that concludes our business here for the time being. So let's head out.   More enemies on the way as always, but this one has a really ordinary name! How unexpected!   We'll head southeast, because...  Over here is a tengu's house!  Manjimaru obtained the "ten thousand hot springs" scroll! So this scroll, "ten thousand hot springs" (万湯), decreases the magic power (intelligence) of one group of enemies temporarily. It is also fitting that the word 万湯 is in fact pronounced "manto" in Japanese, since Manto's intelligence was somewhat... lacking!  Let's head south now, past a cave entrance. Although that cave entrance seems to me a bit larger than the ones we've seen before. I wonder why that is.  A bit west, past a curious looking circle here.  So much lava here...  ...and enemies too! Everything here dies in one hit and is usually not a problem, although the fishy breath guys annoyingly will keep using an attack that hits all party members. If you get hit with an unlucky turn order, this might be the end for you!   This guy is a little stronger and can also use poison, but still not a big deal.   As mentioned enemies from this family will steal your money and items, so be careful. (All that money from the chest I also deposited over to the stored items service so we don't lose it.)   But eventually we reach another village!  This is Shitaburue, which was mentioned previously. Maybe we'll find out more here about the dog situation. So let's see... Incidentally, "engiri" in Japanese (縁切) means "separation". So that's not ominous.  Let's continue with these two people here. The other person actually talks about the same thing, so we'll just move on.  And then this older gentleman here...  Oh, really?  The people at the inn. Yeah, they were sold out when we were there too...  I mean, we were told at least it's possible to reach it through that one cave? Well, let's hope not. But as mentioned, there really isn't anything else to do here, so let's continue our journey!  Just across the bridge, to the west from the village we find... another tengu!  Manjimaru obtained the "hell" scroll! Yes, this spell is actually named "hell" (地獄), but in reality it's just the same as the "confuse" spell in older Final Fantasy games! So let's be on our way. ivantod fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 21:21
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 Anyway, Engiri cave is just a bit south of here, but first, let's do something else. This thing here...  ...is just another Ninja hideout. The main thing with them is that you can rest for free without having to pay for the inn. Although inns are usually pretty cheap (only 10-20 ryo or such). On the other hand, there will soon be a bit of a twist on that whole thing with the inns.  Well, of course. And exactly the place we're going to...  Anyway, back west where we were, here is the cave entrance.  As we enter...  Why, what did you see in the future?  This bit to the left is covered with lava so it's dangerous to walk across. It's a bit similar to walking on lava in Dark Souls, if you want a comparison. So we'll have to continue north.  As we're walking through here...  ...it suddenly becomes dark...  ...and then Shiro is gone! Looks like someone stole him in the darkness!  This part of the cave doesn't really branch, so the only real way is forward, exactly as Kinu had said.  Who the heck are you, and why do you have what looks like a butcher's knife?  And he leaves. Who even is this loser in the first place? I guess we'll find out. I should mention though that he speaks in a feminine way. Incidentally, "inugami" (犬神) means "dog god" in Japanese, but more specifically refers to belief into possession by a dog spirit which was common in western part of Japan (which is the same part where our game is set!). But this does mean that we are one party member less at this time. More importantly, we have one less party member who can deal damage. Although there's a bit of a loophole there with Kinu: if you give her an item that can deal damage (like that sword), she can still use it as item and deal damage, since in that case, the damage is not dependent on her own attack power (which is forced to 0 when she wears the chains of purity).  Here in the chest is Shiro's collar. I give the item to Kinu to carry because it just seems like a right thing to do.  We encounter one new enemy here, but this one seems pretty rare. I wonder if this is a reference to "cat dance" (neko odori) festivals in Japan.   Soon, we reach the other exit of this cave. As per what we've been told, it should lead to Iwami province. But first...  Ok, if you say so.  And with this, we exit into Iwami province, and there is a village right in front of us. So let's go in there to rest and see what's up in this part of the world.  This place is the Inome village that people have been mentioning. Incidentally, inome (猪目) means "boar's eye", but in actuality it represents a typical Japanese "heart shaped symbol", often found in temples and shrines, like the one here:  It dates from around the year 500 CE and it represents a boar's eye that wards off evil spirits. You can often see also on tips of spears, as a small heart shaped hole. There is not a decent sized town in Japan called Inome, altough there is an Inome cave which is an archaeological locality close to real-life Izumo. But for now let's talk to the villagers. First of all, there's definitely going to be a bit of issues with navigating around (although we'll somewhat improve the situation soon), and second, I think it's pretty clear that we'll be doing some island pulling soon(ish). Considering also the mention about needing four people for that, I guess the return of Kabuki is likely imminent. Let's also talk to that person cut off in the corner of this screenshot! No, I refuse to believe this. Also Kinu already foresaw it differently.  Let's talk to these two girls by the pond... This one is quite interesting! This one is a bit rough (it works better in katakana, sorry!), sorry, but I'll explain in more detail when we get to the point this becomes relevant (soon!). The other girl is no easier to understand: You now, let's just make a note of this and move on.  A bit insensitive there, even if he is a villain... Come to think of it, this game has a few gay characters, but unfortunately mostly played for laughs and none of them really so far in an actually sympathetic role. Sigh. I guess it is 30 years old, but still...  The local shrine is on a cool little island connected to the rest with wooden bridges! But we'll come back to it.  But first, let's talk to these people. The old guy: His granddaughter is next to him... Why is everyone so weird in this village? And I will tell you that this is far from the weirdest village in this game!  Hm. Your husband disappeared and then a pig suddenly appeared in your house. Ah, probably unrelated. Also, to reiterate, why is everyone so weird in this place? What is happening.  Why are you hiding over here? Ah, so that's why you were hiding. But clearly we need to go to Inugami temple sooner rather than later!  But first, we want to talk to the people at the inn.  And finally we visit the temple. We should proceed to Inugami temple, but first... let's upgrade our equipment a little bit!  First these "Windstorm Straw Sandals" for 10000 ryo  A +2 upgrade in agility for Kinu.  Then also this "Exorcist Helmet" for 16800 ryo...  ...giving Manjimaru +3 in defence.  And finally, we'll also pick up this "Metal Bowl" for... just 180 ryo!  Obviously, it goes on Gokuraku's head for a measly +1 in defence. As usual, upgrading his equipment is worse than pulling teeth. But it'll get better.  After putting most of the rest of our money back into storage, our party heads west towards Inugami temple. However, on the way...  Well, I guess we're in their territory now! They have powerful fire based attacks which can deal 3-digit damage to any of our characters! Their defence is also decently high, so it's best to be careful. On top of that, they may appear together with another enemy in a group too!   Ah, that's gotta be it. Let's head inside.  In a true Dark Souls fashion, it's important NOT to take the path in the middle. You can't see it on the screenshot, but it's actually a kind of a travelator so you can't stop any more when you're on it. Which wouldn't be a problem, except the dog statues have lasers which deal a ton of damage to entire party. Depending on your level and equipment, but it's actually possible for Kinu to get completely KOd from the laser damage!  So you want to go around in order to get to the entrance.  It's a nice looking building, if you ask me.  But inside, there's nothing much, just the three statues. The red one has an obvious switch on it, so let's press it.  Well, that was easy. Let's go down the stairs.  Down here, you'll have to fight a couple more clay robots, but there are no actual random encounters. The clay robot fights are triggered when you step on predesignated parts of the floor and you can't avoid them.  We can see some inactive robots on the other side of the wall. The chest contains "Pigskin Shoes".  We can give them to Kinu for another +2 in agility, and yes I am aware that I just bought new shoes for her!  And in a few more steps, we reach the butcher guy along with Shiro and, uh, an army of clay robots? Shiro looks a bit... different?  Well, that's unfortunate. But before we continue, I should probably explain his name. The "Hell's Cauldron" part comes from 地獄釜, which in real life actually refers to a way of cooking where you use the steam of a hot spring to heat up food, like so:  This is because the really hot (over 100 °C) springs are often referred to as "hell" springs, so the cauldron is by extension of that. Also, as for "Nikusuke", the "niku" part is written with the character 肉, which means "meat". In addition to that, "-suke" is a strongly male name ending in Japanese, which contrasts with the fact that he predominantly speaks in feminine style. Anyway, what is even more unfortunate is...  ...this. So... a boss fight against Shiro? Well, yes and no. Yes, it's a real fight that you can lose, but also no, you can't win in a normal way. Apart from a few variations on physical attack, he also has a 999 HP heal ability that he can use. Which means, you'll be exhausted/out of resources sooner that he will. But there's actually no need to fight this at all, because simply using Shiro's collar as an item during the fights makes something happen.  Yeah... we kind of knew something like this is coming.  And we're left among the rubble. Hey at least all the robots are destroyed! Hope the sages didn't pay too much for them!  Since we're already here, let's have a look around.   Hmm, curious. That staircase has caved in and is not usable, by the way.  On the other side of the wall, there are a couple of chests and also two signs that we can read. The first sign: To the members of the clay robot unit: When deploying, use the dedicated lift and transport to the ground level one by one as fast as possible! Ah, so that platform we just saw must be the lift then. Then, the other sign there next to the two chests: Clay Robot Maintenance Room Attention! The clay robots in this area are under maintenance and should not be ridden! Now for the chests. The one on the left has 7400 ryo (thanks!). The one one the right has "Automaton Clothes", an piece of equipment.  Manjimaru will happily take a further +7 in defence this gives him!  Over here we have a few robot parts, but also one whole robot. There are also two signs, but they both have the same text: To the members of the clay robot unit: If you lose sight of your clay robot, return immediately to the Inugami temple base! I will explain next time what this means. But for now...  ...we have a clay robot to board!  Yes. We can now just walk around in our own personal mech. Even in dungeons. Which finally explains why some of the dungeons/caves around here have bigger entrances!  There's nothing else to do here, so I guess let's step on the lift!  On the upper floor...  ...is the other end of that broken staircase. So at least we know we haven't missed anything there. The other path...  ...just takes us back out. We exit from that cave which is next to the temple. So, again, a lot has happened today, so let's stop here for now. In the overall balance, we lost a friend, but instead gained a powerful robot/mech--and no, we're not going to abandon it around the first corner this time! Let's see where this takes us next time!
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Jul 29, 2023 21:21
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Also poor Shiro, went out like a boss.
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Jul 30, 2023 02:08
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I think the last few images of the first post are wrong, they don't make much sense with the text. Also I guess we don't need the combining robot of all the vehicles if you just get a robot as a vehicle.
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Jul 30, 2023 02:44
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...The awesomeness of getting a mecha is pretty dampened by Shiro's loss. Good boy, Shiro, good boy.  Yeah, I know that he's most likely going to come back, but there's also a good chance the second time he rescues us, he'll be gone for good.
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Jul 30, 2023 02:52
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Figures they'll do something to make room for Kabuki. honestly I'm a bit worried about the other dogs, given the origins of an Inugami, but I'm not sure if the game will go that far.
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Jul 30, 2023 02:57
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Blaze Dragon posted:I think the last few images of the first post are wrong, they don't make much sense with the text. Hey thanks I fixed it. There was a missing picture and all the others were shifted by one. Sorry about that! 
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Jul 30, 2023 03:02
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ivantod posted:
lmao, I'm probably juvenile but I loved the whole Manto bit. I love me a good comedy boss.
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Jul 30, 2023 22:18
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This game has suddenly brought pee forward in a way with which I'm not entirely comfortable.
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Jul 31, 2023 01:02
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Nooooooooo Shirooooo!!
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Jul 31, 2023 06:02
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Sum Gai posted:This game has suddenly brought pee forward in a way with which I'm not entirely comfortable. I mean the game has been using mild swearwords ("poo poo", etc.) in dialogues pretty consistently until now, but this part for sure goes all out on bodily fluid jokes, that is undisputable! It's always interesting to see how around this time in Japan, the kind of content you could put in a game was fairly liberal compared to those published in the west. The dialogues have stayed mostly the same in all versions of this game, although as mentioned some alcohol stuff was subsequently toned down in GameCube/PS2 remake. There is also one extremely gruesome/gory cutscene which got a bit trimmed in the Nintendo DS/PSP re-release, and then subsequently almost completely neutered in the GC/PS2 remake. It's a massive spoiler so we'll talk about it more when we get to it, but in this case "censorship" actually takes away the main point of that scene so... Seriously though, if anybody is considering playing this game for themselves I really recommend to just play the original PC Engine version. The NDS/PSP re-release has some very minor alterations like the one mentioned (although it does also remove the seizure inducing flashing during the random battle transition, so this may be relevant for you). The GC/PS2 remake, apart from the thing mentioned above, also completely nerfs any semblance of difficulty in the game by making you level up much faster, but also at the same time reducing the enemy stats. The remake also has pretty bad graphics compared to the original, so it's not worth it from that standpoint either.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:48
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Is it just me or was the Manto-2 video a riff on Rocky 2? Especially with the tires.
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Aug 1, 2023 02:44
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 So things were quite eventful last time again! We crossed over from Izumo province into Iwami, but things are a bit messy here due to some lava so we will have go back and forth a bit. Next we heard the story about four heroes from long ago, who managed to pull an island where the Izumo grand shrine is over to the mainland, but now the island is back away from the land again. It seems that this definitely requires four people, so unless we find Kabuki, we're not going to be able to do this. We have also been told that the tools to pull the island are left in some mountain caves. In addition to that, there is a story about two Fire Clan dragons (?!) but we don't know the details here. Finally we ran into one Nikusuke, who is apparently the new Root Clan henchman. In the meantime, the Root Clan has been buying battle robots from the Ashimoto merchants. The robots seem to be very powerful. However, while all that was going on, Nikusuke managed to steal Shiro from us and "adapt" him to fight against his former friends. However, this didn't work, and in a suicide attack, Shiro managed to destroy most of the Root Clan robots. One remained undamaged, however...  ...and so we are now using it for transportation! So we lost a friend, but in exchange gained a personal mech.  Let's first head east to do a bit of clean up.  You do still get random battles while riding the robot. However, as we've seen these robots do have a powerful fire attack, and so now that is also available to us to use too! You can see it above as the highlighted command in the battle menu (火炎), which is the "blaze" attack. It hits one group of enemies with a strong fire attack. To be clear, one group of enemies is defined as: enemies of the same type standing next to each other on the battle screen. So if you have e.g. XXY then the two Xs form one group and the Y is the second group (where X and Y are different enemy types). If you have a XYX configuration, the each enemy is a group of its own since the two Xs are not grouped together in the configuration. In our case above, though, we only have multiples of a single enemy type, which is the best possible case for this attack, and so...  Yeah, that works. It won't always outright kill an enemy, but it's a huge help when you get multiples of the same.  Anyway, over here is the cave where Shiro was originally stolen from us--it's the cave that connects Izumo and Iwami provinces.  You might recall that there was a bit in the middle which was not accessible due to lava. However...  ...as we were already previously informed, this robot can also walk across lava without any negative consequences! A we'll see later today, this does also include any lava on the overworld, too!  This time it leads to two chests in the middle of the cave.  Unfortunately, you do have to exit the robot if you want to open a chest. This does open you to random battles in which you can't us the "blaze" attack. However, it's good to know that in order to get back inside the robot, you don't have to approach it from the front. You just have to be next to it from whichever side. The chests don't actually contain anything of value: one has 44 ryo, and the other a consumable that's has the same effect as the shikigami/summoning spell. But ok, now that this is done, let's exit back on the Izumo side...  ...and it's time to see if we can find those tools that can be used to pull the island over. It's still weird to talk about "pulling the island over" just casually like that!  For now, we'll just head east.  Past the ninja hideout. By the way, you also have to exit from the robot if you want to enter a town.  Eventually, we find this cave here with a conveniently robot-sized entrance.  This is the Kahiko cave, which was mentioned last time as a place where we could find something we need to use to pull the island over.  Unfortunately, there are some fairly strong enemies in here, and the encounter rate is decently high too! To make things worse, as per our previous discussion, this configuration constitutes two "groups" of enemies, so you'll have to do this one by one. The guy on the right is actually more of a problem as he's stronger and also has bad fire attacks. In addition to that, he can throw oil on the party to make it even more damaging. The lightning guy does not have as much defence so it's a bit easier to deal with. I love the look of both of these enemies, they are awesome.   To be honest, I was a bit unsure about the translation for the "lighning fire" enemy. The name in Japanese is "tenbi", but annoyingly written in katakana, so there are no kanji to give us hints (surprisinly, Japanese is actually easier to read when it's NOT written with one of the phonetic kana scripts!). However, there is a word 天火 which means "lightning fire"; normally this word would not be pronounced "tenbi", but at least in theory it COULD be pronounced that way based on kanji readings. The actual word "tenbi" (点鼻) means somehing like "nasal drops", which I don't think fits for this enemy based on the look, so I've decided to twist myself into a pretzel here and go with "lightning fire".  This is a small cave in general. First we'll head to the east side and check out a chest! Manjimaru obtained the "Twin Dragon Helm".  Despite the grand name, it's only a further +1 in defence for Gokuraku. But you already know how that works.  Further north through the lava...  ...there is another chest!  This time, it's a new weapon for Manjimaru!  It replaces his previous "Black Spider Sword" for a further +6 in attack power. Not bad at all. That's all the incidental treasure here (but you'll agree that it was worth it), so let's head to our main destination in the cave.  On the western side of the cavern, we find this passage where our robot is too big to pass through. It does appear to lead to something important, though.  We'll have to do this part on foot, so let's be careful of random battles now!  Best not to try walking through the middle part. But it looks like we have an "important chest" here. So let's see.  Yep. That looks like the thing we came here for. We can now go back to the safety of our robot...  ...and, indeed, out of this cave entirely.  North from the cave is Matsue village which we visited last time. We'll stop here for a bit of a rest, before continuing towards the west.  On the northwestern side of Izumo, we find this bit which is completely impassable due to lava. There is a sign: If you're heading to Iwami province, go through Susa Wind Hole in the west! In real life, this location is actually called Yakumo Wind Hole, but it's located near Susa shrine in Izumo, so it's the same place. It's a cavernous formation which has a cold wind blowing year-round. The reasoning behind this phenomenon is that it has something to do with a volcano that was there a long time ago and the rocks that were formed from lava. So as you can see, like with sand in Iwami, also the lava in this area is not a random thing but something that actually has a basis in history/geography of this area.  Of course, as always, our robot has no problem to pass over the said lava!  And here is the cave that the sign mentioned!  Nothing too special here, there is only one chest with some consumable item. But you do have to be able to walk on lava in order to get to the other side of the cave!  Apart from the two new enemies we saw in the previous cave, here you can also get this combination! Needless to say, our robot is here indispensable. Although it provides no extra defence, its ability to hit both enemies at once with a decently strong attack is very helpful.  Here we are, back in Iwami province!  Checking the map, we can see that going through this cave allowed us to reach the northern side of the province, as was indicated to us by one of the villagers last time.  We do have a village right next to us here, so let's stop for a moment to see what's going on.  This place is called Hasumi, and it's not very big, so let's make a quick tour of it. Of course we start with the three people loitering about the entrance. Yeah, we know. We just walked through it! Well, we'll make our way there later. Not just yet!  Oh! That's VERY interesting. I bet we'll be able to get there somehow!  Their names are also kind of a match since both Kahiko (火彦) and Sahime (左火女) contain the character for "fire" and their last character represents respectively male and female gender in a way. So it all fits. But it also means, since we've already been to Kahiko, that we should probably look for the other one too, as there might be something interesting there. We're definitely getting close. Hamada is right nearby here.  Ah, that's good to know! I was wondering where's the next one (even if we haven't yet finished dealing with the orchid associated with the last one!) Uhh... That's probably not so good. Those guys have been a thorn in our side for a while now. But we'll see.  And as usual, let's bother people at the inn too! Well, we don't really have time. But what's this thing about the pigs? All right, having done all this...  ...let's be on our way!  Just a little bit north from here, up on the coast, is another Tengu's house!  Manjimaru obtained the "shining harmony" spell! Our new spell, "shining harmony" (昭和) heals one party member for about 250 HP. So now we have a complete set of healing spells, two of which heal only one person and two of which heal the entire party (but for slightly less HP than the equivalent single person spell). Shining harmony ("showa") is also the name for the period from 1926-1989 in the Japanese calendar (the reign of Emperor Hirohito).  After this, we head west.  Soon, we reach another village!  This is Hamada village, that we've just been hearing about. Maybe we can find out what is the deal with the pigs? "Tonjiru" (豚汁) is miso soup with pork. Well, that bodes well, since Mt. Kahiko also had something like a shrine inside!   Inside that building is indeed a pig, but surely it's not going to... ...talk to us. Things in Jipang have really taken a strange turn lately... For the moment, let's continue talking to people!   As usual, we check on the inn guests. We've been to that one just before coming here!  I'm starting to get a bad feeling with the pig situation.  They have a nice shrine building, but there's nobody inside...  Well, why not.  Let's get this pigskin hat for Kinu, for just 50 ryo! And we'll also pick up the large pigskin shoes for Gokuraku for only 60 ryo!  For Gokuraku that's a whole +5 in agility!  And for Kinu, only +1 in defence, but at these kinds of prices, you can't really complain, honestly!  A bit south from the village is another cave.  It is indeed Mt. Sahime and as you can see, this one too is hard to navigate around without our trusty mech!  This chest here has the "tiger king" (虎王) scroll. This is one of the "transformation" spells. It allows one character to temporarily transform into a tiger during the battle. The tiger's stats are attack 380, defence 210, agility 290 and it inherits the HP from the caster. But it will only execute normal attacks against whichever enemy has the highest HP and cannot be issued commands. So it's a bit situational, e.g. when you want to finish off a battle, but not entirely useless. It also has a low cost of 9 MP only. Interestingly, here you can also see a bit of a seed of what later became a more fully developed beast transformation mechanic in Linda³ battles! There is another chest through that narrow passage where robot can't go through, but it's a troll because it's just empty.  Like the other caves in the area, this one too has those same powerful enemies, but also a lot of lava to walk on!  It also has a small shrine inside, as we've been told.  Well, that certainly sounds like the second part of what we need to "pull the island over". That concludes our business here, so let's get out.  We should really head over to Tsuwano and speak to the lord of the castle there, but let's explore a bit first.  On the way, still a few more new enemies. These guys can inflict the paralysis status effect, but are not really an issue otherwise, especially with our robot. Yes, even Kinu can activate the robot's fire attack. The game is a little bit inconsistent on that topic, but what can you do. It was probably too much trouble to program all special cases for her.   These guys have a decently high attack stat, but when appearing like this in a group, they can be attacked all at once by the robot, so don't pose too much threat. Without the robot, you probably want to use the kongo spell I guess.   What in the world is even going on here! This guy has faces all over his body! But anyway, the only notable thing is his ability to summon more enemies.   Oh, hey, note that circle of trees there. I think you can guess what that is!  Yes! It is of course another ninja hideout! There's been pretty much at least one of these in each province since we visited the ninja village ages ago! A bit meta here. But really, I never feel that this game is unfair. Even when you get wiped out in battle, it's mostly because you didn't use the right strategy. That is to say, there are no enemy moves that you can't somehow guard against or deal with after they happen. And the game will usually give you the tools you need... if you take time to explore and find all the tengus and so on. Anyway, inside the building is only a person who lets you save the game and rest, so let's keep going.  Over here, deep in the valley is yet another Tengu!  Manjimaru obtained the "kamikaze" scroll. The "kamikaze" (神風) scroll is part of the wind elemental spells which takes away between 1/8 and 1/4 of the caster's max HP to deal wind damage to the enemy. As you maybe already know, "kamikaze" means "god's wind" in Japanese. As for the success rate, the spells in this game can be divided in three groups based on how often they succeed: always, sometimes and rarely. There are only about 5 of them in the "rarely" group and this is one of them. If you want to trade HP for damage, there are better options, so this one can be safely left aside for the most part.  Let's continue our journey!  Just a bit west over a bridge and to the south, there is another Tengu!  So, another one of thsose "stolen" scrolls that Kabuki took. And they are some really good ones, too! But not to worry; as I've already indicated, his return is imminent, so this situation will soon be resolved!  Heading further west, we pass by this place. Presumably that's the castle town where we need to speak to the local lord. But first...  On this small peninsula in the northwest, there is a curiously placed pair of stones!  If we walk in between them...  ...turns out, it's another well hidden Tengu's abode! This one is a bit sneaky! It's another one of those that can reduce the cost of a spell by 1 MP. To be honest, at this point I don't think it matters too much any more, but I will just pick one of other healing spells (since the base heal spell is already reduced to the minimum of 1MP anyway).  Anyway, now let's return back here.  Hmmm. Pigs again. Anyway, this is Tsuwano, indeed the place where we need to talk to the castle lord. But first, let's start by talking to the two people standing on the each side of the path! By the way, I happened to run into a particularly "matching" picture of real-life Tsuwano as it looks today, so here it is:  By The original uploader was Historian at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3163895 In any case, the choice of answer doesn't matter above, but what's this business about "being turned into a pig". Has someone borrowed the "pig" spell from Final Fantasy IV? You know, I was always wondering about these FF spells like Pig, Toad and Mini, they all seem to be an almost the same thing so was never sure what was the point of having three different spells like that. Oh well.  Anyway, let's see about these two guys here. First the gentleman who seems to have some pigs with him. Wait so, uh, this Nikusuke guy has been... turning people into pigs? So he can... eat them? What in the world? We already had a pig who seemed to be able to talk... and so let's try with these three here. That's some pretty dark stuff, I won't lie. Finally let's talk to that other guy on this screen. As I said, dark. Also, double-ironically, the word "irony" itself is in Japanese written with characters for "skin" and "meat" (皮肉). This actually comes from a buddhist idiom "skin, flesh, bone and marrow" (皮肉骨髄), but to save space, if you're interested, you can read more about this on Wikipedia! The metaphorical meaning of this phrase is something like "body and mind/spirit".  A few more people around this side. Obviously, we'll be doing everything exactly the opposite from what he is suggesting! Let's also talk to the girl with the dog.  In the southern part, there are two more pigs! This is a seriously messed up situation in this town, huh?  Now let's talk to this woman standing a bit in front of a house there... Hm. Ok, well, let's go inside and see what they have to say.  And the wife has a bit of a different story. What, are you worried that your little thing that you have going on here will be coming to an end? Also, pigs are people, you murderers!  As long as we're here, let's check these two pigs too... chances are they're probably actually people too. The last one is saying a mangled bit of that Buddhist prayer we've heard before.  One more house. Why is there this obsession with pigs?   Let's check out the inn, as always. And the other guy. Only 1 ryo? That seems suspicious. Normally, the price is around 15-20 ryo. Except in Kyoto where it's more expensive. We'll have to investigate this.  Well, all right. The situation here seems pretty desperate, so let's check out the castle and talk to the lord.  There's a bunch of people here too. Well, that's what we're here for!  Thanks for that sentiment, but let's head up the stairs.   One more floor up.  Hm, this looks like where the lord should be, but he is not here right now. Let's head back down the other staircase.  That... doesn't seem like good security at all!  Down that other staircase is another pig.  Back upstairs, is the place where the lord and the princess are hiding! So let's see what the lord has to say. And at this point the princess interrupts. Sorry, neither of these characters has a portrait so we'll have to manage like this. And then, there is a puff of smoke...  And then suddenly, it's Nikusuke standing in her place! He does seem to have magical powers of teleportation and whatever else!   He disappears in a puff of smoke... only to reappear again a moment later!  He disappears in a puff of smoke... only to reappear again a moment later!   And he turns (almost) everyone into pigs! Luckily, not our party (yet).  He literally sings the last line in an operatic style like it's a part of some stage performance!  And then he's finally really gone! Well, this is not great. But we have no other option but to go outside and...  ...oh. He's turned the whole village into pigs!?  It seems even the dog has been turned into a pig!  But not these two jerks, of course. Also, in case you are wondering, yes you can talk to the pigs and they say mostly the same things they were saying when they were, uh, not pigs. The shopkeepers turned into pigs will still sell you stuff as normal!  Well then. That definitely went not exactly in the direction we anticipated. But no matter, I'm sure we'll figure something out as we make our way towards the Castle of Darkness. So we'll continue our journey next time and until then take care!
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Aug 9, 2023 22:13
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boy if the transformation mechanic wasn't indicative that these are the same people behind linda, the whole eating-people-in-pig-form sure is unless this is a folklore thing that'll come together later, it does have certain fairy-tale vibes
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Aug 10, 2023 00:34
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Wow yeah no kidding about things getting a bit dark. I expected wearing the pig-leather gear to get you turned into pigs, too, but I guess it just makes you feel like a bad person.
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Aug 10, 2023 01:18
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So in an unrelated bit of news... Why does there exist a live action Kabuki?  And why do there exist live action Ashimoto brothers? Or at least one of them?  (Sorry for the crappy VHS quality of screenshots!)
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Aug 15, 2023 21:47
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This series is fairly popular and long-running in Japan, right? It's not too surprising it got a live-action adaptation if it is.
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Aug 16, 2023 01:24
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Man what is it about live action adaptations having *Atrocious* wigs? I mean Kabuki has colors not found in nature, but it looks like they didn't even attempt to fit it (and using the bandana to hide it doesn't fit correctly), even with characters with natural hair colors the wigs just look extremely fake in lot of these. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 01:33
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It somehow works in the game's art style, but they sure stand out like a sore thumb against the drab-colored realistic period drama settings and costumes.
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Aug 16, 2023 15:21
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Yeah the "person in a cheap costume with drab extras in the background" puts me in mind of a mega64 sketch or something.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:20
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So there's actually not a lot of information about this, but it seems that in the early 1990s Hudson did a bunch of these, I guess, promotional videos for a few of their games--they called them "DiGimation"s. And, well, Tengai Makyou was one of those games (I guess unsurprising since it was, and is, massively popular in Japan). This one is about an hour long and has these "in universe" parts mixed in with bits that tell you about the game and such. So it's not a proper "live-action adaptation" of the game. As you already noticed, it's kind of a low budget thing and probably not super interesting outside of a historical perspective.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:08
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i wouldn't be incredibly surprised if the saturn tengai makyo had a few low-resolution filmed cutscenes, but i gather it does not. i mean, come on, you're already doing voice acting, why not have a costume? "boo hoo it would have been so cheesy" oh yeah, it'd really lower the tone of the game, best leave that approach to comedies like Biohazard
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Aug 16, 2023 19:17
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Doc Hawkins posted:i wouldn't be incredibly surprised if the saturn tengai makyo had a few low-resolution filmed cutscenes, but i gather it does not. You're right, it does not. Tengai Makyou: The Fourth Apocalypse, the Sega Saturn TM game, has your typical hand-animated anime cutscenes, not atypical for a game from the late 1990s. Kind of the same deal like with Linda remake version.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:43
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Item Getter posted:It somehow works in the game's art style, but they sure stand out like a sore thumb against the drab-colored realistic period drama settings and costumes. honestly that's probably the big thing, everyone else looks drab, giving some extras colorful wigs or brighter clothes and it wouldn't stand out so much
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Aug 16, 2023 21:40
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 So last time we kept on pursing Nikusuke, and stumbled on a bit of a situation where he's been turning people who displease him into pigs, presumably to eat them. We also gathered two ropes which we might use to pull the island over where apparently a village of Root Clan is located (?). We've been told by Nikusuke to basically meet him over at the Castle of Darkness. As far as we know, it's in the southwestern part of the province, but in order to reach it, we'll have to though a bit of an... ordeal. So let's continue our journey to the next castle, and also dare we hope to finally catch up with Kabuki? So, here we are outside Tsuwano town. Let's try to make our way towards the south. We've been told that there is a village there on the way, so let's see how that looks. Before we go, as a reminder, we're still definitely in the territory of money and item stealing enemies, so you do want to keep especially most of your money in storage and only get it out when you need to buy something. A little bit to the south, we find several cave entrances (more on those later and oh god) and also what looks like a village. But, uh, what's up with that dividing line through the middle? Is this something like cold war era Berlin kind of situation? Let's investigate. Entering the village, we find that its name is "Ashimoto" village, so this must be the one we've heard about that was established by the Ashimoto brothers. Well, if they are involved, it can't be anything good. It only has an inn and a shop, but let's talk these four people on the screen to find out what's the catch here. Hm, who is "they"? As expected, there is some sort of a con going on here, but we're not sure yet exactly what. Sounds like the Ashimotos. I will still not forgive them for kidnapping that mermaid that one time. I really don't think so. But I'm sure we'll find out soon what's the catch. Going into the middle of the village, we can see that there's really a fence dividing it into two halves. But how does that work, when both buildings have an exit on either side? Well, let's check out the shop at first. Ah, I guess the shop is divided too. This is weird. But let's see what the shopkeeper has to say. One of the brothers, of course. Hm, let's see... Hm, there are couple of items there on the left, with nice prices (998/888). If you check out those weapons, they even have decent stats (if I remember right, one gives a big boost to Gokuraku's attack). Unfortunately, it's a scam. They will fall apart after a couple of battles, and you will be left with nothing. So don't buy it. As for the other stuff, that Masurao Katana for 9980 ryo is actually good for that price (and can also cast a decently powerful fire spell on a single enemy when used as an item in battle), so maybe get that if you feel like it. But do know that soon you will also be able to also find a free one in a treasure chest. Still, 9980 ryo is not really expensive, so it's up to you I guess. As for us, we won't be buying anything here as a matter of principle. So let's check out the inn then. Hm, well, turns out the inn is not divided. Huh. Let's talk to the guy on the left first. Hmm, sure. Let's see what the other brother has to say (who is standing in the middle there). As it turns out, you can really stay here for 1 ryo, it's the cheapest inn in the game (other than free ones at ninja hideouts). So you might as well do it now, because... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. In any case, you might get a hint of what's to come if you try to get out the other exit. This guy comes down and blocks the door! Ugh. Fine. I guess we'll have to find another way to get where we are going. Anyway, we have been told that the castle may be reached through the Twilight Cave, which is apparently a dark and scary place. Well, as it turns out, the entrance to the cave is right there next to the village, so we might as well take a look. It is, unfortunately, not big enough for our robot to go through, so we'll have to leave it behind. Does that sound familiar? Before we can go in, though, one more new enemy! Although the name is untranslated, this time the meaning is clear. Kashanbo is another demon creature from Japanese folklore, in this case a kappa demon who migrated to the mountains and has an appearance of a small child. As for the game version, nothing really special about it.  Not only is the entrance too small, but even the cave itself is quite tight, so there's definitely no chance of our robot being able to get through here. As it turns out, this system of caverns is rather huge and has many entrances/exits around the province. Our goal is to find the path which leads to the exit that takes us towards the Castle of Darkness, which will not be easy, as the cave is not only huge but also on several levels connected by staircases. So without a map this will take a while to do. The good news is that the game shows a bit of mercy on us, so the random encounter rate here is very very low, maybe even the lowest in the entire game. So you do get to explore without being interrupted too often. Incidentally, there is an upcoming place in the game where every 1-2 steps triggers a random encounter, but that one is mostly played for laughs; we'll get to it soon(ish). Since the cave is rather huge but mostly looks "samey", I won't cover every bit of traversal in excruciating detail, but I will show any "milestone" moments or any interesting items that we come across. There is quite a number of chests in here, but mostly they contain varying amounts of money. There are a few with 1000 ryo each, but others have just small amounts. As a final note, there are quite a few enemies in here still which can steal your money and items so you do still want to keep your money in storage when entering here. There's another slightly detrimental factor at work during the cave traversal, but we'll talk about that in a few moments. So, let's get going! This bit near the entrance just leads to a staircase down, which we obviously have no choice but to take. After a bit of walking on the lower floor, we run into this fence here. I guess it must be the fence that the guy was talking about that Ashimoto brothers asked him to make. In fact, if you would be playing this game blind, you wouldn't know it at this point, but... on the other side of this fence is exactly the place we want to ultimately reach. So rather than going straight through, we'll have to take a (very, very) long way around. Why would Ashimoto brothers do something like this? You'll find out soon. Over here in the corner, is the first chest. It has exactly 1000 ryo in it. Even this has a reason, but again, we'll understand it shortly. Here is another, containing 1000 ryo more. A cool looking underground lake, with a bunch of chests around it. Some are empty, but some again have money, one of them notably 1000 ryo more. One has a generous 1 ryo! After a while, we find a staircase going back up. There still hasn't been a single random encounter during all of this exploring! There are a few of these little ponds in the cave. They look nice, I think. Shortly after, we find this hallway... ...leading back outside! Notice all the different cave entrances here; they all belong to the Twilight Cave! Yeah, it's a proper maze. Also, as it turns out... ...we're right next to that weird divided village! So before we continue with the cave, let's check that out for a second. Let's just see what happens in the inn this time. The guys on the sides will still block you from passing through, so let's just talk to Ashimoto. And there it is, finally. When entering the willage from the west side, the inn price is 1 ryo as we saw. However, when entering it from the east side, the price is a whole 1000 ryo! The cave system spreads in such a way, that as you go through it you will mostly have to stay on the 1000 ryo side! So now the full extent of the Ashimotos' scam is clear (and also why the game gives you several lots of 1000 ryo in the chests, just in case). As for us, as before, we're not going to be paying this as matter of principle. Oh, but I hear you ask, can't you just fast travel somewhere else and rest there and then come back. Well, no. Fast travelling back to Ashimoto village drops you off on the 1 ryo side. And in order to reach the Castle of Darkness, you very definitely need to be on the 1000 ryo side. This such a clever little bit in the game (which is already full of them), that I can't even be annoyed about it, honestly! All right, let's continue by going back in through this cave entrance here, right next to where we came out from a few moments ago! It mostly looks the same as before. But there are some unique enemies here! I'm not quite sure what this look is supposed to represent. At first I thought it's may be some kind of funeral armband (very oversized), but that's more of a Korean custom and not so much Japanese. So I don't know, but if anybody does, feel free to let me know. Enemy itself is pretty weak so nothing to worry about.  In the meantime, we head down again. And then, after a long walk, back up again on the other side. And then again, we reach another exit. We're still on the 1000 ryo side, just a bit south of the village. You don't of course have to do all this. I'm just doing to go past all the chests. As we try to walk to the next entrance, some more new enemies. Incidentally "jasper" a kind of a crystal of quartz. In Japanese the kanji used to write the word mean literally "blue gem", however blue is in fact the rarest colour that jasper can take! As for "Shimoshimo", this is one of those cases where I just give up and say that I genuinely have no idea what that name is supposed to mean. The only thing I know is that it's sometimes a joking way that people answer a phone call (instead of the normal moshi moshi) but I don't think that's the case here. The enemy itself is quite a pain du e to its high defence, so it takes quite a number of hits to defeat. If you get multiples of this enemy, they will even keep defending each other which means that you will usually not hit the one you're targeting (as you would normally target the one with the lowest remaining HP, of course). They're just annoying.   We'll continue through here. Again it's straight down the staircase. How does one not get lost here? We must go deeper! On the next floor down... ...more new enemies. Not a dramatically difficult enemy, but it will steal your stuff and money if you're not quick enough. To be clear, when we talk about stealing items, it of course does not include unique items that you need to progress the plot, only consumables which you can buy. So in that sense, the stealing of money is much more of a problem. I should also explain the name of this enemy. In Japanese it's called "garan" which is onomatopeia for the sound of metal objects clinking together against each other. As you can see he has a big bag on his back, presumably for carrying metal coins and such.  Anyway, still deeper we go. More underground lakes. The chest is empty, though. And then it's time to start making our way back up! But we're interrupted by what is probably the worst enemy combination here. First of all, "fukusuke" is simply a kind of good luck doll that you find in Japan, like this one:  By Nesnad - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41427492 As for the second enemy, I'm not quite sure why it's named like that, when it's pretty obviously just "maneki-neko" (the beckoning cat), another kind of a good luck doll you'll find in Japanese houses (especially by the entrance), like this real-life one:  Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58044 As for us, though, it's anything but good luck here. These enemies have really high defence, which of course causes problems. But in addition to that, they too will happily steal your money and items (both of them can do it). And on top of that, they also have an ability to strip off your equipment and weapons. At least they don't steal those, but it can still leave you in a bit of a lurch in the middle of the battle if it happens as you will then have to spend a turn putting it back on, but might also get attacked before having the chance to do so. Well, at least the beckoning cat gives quite a lot of money when defeated (and therefore has moderately high probability of running away before you can finish it off, I wish I was kidding). It's like how can we make the most annoying enemy possible and this was the result.   Then we continue back up again! In this cave you can also find a few of those stock holder certificates for the mercantile exchange. Soon(ish), we'll make another visit to Kyoto to see how the prices are doing. The other chest here has a golden scarab egg and you probably don't want to pick this up, unless you want to leave the cave immediately and go to Kyoto to hand it in. One more level up and there's a whole bunch of lakes in a wide open area here. And finally another exit corridor... ...which takes us out here. Ok, we've explored everything and really other than money (and maybe those certificates) there haven't been any good items arond. So let's now make the final run through the "true" path to our destination. But you can see how this can be a problem if you don't know where to go. One last time, we take this entrance now. Let's see how this one turns out. (The chest only has 80 ryo in it.) I was talking about "no good items", but in this chest... Manjimaru obtained the Sword of Justice! Again, despite the grand name... ...it's actually only +1 compared to our current weapon. Soon we'll be able to find something MUCH better. As always it's going to be a bit up and down in these caves. Huh, there's a sign here! Let's read it! To Master Manjimaru's Party: We look forward to seeing you again soon! -- Ashimoto Village Guesthouse Tourism Association This is kind of a nice touch from the game to let you know you're on the right path! Ah! Another one of the four red chests is found in here! However our MP is a bit depleted now because of a long journey without being able to use an inn, so it will have to wait (but only a little bit). It has a really good item in it and you ABSOLUTELY want to do it before the next boss fight and get that item! Let's find an exit, get ourselves rested and then we'll come back and do the red chest fight. After a bit more spelunking, a sight for sore eyes: the othe side of that infernal fence! We've almost made it to our destination! There's the exit! And we're right next to a village (which presumably has an inn)! Welcome to Muikaichi village, and I can already see the inn! Let's go and rest first! Oh no. It's one of the Ashimotos again. Ugh. Oh, come on! They are actually charging 10,000 ryo to rest at the inn here! I hate these guys. But ok, I should be fair. This one is not a problem. Beause we now have a village which is normally accessible, so you can simply fast travel somewhere else to rest and then come back. There are no issues with the village being divided into two halves here. In any case our ordeal is over as we have managed to reach the southwestern part of the Iwami province where the Root Clan castle is! So now let's do our usual thing and see what information we can gather from the local villagers! That guy be the entrance is wearing a typical travelling merchant attire, so let's see what he things about this whole thing! Yeah, the only thing luxury about the inn is the price! Yeah, I've noticed the pigs around, so Nikusuke has definitely been doing his thing, I guess. Don't worry, we'll fix it soon! Here, a woman and a couple of pigs! This is why we needed to get here. Because from this village is the only way to access the castle. One of the pigs here, if you talk to it, mentions Kabuki. So that's presumably the daughter! All right, so that's about all the talking to be done here. So let's do some equipment upgrades for a sec. Maybe these Cast Iron Clogs for Gokuraku for 25,500 ryo. Oddly, this is actually a weapon with +5 in attack power compared to the current one! Not bad at all. Then, this Unicorn Hat for 23,400 ryo. This one is for Manjimaru, this time with +8 increase in defence! Then, let's get also this Sky Hood for 24,700 ryo. This one is for Kinu, with again a nice +4 in defence. Next, this Warrior Armour for 46,000 ryo. Shame about the boring name... Again this one is for Manjimaru with a further +7 in defence. Good. Finally, I'm going to get a bit extravagant and spen 75,000 ryo on this Thrusting Spear for Manjimaru. It's for Manimaru, and it's only +1 in attack, and it's also going to last us a very short time, but we have the money and I just want to make the next bit a little easier. We're done shopping so I'll now go to another village and put our money back into storage. Before we proceed, I just wanted to show you... ...where we are on the map. As you can see it's the southwestern part of the province which is only reachable through that cave system. The castle is in that bit south east of the village. So, the next bit that I was mentioning we want to do now is... ...go back and deal with the red chest. This one has a really good item and I just wanted to be as prepared as possible to make things easier here. Anyway, everything about this fight is the same as before. You get 99 fights against easy enemies (each chosen randomly from four options) and then again this same guy as the boss. Their levels don't scale or anything, so this will now be a little easier than before although still not exactly a joke. After finishing the fight... Ah, yeah. The amazing bone sword. Mm-hm. That's an insane +14 in attack power for Manjimaru compared to his previous weapon. Yep. It also has another, almost game-breaking ability when used as an item in battle, but more on that shortly when we actually get to use it. As you will soon see, it is VERY much worthwhile to get this before the next boss fight. For now, though, there's not much else left to do but to go and defeat the Castle of Darkness. As mentioned, it's a short walk southeast of the village. Here it is. Let's go inside! [CASTLE OF DARKNESS] Inside.... ...it has a similar semi-organic look like all the previous Root castles. The welcoming committee is of course, here as always. With this, as always, they leave, and let us explore the castle as we please. Like the last one, this place is also not too big, but there is a bit of a problem because the random encounter rate is very high. On the other hand, you can just make a beeline for the boss and explore the rest of it after when the random encounters are no longer present after he's defeated, so it's up to you really. Well, let's see. Upstairs we go! There are this kind of small "rooms" everywhere. But mostly the chests just have consumables in them. Just a healing potion in this one. Most of the enemies here are those we've already seen in the caves, but there are a couple of new ones. This one is not really very notable for anything.  We're at the right level, so most of the enemies here won't be a huge problem, except those "Shimoshimo" guys.  It's very colourful in here! Let's see what's in this chest. In fact this is a weapon for Gokuraku, and check this out: If I'm not mistaken, that's +53 in attack power. However, this should raise your "too good to be true" alert, because this weapon is indeed cursed, and if you equip it, it will damage you too every time you use it. So as always with cursed weapons in this game, they are not exactly unusable, but you need to see if the compromise is something you can bear. As usual, it's a small maze navigated via up and down staircases. It leads only to a dead end with a chest. So once you pick up the item you can go back upstairs. It's the same thing on the opposide side of the castle! Although here we can also see some pigs roaming around. Over here is a chest with some money. But taking this staircase near that chest... ...leads down where the pigs are. This is probably progress. You can talk to the pigs, but they mostly say the same gibberish as always, i.e. not much of anything sensible. Through the doorway... ...and back around the other side... ...and through another doorway... ...and then we're sort of going in an S shape back and forth through corridors. Then we pass, uh, through that open mouth with a tongue. Some kind of a dining area with tables and chairs. We'll be taking the staircase up though. And one more time. Then we're kind of in a more open area. We're close to our destination now! Those holes allow you to fall through to the below level... But we'll just take the stairs for now. We want to get to that part in the middle, but first... ...there's a bunch of chests here. They contains mostly useless low level pieces of equimpent that we don't care about. That bit in the middle is something very hot, so I assume this is the giant cauldron we've been hearing about. Anyway, there's another staircase, leading to the opposite side of the cauldron. Situation with the chests here is the same, just useless stuff. Back on the upper floor, there is kind of a dining hall. There is a bunch of chests here too. One contains another copy of the cursed weapon we saw recently. A second one contains 2450 ryo (not too bad). But then things change... Kosode is a like a short(er) sleeved kimono. Kinu can equip this... ...for a cool +11 increase in defence! And it's not even cursed! There's one final new enemy here to meet. This guy is a little bit tougher, and can poison you, but not a problem because Kinu has a spell that removes negative status effects (more or less exactly like Esuna in Final Fantasy). His attack is very strong, but has almost no defence, so still goes down easily.  Aynway, in order to get down to the middle part... ...you go back to that room with all the holes in the floor and simply drop to this one in the middle, straight in front of our party. And you're here! At the end of that walkway... ...is, of course, Nikusuke, waiting for us! But now things start to happen quickly and it's best to have a look at the cutscene!  Well then! How about that, looks like our party is complete again and the next boss fight will be fought with four people! Speaing of which... ...here is Nikusuke in his true form! And, well, I know what you must be thinking. He has 5000 HP, this is going to be tough. But no. With the return of Kabuki and a piece of equipment we recently got, this fight is in fact already over, before it's even started. This is probably one of the most broken fights in this game, and I mean that in the sense that you can completely break it and win it in just a couple of minutes. So, here's how that goes. First of all, elemental weaknesses are a thing in this game, although they don't play a major part since until now most offensive spells consume too much MP to be able to use them a whole lot. What's important though is that this boss is weak to ice. Second, Kabuki is very much NOT exaggerating when talking about being "new and improved" now--he really did properly train, as we'll see in a moment! So before we continue, let's check out his status screen. His stats are up to about the same level now as the rest of our party, as expected. As for the weapons, he actually comes now with that 150,000 ryo sword that we saw in Kyoto! You know, the one that can cast a strong fire spell on all enemies? Yeah, that one. That's why I said to not worry too much about it at the time, since you get it here for free anyway! But more importantly, he does not come back empty handed as far as spells are concerned! In particular, during his absence, he has learned some REALLY powerful new spells! So here they are. - Ice dragon (氷竜): A strong ice elemental attack on one enemy. (MP: 23) - Frozen dragon (凍竜): Freeze one enemy and prevent them from acting temporarily. (MP: 27) - Fire snake (火蛇): Temporarily increase attack power of all allies. (MP: 26) - Wind snake (風蛇): Temporarily increase agility of all allies. (MP: 9) - Stone snake (石蛇): Temporarily increase defence of all allies. (MP: 12) - Dawn (有明): Heal around 200 HP to all allies (MP: 36) - Barrier (結界): Temporarily nullify all enemy spells towards all allies. (MP: 26) - Old pine (久松): Heal status effects on all allies. (MP: 8) As you can see, these are all extremely good, and even the non-offensive ones can also be used by Kinu, too. For example using the "ice dragon" spell on our friend Nikusuke...  ...results in 300+ HP damage! Normal attacks do under 50. But there is of course a problem. As you no doubt noticed, these spells use quite a lot of MP, so they can't really be used infinitely, and sooner or later we have to resort to using just our normal attacks. Or... do we? Well. Remember that Bone Sword we got for winning the red chest fight just a short while ago? And I mentioned that it has another secret property? Yeah. As it turns out, using it as an item in battle gives a FREE recovery of around 100MP to one party member (it's not limited to the bearer, you can target which one of the party members gets the recovery!). So this is what I mean that this boss fight is completely broken. There's no strategy required. Simply have Kabuki spam Ice Dragon, and Manjimaru can refresh Kabuki's MP when needed. Kinu can heal anybody who needs it in the meantime. It can be even funnier than that, if you apply the buffs which increase attack power on Kabuki. Then he'll be doing close to 400 HP damage every time! Unfortunately, there's not really anything specific for Gokuraku to do in this fight, so I guess he can help a bit with some additional damage that he can do with his attacks. Anyway, so because of all this, there's hardly anything to this fight. The boss does have a physical attack and if I remember right he can make it crit for about 230 HP damage or so, but it's easy to keep healed. Especially since Nikusuke doesn't have particularly high agility, so he won't be getting a huge amount of turns. The only other thing is that he can decrease the defence of one of our party members. But you can use Kinu or Kabuki to dispel that if you want. Apart from that, he can heal a bit by "eating a bit of his own flesh" and also temporarily increase his own defence. But neither of those moves really makes a difference in the end. So, after Nikusuke is defeated... Well then. But hey, at least this whole (disturbing) episode is now finally over!  It's time to pick up our next holy sword (although we're still carrying the last one as we haven't used it yet). In any case, this is number five. As usual, after picking up the sword, the spirt of a long gone hero from a thousand years ago speaks to us. This time it's Shizuka, the blind warrior. So let's see what she has to say to us. We're not quite there yet, but soon. Anyway, as usual, Manjimaru learns a new technique, although it's not quite like she said. You will only trade blows with the enemy between 2-4 times. So no fighting until death or anything like that. At this point, of course, we're done with this castle. You're free to explore and pick up any items you may have missed as after the defeat of the castle's ruler, the random encounters cease. Otherwise feel free to use the return stone (or the spell) to exit from here. Like those before this one, the castle crumbles into dust. All right then, now is the time for the next step in our plan, which I guess would be to pull that island over to the mainland. In order to gather a bit more information about it, it's time to finally visit the Kojindani Burial Mound that we've heard about previously. Apparently it contains some hints on how to accomplish this. You can also talk again to the villagers in that last village we visited before the castle and they will remind you where to go next and how supposedly there is a Root Clan village on that island, and so on, all stuff we've already heard before. Also they're no longer pigs so that's good! Also the people in the original pig village (Tsuwano) have been turned back to normal, and you can get thanks and small hints also from them. Although, speaking of Tsuwano, I'm curious what those two people who willingly collaborated with Nikusuke will say... Yeah you got let off easy, but nothing we can do about it. All right, let's head to Kojindani. The Kojindani Burial Mound is here, kind of in the middle of the Izumo province. Let's have a look at what's inside. Looks a bit similar to those four shrines we've had the opportunity to visit back in the desert province. Fire symbols are here too. Looks like down it is. The chest is empty, by the way. And again. There are several floors like this to go down to, and on each is an empty chest. I like this, because it subtly indicates that this place is so old that it has already been looted a long time ago (kind of like a lot of the pyramids in Egypt). And finally the last floor. There is a stone tablet with some writing on it, and three chests around. These are not all empty, surprisingly. The first one contains Twin Dragon Shoes, a piece of equipment for Gokuraku, but unfortunately, not better than what we already have. The second chest contains the "tailwind" (追風) spell. If you use this spell, then the duration of the next spell you use will be increased. It seems overly complicated to really be able to use it effectively, but... it's here if you want it. The third chest contains another Ume Kokeshi doll. So, on to the stone tabled. If you examine it, it turns out that the text on it is complete gibberish and does not form any words in Japanese. So you need to "decipher" it. (I'm not going to reproduce it here, because this is nearly impossible to translate into English, so I'll just describe how you solve it.) Unfortunately to decipher it, it's a bit like the "Rumpelstiltskin" puzzle from one of the old King's Quest games by Sierra, in that the solution is a bit obscure. Although in this case at least there are hints (remember those two silly girls by the pond in one of the villages?). So, first of all, the message you get when you read it is written in katakana syllables. First you need to employ the first hint from the girls, i.e. to remove some of them from the message. In this case you need to remove the U, ME, KO, KE and SHI syllables. The hint for this is that the girl said that apart from tanuki language there is also the ume kokeshi language and others. Also the fact that you find an ume kokeshi doll right here is another hint. Unfortunately, doing this still gives you gibberish. Now you need to take the second hint from the girls, and read the whole thing backwards. Also if you look at the last screenshot, the fire symbols are upside down, so that's another hint in the same direction. After doing this, you finally get a sensible text, which is as follows: Four Fire heroes with two ropes pull the Root island The two ropes in two fire mountains are So... all the stuff we already knew, because several NPC already explained it all to us long ago. Really, why is this puzzle even in the game? Coming here is definitely completely optional, the game doesn't block you from proceeding if you know where to go and what to do with the island. It seems like they made this puzzle, but then weren't confident about it so first they overloaded it with hints and then just made NPCs which already tell you about it anyway, so you don't even need to come here. Funnily enough, in the remake, even the "read it backwards" thing was removed from the puzzle, so the hint with upside down fire symbols is also gone! This puzzle is one of the very few "lesser" moments in this game, honestly, if you ask me. But in any case, now it's time to make everything awesome again, so let's head over to Matsue village, which is the place where originally there was a connection to the island before it got separated. Here we are! Inside, an interesting thing happens. Our three ninja friends are here! It's been a while since we saw them last. they are standing in front of what appears to be a gravestone of some sort. And they leave, just like that, as usual. But as it turns out, we do have something he used to wear. Namely, Kinu is still holding on to Shiro's collar. So let's offer it to the grave. Kinu places Shiro's collar in front of the grave. Shiro's spirit appears briefly in front of us. And then he disappears again... Obtained the Spirit Escort Bell! ...but leaves us an item! We have absolutely no idea what it might be useful for, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. Anyway, now then. Let's go over to this spot, from where supposedly the island was pulled over long ago! It's time to unleash the twin dragons of Izumo! (And let me say that nothing, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the awesomeness of this cutscene. Just watch it.)  And the gap is no more, now the island is part of the mainland again! But how insanely cool was that? Truly one of the high points of this game. Actually, do you want to see something ever cooler? Check out the map of what the layout of the land looks around the present-day Matsue in Japan:  Mmhm. Yeah. It actually really looks like there used to be an island maybe a very long time ago that eventually got connected with the rest of mainland (yeah I call it mainland, but yes I know that the whole of Japan is just islands). The amount of thought and creativity that went into making this game is kind of staggering sometimes. In addition, if you look to the left on the map, you will see the location of Izumo Grand Shrine ("Izumo Taisha") which our next destination in game, but is an actual location in real world in the same spot where it is found in the game! But, that's a thing we'll tackle next time. There is still some work to be done before we can finish off the the next two dark orchids! Until then, take care!
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Aug 23, 2023 21:27
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While this remains a game I'm pretty sure would wear out my patience pretty early if I tried playing it myself, it's always cool seeing the new things it keeps doing.
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Aug 23, 2023 22:16
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Finally a full party. Too bad our robot isn't here, that'd make it even more full.
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Aug 23, 2023 23:12
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PurpleXVI posted:While this remains a game I'm pretty sure would wear out my patience pretty early if I tried playing it myself, it's always cool seeing the new things it keeps doing. To be honest I think the game works best if you view it as a kind of a road trip thing. While the game is by any measure absolutely huge* in size (again, you know, having a full CD of available space compared to a SNES cartridge lets you do stuff like that), it also has a more episodic, road trip-like structure, which I think helps to not overwhelm the player. And yeah, you may have to go around and talk to people to figure out what to do next, but it's usually within a limited area and you never have to go back to a place from 20 hours ago to get a hint how to proceed. And it also gave the authors the opportunity, as you say, to just keep doing something new and different in every "chapter" because it doesn't need to be relevant past that limited section of the game. I feel they did a really good job here to keep the player interested to continue. So I am happy that you are happy, and I AM actually having fun playing the game, which is probably good because we all do want to see this LP completed to the end! For the curious, I would say, we're probably around the 2/3 mark as far as the game length is concerned. So there is still a fair bit to go, but we're definitely on the downhill path towards the ending. But don't worry, there's still going to be a whole bunch of cool set-pieces and also, of course, more vehicles for Manjimaru and his friends to abandon in the countryside! * I guess it takes about 60-70 hours to finish the whole game. Outside of the red chests, there isn't really any other substantial optional/post-game content. ivantod fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Aug 25, 2023 |
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Aug 25, 2023 21:48
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ivantod posted:To be honest I think the game works best if you view it as a kind of a road trip thing. While the game is by any measure absolutely huge* in size (again, you know, having a full CD of available space compared to a SNES cartridge lets you do stuff like that), it also has a more episodic, road trip-like structure, which I think helps to not overwhelm the player. And yeah, you may have to go around and talk to people to figure out what to do next, but it's usually within a limited area and you never have to go back to a place from 20 hours ago to get a hint how to proceed. And it also gave the authors the opportunity, as you say, to just keep doing something new and different in every "chapter" because it doesn't need to be relevant past that limited section of the game. I feel they did a really good job here to keep the player interested to continue. Yeah, every chapter has a cool, neat gimmick or idea of some sort. It just feels like, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're cutting out a lot of generic jRPG random encounters in between every noteworthy thing, which are a thing that do not spark joy in me, as they say. It's one aspect of "old school" game design that I'm glad most developers have dropped.
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Aug 25, 2023 23:55
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, every chapter has a cool, neat gimmick or idea of some sort. It just feels like, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're cutting out a lot of generic jRPG random encounters in between every noteworthy thing, which are a thing that do not spark joy in me, as they say. It's one aspect of "old school" game design that I'm glad most developers have dropped. Yeah, it's a JRPG from early 1990s, having a ton of random encounters every few steps is pretty much a given. I have indeed been skipping over most of them, I just show any new enemies when they show up for the first time and also any enemy formation that may be interesting for some reason, but that's pretty much it. The game does give you a spell which allows you to turn off the random encounters for a couple of minutes, so you can use that in cases when you want to explore somewhere. Kinu also has an ability which allows to "preview" up to a couple of screens in each direction without moving, so that helps too. But yeah, random encounters are still random encounters. ivantod fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Aug 26, 2023 |
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Aug 26, 2023 08:09
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That's actually a surprisingly nice move of the Devs. I can't think of too many times where getting that kind of peek ahead happens in games without it being either ridiculously expensive or tied to an object/minion/etc that can be destroyed easily.
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Aug 26, 2023 12:57
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 So then a bunch of things happened last time! We managed to catch up to the crazy cook Nikusuke, but also got turned into pigs. Then a new and (very) improved Kabuki showed up and saved us all! Then fought off Nikusuke and obtained another holy sword. Then we finally went and, now with all four of us, pulled the island over to the mainland!  I guess now we can explore the (former!) island!  Mostly in order to get anywhere, we'll have to go into this cave...  ...but if we go all the way to the west, we can in fact see our destination with the two dark orchids we need to cut down! Good thing we have already the two holy swords.  The cave it is, then!  There are some new enemies here. We've seen shrine maidens in most of the shrines/temples we've visited, but here is now a cursed one as an enemy! She can silence our magic, but is not strong enough for that to matter in any way.   There does seem to be a bit of a theme here, it looks like!   This place does not look very inviting, with those pools of... something?  Well, at least there's a bridge...  ...but also some evil ninjas!   In any case, we're going downstairs!  Here, though, we don't have a full bridge... but the game gives us a hint. On the opposite side you can see a ferry... Huh, I guess we need to get their attention somehow. For that, we can use the bell we received from Shiro last time!  And a boat shows up. There doesn't seem to be anybody steering it, though. This is all very creepy.  But it does let us cross to the other side.  On the other side, we continue downwards!  And then immediately back up.  Looks like we've arrived. Let's see what's outside!  Well, not exactly outside, but we've reached some kind of a settlement inside the cave, it would seem. Let's talk to the welcoming committee and see what's up here. Well then. Maybe through here we can somehow reach the Izumo Grand Shrine, where, if you recall, are the two dark orchids. But first, we'll make a tour of this village, of course.   You can also go inside those huts, where there are more people to talk to. The other guy in this hut just lets you rest and replenish your HP/MP, and for free too!  Yeah, things are not very happy here, huh?  The "Nameless" was the guy who we had to fight at Mt. Ooe in order to rescue Kinu, if you remember. But anyway, let's keep this in mind for the future.   One more person here who we haven't spoken to already.  One last hut is over here.  A little bigger than the others... What are they even doing here? We are learning a lot of interesting stuff here. So it seems based on this that the situation in the conflict one thousand years ago was not so clear as we thought. And if the Root Clan had the support of the Ihika guys (you know, those guys who come up with all sorts of mechanical contraptions), they might have won? That's not what we've been led to believe so far, but at least it's good that in the present day Ihika guys are definitely on our side.  There is one more person upstairs. This is all pretty crazy, but I should remind you that "root country" in Japanese (根の国) is a synonym for "underworld". Just to be clear!  One last person here, before we head up the stairs that we were told about! You can probably guess what this means, but...  ...let's head up anyway. This place was quite unsettling so I don't mind getting away from it all now.  As expected, as we climb up, we get visited again by some of the formerly defeated bosses coming back to life.  Like the Grim Reaper Shogun. But this is a boss from the very start of the game and he still has the same stats! So, one hit victory it is!  Or, Princess Clam (the true form).  Or, Madam Barbara (no Duke Pepe this time). But they all have the same stats, so pretty easy now.  We also have to fight Nikusuke again! But I already explained how this fight is a complete joke with the combination of Kabuki and Bone Sword, so... In fact these are all final bosses from each castle which we had to defeat to get the corresponding holy sword... except for some reason, Kikugorou is not included. No clue why, but it still would have been easy.  And by doing this, we're able to reach the entrance at the top.  But going inside...  ...we get an actual new boss fight this time! This one is again a double one, against a pair consiting of an "Horse-headed King" and an "Ox-headed King". This is in fact not at all a random combination, and is actually quite appropriate for the situation we find ourselves in right now! "The horse-head and the ox-face" are in fact two guardians of the underworld in the East Asian mythology! You can read more about it on Wikipedia. Anyway, the fight. It's not super hard, but it's also not exactly a cake-walk like the last one. The "Ox-Face" is definitely the weaker of these two, so I would recommend getting rid of him first, as the "Horse-Head" will take a bit longer to dispatch. The "Ox-Face" has a physical attack ("summon an underworld demon") that can hit everone for about 70 HP, so do be careful. He is, on the other hand, not very resistant at all to Kabuki's Ice Dragon spell, so feel free to spam that against him and he'll be gone quickly. The "Horse-Head" is more resistant/has higher defence, so you won't be doing crazy damage and it will be more of a war of attrition kind of thing. But his attack power and agility are lower, so it all kind of evens out. You also still have the benefit of the Bone Sword, so MP for healing, etc. is not an issue. All in all, if you're a bit careful, this shouldn't give you a huge amount of trouble.   After dealing with that, since we entered the building at the top, we need to make our way back down. Cool statue there, but you can't examine it or do anything else with it.  Well, yeah. They're missing their own heads so they need a replacement. Anyway, there are a few floors to go here and the encounter rate is fairly high. So if you ended up with one or more of your characters knocked out after the double boss, you may have a problem, since there won't be enough time for them to revive between the battles. And there are some decently strong enemies here, such as these guys. But if at least Kabuki is alive, then it should be easier.   Essentially just keep going down, there are no items to be found here.  Plenty of enemies, though! Silhouettes here are a prime candidate to use the free fire spell from Kabuki's sword on their whole group, but it will still take a couple of hits. The court lady is pretty weak and doesn't pose any threat.    Still a few more floors to go--I'm skipping over here since they all look the same!  Finally we reach the bottom!  Exiting out, we find ourselves back again next to the staircase. But the staircase goes from further below and it's not possible to "exit" on this floor, so we had to go the long way around! Anyway, we can already see the dark orchid to the left, and the second one is to the right, of course.   And again, Manjimaru makes his jump to cut it down...  And then of course, also the second one...  After which everything returns to normal, finally. Well, except for the two big holes. And the Root people who are now gone, as we were told they would be. All in all, this leaves only two orchids to deal with out of the initial seven. This was a nice change, to take care of these two simultaneously, rather than one after the other!  Anyway, we can now exit from here...  ...which takes us to the other side of that mountain range into the area we glimpsed previously. There's not really anything else left to do here, except...  ...well, there's a tengu's house right here on the northwest little peninsula! Let's see what we get here!  Manjimaru obtained the "triangle" scroll! So, the "triangle" (三角) spell is interesing and definitely usable. When cast, three summoned creatures will appear on the battlefield, in addition to our party. They will have the parameters as follows: attack 280, defence 275, agility 290, HP 50, level 48. They will automatically perform attack on one of the enemies, or protect Manjimaru when his HP is low, or perform sacrifice when their own HP is low. Of course, they also act as 3 additional targets for the enemy. This is a bit similar to a spell we got a long time ago, "red shadow", but there altough we could issue actual commands to the summoned creatures, it was random to get between 1 and 3 of them and also they would die in one hit. So although here we can't issue commants, this is overall better in my opinion. Finally, with it being a "demon technique", it's of course only usable by Kinu. So then, with this done, where should we head next? Well, the destruction of two orchids has opened up some of the paths which were previously blocked off by the roots, so we should go and find one which leads to some new place. However, before that, let's do a little bit of housekeeping. We do have a few things which were sitting around for a while, so now in the break between two "chapters" seems like a good moment to deal with those. First of all, there is still that one red chest from near the start of the game which we skipped over. It's really high time that we deal with it and see what kind of equipment piece we get from it! It's been a while, but I will remind you that it was located in a cave back in Oomi province.  It is in fact, this cave here, tantalisingly located just across an impassable river!  Checking the map, the cave is located right above the square marking our location. You can see the short river blocking the way. Here, the realisation strikes, that we got to that cave by crossing the lake Biwa on a boat! So it seems, if we want to get back to the cave, we're going to have to find our boat again! Luckily, the game has a bit of a quirk in how it deals with vehicles, which does help in situations like these. The game only tracks the location of a specific vehicle while you remain in the same province. Once you travel to another, the vehicle will reset to whatever location it was originally obtained at (or as close to it as possible, e.g. it will not reset back to an indoor location, but just outside it and such). This allows us to easily find our abandoned boat, by simply going to where we originally obtained it!  And so here it is, and we can use it again to cross the lake and get to the cave! Bet you never thought we would ever go back and re-use an abandoned vehicle!  This allows us to cross the lake...  ...and get to the cave entrance!  Anyway, here's the red chest, so let's open it.  You already know everything about this, so I will not bore you with the details. The end result is...  Although it can be used by anybody except Gokuraku (of course)...  ...I will give it to Kinu because it gives her a +20 in defence, thus bringing her defence stat up to about the same level as the other party members--she was a bit lacking in that aspect until now! So you might ask, does this piece of equipment have any special effect when used in battle? And the answer is yes. You can use it on one of your party members and the result will be that that party member gets poison status effect applied. Wait what. How is that useful? Well. There's a bit of a quirk here. So previously we got the bone sword, which has the effect of replenishing MP on one party member, but actually, that's not the whole story. You will recall that long ago I mentioned something about all these "elixir" type items which have various (positive and negative) effects. And I also said how these effects are randomised for each playthough. And so, these weapons/equipment, they take the effect of the same named elixir: bone sword from the bone elixir, moon helm from the moon elixir and so on. And it so happens that in OUR playthrough the bone elixir has the effect of replenishing MP and the moon elixir has the effect of poison. So you could also say that we kind of lucked out with the bone sword, as it could have ended up with a much worse effect than what we ended up getting! But such is luck, and we actually got one of the best possible effects it can have--free MP refresh is a ridiculously broken ability, as you already saw. I mean, the fight against Nikusuke is still broken regardless, you can just bring a ton of MP refresh items instead for Kabuki to use, and there's even a spell to steal enemy's MP, so there would still have been options to do it the same way. The sword effect we got just made it even easier, nothing else. All right, then. Next on our list is to visit another tengu, the way to whose house is now open to us.  Over in Inaba province, the Santoku pass is no longer blocked and...  ...leads to another small valley with another Tengu's house!  Manjimaru obtained the "foam bubbles" scroll! So, not much to be said here. The "foam bubbles" (水泡) scroll does exactly what it says on the tin, as kind of a weirder version of "dispel" from Final Fantasy. It does operate on one whole group of enemies, but otherwise you do need to be careful how you use it, as he said! Incidentally the name of this spell comes from the Japanese expression 水泡に帰す ("to end up in the state of foam bubbles"), which means approximately to have things come to nothing in the end. All right, next on our housekeeping list is another Tengu.  We start over by the Inugami Temple back in Iwami province that we've visited recently...  ...and head through this narrow passage here.  Here, we find a curious clearing in the middle of the forest. But entering the clearing...  ...reveals it as yet another Tengu's residence! And it's one of those. Again I will choose to do it to one of the healing spells, but honestly at this poing with just -1 MP it doesn't even make that much of a difference. There is one trick you can do however. I mentioned earlier that there is a spell which steals enemy's MP. That spell costs exactly 1 MP to use. But with these MP cost reducing tengu's it IS in fact possible to take down a spell's MP cost all the way to zero! So if you don't have a piece of equipment which replenishes MP, this is another option you have--reduce the cost of that spell to 0 MP and you still have a free MP replenish. It doesn't give you as much as the Bone Sword, but still it's free, right? Anyway, before we continue with the game's main plot, let's do one more thing! You will recall that when Kabuki left us last time, he also took with him his lottery ticket. It also turned out to be the winning ticket too! So let's head over to Kyoto and cash in our reward, and there's actually something else new to see there too at the moment.  The rewards are given over here in the temple, as you remember.  Well, thanks for that, and also we free up one inventory slot by getting rid of the lottery ticket! There is one other thing happening in Kyoto at the moment...  If you walk around, you will see these posters on the outside of some of the buildings. Let's have a closer look...  I hope nobody thought that we'll be rid of Duke Pepe quite so easily, right? Although to be honest, it's not much of a prize if you ask me... But more on that in a few moments. For now, we're done with housekeeping, so let's continue our journey!  So let's have another look at the map. This is Izumo province and we're back near Matsue. There's been a few mentions of the Root Clan doing evil stuff down in Tanba province. We've dipped our toes there a bit a while ago, but now we should go there for real. The passage from here to Tanba (丹波) is down in the botton right corner. After defeating the orchids, it's no longer blocked, so let's head that way.  Here we are, at the Mimuro pass.  It's a typical small place that only serves as a border crossing. But we do have a guy to talk to. He's not 100% right, but it is true that there is a bit of a problem with finding a place to rest in Tanba. You'll see why in just a moment.  There is one more person in the hotel... Another one, huh? Well, let's be on the lookout for that too.  Now we can be on our way, so welcome to Tanba province. Before we can go further, we get the usual scene from the Three Sages' lair (which is apparently somewhere around here in Tanba?).  Sure, sure, whatevs.  Let's go back to our heroes. First of all, let's have a look at the map of this province, although, this time not the in-game map as what I want to show you is not clearly visible on it. Instead, here is a collage map made from actual game screens (don't worry, no spoilers to be found here):  So as you can see, it's quite a mountainous area, with only some narrow river valleys. Therefore there are no proper towns to be found here and only one village in the south west, and also a few small border villages which aren't close to anything useful. There ARE a couple of other places here as we'll see shortly, but mostly it's just a mountainous wilderness. Nevertheless, we don't have a choce and have to press on. By the way, in case you're curious, we're entering from the top left corner. Last time, when we briefly entered Tanba to visit a tengu, it was in the top right corner which, as you can see, is a completely isolated area, not accessible in any other way except through that cave. Anyway, let's see what we can find here.  There are definitely new enemies, though! And this is another one where I have to spend some time explaining the name. The actual Japanese name of this enemy in the game is: 泣く子はいねか, which means roughly "Are there any cry-babies around?". But this doesn't really work in English, so I had to give it the name "Namahage" instead. Namahage (生剥げ) are demons/oni, portrayed by people during New Year festivals in the Akita area who admonish children to scare them into behaving themselves by asking them questions such as the previously mentioned one! Here is a picture of such a costume during a New Year festival in Akita:  By kanegen - Flickr: Happy New Year 2010!, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12799005 As for the enemy, not super dangerous, but high defence makes it a bit annoying as it needs a few hits.   High defence is a bit of a theme here. One of the more annoying enemy combinations here, not because they're dangerous but because they are damage sponges. Plus they can poison you (and will, almost every time). Couple that with a somewhat higher random encounter rate in Tanba and it does get a bit old after a while.   Let's just cross this bridge...  ...and head east!  Aha! We found something! Not a town, but a temple by the looks of it. It's very red! We'll get back there in a second. First, let's quickly visit a couple of border villages, that we can easily access from here.  On the way, you might see these tiny circular pools of water. You may try drinking from them, but you don't know in advance if you're going to get healed or poisoned. Some of them are good, and some are bad, so you have to try and find out which ones are good.  Anyway, more enemies! Not really anything special about this one.   Apart from high HP, the only other thing these guys have going for them is that they can temporarily block one of our party members from acting!   Finally we reach the first of the two, Tokura pass.  No, can't say that I have.  As we're walking to the other village, we pass by that Tengu whom we've already visited some time ago!  Anyway, here is the second village, Hozu.  Let's just quickly see what they have to say. Yeah, we kind of know. But, not really anything else of interest here, so...  ...let's get back down here.  Huh, looks nice here.  Let's see what's up. So we get warned about poisonous springs outside as I already mentioned. Let's also talk to the monk.  Ah, Hoteimaru, everybody's favourite easygoing missionary. I wonder when we'll see him again. Also, who is this person looking for us then if not him? I wonder. By the way, you can drink from that pool there to replenish your health if you need to.  Also, a couple of buildings here. Hmm, well, we'll go and visit them for sure.  Hmm. We should probably go and find him. He usually knows what's going on in the world. The monk here just repeats the warning about poisonous springs outside, so we can skip that.  How about reviving an evil god? I think that would do it. Anyway, that's all the people we can talk to here for now.  So, let's go and find that other temple in the eastern part of the province!  We'll go through this narrow valley...  ...and across the... uh, the bridge is blocked by someone? Well, let's approach. Not much else we can do really.  Of course. It's Duke Pepe.  And... it's a boss fight! Or rather... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.  As before, his speciality is debuffing all your stats with this cool animation you see above. Other than that, he just has a normal physical attack. And finally, he can "look at the photograph of his late wife Barbara" to heal for 100 HP. So if you want to get anywhere with this one, you'll have to use an ability which removes all status effects (either the one from Kabuki which does it to entire party, or the one which only applies to one party member). He also has a very high defence stat, so probably the physical attacks will not do much, and you'll have to resort to spells and special attacks which have a fixed damage level not related to your stats. Other than that, this is pretty straightforward and Kabuki's Ice Dragon also works pretty well. The only problem is, near the end of the battle...   Ugh, the stupid three sages. Why did the guys they sent after Pepe have to appear just now?  And yeah. You can't win this one (you also get no money or experience either). But don't worry. There will be other chances to try. Plenty of chances. PLENTY. Better get ready now.   Well, but the bridge is free, at least! So I guess we can try to reach that other shrine.  And here it is, indeed, just a few steps to the east from the bridge. This one is blue, which fits with its name "Aokuchi", since "ao" means blue in Japanese. The other one, Akagawa was red, because "aka" means red in Japanese, of course. Well, let's see.  Looks similar at least.  Hmm, ok, so I guess Hoteimaru hasn't reached Kobe yet then!  Again? The Root Clan really needs some new material!  Yeah, she's right. Unlike Akagawa shrine, here if you drink the water, you will get poisoned, so don't do it.  But, this building here is actually an "inn" of sorts where you can just rest for free!  I mean there are bones of dead people all over the floor, but still. It's ok, it's safe to sleep here actually, so this is one place you CAN use for resting.  In the other building... Ah, well, that explains that at least! It's been a long time, but you could see this in the opening animation of this game. We already know that the blue sphere is Yomi, so that mean that the red one must be the good god Mari. Did they also take Mari away somewhere? If so we'll have to go looking!  And the final building. And well, that's all for here for right now.  So, it seems that our next task is definitely to try to reach Kanoko village and to try and catch up with Hoteimaru if possible. But, as usual, that's something we'll leave for next time! Take care and see you soon! By the way, did you notice? When reaching level 49, Gokuraku actually gained his first 2 MP!
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Sep 6, 2023 23:08
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How many innocents did our Fire Heroes kill here? There was no other way out but...still pretty chilling.
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Sep 7, 2023 00:11
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I pray that the lack of Kikugorou in the boss rush was because he's still out there. Please don't let him be gone, he's the best villain.
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Sep 7, 2023 00:24
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Hey everyone, sorry for a bit of a longer break between updates, I was away for a few days. But worry not, the next update is almost ready and will be posted probably tomorrow. In the meantime, I would appreciate again some help to get to the next page since it's going to be one of those two-part updates this time again as we have a lot to do!
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Sep 21, 2023 22:09
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Can I say I really love some of the enemy names in this name? It's really hard to pick a favorite.
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Sep 21, 2023 22:11
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Robindaybird posted:Can I say I really love some of the enemy names in this name? It's really hard to pick a favorite. Oh yeah, definitely, me too, even if some of them are a total pain to translate into something sensible in English. Well, to be fair, a lot of them are not sensible to begin with even in Japanese, so...
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Sep 21, 2023 22:35
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