|
That does always make games like this exciting. We gave you very detailed areas! Can you rotate it? No, that would ruin the detail. We assure you we will
|
#
?
May 5, 2024 04:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 23:56 |
|
|
 Previously, the true plan of John's was revealed, which was to obtain the armour of the great evil god of hell (Metatron) and make Abel wear it. Which did happen, and did involve Abel ripping his wings out. Well, at least now we know where they go when the armour is worn!  Let's see what happens now!   Abel is kind of "glowy" after putting on the armour! By the way, Metatron is a mythical archangel mentioned in some Jewish religious writings (not biblical). It is often associated with the occult. Although the name "Metatron" sounds like some kind of futuristic sci-fi thing, it is actually not in this case! The origin of this name (which sounds like it comes from Greek language) and how it came about is not really clear, unfortunately, although there are a few hypotheses. Oh, right, Judas is still here, I forgot.   And, well...  BATTLE 3-5: ARMOUR OF THE GREAT EVIL GOD VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT JUDAS ...we go straight into the next battle! This time, we'll need to do some preparation.  First of all, Reprobus will take that falchion we got in the previous battle. A bit more STR, but a super nice VIT increase! But we want it for more than that, more on which in a moment.  Next, Gaius will take the foil sword we also got last time. A bit of an increase to STR will not go to waste.  This time, after a little while, we'll be performing again the blood ritual on some of our weapons!  First of all, we're going to awaken the "Raum" special ability on Abel's axe. It doesn't change the weapon's stats but... Actually, this one is pretty crazy. When you use this special attack on an enemy, it allows you to literally exchange your weapon for theirs (and vice versa). There is a nice weapon we want to steal in the next fight, so this will make it possible to do so. Do be careful though, because like everything else, enemies can also use this ability, so try not to get your weapon stolen. To be clear, Raum is a special attack which has the same range as that wepon's normal attack. So you can always avoid it by staying away from an enemy who has it on their weapon. In demonology, Raum is a "Great Earl of Hell", whose thing is among others, stealing stuff out of people's houses, so that makes sense.  Next on our list today, for Reprobus's falchion, we're going to awaken the "Aeschma" ability. Apart from +2 in STR, this ability allows you to execute an attack which ignores the enemy defence. Also, Aeschma is a demon of "wrath", so that again fits.  For the foil, I guess we can awaken this ability here "Taskut". It allows you to steal enemy BP. It does have small drawback of -1 to VIT, but we'll survive. With that, we're ready to go.  As usual, we'll take everyone with us and give max BP to everyone since we have more than enough. We'll see if a good opportunity presents itself to use any of the spells.  We have quite an intense music tune to go along with this fight!   So this the map for this fight. Judas is located all the way down in the bottom corner. There's two ways to do this, essentially. You can take the route to our characters left, and go through all enemies. This allows you to collect the full EXP and BP. Alternately, since the objective is just to defeat Judas, you can simply take the right hand route where there's nobody and go straight to her. As usual, we'll go take the option where we collect as much BP and EXP as possible, which means defeating everyone. Also as usual, the S rank max turn count requirement is generous enough to allow for this. Let's have a look at some of the enemies.  First of all, there is Judas of course. Her level is one higher than last time, so also her stats are a little bit higher now. She has a pretty annoying ability on her weapon (a staff) which allows to nullify the next physical attack after use. It stays active for a maximum of 24 CT, so waiting it out is probably not going to be an option and you'll have to do one useless attack to make it go away, rather than wait 24 CT until it goes away on its own. Oh well. It could be worse. Other than that...    ...we again have a few of these "lovers", with usual variety like last time.  There's also two of these D-Summoner enemies. They're just mage type enemies and really not strong at all as you can see from their stats. Even their BP is pretty low.  We'll adjust our starting positions just slightly from what the game gives us. It's important to note that the pink haired enemy standing right next to our team has a powerful weapon that we want to grab with Raum. It's nice that he's right there, so we can already get that done in the first turn and then use the new weapon for the rest of this fight! Note also that in addition to exchanging the weapons, Raum will still do normal damage to the enemy. All right, let's get started!  As I already mentioned, this guy next to our group has a unique weapon which we want to take, so to start with, Abel moves over here and will invoke the Raum ability that we just addded to his axe.  I like the visual representation of weapons actually exchanging hands! Anyway, here it is:  So it's still just a different kind of axe, but it gives Abel +4 in STR and +5 in VIT compared to his previous one. By the way, wearing the armour doesn't really change Abel's stats immediately, but it does give him bonus when leveling up. There are also a couple of other things related to the armour, but more on that another time when it becomes relevant. In any case, as mentioned, Raum does also do normal damage, but not enough to finish this enemy off. This is something you should be careful about, as of course this enemy is now using Abel's old axe with Raum on it, and we don't want him to be able to use it back on us when the enemy turn comes! Therefore...  ...Reprobus approaches and strikes from above, putting an end to this enemy. With that done, we can now proceed with the rest of this fight in a normal fashion.  Here is Gaius, moving forward and striking one of the "lovers" with his foil. That's a pretty nice damage.  Rupi Rupi moves down also, but don't forget she is able to attack diagonally because she uses weapons that are of "horizontal slash" type. So...  She makes a start on the second "lover". By the way, here's a little sidebar on attack types, just so we're all on the same page how that all works! quote:
All right, now that that's (hopefully) clear, let's make our next move.  Philip moves over to help with this same guy, but it's still not enough to finish him off.  Therefore, we need also Prague to pitch in, and he's finally done!  Finally, John moves also a bit forward just there behind Gaius. We'll be hoping for some favourable biorhytm by the time we get to Judas, but let's see how it goes. It will make things quicker, but is by no means required in order to win here. All right, let's see what the enemy does now. By the way, for this one I'm keeping most of our people on "counterattack" mode.  One of the lovers does a special strong attack on Gaius. Since he is in counterattack mode, he gets full damage. But not to worry, when the situation on this upper part of the map is a bit under control, we'll have Rupi Rupi do a heal spell to refresh everyone a bit.  Counterattacks will definitely make all this go a LOT faster.  Like before, one of the lovers moves closer to Judas down in the corner. But this is just busywork since none of our characters are anywere close to them yet.  John gets attacked a bit from the side. But he's kind of weak compared to the rest of the gang, so I do keep him in defend mode. It would be too risky otherwise.  Another attack on Gaius...  ...and another counterattack. It helps that both of these counterattacks are coming from high ground for better damage.  One of the mages moves forward, and decides to cast a "Meteor" spell.  This looks like it's going to be dangerous... maybe?  Oh, ok. Well, it helps that the biorhytm is in the negative at the moment I guess.  Finally, another lover moves closer. This one has a bow, so probably there will be some ranged attacks coming in the next turn.  Prague skeletonises this guy here. As mentioned, we're going to want to use a AOE heal soon, so it wouldn't do that the enemies get revived who are caught within the range.  It also frees up a square for Reprobus to move onto. He can't really attack anybody from here though.  From his perch, Philip finishes off this one guy here.  Abel moves back over to the starting area and will soon start making his way down.  Rupi Rupi steps forward and bonks this guy here...  ...which allows Gaius to finish him off. This gives us an item called "Blue Cure", which simply cures poison status effect. There's no poison danger on this map, so we won't have to use it. And that's about all we can do in this turn. So again let's see what the enemy does.  That guy standing in front of Gaius does it again with his special attack. Although this time I've changed Gaius to "defend" just in case.  The mage tries it again on Prague and Reprobus...  ...but the biorhytm is actually in a similar state as the last time, so the results are similar too, i.e. not very effective.  The second mage moves a bit closer too, but doesn't attack. Too bad for him, as the biorhytm is now much better.  A lover does a special bow attack on Rupi Rupi there, but due to distance it's not super effective.  In our next turn, Reprobus comes down and one-shots the first mage. Like I said, they're very weak.  Philip also does nice damage on the last remaining lover in this part of the map, which finishes him off.  Gaius skeletonises him just in case and moves forward.  This also makes it possible for John to move forward.  Prague also moves forward and skeletonises the lover on the square right behind her (but it's difficult to see from this angle).  The biorhytm is not fantastic (in fact it's just above zero, but Rupi Rupi does a heal anyway, because Gaius definitely needs one by this point.  Still, everyone gets healed for 19 HP, including that one enemy there. But we haven't even damaged that enemy yet, so no harm done. Here, if we had not skeletonised all those enemies previously, at least two of them would definitely have been revived as a result of this spell use. So you have to plan a bit in advance if you intend to use AOE healing magic like this.  Anyway, Abel also makes his way down. And this is all for our turn.  In the next enemy turn, we discover that the mages just like to spam "Meteor" for some reason. Anyway, the biorhytm is basically at 0 so this will...  ..hurt a bit more than before, but it's still not too bad. Especially since the mage is very definitely not surviving this turn.  A bow attack from one of the lovers is also not too bad. That's all that the enemy can really do in this turn, so..  ...as soon as we take over, the mage is gone, thanks to Gaius. This gives us a weapon, "Bone Staff".  Prague, John, Philip, Abel, and Rupi Rupi all step forward, but are not in a position to attack. We'll leave it at that for now.  In the next enemy turn, that bow attack REALLY doesn't work.  And then it's our turn again, and Abel takes a chance to bonk the lover with his new axe.  His health is low enough that John can finish him off. That leaves only the last lover and Judas herself.  So we'll just move forward.  In the enemy turn we're reminded that this guy also has a bow, but due to distance and Abel's defend mode, it only does 1 HP damage.  Judas still has her icicle spell...  This one, however, is still pretty strong! And then it's our turn again. The things are going to get a bit messy now, but oh well. As long as we win, it's all good. Mainly because none of our characters can really come close enough to attack, and also the biorhytm is quite unfavourable.  So we just move a bit forward.  Enemy turn. Abel defends successfully again!  That's a really strong special attack from Judas! Abel is kind of getting decimated there. This attack, as I've already mentioned previously, also makes it so that the next physical attack on Judas will do 0 damage. Very annoying, but not much we can do.  In our next turn, Gaius makes a special attack with his foil, which is enough to finish the lover off, and also nets him a double dose of BP, one for killing the enemy and the other is the "BP steal" which this attack does. It's nice that the steal happens first, and then the enemy is downed!  Abel just does an attack which expectedly does zero damage (but dispells the status at least)...  ...and then gets out of dodge.  Reprobus comes down and does a special attack on Judas with his falchion. This is much better.  Rupi Rupi helps out a bit, but Judas is in defend mode.  Prague and Philip just move forward. Told you this finish is going to be a bit messy.  In the next turn, Judas again does the special attacks which grants her immunity from the next attack. Grr.  But Rupi Rupi is in counterattack mode and already takes care of it, at least.  Unwisely, Judas has moved over here, which allows Reprobus to attack from behind!  Luckily, he has enough BP for one more special defence ignoring attack! Yeah, this is pretty good. In fact, it's good enough to finish Judas off finally! With a bit more luck, we could have ended this a turn sooner, but hey it's done, so...   We sure did! Let's check ou the results!   By the way that number 232 which is labeled in Japanese is just the unused BP which is returned to us, nothing else. Anyway, let's see what rank we got this time!  All right! Despite a slightly messy ending, we did sneak through into S rank one more time! The item reward for this fight is a broadsword! And now, as usual, it's level up time!  Abel to level 8.  John also to level 8.  Rupi Rupi to level 8.  Prague to level 8, also.  And finally, Philip to level 9. Let's see what happens now.   I think the game might have expected us to use the armour abilities (uh, did I spoil something here?), but I guess it was not really needed.     Thanks, Gaius. Even if you do seem to have also an agenda of your own... Reprobus, when you ask questions like this, you're never going to lose your "meathead" reputation... Way to be random there, Rupi Rupi. Anyway, it seems our action of taking the armour may have a consequence...  I think we can reasonably surmise that there are probably six more chains like this to be found in the world. On that topic, a small interlude here. quote:I've mentioned that the PS1 remake which is really a "de-make" removes most of the animated cutscenes. But the ones it does keep are actually still not the same but instead have been completely redone for that version. And then, it's time to...  CHAPTER 3: TEMPLE OF THE SUN -- THE END ...end this chapter of course! Some time later...  ...as our group travels across the continent...  CHAPTER 4: ON THE ROAD  ...they decide to take a short break. Also, curious name for this chapter, but it will be clear soon.   But didn't your parents force you to work as a prison guard?  Hmm, well, let's think about this next time in our new chapter. Until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2024 22:49
|
|
|
Definitely have to agree, dated graphics aside, the PS1 version of the breaking chain is so much better, not just being more explicit on number, but for better composition/mood
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2024 23:14
|
|
|
Yeah, the PS1 chain breaking is better. The original looks nice, but it just looks like a chain, the PS1 version makes it far more explicit how this is a magical item that just came undone for unknown reasons. Also I imagine we'll get a lot of wing-pulling if all the armours are getting worn eventually.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 00:07
|
|
|
To expand a bit, Metatron is mentioned in the Talmud, which would generally be considered a fair bit more important than typical religious writings, even if it's separate from the Tanahk. That said, there is precious little non-heretical information about him, and his mentions in the Talmud are somewhat conflicting. He is most often portrayed as the highest ranking angel, or at times an entity above angels entirely, who serves as God's scribe, servant, spokesman, or even substitute, depending on the source. The most popular interpretation in the broader culture is that he serves as God's voice on Earth, the implication being that to actually hear God would straight delete mere mortals. By the way, "Billion Axe" is an extremely late-nineties name for a weapon, hope Abel hangs onto it for a while.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 00:11
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:To expand a bit, Metatron is mentioned in the Talmud, which would generally be considered a fair bit more important than typical religious writings, even if it's separate from the Tanahk. That said, there is precious little non-heretical information about him, and his mentions in the Talmud are somewhat conflicting. He is most often portrayed as the highest ranking angel, or at times an entity above angels entirely, who serves as God's scribe, servant, spokesman, or even substitute, depending on the source. The most popular interpretation in the broader culture is that he serves as God's voice on Earth, the implication being that to actually hear God would straight delete mere mortals. Wait until we get to the "Pillow Sword" in the next episode! (But I will note just for the sake of accuracy that a "pillow sword" is not a 1990s invention, though! It's a much older thing than that.) Also thanks for the additional info about Metatron!
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2024 22:38
|
|
|
Captain Oblivious posted:It is absolutely hysterical how popular this edgelord silliness would have been if it had been brought stateside Oh, absolutely.  I'm very sad it didn't.I can already imagine all the teenage fanfiction, etc. that would get written...
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2024 22:08
|
|
|
 PREVIOUSLY ON BLACK/MATRIX...  The seven great evil gods, who were supposed to have died in the battle of the gods called the Genesis War... their souls continue to dwell inside their armours, even after their corpses have crumbled to dust. It is said that those who have the armours will receive the power of the gods themselves. Whatever desire they believe in: freedom... justice... equality... and even love. Even if all of these things are abstract and uncertain, sometimes people will sacrifice everything for them... even if it will be a constant drain on their life force.  Even if they are cursed armours that will take away the life of those who wear them... AND NOW, THE CONTINUATION!  CHAPTER 4: ON THE ROAD As they travel, our characters take a short break. But didn't your parents force you to work as a prison guard?  Ohhh. We actually have to make a choice here, huh? So at first glance, this seems to give us a choice between doing some extra stuff by visiting Philip's hometown, or alternately to skip that and just continue on with the story, right? But that's not actually what's happening here. The reality is that there actually are two completely different versions of chapter 4, and you can only play one of them in any given playthough. Which one you play is determined by what choice you make here. Obviously, choosing the first option takes you to Philip's hometown and whatever happens there, but the second option takes you on a different plot branch with whatever happens there, and the two plot branches only join back up at the start of chapter 5. To make matters worse, this chapter contains several recruitment options, and each side of the chapter has totally different people available to recruit, so you will inevitably miss out on the other half! This is kind of a bit silly of the game to give you this choice, but you have no way of understanding what are the implications of it at the time you make it! On the other hand, you CAN just reload your save and check out the other path, so... Speaking of character recruitment, there's a total of 13 (yes, thirteen) possible characters to recruit across both branches of this chapter. Of course, like before which characters will really appear is highly dependent on your choice of master (plus some other conditions), so in an actual playthrough there will only be 2-3 characters that you actually CAN recruit in one branch of the story. Anyway, to cut a long story short, our canon choice is going to be the Philip's village option, but we WILL take a look at the other path after, before we move on to chapter 5. In fact, there will be more weird choices to be made in this episode, and even one which leads to an immedate Game Over if you pick it!  Later that night...  ...Philip and Abel are having a conversation.  I mean, yeah, Philip is a super useful character in fights, even it seems at first like he won't be. Ok, whatever you say, Philip. The next day, we arrive to Philip's village... As usual, our arrival is depicted in a cutscene.  Hmm, well, that's... I mean it seems like a welcoming place, for sure.  Well, I mean let's try and find out what's the deal here.  By the way, Kidron Valley is, unsurprisingly, a real place in what is today the Jerusalem, Israel area. It is, indeed, even in real life a historical burial place, dating mostly from the Second Temple period (516 BCE to 70 CE). Reprobus needs to learn some subtlety.    And after that social sciences lesson, we are now free to explore here a little bit. You can already see down there leaning on the wall the shady guy who will take us into the Free Battle, but for now, let's see what the locals have to say. First the person sitting there on the ground, one of the few younger fellows here.  Then we have also this group over here. Among them, one white winged slave. And then the two black winged elders. The second person actually doesn't even want to talk to us.  We also have these two people here, one elder... ...and two younger! If you look carefully, you can see that the lady standing here in the middle is actually pregnant. The last person in this group is actually a shopkeeper. To be honest, there's not really too much of interest here in the shop, mostly the same stuff as before. They do sell a Crystal Rod which is an improved magical staff for John, but it's a bit expensive at 2400G. The one interesting item here that I wanted to show you is this one, though:  If you have lots of money, but are short on BP, you can actually buy some BP in the shop! Here you can see that it's possible to buy 100 BP for a measly 5000 G! Other than that, they also have a bunch of consumables, but also some weird ones like a "Medicine taken in the afternoon", which is the same thing as an ordinary potion, except the effect is increased when the time is between 2 and 3 PM (the biorhytm clock). There's a similar one for the evening (4-6 PM) and so on. But if we want to keep up with S ranks, then we can't use these anyway, so...  Anyway, let's continue, we have three more elders here...  In the lower section, there is a white winged slave... ...and also two more elders: Interesting bit there about the "lady who runs a free clinic". We'll come back to that at the end of this episode! Anyway, after gathering a bit of info about this place...  I guess we'll approach this guy and try out the free battle!  FREE BATTLE: THE VILLAGE OF KIDRON VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT ENEMY LEADER  It's a pretty simple setup. Most of the enemies are grunts and a couple of archers. There are only two enemies of note.  This guy here is the leader.  As you can see, he's the D-Summoner type, so as before he'll mostly be spamming the Meteor spell which we already know we can survive. Although, since we are not graded on the number of turns used, we can easily use that to manipulate the turns by doing useless actions in order to make sure that the biorhytm is low on enemy turns.  The other important person is this guy here.  This one is a Healer type enemy, but they've advanced a bit since last time, so this guy can actually mess you up. They have a very powerful magic attack, which can during favourable biorhytm deal 100+ HP damage. So in order to not get obliterated by this guy, it's even more important to be careful about what the biorhytm will be during an enemy turn! How bad is this spell?  This bad. (Also, love the spell casting animations in this game. They're awesome.) So this is the only thing to be careful about here. But you do want to defeat the healer as him and the leader are the only two enemies here who give you EXP. So you should really just focus on them and ignore all the rest as much as possible.  Probably a good setup is like this. Philip goes there in front, with Abel behind him and Gaius to his left. The other characters pretty much don't matter. The battle starts as usual on enemy turn, during which the leader guy will make his way down to the lowest part of the map. Then Philip can shoot him with his bow and Gaius moves forward. In the second turn, Gaius proceeds to the healer and can hopefully one-shot him. Then Philip shoots the leader again which should be enough damage and Abel comes forward to skeletonise him to end the battle. I forgot to mention this before, but when the battle objective is focused on defeating just one enemy, in order to end the battle at that point you DO need to skeletonise them. Otherwise the battle will proceed until all enemies are defeated. Therefore we need here that extra step, which Abel is on stand by to perform.  Anyway, as usual, main reward here is the EXP, of which you get 800 here. Money and BP are pretty negligible. So now I have confession to make. In the next episode (so not today), we have a fairly tough battle coming up, at least if you want to achieve the S rank. So, I will cheat a bit here and grind this free battle for a bit to gain a couple of levels for all characters, in order to make that a bit easier to achieve. It is definitely not needed at all for the immediate next upcoming battle, but it's not possible to return to town in between, so we have to do in now. The next battle is pretty easy anyway, so it won't really make much of a difference either way. Anyway, here are the new levels.        I won't make a practice of this, I promise!  Anyway, after this, we're back in town. So we'll choose to end the free time, and continue the story. But then...  ...we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by a bunch of older guys!  What exactly is happening? Uh, yeah, maybe you should stop bleeding them dry. Yes, this is actually happening.  BATTLE 4-1: THE CRAFTY ELDERS VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT MASTEMA "Mastema" is the persons's name, and in our case actually the name of the leader of this group of elders. It is also the name of a creature which appears in some Jewish apocryphal texts (The Book of Jubilees). As for the preparations...  Reprobus will temporarily downgrade back to Cutlass from his usual Falchion, because I'm going to awaken "Raum" on that cutlass. You know what that means! We'll be stealing a unique weapon again! After this we're ready to go! I did actually forget to equip the Bone Staff on John, but that's ok as we're not going to be using his magic in this fight anyway. All right, let's see the map.   As for the enemies, they're all elders of varous sorts.  Mastema is here at the top of the map.  He has good movement range, but is not otherwise a big threat. The rest are just various types of elders:    They're also not especially strong.  But over here in this corner, we have three...  ...whip-wielding grandmas also.  Here is our starting formation. Reprobus is there on the forward position as he'll have a special task. Otherwise, as usual Philip and Gaius are the rest of the main attack force with support provided by Abel and the rest of the people in the second row. Most of our characters will be set to "defend" mode, not because these enemies are strong, but because this fight has... a secret condition. It is quite important to NOT defeat more than 5 enemies (including Mastema), therefore we don't want to have our counterattack accidentally down an enemy! So you're going to have to satisfy yourself here by getting only about half of the total possible EXP (there are a total of 11 enemies on the map). If you get greedy you miss out on something later. Well, let's start.  In the first turn, we just move our troops forward. Importantly, Reprobus and Philip go over to that little ledge on the side. The rest of the people stay in the centre. We won't do any attacks at this time. As John makes his move , he tries to calm the situation down.  Next, the elders start their attack on Gaius.  This guy comes close to Reprobus for an attack. But in the next turn, he'll realise it was a bad idea.  There's an archer elder shooting at us from behind there, but we'll leave him alone.  The elders over on the wall move around a bit also.  If we check out this guy standing in front of Reprobus...  ...it turns out that has a unique weapon, a "Pillow Sword". Before you laugh, a "pillow sword" is an actual thing. It is a small sword that was kept by the bed so that it could be used for defence in case a person was attacked while in bed during the night! Here is a picture of one such sword:  So obviously, we'll be using Raum on it shortly.  But first, Gaius takes care of this guy here by a sneak attack from behind. That's 1/5.  John approaches to turn him into a skeleton. This is not strictly necessary as I don't think anyone has heals here, but just in case.  Reprobus climbs up on the step and executes Raum.  Of course, we steal the enemy's weapon. Before you ask, yes there are ways to protect yourself against this being used on you.  Philip is here to finish that guy off. That's 2/5.  Philip then moves forward.  Rupi Rupi there makes another skeleton, just in case.  Finally Abel moves a bit forward also.  In the next enemy turn, that archer is still a bit of an annoyance, but like I said he's not going to be one of the 5. You should only focus on the enemies that are "on your way" towards Mastema. The rest are unimportant. And that's all the enemy does in their turn. As you can see, they're more defensively focused.  In our next turn Reprobus will be moving forward in order to get ready to deal with those guys on the wall.  Then Abel, Gaius, Rupi Rupi and Prague move forward.  Philip also moves and makes a start on the wall guy.  In the enemy turn, the whip grandmas start moving forward. But they can't reach us.  Mastema comes all the way down and attacks Philip. His movement is as good as that of Gaius who is the most nimble in our group!  Reprobus also gets attacked.  Because it's safe here, I've changed him to "counterattack" mode, so revenge is swift!  The archer is still being annoying.  Our next (and final) turn: Reprobus climbs up and finishes this guy (3/5).  And Prague comes over and deals with this one (4/5).  Philip fires a shot at Mastema.  And Gaius finishes him off (5/5). This also gives us an item, "Judith Stone". This is an accessory which gives you +2 in INT and also +10 in BP while wearing it. So almost definitely something for John. There is an actual rock named Judith Stone in East Farndon, England, but that one is supposedly named after the niece of William the Conqueror, so probably not related to this one here.  Abel is on hand to skeletonise him so we can finish this fight without defeating everyone, as I described earlier.  Let's see how we did.    So this was an easy and fun battle! The enemies are pretty weak here, so it's just as easily doable without being slightly overleveled. It may have potentially taken an extra turn in that case (so 9 instead of 7), but this would not have affected the S rank in any case. So let's see if we can now finally be allowed to finish a sentence and explain the situation! Before that, of course...  Reprobus levels up to 12.  And so does Gaius. Now, let's see.    Of course, this is a choice we can make, like before, but there's really no downside to it, so...  Mastema has joined the party! Yes! Moar party members! If you defeated in the previous battle more than 5 enemies, then Mastema just dies and you can't recruit him. However, you might be wondering what's up with that story about a "crazy lady" who maintains a free medical clinic outside the town? Well, as it turns out, there is one other way how this post-battle scene can go. The requirement is still to not defeat more than five enemies, but then this happens. quote:
Before we got interrupted by that ridiculous fight, Philip wanted to go and look for his brother, so let's do that now.  So here we are in front of his brother's house...   Well... what can we lose here really? So, we knock on the door, and...  ...a person appears... who is pretty clearly NOT Abel's brother! In fact, this is Michette, one of the masters we could have chosen at the start of the game! But if you don't choose her, then she appears here. If you do chose her, then a different person will appear here instead.   Um, no, I'm Abel, but, uh, close enough, I guess? What is happening. Notice how they are carefully avoiding to say Abel's name--the dialogue is all voiced, but since you can change the name at the start, they can't really say it out loud since they don't know what you're going to pick! Of course, Tokimeki Memorial kind of solved that problem, but I guess they didn't want to bother with that. Well, we already know that what he was told has happened to make him lose his memories is not true, although it seemed at the time that Domina didn't quite know the truth either.  Oh. Oh god. What should we do? This actually feels a bit like those crazy dialogue choices you get in Sakura Wars games, but at least it's not timed! And also in Sakura Wars, the third option wouldn't even exist but instead the game would just expect you to just not answer anything in that case and let the prompt time out. And this choice here is not just cosmetic! The three options here have the following possible outcome: continuing with adding Michette to our party; continuing without adding her to our party and the third option leads to... a somewhat unexpected immediate game over! But the only problem is, you as a player have no clue, which of the options leads to which outcome! Well, since I know you're curious, let's first check out the game over option! quote:Unexpectedly or not, but choosing to say "I am your Cain" will end the game right here. Here's how that goes. Anyway, where were we. Oh, right. Well, as it turns out, and probably this is not a surprise, the right way to go here is... to say nothing!  Michette has joined the party! Yes! Moar party members! By the way, selecting the option "I am not Cain" results simply in her going back inside and not joining your party. So in that case you just continue the game without her. All right, well, since we didn't find Philip's brother...  ...I guess we should go and try to see if we can talk to Philip's parents instead. But more on that next time, and I guess things are going to get a bit weird. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this more comedic oriented episode and until next time, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 21:51
|
|
|
Got an old man and a young girl, how balanced.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 22:35
|
|
|
Grind as much as you feel like, I highly doubt anyone is going to start shouting "git gud" at someone LPing an obscure SRPG from the late nineties. Also, I'm sort of mentally working out a flowchart for character availability based on master choice. So far, it seems that Domina, Prague, and Prica are all "safe" choices*, in terms of having the maximum number of available characters, as they're each mutually exclusive with someone else anyway (Prague and Prica with each other, and Domina with Mastema). However, choosing Michette as master means you're one person short compared to someone who selected one of the other three. *Prica, of course, is problematic for unrelated reasons, which makes choosing Prague potentially undesirable as a result, because it then leaves you with the choice of being a person short or having to deal with Prica's mannerisms for the rest of the game. EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 21:11 on May 16, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 22:55
|
|
|
Attacked by boomers demanding to leech your precious youthful income. Well, that certainly seems appropriate for demons.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2024 01:21
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:Also, I'm sort of mentally working out a flowchart for character availability based on master choice. So far, it seems that Domina, Prague, and Prica are all "safe" choices*, in terms of having the maximum number of available characters, as they're each mutually exclusive with someone else anyone (Prague and Prica with each other, and Domina with Mastema). However, choosing Michette as master means you're one person short compared to someone who selected one of the other three. Back in the second chapter, you can get Prague (if she's not your master) or Prica (if you don't get Prague and Prica is not your master). So there too, no matter how, you can always only get one person maximun. EclecticTastes posted:*Prica, of course, is problematic for unrelated reasons, which makes choosing Prague potentially undesirable as a result, because it then leaves you with the choice of being a person short or having to deal with Prica's mannerisms for the rest of the game. On a slightly related note, as mentioned, after chapter 4 is done, I was planning to show off the alternate route (which has several more recruiting options, including Zero), but I hope it's ok with everybody to not go into fights in detail, since they're also not that important for the overall plot, but rather just on the story segments for the most part. In fact, I don't know if you can tell or not, but this chapter didn't even exist in the original Sega Saturn version, but was only added in the remake so by definition it can't have any huge plot progression in it. It's more there to give us some background on two our our party members (the other branch focuses on Reprobus instead of Philip).
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 20:31
|
|
|
So there's someone else who shows up in Michette's place if she's your master? Is it Philip's actual brother?
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 21:13
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:So there's someone else who shows up in Michette's place if she's your master? Is it Philip's actual brother? Yes, but not Philip's brother.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 22:41
|
|
|
I hope this game never acquires any more brain cells than it currently has
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 07:19
|
|
|
Captain Oblivious posted:I hope this game never acquires any more brain cells than it currently has I mean it's true, this game story is not exactly deep and meaningful, but it's entertaining enough to make you keep going, and the difficulty level is not too bad so it plays without inducing frustration during the battle segments. From my end, after the last 3 games I played here, I'm pretty ok to have a game which is somewhat less wordy, which also allows me to keep a better posting schedule for once! So I hope everyone is having fun, but as usual do let me know if you'd like to see more or less of something! Also: Man, even with the grinding, this next battle is really rough if you want to achieve the S rank. The command time limit is super tight and the map is large so moving around takes more turns than usual, plus there are a lot of enemies too who like to do unnecessary moves which just waste CT. But well, at least the only reward for S rank is some different items, so it's something you can definitely live without. You don't need to get it in order to achieve some kind of "true" ending or anything like that! So it's really mostly for your own satisfaction (or the guys from Electronic Arts would call it, "a sense of pride and accomplishment", right?).
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 21:56
|
|
|
If this game came out in the modern era, you just know there'd be an achievement for getting S ranks in all maps.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 22:59
|
|
|
 Last time, we ended up in front of the house where Philip's parents live. So, let's see what happens now.   A man comes out of the house...  But of course, we have black winged people among us, so he makes an assumption...  And then annother guy shows up!   And then the "five doctors" show up. I guess they are the doctors which have been fleecing the residents, but they look more like "mad scientists" to me. But why would you have mad scientists as bodyguards? This is all quite bizarre, but I guess those are the greedy doctors we've heard about last time... Also, this last guy's portrait somehow doesn't fit with the others, almost like they forgot to do it and then just whipped something up quickly at some point. Just weird, it just looks to be in a completely different style than all the others. No clue what happened here. But anyway, as you might expect, for us, this means simply...  BATTLE 4-2: HUMAN BONDS VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT ALL ENEMIES Looks like we'll be fighting the doctors, huh?  First, let's awaken this "Tarab" ability for Abel's Billion Axe. It absorbs BP from the enemy when used (apart from dealing mormal damage), either 1/2 or 1/3 depending on whether the biorhytm type is matching or not. Probably won't use it much though.  Awaken Raum on John's morningstar, just in case he needs it to swap weapons with an enemy. Not in this battle though. As for the rest, since Mastema and Michette won't really have a part to play in this battle, I'm going to steal their equipment and give it to other characters.  Reprobus gets the Pillow Sword from last time and also Chain Mail armour which I've stolen from Mastema.  Gaius gets Tobit stone accessory which gives HP+10 and STR+2. Tobit is the main character in "Book of Tobit", another apocryphal religous text (part of the Dead Sea Scrolls). He also gets the Lamellar Armour which gives him VIT+11, so overall pretty nice!  Rupi Rupi gets Judith's ring from last time, which is INT+2 and also I have awakened Raum on yet another cutlass, since we'll have a chance to swap weapons with it again this time. Is is just me or is this ability a bit broken? It actually has a success rate 100%, it's not like it has only a "chance" to work! And that's about it then. So let's get started!  So as you can see, the map is a bit larger this time, which as we'll see will cause some problems due to my small oversight in character leveling in the previous fights.  Anyway, here's our setup to start with. As you can see on the previous screenshots, there's kind of a "upper" and a "lower" path that we can use. Therefore, Abel and Rupi Rupi will circle around via the lower path, where as Reprobus, Gaius, Philip and John will be taking the upper path. For this fight, Prague, Michette and Mastema will not participate. The Command Time requirement for S rank is very tight, so we really don't have room in there to spend it on moving all the characters around this relatively bigger map, therefore we have to limit ourslves a bit how many characters we use. In addition to that, we'll be making a bit more use than usual of John's magic, in order to speed things up and to hopefully achieve the S rank once again! So let's have a look at enemy placement. As you can see above, we have a bunch of grunts (mostly those with cross pattern on their armour) and then also the five doctors. Here are the doctors:  Dr. Green!  Dr. Blue!  Dr. Yellow!  Dr. Black!  And lastly, Dr. Red! By the way, as I've mentioned, the PS1 reworked the character portraits back to their original style as they were in the Sega Saturn version. Obviously, these doctor characters didn't exist there because this whole chapter didn't exist, but they did rework these portaits in the PS1 release to match the style of the rest as I'm sure you'll agree with me that they kind of stand out a bit as they are in the Dreamcast version. Anyway, here are the PS1 versions:  Dr. Green!  Dr. Blue!  Dr. Yellow!  Dr. Black!  And lastly, Dr. Red! In any case, the doctors will mostly be using magic spells against us. As we start the battle, some trash talking happens. Hehe, maybe. Maybe not. But anyway, let's make our first move.  So anyway, as mentioned, Abel is taking the lower route, so he'll move over here and start on this guy...  ...and Rupi Rupi will finish the job. If you didn't recruit Michette in the previous story segment (the "I am not Cain" dialogue option), then she would be appearing in this fight in place of the enemy we just defeated.  The part of our forces that will be taking the upper route (Reprobus, Gaius, Philip and John) moves forward, but can't reach to attack anyone just yet.  In the enemy turn, one of the archers comes forward and attacks Gaius, with not much damage dealt in the end.  Apart from that, a bunch of enemies on the far end of the map change positions a bit, and waste a lot of CT on that.  Continuing with our next turn, Gaius will attack the archer.  And Philip can finish him off.  John comes forward, we need to get him to the other end of the map as we'll need his magic in order to be able to finish this halfway efficiently!  Reprobus also moves a bit forward and turns the enemy into a skeleton. The doctors do have recovery magic, so we want to avoid any nasty surprises here.  Rupi Rupi and Abel step a bit more forward also. But it's a this point that I realise that Abel's mobility of 3 is going to be a problem here, as he's not going to be able to reach the enemies on the other side of the map as quickly as I'd hoped for. So we're not going to be able to finish this as "cleanly" as I would have liked. But oh well, let's just keep going and see where it gets us. In any case, this is about all we can do for now, so let's hand the turn over back to the enemy.  The guy standing on that roof casts a spell on Rupi Rupi, but the biorhytim is in the negative, so it actually deals 0 damage!  And then Dr. Blue over there does the same, with slightly more damage, but still nothing we can't handle. And then the turn is handed over back to us.  John moves forward. Take note that we have the max biorhytm coming soon. But we'll need to make a couple of moves first before we can cast the spell.  And that would be Rupi Rupi approaching Dr. Blue. and attacking him. He's in "defend" mode so damage is not huge, unfortunately.  She was also using Raum, so we take Dr. Blue's weapon too. The weapon is a "Dress Sword", a.k.a. "Espada Ropera", a.k.a a kind of a Rapier.  John can now take advantage of high biorhytm and one-shot Dr. Green here with his trustly Lumina Cross.  Now Abel can step further forward, but here it's really obvious that we would be benefiting greatly if he already had mobility of 4, as he would have been able to get to Dr. Blue in this turn and continue damaging him (or even possibly finish him with his special attack)! But we're going to have make do with what we have.  Finally, Reprobus, Gaius and Philip step forward too. As part of this, Gaius will turn Dr. Green into a skeleton, to prevent revival.  In the enemy turn, Dr. Blue again casts a spell on Abel, but we can handle the damage.  After some reshuffling of enemy forces on the upper gallery, Rupi Rupi is attacked by the archer here.  Dr. Yellow over there comes down and casts a status effect on Rupi Rupi! But the effect is that she can't use any spells or abilities which require BP. So it's kind of like "Silence" status in other JRPGs. It's also meaningless since she's already done what she needed to do and won't need to use magic for the rest of this fight. So we can just ignore it completely.  She also gets hit by Dr. Blue, but we have her in "defend" mode, so not really bad. After a bit more reshuffling, the turn is handed back to us!  Again our quartet of Gaius, Reprobus, John and Philip steps forward. As you can see, because of the size of this map, traversal is a little bit of an issue.  Abel moves forward and is finally getting into the range where he'll be able to do some more attacking.  Rupi Rupi hits Dr. Blue...  ...and then I want to move her upstairs. But take note of her movement range here. Obviously her movement stat is 4 because you can see that she can move 4 squares back. But why can't she move also 4 squares up the stairs? Well, it's time to take note about another game mechanic. I haven't really talked about this one so far because it would just take too much time to mention it every time it's in effect, but here is now a brief summary, just so that you can be aware that it exists. quote:
 So in the end, she can only move up to here, in front of Dr. Yellow. And this is the end of our turn.  In the next turn, Dr. Yellow moves up and casts a spell on Reprobus. But the enemy AI is not worried about making sure the biorhytm is actually good.  The archer keeps firing at Rupi Rupi.  Dr. Blue makes another attempt with the spell, but again, he's not minding the state of the biorhytm.  Another archer hits Gaius from above!  And then a second one! And then it's again our turn!  Rupi Rupi attacks Dr. Yellow...  ...and Abel uses his strong attack on Dr. Blue. Dr. Blue is now finally in critical HP!  We bring Philip forward... but his bow range is too short to hit Dr. Yellow from there.  So I change back to his shortbow, which while the damage is slightly lower, has one tile more of range! Well, good thing this game lets you change characters' equipment mid-battle!  Anyway, nice chunk of damage on Dr. Yellow there.  Reprobus comes up on the staircase and bonks the archer. Not enough to finish him off, unfortunately.  John and Gaius move over a bit. We do have a high biorhytm, but Yellow and Blue are fairly low on health so it would be a waste of BP to use a spell here, honestly. So we'll just hand the turn over to the enemy.  Dr. Yellow moves to the back and attacks Reprobus with a spell. It's not very effective because again biorhytm was in the negative.  Dr. Blue moves to hit Rupi Rupi...  But I was anticipating this, so her counterattack finishes him off once and for all!  The archer which was in front of Reprobus climbs up and shoots Rupi Rupi...  ...and the other guy hits Reprobus.  Dr. Black comes down and casts a heal spell! Although it revives Dr. Blue, it's with only 1 HP and the one who benefits most is actually Rupi Rupi who is standing next to him! So Dr. Blue will definitely be gone again in the next turn.  Another archer attack at Gaius who is in "defend" mode.  Finally, Dr. Red casts a heal spell on his archers there, but... none of them are even damaged at all? So I don't really know what the AI does sometimes in this game. And then it's our turn again. We've been at this for a while, but there's still quite a bit more to do!  We'll let Philip finish off Dr. Blue once more.  Gaius will climb up and make a good start on Dr. Black.  And then Reprobus can finish him off. We'll want to skeletonise him soon to avoid any interference from Dr. Red.  After this, Reprobus comes up in preparation for dealing with all those archers there and Dr. Red.  Rupi Rupi goes over to Dr. Yellow and hits him.  Abel also approaches Dr. Yellow, but can't attack yet. In the previous turn John also moved up next to Gaius.  So he can now turn Dr. Black into a skeleton too.  In the next enemy turn, Dr. Yellow casts a heal on himself!  Another arrow plonk at Gaius.  And also at Reprobus.  Because why not do it again.  Dr. Red has a spear, so he's able to do that thing where he can pierce through two tiles. He does deal a tiny damage to one of his own troops, but Reprobus definitely gets hit.  And then Dr. Yellow fires an arrow at John (I guess he must have run out of BP). Most of the enemies on this map are archers or use spells. I think Dr. Red is the only one who actually does close attacks.  And finally, another arrow attack at Philip.  Abel finally does away with Dr. Yellow (Rupi Rupi has moved over to allow him to attack from the side).  We'll leave Philip down here to use him to weaken the enemies up on the terrace with his special bow attack. We do have to use a shortbow because of the distance, but it should do fine.  Reprobus hits this archer over here, but it's not enough to finish him off.  John climbs up here. In the second next action, biorhytm will be at max (so we'll make a small move with Gaius to advance the clock), so we'll use that to...  ...finish off both Dr. Red and the archer standing in front of him. Now we just need to clean up the last 3 archers and we're done.  But first, enemy turn.  The archer who was in front of Reprobus moves back and also hits him with an arrow.  And so does the last guy.  And then the last guy moves back there. But he's made a mistake. Take note how the three enemies are standing in a L shaped formation. This will be their undoing.  This archer here is the only one with full health, so we'll use Philip...  ...to weaken him.  And now for the finale. John moves there behind Reprobus to be closer, and...  ...well, as you remember, the AOE shape of the Lumina Cross spell is... exactly a cross! Therefore thanks to their L shape position, we can hit all three of the enemies with one cast!  Biorhytm is pretty much at zero, but thanks to them having been previously weakened by Philip and Reprobus, this is enough to finish all three of them off!  Finally! That took a while, didn't it. Let's check out the result.    And somehow we managed to squeeze through into the S rank. As you can see above, the amount of command time that was used in this fight was 148. The maximum you can have and still receive the S rank is 150. So with 151 we would have already been down to A rank instead. For the curious, the absolute longest fight in the game is at 367 Command Time for S rank, so more than twice as long. But this is quite an extreme and most of the fights are between 100 and 150 with a few shorter and a few longer ones than that. I'm not going to lie, it took a few attempts to get here and to find the right combination of moves in the endgame that allowed for maximum efficiency, but, well, we got here somehow. The item rewards are another Rose Whip (for which we have nobody who can use it, as Prague already has one), and also a second item called "Onyx Medal". This is an accessory which guards against "sleep" status effect, so probably we'll use it when that becomes an issue. Incidentally, like in Final Fantasy games, here too a physical attack will wake up a character that is in "sleep" status and you CAN attack your own characters to achieve that too. Alternately, the sleep status will go away on its own after some time, like all other statuses in this game. All right, now let's see about leveling up.  Rupi Rupi will go up to 12. But I will adjust her stats a bit more towards strength at this point.  Prague also goes to 12, also with a small adjustment towards strength.  Philip will go up 2 levels, to level 13. Here too I will increase the strength a bit. As you saw in previous fights, Philip's role is quite critical so we want him to be able to deal good damage.  Abel will also go up from 12 to 13, but here I will increase his DEX so that he can have a movement range of 4, as this proved to be a bit of an issue in the last fight when he was still only able to move a maximum of 3 tiles.  And finally, why not, John will go up 13 also. All right, now let's see what happens.    Surprisingly, Philip's mum shows up at this point.    And with that... it's indeed time to continue our journey! Even though it seems we never really got the full story from Philip's father about what exactly kind of arrangement was existing there between him and the doctors. Oh well.  On the outskirts of the village...    And as reward for finishing this chapter, we get...  ...this nice sketch of Philip!  CHAPTER 4: ON THE ROAD - THE END And with this, we're done with chapter 4. Or rather, we're done with this version of it. Next time we'll take a look at the other path, which focuses on the backstory of Reprobus and also has a whole bunch of recruiting options that we'll have a chance to see! As I've mentioned last time, these chapters have been added in the remake to flesh out the characters a bit. So until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2024 22:25
|
|
|
Interested in seeing what other characters can be picked up from the 'other' side. Fun to watch so far
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2024 23:07
|
|
|
I'm still not sure if I'm meant to find Phillip's dad agreeable. We're told all those good things about him but he still sent his son away to a horrible environment and crafted a village where the young are exploited.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2024 03:04
|
|
|
You’re supposed to think his dad isn’t so bad after all, the game just Isn’t very smart is the thing. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2024 05:48
|
|
|
While this chapter is a bit all over the place, I guess the charitable interpretation is that he was being blackmailed by those doctor due to having a weakling in the family and hence the reaction about "not knowing" Philip and the rest. But once the doctors were no longer a threat due to our party having defeated them, then he eventually was able to talk more freely. I think that's the only way that it all makes sense. So the whole messed up situation was more engineered by the doctors, but he was not able to stand up to them. Or something like that. By the way, I don't think I've mentioned it so far, but for those who are curious, the game has 12 chapters in total. The original version on Sega Saturn had 10 chapter, so 2 have been added in the remake.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2024 18:19
|
|
|
I just chalk it up to the devil angels having no drat clue what they're doing. This game's head is empty and it's trying so hard, and it's adorable.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2024 19:35
|
|
|
It certainly feels like one or more of the writers had some strong opinions about Healthcare they really wanted to voice in this segment.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2024 20:00
|
|
|
I'm amused that so far the wings appear to be useless decorations. No one flies. No gliding, nothing.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2024 23:29
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:This game's head is empty and it's trying so hard, and it's adorable. Oh by the way, regarding the "trying hard" aspect, this game also tries to make Japanese text more "fancy" by constantly using kanji for words like 為に, 流石に, 勿論 and even stuff like わし等, than no one in real life would ever bother writing in kanji. But as you say, everything about this game feels like an actual sincere effort from the dev team to make the best game they could and it's just adorable. I think in the end they did make a decent game that is fun to play through, so no real complaints.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2024 10:34
|
|
|
I know I'm looking forward to the updates, so on that level they succeeded. I'm legitimately curious where they go even if they're very silly.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2024 12:56
|
|
|
ivantod posted:But as you say, everything about this game feels like an actual sincere effort from the dev team to make the best game they could and it's just adorable. I think in the end they did make a decent game that is fun to play through, so no real complaints.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2024 03:17
|
|
|
 Hello and welcome to this alternate version of chapter 4. Last time we finished our "canon" version, but now we'll check out the other option. As you might recall... ...a short while ago, we were presented with this choice. Choosing the first option led us to make a visit to Philip's village. So now let's choose the second option and see where it takes us!  So, later that night...  ...this time, it's Reprobus who has a chat with Abel instead.    The conversation is interrupted by Gaius.  Some people show up... and they don't look friendly!  Well, I mean, I guess we have the armour, but not sure of how much use it would be to you, really... Oh, another one?  That's a cool looking armour, though (even if I'm not entirely sure what exactly is going on around the hips area, but let's just ignore it). Anyway, meet "Oscar". The voice actress for "Oscar" is just the best! She does this crazy menacing whisper-talk that sounds really good. Oh, I said "voice actress", didn't I? Sorry about the spoiler, but this character is definitely female, despite the name. So it just remains to see who it actually is behind that cool looking helmet. But there are clues already on the screenshot to know it already, if you feel like figuring it out.  BATTLE 4-1: AN ATTACK OF HOMESICKNESS VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT THE BANDIT CHIEF Yeah. You knew this was coming, right? Anyway, to be clear, "the bandit leader" refers to the bearded guy and not to "Oscar". In fact, when you see a fight that DOESN'T have a victory condition of "defeat all enemies", you probably want to be a bit careful about what you do in the fight. And such is definitely the case this time, too. Of course, it has to do with recruiting, but this time, although in this branch you can still recruit only a maximum of 2 characters in the end, this time there are many more that can show up as an option and conditions to make specific ones appear are even more complicated than in the other branch. But the good news is that from here on out, the recruiting options will be limited to just one per chapter (or in one case two). Anyway, I'll explain all options as we go through the chapter.  For this fight, we have to take everyone except Prague, so I guess I'll bring her along too, although in all honesty this fight is probably easier with fewer people, weirdly.  So here is our map for this one. Our characters are caught in the middle, with enemies being everywhere around. So here's what the enemy forces look like.  The bandit chief is of course all the way down here...  ...but there's nothing especially threatening about him, so this should go relatively smoothly. Standing in front of him there is...  ...of course our friend "Oscar". Other than them, there's a whole bunch of other enemies here:  Some are bandits (who all share this same generic portrait)...  ...but a few are also white winged slaves. Speaking of which, while most slaves have this generic portrait, it's important to note that two of them actually have unique portraits looking like this:   It's something you want to pay attention to, because this version of chapter 4 is actually, uh, worse than the other one when it comes to secret conditions for recruiting different characters. The first possibility for a recruitment actually already comes after this fight, so let's get to it!  We'll arrange our starting position kind of like this, although in the end really the only people who will matter are the trio on the right side (Gaius, Abel and Philip). And you might be wondering why, because even though our victory condition is to defeat only the bandit leader, usually it's a good idea to go aroud and defeat as many enemies as you can for that sweet sweet EXP. However, like the first fight in the other branch, here too we have some strict limits on the number of enemies we're allowed to defeat if we want to recruit someone after the battle (guess who!). So as it turns out, the only enemies we're allowed to defeat are up to 3 bandits, up to 1 slave, and of course the bandit leader. We're not allowed to defeat "Oscar" and we're also not allowed to defeat the two slaves with unique portraits. What this means in the end is that you probably just want to make a beeline for the bandit leader (as it turns out there are exactly 3 other bandits on the way) and completely not worry about the rest. The enemies in the upper part of the map will come down and attack our characters, but just set them to defend and pretty much don't worry about them since they are anyway not allowed to defeat any enemies due to the above restrictions. Therefore, in this play by play of the fight, I will also simply focus on the moves that matter and will skip over useless trading of blows by our characters other than the three I already mentioned. Unfortunately, you're forced to take everyone into the fight (well, story wise it makes sense, since we were ambushed during the camp), so it is what it is. Anyway, enough talk, let's get this done quickly. Oh, right, one other thing I almost forgot. Since this is an ambush, this battle expectedly starts with enemy turn first!  So as we start, first a bunch of bandits approach our little area and attack Reprobus and John.  Then this guy comes to Gaius...  ...but is swiftly reprimanded by a counterattack (Gaius and Abel will be set to counterattack as they will actually be progressing through the map and attacking for real).  Also more people approach our camp. But other than one thing later, we're not going to worry about that any more.  Some rearrangement of the forces at the bottom of the map.  Abel moves to finish this one bandit off.  This opens the way for Gaius to come down and attack the second bandit...  ...who is then promptly finished off by Philip.  Rupi Rupi moves over and attacks this bandit here...  ...but this is only important because she again has equipped a cutlass with Raum so she can steal this guys weapon. It's again the same Pillow Sword like we had in the other branch. I just wanted to show you that you can still get that weapon here, but as it turns out Rupi Rupi won't even participate in the rest of the fights in this chapter (they're a bit special, as you'll see).  Anyway, after that, Gaius, Abel and Philip move forward towards the leader as much as they can.  In the next enemy turn, we do start getting attacked.  And then again, the enemy forces move around a bit.  In the next turn, our trio moves forward again...  ...and then we attack the third bandit here.  As usual, Philip is on hand to help out, which does finish off the guy. I do like how really all types of weapons/characters are useful in this game. But in any case, the only remaining person we want to defeat at this point is the leader. At the moment, he's hiding there to the left of "Oscar", so we'll let enemy take over the turn.  In th enemy turn, all that happens here in the lower part is that one of the slaves moves into the empty spot, blocking our way a bit.  So, unfortunately, all we can do in our own turn is skeletonize that one guy and move forward! Maybe they will get scared!  Turns out they do! In the next enemy turn, "Oscar" and one of the slave move away a bit...  ...and then the leader himself moves over towards us and attacks Gaius!  And then the other slave also moves a bit. This is pretty good, since we can have Gaius attack and then move to let Abel attack and then Philip can also attack from behind Abel! Let's try it!  First Gaius attacks...  ...and then moves over, as planned.  Then Abel approaches and also attacks.  And finally, Philip with an arrow from behind! This finishes off the leader, but as you recall, in order to finish a battle early, we do have to skeletonise him, so we'll have to wait for the next turn to do that. So we'll hand it over to the enemy. In the enemy turn, nothing special happens (the action is mostly around our camp)...  ...so in our next turn, Abel will skeletonise the leader...  ...and we're done!    If you want to obey all the restrictions and go straight for the leader, you're pretty much guaranteed the S rank here, as the maximum number of allowed CT for the S rank is 156. This is simply to make it possible to still get the S rank even if you clear out all the enemies. As I've indicate already a couple of times, as you can see, this game plays mostly fair with S rank requirements. Anyway, since this is just an alternate route that we're taking a look at, I'm not going to bore you with the leveling up part, as those levels are anyway just temporary until we return to our normal route. So let's see what happens now!   Of course, you only get this dialogue if you obeyed the extra conditions for this fight.  And again here you get a choice, of course. In the interest of seeing more plot, we'll opt to add her to our group, of course (even if it is just for this one chapter). Oscar has joined the party! Oh, by the way, I have to show you Oscar's portrait from the PS1 version:  Isn't that helmet just adorable. I honestly wish that the Dreamcast version could have also had these portraits, but I guess not. All right, now let's not forget that we spared two other "named" characters in this last fight! One of them shows up to talk to us at this point.  A battle arena?  What none of our team realise, however, is that they are being watched by a black wing standing on an elevation above...   Sorry, didn't catch your name again? I mean she has horns like John, so she's definitely some kind of a high priest or other, but... Well, anyway, she quickly departs the scene without anybody noticing her. In the meantime, back in our camp...  ...Reprobus is not doing great.  Well, all right. Let's head there then. It's not like we're trying to... I was going to say, "save the world", but, actually that's not what we're doing. I guess we're trying to save Domina and also John has some kind of a plan of his own, but we don't really know what the outcome of that will be... Oh whatever, we have time for this so let's go. Anyway, the next morning...  ...we find ourselves at the arena place. And like usual, we have some "free time" to talk to the locals (and visit the shop if we want to I guess). So let's start with those three guys there. Hm, yeah. Let's see the other guy. And finally the last guy here: Wow, it's really all about betting on fights here, huh?  Over here we have three counters. The last one is just a regular equipment shop, but the first two are where you can bet on gladiators.  And finally, two more people standing here on the edge. This last one actually uses terminology used when checking out race horses.  The armoured guy over here lets you do the "free battle". But upcoming fights in this chapter are some of the easiest in the entire game (if not THE easiest), so we're not going to need any extra levels here at all. In general, this version of chapter 4 is much lower difficulty than the other one, especially if you're aiming for S ranks. So let's just talk to the last two guys here. And the last one. All right, with that all done, let's continue the story. As we try to enter, we're confronted by a guard.  We can say yes or no here, but no simply takes you back to the "town" area. Therefore we'll say "yes" and progress the story.   We're taken to players' waiting room, and this same guard comes over again.  And with this, he leaves for now.     This conversation is interrupted. And so....  ...we're taken to the arena...   ...where there's some quite rowdy crowd watching the show! Looks like we'll have to participate in the tournament!  BATTLE 4-2: TOURNAMENT (PART 1) VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT ALL ENEMIES So, here we go. The first of the arena fights.  The fights are between teams, but we're only allowed to take a maximum 5 of our characters this time. Therefore, Prague, Rupi Rupi and John will be sitting this one out, and in addition to Abel, Reprobus, Gaius and Philip, we'll also take "Oscar" with us, because why not--the choice of party will be more important in a later battle in this chapter as there is again a... (gasp!) secret condition! So let's check out the map!  So it's a five vs. five kind of situation. As for the enemies...  ...they are all different kinds of gladiators, such as this one.  ...or this one. There are no "boss type" enemies here. For some reason, the initial placement positions our characters on the side where there are no enemies...  ...so we'll move ourselves over to the other side like this.  In the first turn, we're too far to do anything really, so everyone will just move forward a bit as much as they can. In the enemy turn, they don't do anything but simply wait for us to approach. So it's our turn again.  But all we can do again is simply move forward. Enemies skip their turn again. I guess we're not close enough yet for them to react. So it's our turn again!  So, let's move forward once more. This is invigorating, I know. But guess what. Still no action from the enemy. So it's our turn once again!  We move forward again. Unfortunately, we're still not able to attack (not even with a bow). But we're close to them now, so things should start happening.  In the enemy turn, Gaius gets attacked...  ...but I'm definitely setting everyone to "counterattack" mode in this one!  One of the enemies has a spear, so they can do that piercing attack thing which we also had for about 5 minutes at that one time!  Other than that, an enemy also moves closer to us. But now it's again our turn.  Let's do another attack with Gaius on this other enemy here.  Also, Philip can now finally get into the action with his bow.  The rest of our people can just move closer and then it's enemy's turn.  Gaius gets attacked diagonally. I wasn't counting on this, so unfortunately there's no "counterattack" because of this.  And same from this other guy. Oh well.  Here also a diagonal attack on Abel.  And another attack on Gaius, but since he's getting pounded, I've switched him to "defend". You can actually change the stance of your characters even during the enemy turn, by pressing a controller button to go into stance setup mode temporarily!  This enemy here has a really long range bow. But I don't bother with the stealing since we'll be soon returning to the other timeline.  We start our next turn with Gaius finishing off this guy here.  And then Abel does the same over here.  Reprobus makes a start on this guy with his special attack, of course.  "Oscar" then approaches to finish him off.  Finally, Philip continues to work on this guy here.  In the enemy's next turn, Philip gets another diagonal attack.  And also an arrow in the face!  The guy with the bow comes closer to us, which is nice because it means we can finish this in the next turn!  "Oscar" attacks this guy, but he dodges! Maybe I spoke too soon?  Abel has better luck on the archer here.  Philip can finish him off then.  Unfortunately, we don't have anybody who can come close enough to attack that last guy, so I just position Reprobus and "Oscar" in counterattack mode here just in case, but we'll have to go another turn after all!  More or less as expected, he does a diagonal attack again, so no luck on the counterattacks then.  Reprobus tries to bring this to a close, but this guy dodges again!  Abel's attack, however, succeeds.  And we're done. That was pretty easy mainly due to a simple layout and low level enemies and no boss types.    And that's another S rank for us! Although to be honest, with this one I feel like you really have to try NOT to get an S rank, because the fight is so easy that it will just come naturally. So let's stop here for now, and then next time we'll continue with the tournament and meet another potential recruit for our gang! Until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2024 23:25
|
|
|
And on this path, we're getting more lore about Reprobus as well as more specific info on conditions for white wings. Thanks for making sure to show off both!
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2024 02:05
|
|
|
Oh man, I can't believe I somehow overlooked this LP. This game is certainly interesting in its premise, and the plot and dialogue are entertainingly dumb so far. Please tell me it stays this stupid and doesn't suddenly turn into deep, philosophical naval gazing about religion's role in society that culminates in the party's
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2024 21:16
|
|
|
 All right, we're in the alternate timeline in which chapter 4 was dedicated to Reprobus's back story instead of Philip's and we ended up in some kind of battle arena because Reprobus wanted to catch some guy who is "back again". We got ambushed by some bandits on the way and had our first arena fight (5 vs 5), so let's see what happens next.   Sure. I mean not like we're going to be purchasing anybody, but still let's see what's going on.  They're serious about this, huh? Anyway, the auction announcer explains the rules.  And then... another unexpected person joins the conversation!  Well, I guess it was time for Zero to finally make an appearance in the game, huh?  But which young lady? We have several in our team? He means of course the only one which will definitely always be in the team, Rupi Rupi:   And then...  ...the next round of fights starts!  BATTLE 4-3: TOURNAMENT (PART 2) VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT ALL ENEMIES No special preparations this time, we'll just go straight into the fight with the same team as before (the game does let you change it if you want, but the limit is still 5 characters maximum).  The map layout is the same as last time (well, it's the same arena!), but the enemy positions are different.  We'll rearrange the positions just slightly and then we can start. The enemies are again just five ordinary guys with no boss types:   Actually, as it turns out, it's four guys and one lady:  Let's get started, then!  In the first turn, Philip makes a move and starts the attack!  The rest of the people just move forward since they can't reach any enemies. I'm sure the enemies will come to us in the next turn, though.  And indeed they do, like this guy with a spear here.  But he gets an immediate counterattack from Gaius which finishes him off. The other enemies decide to stay put for now.  Therefore, in the next turn, Gaius moves forward and attacks this guy.  Abel and Philip move forward and Philip continues working on this guy, but he's a bit sturdier than the last!  Reprobus and "Oscar" can only move forward.  Next, this enemy uses his decently strong special attack on Gaius...  ...and the female gladiator hits Reprobus with her whip for not a lot of damage.  In our next turn, Philip approaches and hits this guy with an arrow in the face. He's finally out.  Reprobus uses his special attack on the lady there.  ...and "Oscar" is there on hand to help out. This is enough to finish off this enemy.  We'll finish off our turn by moving Abel a bit closer.  Next, Philip gets attacked...  ...but archers can still counterattack, so...  And this guy also attacks Philip with his spear...  ...but like I said, archers can counterattack.  Next turn, and this guy gets another arrow in the face...  ...before Gaius can finish him off.  And finally, Reprobus does another special attack over here... which is enough to finish off that guy.  And... that's all there is to this fight. If anything, it's even easier than the last.    Again, you would really have to try hard to avoid the S rank here! After the battle...  ...the annoying guard comes back to annoy us again.  Well, I don't know about that. The fights here in the arena have been pretty easy so far?  Back to the arena it is, I guess then. But before the fight...  What a worldview. He's even getting quite agitated at this point about all this!  It's time to mess this guy up, because I'm tired of his attitude!  BATTLE 4-4: A BLOODY BATTLE! VICTORY CONDITIONS: DEFEAT ENEMY LEADER All right, before we go into the fight. I actually haven't talked much about alternate recruiting options in this chapter, and to be honest it's really complicated so I'm not going to go into full details, but it goes approximately like this. In the first battle from last time, if you don't recruit "Oscar", then you will be able to instead recruit that female slave with unique portrait. After that, if you didn't recruit "Oscar", then the boss of this next fight will not be Zero, but a different character. As you might expect, if you fulfill certain conditions, you will be able to recruit Zero after this battle (if he's the boss), but if he's not the boss (including when you chose Zero as your master), then some other character will be able to be recruited after the battle (but there are six different ones, and which one you get will depend on your choice of master, i.e. if you chose Domina, you get character #1, if you chose Michette, you get #2 and so on), so you don't always get the same one. For the life of me I don't understand why they made this so complicated! And this is also why the victory condition says "defeat enemy leader", because it can be different person. But in our case, it means "defeat Zero", of course. But we're going to try to recruit Zero, of course. So what are the conditions? Well, first of all, you must have recruited "Oscar" after the first battle (the one with the bandits). In addition to that, you must not have killed Darom in that fight. And then, finally...  ...it's necessary to choose the correct party for this fight, too! Your party in this fight must consist of four male characters, plus "Oscar". Since "Oscar" is a woman pretending to be a man (which Zero doesn't know), this will serve a purpose of showing to Zero that women can fight just as well as men, of course. So for that purpose the party of Abel, Reprobus, Philip, Gaius and "Oscar" as shown above, will be the one we use here (we're still limited to just five party members). All right, so let's do this.  We're still fighting on this same arena map as before, no change there. As you can see, Zero is there on top of the stairs, but the rest are just ordinary gladiators. Also note that archer there on that little platform. It seems like he's going to be a major pain, but no. This will be over so quickly that we're not even going to get to the point where he becomes relevant.  Here's our positioning.  Again we're a bit far, so all we can do in the first turn is move closer to the enemy.  In the enemy turn, Gaius takes a bit of a beating... unfortunately, this enemy has a sleep ability on their weapon, so Gaius is put to sleep with this attack.  Another enemy comes down and hits Abel...  ...but the counterattack comes quickly.  Zero actually comes down and uses his spear to attack Gaius (thus also waking him up in the process!).  It's our turn now, so Reprobus is just able to reach to this point above Zero and attack him from above for decent damage! Luckily Zero is in defend mode so we don't worry about counterattacks for now.  It's a bit crowded there, so the only other person who can really attack Zero at this point is Philip with his bow. If you're actually playing this route for real, you might want to slow down and defeat other enemies for more EXP, but since we're not, we'll just go straight for Zero. These three arena fights are so simple that there's really not any kind of strategy happening or anything like that.  Just for giggles, Abel attacks that guy in front of him. But it's not really going to matter much in the end.  I move "Oscar" up the stairs, to be closer to Zero in case we need an extra person to be able to reach him.  She also attacks that one guy, but it's still not enough. The enemies are a little bit sturdier here. All right, enemy turn time.  Zero does his spear attack on Gaius again.  And Abel also gets attacked, but he's in defend mode.  That guy from the top of the stairs does quite some damage to "Oscar", but don't forget that she's a couple of levels below the rest of the party!  She can still counterattack with her axe, though. All right, it's our turn now, so let's finish this!  Reprobus moves over here and attacks Zero for another good chunk of damage! This brings Zero's HP to critical which actually ends this battle! You don't have to fully defeat him, only bring him to critical as it turns out! But then... And then the arena announcer sounds.  Oh, right, we got a bit distracted there with conversation, but we still do get the battle results!  No enemies were actually fully defeated in this fight, so we get zero EXP and zero BP. But as I mentioned, you ould have prolonged this if you wanted.  This was so quick, so of course we get an S rank. The item is the same Onyx Medal we got on the other side. But now, let's see what Zero (and "Oscar" for that matter) has to say!    Hm. He actually used this exact same logic with Prague, if I remember right.   Again, as is common in this game, the conversation is interrupted by "Oscar" finally taking off her helmet to reveal...  ...that she's in fact Craze, one of the possible masters from the beginning of the game! The interruption is interrupted by the arena announcer once again! Zero has joined the party! If you don't have the party chosen in the last fight as described previously, then you just defeat Zero normally and this whole conversation doesn't happen. Also, you don't get a choice here, if you have fulfilled the conditions for Zero to join the party then he will always join. In any case, this finishes all recruitment opportunities for "master" characters. There will be more recruitment opportunities in the rest of the game, but they will be just regular NPCs. Later on, back on the road...    As before, we get a nice portrait of Reprobus as a reward.  CHAPTER 4: ON THE ROAD - THE END And here we are. This was the second (and last) branch of chapter 4. As you saw, this chapter, which was added in the remake, mostly serves the purpose of learning a bit more backstory of Philip or Repropus, but of course you can't do both in a single playthrough (although you can of course reload your save to see the other one, like we did here). I guess I can say, that probably the story in this version is a bit more interesting, but the fights are more challenging in the Philip version because the ones here are basically entirely trivial and pose no challenge whatsoever. Anyhow, a short time later, we find our group finally reaching the city of Pandemonium!     Well, it does look like a fairly prosperous place...  CHAPTER 5: THE CITY OF GREED  Well, looks like it's time to do a bit of exploring, like always when we reach a new place! But that's for next time, when we finally return to our regularly scheduled programme, in hopes of acquiring the next great evil god armour, and with that, also back to some more challenging fights as the game difficulty starts ramping up! So until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2024 22:27
|
|
|
And Zero completes the late-nineties/early-2000s tableau with an unfortunate helping of  , guess someone had to do it, given the rest of the game's general vibe.Is there an easy way to show off all the miscellaneous alternate characters you can recruit? Obviously, there being six possibilities in the arena makes doing full alternate playthroughs to show them off unfeasible, but I am curious about all the other characters.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2024 23:24
|
|
|
Wait, what happens if Craze is your master? I assume that means you can't get "Oscar", so is Zero just not recruitable here?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 09:09
|
|
|
Wait, if love is forbidden, why do they have families? You would think there would be some sort of more general commune system going on, where all the children are left at an orphanage as soon as they're born and people normally live by themselves or just live with other people out of convenience. I mean, I know that we're shown that people still "sin" because they're still human after all, but so far, from what we've seen, it definitely seems like if people are married or living together, it's because they love each other.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 11:30
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Wait, if love is forbidden, why do they have families? You would think there would be some sort of more general commune system going on, where all the children are left at an orphanage as soon as they're born and people normally live by themselves or just live with other people out of convenience. No, it's because your spouse is your property and if you let your property go, you're weak. Same for kids, they belong to you until they reach the age of majority, and if you don't exercise total control over their lives and make them live by your rules, you're a wimp. That's sorta how dominance-and-darwinism societies work. I mean, poo poo, that sort of thinking underpinned actual human relationships for a good chunk of our history, both explicitly and implicitly, and still does, in certain circles. We only really got away from it as a society in, like, the seventies.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 11:42
|
|
|
While I guess that makes sense, the one married couple that we've been shown seem like they loved each other and what the mayor was trying to do seemed to be out of love for his son despite his son being "weak"  . Plus it's early in the morning and I hadn't had caffeine yet.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 12:13
|
|
|
Also there's often a large gap between what people say of themselves and what actually happens.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 12:23
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Also there's often a large gap between what people say of themselves and what actually happens. This, Abel's master got in trouble for having the audacity of saying it out loud. Not to mention given the toxic dominance/social darwinism, there's a good chance most people don't really understand their feelings as Love-love.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 15:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 23:56 |
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:Is there an easy way to show off all the miscellaneous alternate characters you can recruit? Obviously, there being six possibilities in the arena makes doing full alternate playthroughs to show them off unfeasible, but I am curious about all the other characters. Arzaac posted:Wait, what happens if Craze is your master? I assume that means you can't get "Oscar", so is Zero just not recruitable here?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2024 17:35
|
|