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I read the English manual extremely carefully as a kid and can attest that it tells you nothing useful whatsoever beyond what the controls do.
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May 20, 2018 04:29
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Eric the Mauve posted:I read the English manual extremely carefully as a kid and can attest that it tells you nothing useful whatsoever beyond what the controls do. That's not true. In addition to the controls, the manual has taught us four very important pieces of info so far - that Dracula's remains can be found in the mansions, that you need an oak stake to get these remains, that the boatman will take us to different places depending on what remains we've found, and that the holy water can break floors and walls to reveal hidden items - and these are all in the English manual as well. It leaves some stuff out and simplifies others, but most of the important bits are present.
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May 20, 2018 09:39
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Chapter 4: Berkeley Mansion Let's recap what we've learned before we enter this mansion, shall we? *We've purchased a white crystal, and we've learned that it can be used to "open up a path" in Berkely Mansion. *We've learned that the sacred flame, which is presumably a weapon, can be found in Dennis Woods. *We've learned of a place called Dead River, and that the boatman there likes garlic. *We've learned that there's someone we should meet in the town of Aludra and the town of Orujiba. *We've learned of 13 hidden books we should find. We've found one in the town of Belos, and know there's one in Orujiba and one in Berkely Mansion. *We know we can purchase a chain whip in Belos once we get the money to afford it *We've learned that "the demon lord's bone becomes a shield protecting against the powers of evil", whatever that means. In addition, the manual has told us that we can find the pieces of Dracula's remains we're looking for in the mansions, and that we need an oak stake to actually obtain them. Got all that? All right, let's enter this mansion and see what we can find.  Looks like a friendly enough place. The blue blocks to our right is an elevator that moves up and down, and the guy waiting on the top platform is a new enemy.  It's called a "spear knight", and the manual explains that it will charge towards Simon with its spear. Sounds nasty.  Thankfully it can easily be killed from this platform, and dies in one hit from the thorn whip. It drops halves of big hearts. The jumps you have to make here are tighter fits than they look, and I lost a life trying to jump from the single block on the left to this platform since undershooting it sends you plunging straight into the water below. You should always walk to the very edge of the platform before attempting one of these. Also worth noting is the fact that when you're standing on the elevator, you jump lower than normal as the elevator is going down and higher than normal when the elevator is going up, so the easiest way to make the jump to the middle platform here is to stand on the elevator, then jump to the right just before the elevator hits its highest point. The jump to the high platform where the spear knight was is lovely no matter what, though.  gently caress.  gently caress. Yes, I died another two times on that jump.  This is what the Game Over screen looks like. If you choose to continue, you'll just respawn at the same exact point you died, but with your hearts and experience points reduced to zero. If you choose to save, you'll be booted back to the title screen after some loading screens and disk side switching fun, and starting the save up again will return you to Yorba, so don't do that unless you're actually quitting for the day.  After dying a THIRD time on that goddamn jump, I finally made it up here, just in time to meet another new enemy.  This is the imaginatively named "skeleton (2)". The manual warns us that it's a rather tough enemy that carries a shield and will come at Simon while throwing bones. It dies in one hit from the thorn whip and also drops halves of big hearts. Nowhere near as scary as the manual made it sound. They don't actually throw bones either.  A bit further right we find a split path. Let's try going down first. Another new enemy awaits at the bottom of these stairs.  The manual tells us it's called a devil, and that it will hop towards us while firing projectiles. It's by far the most threatening enemy we've had to deal so far, as it will jump farther distances that the wolfmen and fire two fireballs diagonally up and down during its jumps. Thankfully it dies in one hit from the thorn whip and drops FULL big hearts, which gives us a whopping 6 hearts. Unfortunately none of the enemies in here give any experience when I'm at level 1. It should also be noted that time doesn't pass inside the mansions, so as long as you enter during daytime, it won't ever become night while you're in there and you won't have to deal with the stronger nighttime versions of the enemies in here.  Curiously, the entire area to the left, where we could see those skeletons, is entirely blocked off.  No surprises there.  There's another breakable wall blocking access into the skeleton room itself.  Oddly enough, there's absolutely nothing in here at all. The wall I'm facing can't even be broken, so this place serves absolutely no purpose. Back to the stairs we go.  If we go right instead of left after going down those stairs, we find this area, where we get to choose two different routes into the next room.  I chose the top route, but immediately encountered a trap door that dropped me into the bottom route, which is full of devils.  After continuing right, I discovered the two routes link back up anyway. The top route has spear knights and trap doors while the bottom one has devils.  After the routes link back up, we're faced with another bullshit jump. I just barely loving made this one, and I was standing as close to the edge as I dared, too.  Holy water is not a very strong weapon, but it's super handy for killing enemies on lower platforms. Two hits kill this skeleton.  You'd think this wall can be broken with holy water, but the bottles just go sailing right through the blocks in the middle of them instead.  Like the trap door earlier, they're just illusory blocks, so you can just jump through as if they're not there. As for the weird slime ball here...  The manual tells us this is an amoeba, and that it will leap around on the floor, then spring to the ceiling, which is a pretty good description of how it moves. It dies in one hit from the thorn whip, drops small hearts, and is surprisingly fast and hard to hit. Not something you want to fight above pits it can knock you into.  After getting past two of those buggers, we find this middle finger of a room. No breakable blocks, no illusory blocks, just a dead end.  I also lost another life trying to jump back. This makes the amoebas respawn, but I thankfully managed to kill them without getting knocked into the water.  Yep. Pretty much everything we've done in the mansion so far has been meaningless. The correct way was to take the up staircase at this point. At least I got a lot of hearts from all those devils.  This time we take the staircase leading upwards. There are amoeba waiting at the top of these stairs, but if you just wait a bit, they'll try jumping to the ceiling and disappear offscreen. That suits me just fine.  After walking to the left and killing a couple devils, we reach this set of four annoying jumps in a row. The enemies are no threat, and missing a jump will just send you down to the floor instead of killing you, but it's still a rather annoying climb.  Taking a right at the top leads us to a long hallway filled with amoeba. There are no pits around, so they're no problem.  The hallway leads to this room, where we need to make some jumps over spikes. The spikes deal quite a bit of damage, but at least it's not instant death, and these jumps are a lot easier to make than the actually deadly ones earlier. The enemies here are thankfully just skeleton (2)s.  The room just ends in another dead end, though. None of the other dead ends had anything in them, but...  ...it pays to be thorough and check them all. Here's the hidden book we were told about in Belos.  "When an oak stake is driven into a certain something, a symbol of the demon lord will appear". It's not the clearest message in the world, but considering the manual told us we need an oak stake to obtain Dracula's remains from the mansions, the book at least tells us we need to drive that stake into a "certain something". There's a decent chance of "a symbol of the demon lord" being a reference to one of Dracula's remains as well. We shall see.  Well, nothing left to do but to go back to this spot and take the stairs up, since that's the only place we haven't been yet. And yes, in case you're wondering, I missed the initial jump up here.  The upper path is just a straight walk filled with boring skeleton (2)s, but then we get to this spot, and... hold on a minute.  Yeah, the two first blocks on the higher level here are illusory, so you need to make a jump through them and land on the third. If you miss, you just need to walk back past a couple non-threatening enemies, but it's a bit of a long trek.  Thankfully I made the jump on my first try. Now let's head right, into unexplored territory.  A quick screen transition later, and we find ourselves in a new section of the mansion. That guy down there looks like he might be worth checking out. Also, the skeleton (2)s in this area actually toss bones the way the manual told us they would, which caught me a bit by surprise. They're still not very dangerous, especially since their bones disintegrate when they hit the floor, but they could be a problem if positioned around pits.  A bit further to the right we see that our trip to the robed man apparently won't be as straight forward as just dropping down a level and walking left.  And another bit further to the right we find a few staircases leading down. As we saw above, going left here would just take us to a wall...  ...which can't be broken through with holy water...  ...so we go down and follow the only way we CAN go. The enemies here are all just skeleton (2)s, and there are no pits or anything around, so there's nothing to worry about.  Going all the way back left brings us to these two stairs, and since we have a better memory than a goldfish, we know that taking these stairs up will take us to the robed man.  A couple easy jumps over spikes later, and here we are. The man offers to sell us an oak stake for 50 hearts. Quite appreciated, since we've known we'd need one for quite a while now. At the moment I have 172 hearts thanks to all the enemies here, so this isn't much of an expense.  The oak stake goes into the battle items menu. Let's see how it fares.  Well, it has the range of the entire screen, at least. ...and it's apparently a single shot only, so it's now gone from my inventory. Guess it's not meant to be used as a weapon, then.  Okay, now that I've bought a second oak stake... let's see if these blocks don't hide something interesting. The ones on the other side of the wall did, after all.  Well what do you know. Here's our third hidden book already. Japanese doesn't really use plurals the same way most other languages do, so the hints we get about there being "a book" in a particular location can just as well mean there are multiple.  "Brahm Mansion receives those who undo the river's curse". This is another of those clues that will definitely make more sense later. Apparently we need to undo a curse before we can enter Brahm Mansion, one of the five mansions on our map, but we have no particular idea how we should do this. Definitely worth making a note of, though. Brahm Mansion is one of the more bizarrely named places in the game. Your first thought would be that it's named after Bram Stoker, but his name is spelled ブラム, not ブラーム. It could be a typo - if you Google "ブラーム・ストーカー" you do get a number of hits from people that mistakenly think Mr. Stoker's name is spelled this way - or it could just be a coincidence. The other mansions in the game don't appear to be named after anything in particular, so I'm not so sure I'd jump on the typo train just like that.  Either way, there's no point in worrying about that now. Time to go back to the stairs from earlier and continue into the only area we've yet to visit. We can go either down or right here...  ...but going right just takes us to a dead end.  Aha! I'm on to your tricks now, game!  "The source of the sacred flame still rests in a region enclosed by daylight". ...yeah, I don't know either. The other hidden books were a bit slim on the details, but this is the kind of vague poetic nonsense that's hard to make any kind of sense of. "A region enclosed by daylight" would presumably mean a permanently dark place, I guess? We'll make a note of it and continue on.  After returning to the stairs and taking the down path, we once again only have a single way we can take.  ...and it contains a trapdoor that drops us down into the dead end area at the very beginning, because the designer of this mansion hates people.  It's not actually that long a walk back to this spot once you know the way, but it's kinda frustrating that you're forced to do it. On my way back I also ran into a devil, died, got a game over and lost all my hearts, which didn't exactly help the frustration. The trap door is marked by this pillar to my right, and you're actually able to tell exactly where it is by observing the skeleton, since he'll turn around once he reaches the illusory blocks. Still a dick move, though. At least it's not a difficult jump once you know the specific blocks you can't stand on.  Just past the trapdoor is this spooky room. Could a boss be coming up?  Well, at the moment there's nothing here except this glowing orb. The manual told us an oak stake is required to obtain the piece of Dracula's remains from a mansion and one of the hidden books talked about striking a "certain something" with an oak stake, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what we have to do here. Even if you didn't find the book, this isn't really that difficult to work out, considering what the manual tells you - the orb is conspicuous as all hell and there's no other way to interact with it. In the English translation the clue in the book is mistranslated as "A symbol of evil will appear when you strike the stake", making the clue vaguer than in the original, but still sort of possible to work out the meaning of as long as you read the manual.  Boom!  Hitting the glowing orb with the oak stake makes this flashing bag appear. And if we jump into it...  ...we obtain Dracula's rib! One down, four to go. The manual just tells us that it's one of the remains, and that it has the power to make "the devil" materialize, which we already knew from the prologue.  The rib obviously shows up in the "Dracula's remains" window on the subscreen (alongside the white crystal, which isn't one of the remains), and we're able to select it here, just like we can switch between attack items. And when we do...  ...a shield materializes. This is what the guy in Belos meant by "the demon lord's bone becomes a shield protecting against the powers of evil" - as long as you have the rib selected as your remains item, you'll literally have a shield in front of you that will protect against projectiles. It's one of those kinda unnecessary hints that are so vague you only realize what they meant after you stumble over the answer on your own.  All right, we found an entire three hidden books and one of the five remains, so let's get out of here. The trapdoor is rather handy as a quick exit this time.  And the devils here are easy enough to grind the rest of the hearts we need for that chain whip on. They die in one hit, they have no room to maneuver, and our new shield will block their fireballs if they manage to get any off.  We got our hearts, time to leave. ...wait, where did the elevator go?  Oh, there it is. This is actually what the book in Belos meant by the white crystal "opening a path" - the elevator is invisible unless you have the white crystal selected in the remains window. The thing is, most people aren't even going to realize this; you're strongly urged to buy the white crystal at the very start of the game, it's sold by the first merchant you're likely to encounter, you CAN afford it with the hearts you start the game with, and you have no other items you could possibly have selected instead of the crystal when you first enter this mansion, so unless you specifically didn't select any item at all in the remains window, it's likely you'd never even realize this elevator was ever meant to be invisible. The clunky translation may have made it rather difficult for those playing the English version to find the book telling them the white crystal would open a path for them in this mansion, but chances are they'd never realize that path wasn't open from the get-go anyway, so it's not that big a deal. Well, we have our 150+ hearts, let's go buy that chain whip.  Oh goddammit.  ...and after beating up a bunch of the zombies and bats in the town waiting for the sun to rise, we finally have our chain whip. Time to start figuring out what lies further to the right of the mansion and this town. But that'll have to wait until next time. Adamant fucked around with this message at 10:29 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 21, 2018 00:10
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I always forget that time pauses in a mansion. Will have to remember that if I decide to give this another playthrough. Didn't know of some of those hidden book locations myself. Only knew about the first one shown, specifically.
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May 21, 2018 20:29
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Right. The jumping mechanics. I had forgotten how bad they are.
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May 22, 2018 01:41
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SirSystemError posted:I always forget that time pauses in a mansion. Will have to remember that if I decide to give this another playthrough. Didn't know of some of those hidden book locations myself. Only knew about the first one shown, specifically. It’s a pretty big deal if you’re going for the best ending, which basically requires you to beeline to the mansions and grind inside them for hearts with time frozen.
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May 22, 2018 02:41
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Coolguye posted:In spirit it has been remade several times, at least, and people generally agree that the games that ape 2 rather than 1 are The Good Ones.
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May 22, 2018 02:49
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SirSystemError posted:I always forget that time pauses in a mansion. Will have to remember that if I decide to give this another playthrough. Didn't know of some of those hidden book locations myself. Only knew about the first one shown, specifically. Did you know about the one in Belos? That seems to be one a lot of English players missed, since it's pretty hard to stumble over unless you're specifically looking for it. Thankfully it's not a very crucial one. ultrafilter posted:Right. The jumping mechanics. I had forgotten how bad they are. It's not the mechanics as much as the jumps being ridiculously tight and requiring you to stand on the very very edge of one platform to barely make it to the next one. But yeah, I had forgotten they were this bad as well. There's nothing like this in the first game. Adamant fucked around with this message at 07:34 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 07:27
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buraamu's mansion versus buramu's mansion isn't so much a typo as it is a cultural misunderstanding/mistranslation. stoker's name used the long vowel in much of the stuff that came over in the 60s, 70s, and 80s - even in the musical "Dracula - The Pale Kiss" that got run by the takarazuka review they credited the original dracula story to sutookaa buraamu in the original programs (i still have one somewhere in my filing cabinet i think). this demonstrates how the misunderstanding came about in the first place. stoker's name legitimately does use long vowels a fair bit, and the long a is a pretty subtle difference in english. i imagine when it was translated back in this game, the translators noticed that it was a little weird, but lacking any context and any communication with the original team they just did what arbitrarily felt right and left it at that. and...they clearly were deprived of that communication, context, and oversight. in addition to the the embarrassing fail in "a symbol of evil will appear when you strike the stake", a text box i was waiting for, picking up dracula's body parts in this game rewards you with "you now prossess dracula's (x)", a typo that's fixed in many other "you now possess" text boxes but will keep coming up every time you pick up a part of big D's remains. ironically, the rib hints end up reading better in english than they do in japanese. the hint regarding the fact that the rib turns away enemy projectiles is just "a rib can shield you from evil", which is a pun that doesn't work in japanese. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 17:18 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 17:02
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Coolguye posted:buraamu's mansion versus buramu's mansion isn't so much a typo as it is a cultural misunderstanding/mistranslation. stoker's name used the long vowel in much of the stuff that came over in the 60s, 70s, and 80s - even in the musical "Dracula - The Pale Kiss" that got run by the takarazuka review they credited the original dracula story to sutookaa buraamu in the original programs (i still have one somewhere in my filing cabinet i think). this demonstrates how the misunderstanding came about in the first place. stoker's name legitimately does use long vowels a fair bit, and the long a is a pretty subtle difference in english. Hm, that's interesting. There's another similar typo issue coming up in the next chapter too. Coolguye posted:ironically, the rib hints end up reading better in english than they do in japanese. the hint regarding the fact that the rib is just "a rib can shield you from evil", which is a pun that doesn't work in japanese. It actually works even better in Japanese - the guy says "tate to naru", an expression that's used more or less the same way to English expression "to shield" is, and it literally means "become a shield". As I said in the OP, this is just a playthrough of the Japanese version of the game that explains and makes use of the actual information provided in-game and in the manual to a Japanese player. It's not meant to be a super accurate retranslation or translation comparison, and I'm paraphrasing a lot of the dialogue and only really checking what the English version said for crucial hints that will hinder a player if mistranslated, which this particular one wasn't really. Adamant fucked around with this message at 17:47 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 17:44
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I'm actually really enjoying the translation discussion and trying to guess at where communication broke down and why. I know that's not the purpose of the LP but I enjoy the side conversations. I'm still waiting for the part where I give up almost every playthrough just because the jumps become even more difficult in my opinion.
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May 22, 2018 20:29
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Chapter 5: The Sacred Flame All right, let's recap: *We've found Dracula's rib and purchased all the items available to us: a white crystal, holy water, a dagger and a chain whip *We've learned that the sacred flame, which is presumably a weapon, can be found in Dennis Woods, and that "its source still rests in a region enclosed by daylight", probably some permanently dark place. *We've learned of a place called Dead River, and that the boatman there likes garlic. *We've learned that there's someone we should meet in the town of Aludra and the town of Orujiba. *We've learned of 13 hidden books we should find. We've found 4, and know there's one in Orujiba. *We've learned that to enter Brahm Mansion, we need to undo a curse on a river somewhere.  If we look at the map, we can see that Brahm Mansion is located beyond Vlad Mountain, and it looks like it might be possible to reach it by going through Belasco Marsh. There's a river near it, probably the cursed river mentioned in the book, and we can see that the town of Aludra lies on the other side. There's no bridge leading across it, however.  In addition, Dennis Woods seems to be located just besides Berkeley Mansion, beyond a place called Dennis Marsh. There's also a bridge leading to the central island here. Finally, the town of Orujiba is located on the other side of the Borgia Mountains, just beyond the Orujiba Woods. The Dabi Tunnel, which we found the entrance to in Belos, can probably take us here. Well, that's all the named locations we've been informed of accounted for. Since saving and quitting the game always starts us back in Yorba, seeing if we can finally pass Belasco Marsh now that we have the chain whip sounds like a good place to start.  There we go! The chain whip is strong enough to kill the 2-Heads in one hit during daytime, and the shield the rib gives us allows us to reflect their fireballs. Now we can finally avoid getting knocked back off screen immediately after entering the marsh.  A bit further left, past a third 2-Head, we find a hill and a new enemy.  The manual explains that this is a wolf, and that it will attack Simon while running. It dies in one hit from the chain whip and drops small hearts. As an aside, all of these enemies take two hits with the dagger to kill. The wolfman in Yorba Woods dies in one hit, meaning the dagger is as powerful as the thorn whip, just with a bit more reach. It was a pretty okay weapon at first, offering more reach in exchange for a longer delay between attacks, but now that we have the chain whip the dagger seems to have outlived its purpose somewhat.  Another wolf later, we find what appears to be the actual Belasco Marsh on the other side of the hill. Another new enemy awaits us there.  According to the manual, this is an... uh, "Earth Person". I'm not sure where they got that name from and why they didn't just go with "Mudman" like every other game did even back then. Either way, the manual goes on to explain that they will approach Simon while firing projectiles, and that they grow by eating people. They don't actually move, though, they just pop up and down from the marsh, firing projectiles as they go. They die in one hit and are fairly non-threatening.  The actual Belasco Marsh is fairly wide, and as we know from earlier, touching the marsh hurts you, so this is a bit of a road block.  It's technically possible to brute force your way across if you really want to (though dying in the marsh will make you respawn at the edge of it, so you have to make it across on a single life bar), but I know my video games, and this is a very blatant example of a game telling you you're not supposed to go this way yet, just like the 2-Heads earlier were. So let's ignore this direction for now until we find a proper way of dealing with the marsh. Let's go see if the Dennis Marsh is a bit more welcoming.  On the way back it became night, and I got to deal with powered-up wolves and 2-Heads. They both take two hits from the chain whip and drop halves of full hearts. The slow 2-Heads aren't very threatening if you have the shield out, but the wolf is really fast and can be a genuine problem to kill before it runs into you.  The journey back to Berkeley Mansion was relatively trivial thanks to the chain whip, however. Now, let's see what lies on the other side.  Based on the map, we can assume this is Dennis Marsh. The skeleton (1)s here are as uninteresting as ever, and no stronger than the ones in Belos Woods.  Past the hill with the skeletons, we encounter a new enemy.  This fellow is, not surprisingly, a bat, and the manual tells us it will approach us and attack. It flies straight ahead while bobbing up and down and is probably better to just walk under and ignore. Its nighttime version dies in one hit and drops halves of full hearts, like everything else here. (also, it appears I mistook the raven enemy earlier for the bat, I fixed that error.)  Just like in Belos Woods, these incredibly suspicious blocks can of course be destroyed with the holy water, letting us access the cave below.  And just like in Belos Woods, there's nothing down there except marshland. We can see a stairway going down into the cave a bit further to the right, past this huge section of marsh, so there's no point in messing around with this cave area. Let's just retreat and take the upper road.  Oh. Since we destroyed the blocks leading to the upper road, our only choices are to take the lower road through the marsh, or to go back left and make the blocks respawn by leaving and re-entering the area.  I value my life, so I chose the latter. It should be noted that the game needs to load every time you pass between a specific chunk of areas, and that this is considered a separate chunk of areas from the mansion exterior, so "leaving and re-entering the area" involves waiting about 30 seconds for the game to load new areas twice.  Interestingly, we get a choice of two exits at the end of the marsh. And if we choose the upper one...  ...we spawn in the air in the next area. Taking the lower exit will make us spawn on the ground, so both exits ultimately lead to the same area. If the previous area was Dennis Marsh, this is presumably Dennis Woods. That sacred flame should be here somewhere.  Another new enemy awaits us here. This is the spider, and the manual tells us to watch out for the webbing it spits.  Spiders are pretty advanced enemies that will crawl around in the trees where you can't hit them, then lower themselves and spit webbing at you. Like everything else here, even their nighttime versions die in one hit from the chain whip and drop halves of big hearts. They follow Simon around, so they can actually be rather troublesome if you leave them be and are worth killing to get out of your hair.  It should also be mentioned that we're actually gaining experience points again. Chances are these enemies would've taken two hits with the thorn whip to kill, like the nighttime enemies in the town of Belos did.  A bit further right we find a cave, the only exit from this area. Presumably this will take us to the bridge on the map. What was that about the sacred flame being found in the top of "the 6th tree in Dennis Woods", though?  You can try interpreting it however you'd like, counting trees from either side of the screen, tossing holy water around to look for breakable blocks... but no matter what you do, there's nothing to be found here. Maybe we have to return later?  If we enter the cave, we get to... well, a cave, not the bridge as we might expect. There's yet another new enemy waiting for us here.  This is the Eyeball Ghost, and the manual tells us it will roam around in the air. It will actually home in towards Simon and try to ram into him, and while it's not terribly fast, it should definitely be killed off, since leaving it around is almost certain to result in it eventually hitting you. The daytime version dies in one hit from the chain whip and drops small hearts.  A short walk to the right and we find the exit, but there's also some stairs leading to a lower area here, so let's check that out first.  We initially get a choice of going back left or even further down.  Going left takes us to this series of platforms we could see from the entrance. There's nothing over here apart from a skeleton and some Eyeball Ghosts. You might suspect it'd be possible to break the floor here with holy water, but that doesn't work either.  After going back across the platforms and taking the stairs this time, we get another choice of left or down right away. Let's try left again first.  Nothing here either. Dropping down one of the holes above would've of course taken us here, but there's no purpose to this area beyond that. Let's take the downwards route, then.  That choice takes us to the bottom of the cave area, with nowhere new to go but left again. The enemy positions here makes me long for the axe subweapon, but according to the manual, there's no such thing in this game.  There's a particularly annoying Eyeball Ghost trying to knock you off these platforms as you cross them, but at least there's only a bit of marsh below them, so while it'll make you take a bit of extra damage, it's not the end of the world. There's another exit from this area to our left here. Let's see where that takes us.  Wait, what? Isn't this the town of Belos? Let's check the map.  Yep... the cave we were in was apparently this "Dabi Tunnel" the sign in Belos told us about, which we've now discovered also exits into Dennis Woods. There's still an exit to the right there we haven't taken, which presumably leads to the Orujiba area, but this means that going past the Berkeley Mansion just makes you travel through Dennis Marsh and Dennis Woods to reach the Dabi Tunnel via a different entrance, and that there's no apparent way to reach the East Bridge. Bizarre.  I was also unlucky enough to have night fall shortly after entering the town, so I don't even get to heal at the church unless I feel like waiting for daylight. Screw that, let's check out that other exit from the Dabi Tunnel.  It may be night, but the chain whip still kills everything in the Dabi Tunnel in one hit, and they now drop halves of big hearts. That next level should be within our reach soon.  All right, let's finally see what lies this way.  Another portion of the cave, apparently. The enemies are positioned in pretty nasty spots and will most likely hit you the first time you enter this area, but since the ceiling is right above your head, you'll just get knocked into that and fall back down more or less where you were standing when you got hit instead of getting knocked offscreen.  Nowhere to go but right. These blocks look like they might be breakable with holy water, but once again, that's not possible.  THESE blocks, on the other hand...  Knew it.  It may look like there's any reason to go over here, but those two blocks couldn't look more breakable if they wanted.  Bingo. But... what's that? I expected a hidden book.  It appears I have now obtained the sacred flame. This is what the clue in the book we found in the mansion meant - "The source of the sacred flame still rests in a region enclosed by daylight" is supposed to mean that the item you need to use the sacred flame is located in a cave. It was badly mistranslated in the English version as "A flame flickers inside the ring of fire" by someone that misinterpreted the word "hi" as meaning fire instead of daylight, but let's be real, no Japanese kid read that clue, realized it meant the sacred flame was in a cave, then went searching for it here, they all found it because these blocks are pretty obviously hiding something. Just like everyone playing the English version did. And what about that guy in Yorba that talked about a tree in Dennis Woods? ...Yeah, he just lied. As mentioned earlier, the manual tells us some townspeople will lie in order to mislead Simon, and we just got tricked by one such person.  Now that we have the sacred flame, it can be selected in our attack item window. As mentioned earlier, the manual just calls it the "flame", and tells us it's an effective item since "demons fear fire". So what does it actually do?  It's a souped-up version of the holy water from the original game! Using it will make Simon toss it on the ground in front of him, where it will cause a flame pillar even taller than him to rise out of the ground. Unlike the holy water and the dagger, this one actually costs hearts to use, though only a single one. It kills the bats and Eyeball Ghosts here in two hits, making it presumably as strong as the thorn whip, but it also stunlocks them inside the flame and will hit them a second time before it goes away. Definitely the best attack item so far. Also, since we found a sacred flame that can incinerate demons and in general cause more harm to them than anything else we've found so far, the name "Dabi Tunnel" may refer to cremation after all. It's hard to tell.  If we go to the right of the blocks we broke to get to the flame, we find the exit.  This one takes us out of the tunnel and to an all new forest area. Could this be Orujiba Woods? Let's find out next time. Adamant fucked around with this message at 11:15 on May 26, 2018 |
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May 25, 2018 16:21
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man, i remember every gaming rag at the time hyping up how powerful a weapon the Sacred Flame was, but i could never find a good use for it while playing. in the unusual case that the thrown arc from the holy water was useful, i'd just use the holy water. in the case that someone was stationary and you ostensibly wanted to screw them up, you could get more damage output by using your whip. the lies continued even out of game
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May 25, 2018 17:35
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Coolguye posted:man, i remember every gaming rag at the time hyping up how powerful a weapon the Sacred Flame was, but i could never find a good use for it while playing. in the unusual case that the thrown arc from the holy water was useful, i'd just use the holy water. in the case that someone was stationary and you ostensibly wanted to screw them up, you could get more damage output by using your whip. The problem is mostly that it's a good weapon in theory, but that unlike its predecessor, the game never really throws all that many situations at you where setting up an impenetrable wall of stunlock death in front of you is all that helpful. The fact that anything that gets hit by it is going to be frozen in place until it dies as long as you can stand still and keep throwing flames has its uses, though.
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May 25, 2018 18:33
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Adamant posted:The problem is mostly that it's a good weapon in theory, but that unlike its predecessor, the game never really throws all that many situations at you where setting up an impenetrable wall of stunlock death in front of you is all that helpful. The fact that anything that gets hit by it is going to be frozen in place until it dies as long as you can stand still and keep throwing flames has its uses, though. If my memory serves, the stunlock works on the very few bosses the game offers, right?
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May 26, 2018 00:40
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Eric the Mauve posted:If my memory serves, the stunlock works on the very few bosses the game offers, right? Correct.
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May 26, 2018 00:44
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