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Hello everyone and welcome to this playthrough of Linda³ ("Linda Cube"), a weird and wonderful game unlike any other! What is this game, anyway? Well, on the surface, it's just another 1990s JRPG, although this time with more of a Sci-Fi slant. However, this one has, over time, achieved a bit of a "cult classic" status, due to some of its plot elements and the overall execution. A bit of history. The game, directed by Shoji Masuda, was released originally on PC Engine platform in 1995 as a Japan-only release (also worth noting is that 1995 was way at the tail end of that platform's lifecycle, it had pretty much already been discontinued by then!). It then two years later, in 1997, received a remake on PlayStation 1, under the name Linda³ Again. This really was a full on remake: the in-game graphics were much improved, and the original's semi-static cutscenes were replaced by fully animated anime FMVs, in addition to some QOL improvements in the gameplay. Unfortunately, due to Sony's policies at the time, it also received "toning-down" of some of the more violent and/or weird content--the PC Engine original was one of the few 18 rated games on that platform--however, the plot remained largely unchanged. There were also some new extras added to the game (which I will not spoil here). Apparently, the game was popular enough to then receive also a Sega Saturn port in 1998, this time under the name Linda³ Complete Version! The "Complete" moniker refers to the fact that this version includes even a few more extras, and I think it also came with a soundtrack CD, featuring some music and songs (yes!) from the game's soundtrack. There seems to be what I think is a bit of a misconception, that this version restored things which were toned down for PS1 edition, but as far as I can tell, this is not really the case--rather, this version is, at least when graphics (including the anime cutscenes) and gameplay is concerned, largely the same as the PS1 version. Therefore, if there are any differences, they might be in some restored bits of dialogue or something like that. So I will refer to both PS1 and Saturn versions collectively as "the remake". In any case, the PS1 version is definitely the most popular one, so that's the version we are going to be playing in this thread. Uh, but what is it ABOUT? Right, I got distracted there a bit talking about the game's history. Anyway, to start with, here's a story from the first pages of the manual, which set up the background of the game's plot: quote:Even in the old records, no information remained about "mother" Earth, other than the fact that it "became extinct". In the present day, humanity has spread across many planets, so that even the coordinates of the original Earth had been lost to history. In order to find other viable stars and planets, the humankind had to do everything they could to keep moving. By the end of the millennium, they built a vast interstellar Federation. By the way, AMD stands for "After Mother's Death", implying years since the "mother" Earth became extinct. In any case, this is where our game starts, in the Spring of 1991 AMD and concerns the events around our main characters, Ken and his girlfriend Linda (after whom the game is named), as they try to save the animals of the planet which is about to be destroyed. I'm not going to say too much more right now about the story, since the game's opening does a good job of setting up the rest of the premise. But I guess it's a bit like Pokémon  except it's definitely not intended for kids. (This is a joke. The game is actually not very much like Pokémon at all. But you'll see what I mean.)The gameplay From a purely technical side this has the look of a typical "top-down" JRPG from the 1990s with turn based combat akin to Dragon Quest. It features your standard towns, dungeons and towers, like a Final Fantasy game from early 1990s would. However, it does have a fair bit of mechanics which are either different or not really seen in the other JRPGs of the time. It's also one of those games which doesn't feature random encounters, but instead "enemies" are in fact visible on the overworld--there is also a plot related reason for that, which we will learn soon. I will cover different game mechanics (of which there are a fair few) as we encounter them in the game. About the LP Well, first of all, the big elephant in the room. As some of you probably know, none of the versions of this game were ever released outside of Japan. Unfortunately, that means there is no official translation, so you'll have to make do with my imperfect one. Neither Japanese nor English is my native language, so it's probably going to be a little rough, but we should be able to follow the plot well enough. I am aware that there has been a fan translation in the works already for a number of years (I think it's just one person working on it), but I don't think anything has been released publicly so far really. If it ever gets released, then I will consider switching to it if possible, since by coincidence it is being developed for the PS1 version of the game, the same one we're playing here. I'll keep an eye on it and we'll see. As for the rest, although I have not actually played the game to the end, this is not really a blind playthough either since I am familiar with the different game mechanics, etc. In any case, I also have in my possession the following book: Namely, the complete game guide which was published at the time of the game's release. So if things get rough, we can turn to it for help as it really is quite complete! The goal of this LP is definitely to, so to speak, 100% the game, or as close to it as possible. So I will make an effort not to miss anything (in fact there is already in the first update below something you can permanently miss!). Some extras Extras? Yes, I will be posting some extra content as we go through the game. First of all, the guide is full of beautiful illustrations from the game's character designer/art director, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, and there is also a whole art book on top of that. So there's a TON of concept art, illustrations and film storyboards (for cutscenes) to be seen. I will be posting some of those as appropriate, while trying to avoid spoilers. In addition to that, I will be posting some bits and pieces from the PC Engine version too, including a few full cutscenes, just so you can see the difference between the two. Here and there I will also post links for tunes from the game's soundtrack (composed by Ryouko Kihara) which is actually a lot better than you would expect and honestly on a par with Final Fantasy games of the time period. There's even a few vocal songs which we will be able to hear in the game. Final words Finally, please don't post spoilers, not even in the spoiler tags. I don't expect a huge amount of people have played this game already, but nevertheless, if you have, please try not to spoil the future plot events for others. Anyway, I know, I really talk a lot, so let's scroll down and get started with the game finally! List Of Updates: SCENARIO A: MERRY XMAS Part 01: Summer 1991 Part 02: Summer 1991 Part 03: Summer/Autumn 1991 Part 04: Autumn/Winter 1991 Part 05: Winter 1991 Part 06: Spring 1992 Part 07: Spring 1992 Part 08: Summer 1992 Part 09: Summer 1992 Part 10: Summer 1992 SCENARIO B: HAPPY CHILD Part 01: Summer/Autumn 1991 Part 01: Summer/Autumn 1991 (cont.) Part 02: Autumn/Winter 1991 Part 03: Winter 1991-Summer 1992 Part 04: Summer/Autumn 1992 Part 05: Autumn 1992-Summer 1993 Part 06: Summer/Autumn 1993 Part 07: Autumn 1993 SCENARIO C: ASTRO ARK Part 01: Summer 1991-Spring 1992 Part 02: Spring/Summer 1992 Part 03: Summer/Autumn 1992 Part 04: Autumn/Winter 1992 Part 05: Winter 1992/Spring 1993 Part 06: Spring-Autumn 1993 Part 07: Autumn 1993-Spring 1994 Part 08: Spring/Summer 1994 Part 09: Summer/Autumn 1994 Part 10: Autumn/Winter 1994 Part 11: Spring-Autumn 1995 Part 12: Winter 1995-Autumn 1996 Part 13: Autumn 1996-Autumn 1997 Part 14: Winter 1997-Summer 1998 Part 15: Autumn 1998-Summer 1999 SCENARIO D: LAST YEAR Part 01: Summer 1998 Part 02: Autumn 1998 Part 03: Winter 1998 Part 04: Spring/Summer 1999 ivantod fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 15, 2022 |
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Well, then, after that overly long introduction, it's time to finally start the game. And by doing that, we are faced with a couple of opening cutscenes that we need to watch, so let's get started. So that was a short prologue with a childhood scene between Ken and Linda, set some years in the past. The next scene, however, is the actual opening of the game, set in spring 1991. And now, the actual premise of the game becomes clearer. As we already know, the planet is doomed to be destroyed by a meteorite in 1999, so that gives us 8 years to collect one male and one female of each animal species living on the planet, including humans, and use that "ark" to save them (there are some variations in this goal, but I will cover that in a moment). There are clearly, many questions around this whole situation, but one of the burning ones surely is, where did this ark even come from? (I guess we'll have to play the game to find out?) By the way, you might have noticed that this scene also contained the game's main credits. Unfortunately, they got a bit cut off in the video for reasons of mismatched aspect ratios for the actual video vs. where the credits are on the screen, so I'll give them here for those who are interested: Voices: Linda - Minami Takayama Ken - Kazuki Yao Character Designer: "Cannabis" (Tatsuyuki Tanaka) Music Composer: Ryouko Kihara Producer: Tetsuya Sasaki Game Designer/Director: Shoji Masuda As I mentioned before, Tatsuyuki Tanaka is not only the character designer but was also responsible for the game's overall look and in particular for storyboarding the cutscenes. He also drew a ton of illustrations and concept art. In any case, this finally gets us to the game's title screen and main menu, the second of which is, I have to admit, a bit plain looking.   The options are mostly clear, I guess, except the "Prologue" option let's you see the prologue cutscene again, if you want. The last option which is written in Japanese is kind of a bit important: it's the difficulty selection. In case of this game, the difficulty level controls only one thing: the speed of passage of time. With all that talk of limited time before the planet's destruction, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise, but with this I can indeed confirm, that the passage of time in this game is not in fact plot driven, but that the time passes independently of that, so you better know what you're doing otherwise you might find yourself in trouble! The time-passage mechanic in this game is actually a fair bit more complex than just "the time passes constantly regardless of what you do", but we'll just talk about different parts of it as we encounter it during the game play. But if it's your first time through the game, it's probably a good idea to turn the speed down here a bit. After selecting the difficulty setting to your desire, there is nothing else left, but to choose the "Start" option, so let's do it!  But, oh, if you thought we're done with the preamble, no such luck. As you can see, the game offers three different scenarios that can be played, and you can read their names on the screenshot. Again, this is something I will get a lot more into much later, but for now we'll just pick the first scenario, "MERRY XMAS" and be on our way to finally play the game!  After selecting a scenario, the game gives us a bullet list of winning conditions, which in case of Scenario A are as follows: - Collect no less than 30 animal species (one male and one female each so a total of 60 animals) - Take off with the ark There are actually a total of 120 species in the game overall, but in order to win this scenario, we only need to collect 30--in fact it isn't even possible to collect all 120 species in this one due to some areas of the overworld being blocked off. The game also reminds us that the difficulty level is set to "2", which is basically "normal". The possible options are from 1 to 4, with 1 being hard and 4 being very easy.  Like any normal JRPG protagonist from 1990s (literally and figuratively!), Ken also starts the game in his mother's house. Although, at least he is already up and in the middle of a breakfast instead of just getting out of bed! So, that's something, I guess. I should also note that although the opening cutscene was set in Spring 1991, by the time the game proper actually starts, it's already Summer, so I guess we lost about three months there already! That's probably not going to be helpful. Anyway...  The lady over by the kitchen counter is Ken's mum by the way. And she's got a few things to say.   He's interrupted by a phone ring.  She finishes the conversation. Well, there's nothing to do at the moment in Ken's house, no hidden items or anything, so we might as well go outside. Oh right, before we go out... let me show you the difference between in-game graphics of PC Engine version vs. PlayStation. Here is the PC Engine screenshot:  ...and here is the exact same screenshot in PlayStation version:  As you can see there's quite a bit of improvement, especially in the detail for the character sprites which are supertiny in the PC Engine version! All right, now let's head out.  Coming out of the house, to the left you can see the swing that Linda was sitting on in the prologue... which actually reminds me. The prologue cutscene actually changed a fair bit compared to the PC Engine version. So purely as a fun comparison, here is also the PCE version of the prologue: So that changed a bit, although I'm not quire sure why. One reason I can think of is that they wanted to reduce the animation budget by shortening it or something. Also it's pretty wild how crudely drawn the PCE version looks, it looks like it was literally animated pixel by pixel by hand on a PC or something like that! Anyway, back to Ken going outside. Like in a typical JRPG, there are a TON of people to talk to everywhere, and honestly, we will, because they do provide a lot of "lore" and background info on the world and everything else around us.  It is possible to actually sit on the swing, but perhaps it would be better to try this again once Linda is with us. We can, however, talk to that guy standing on the lawn on the left!  I guess by "cobra twist", they are referring to the wrestling move. A couple more things here. NPCs and in general characters which are not part of the plot, don't have portraits in this game, so I will simply use the empty portrait to represent them. Also, in general when talking to NPCs, Ken takes on the role of a silent protagonist. Really it's only with plot-relevant people that he will actually have a proper conversation. So, now let's move on and talk to the little girl standing next to the building there, since she has something important for us! It's a bit hard to see, but she has a dog with her, the dog is hiding behind that bush.  This here is a dialogue choice, which you will get sometimes when talking to a person. The option I will select will always be outlined in brackets, like here. It's probably a good idea to say yes here, because if you do, you get yourself a dog, exactly as the girl said (if you say "no", you get nothing)! Why is that important? Well, turns out, dogs can be in your party when you're fighting enemies! And believe me, when Ken is low level like at the beginning of the game, it helps immensely, so it's not a bad idea to get a dog for free! However, we'll talk about it next time when we actually get into some battles, so that this first update is not overwhelmed with info right now. For now, let me just say that the "DOG" building to the left is a shop where we can actually buy even more dogs--up to two can be in active party at one time, but you can keep more in reserve. We'll visit that shop later, but for now we do have quite a few more NPCs to talk to. The Ranger HQ building is to the right of us, so let's slowly make our way there. We are right now not in fact on a timer--although the time passes in this game, it actually doesn't pass at all while you are in a town, so that makes it possible to easily explore and talk to everybody without worrying about the time limit! Nice one, game! Before going into the building, if we go all the way south to the town entrace, there are some rangers blocking us from going out.  It's starting to seem increasingly like we have a "but thou must" kind of situation here! Let's finally go back to the Ranger HQ. One last person to talk to before going in!  Inside it is!  I know there's stuff here and people to talk to, but honestly, we've been prolonging this already too much, so let's head straight to the second floor, up the stairs!  The meeting room is over to the left where a bunch of people are standing, but let's first see what the couple of people here have to say. First, the lady sitting at the desk: ...and then the guy standing by the doorway: Yeah, let's do that. The commander is probably not going to be too happy.   There's a longer cutscene coming, you can select No here to skip it. It doesn't change anything. Let's have a look! And then...  Maybe you're wondering how they can have a button "in front of themselves" when they are standing in an empty room? Well, that's because back in the PC Engine version, they had desks:  Anyway, Ken pushes his button. As I mentioned, this is definitely a "but thou must" situation and you ain't getting out of this room until you say you're ready! After everybody is gone, we can talk to commander (whose name is Ben, by the way) again.  It's true that we do need to go and register at the ark, but we can do that a bit later. For now, let's just make our way out of the HQ. Obviously we have to stop and hear what EVERYONE has to say after Ken's decision! First, the guy at the doorway.  Huh, is he talking about Linda? Was Linda here? I guess we'll see. Let's talk to the desk lady again: Before we go down, there's just one other thing...  ...over here in the corner, there is some kind of a picture on the wall. Let's have a look.  For reasons that I can't explain, there is a pin-up calendar with a picture of Linda in this room. To be honest, I don't really want to think whose room it might be, but in reality, this is just a bit of fan service from the game. The calendar will actually change every year, showing different pictures of female characters from the game wearing a bathing suit (or in one case, not quite wearing one), kind of like how there would often be a beach episode in an anime TV show. Ultimately, it has no influence on anything in the game, so I guess I will just leave it to the thread consensus to decide if we should come here and check it once a year, or just skip it. With that done, let's go back to the stairs and head down.  But, as Ken walks down the stairs... Ah, why is Linda following us with a big stick in her hands? The cutscene will give the answer! By the way, don't worry that we'll be constantly bombarded by cutscenes every few minutes--this is actually the last one for quite a while!  She starts to leave, but then comes back, and... In the PC Engine version, there was actually an insert picture here showing Linda kissing ken as she leaves, like so:  In the PS version, there is only a barely even noticeable animation. So barely noticeable, that I didn't even make a gif of it. Also, yes indeed, I just wanted to point out that Linda's hair used to be red/pink in the PC Engine version, however when the characters were redesigned slightly it was changed to blue/green in the remake. When I post the illustrations/concept art from the game, you will also see that some have one version of the characters and some the other, depending on when they were drawn. Back to our story, the lady in the blue suit who was standing there all this time is actually Linda's mum. Her name is Ann.  And with this Linda finally leaves, and Ann approaches Ken.  I guess she means in particular after we get on the ark, since nobody knows what will happen. After this, she leaves too, leaving Ken(ny) on his own. We do need to go and register at the ark, but before that, let's make a big tour around the town and talk to all NPCs and have a look at all the shops! Sorry, this first update is going to be very talky, but that's just so we can get the plot going without too much delay. Anyway, let's start by looking at that poster behind and to the left of Ken. There is actually no picture for it in the game, you can just read what it says: Let's make the Neo-Kenya Escape Project a success and a source of pride for our Ranger Corps! Then we'll continue by talking to everybody, although some people just tell you about game mechanics, like which button to press for what, so we can safely skip those since I will be explaining those bits as we come across them. That means we can even skip the two rangers in the room there. I do want to talk to this guy who looks like a doctor:  I kind of just wanted to note this for now. What he's saying is that there's (almost) no penalty for dying in a battle in this game! This guy here simply puts you back together and you can continue--you only lose one small thing but it's genuinely not that bad, e.g. you retain all your money and such. So not a huge worry on that front, which is just as well since there are only limited locations where you can actually save your game! And one such place is this person here:  So, there are phones in various locations which you can use to save. In particular there is one at the entrance of every town. The phones also have some other functions, like allowing you to hear your answering service messages and so on, but again, more on that next time. The person on the sofa we can also skip as he just tells us how we learn skills as we level up. I do however want to visit the bank counter there.  We can chat a bit more with the lady at the bank counter. Here we can check out Ken's bank book:  ...which reveals that his full name is Ken Challenger! Nice. We can also checkout his transactions so far:  ...and this confirms that Ken already received his 100G salary for Summer 1991--not bad. We can withdraw that money so we have it with us, but we can also get here a loan. The current limit for a loan is 400G with the repayment term of one year and seasonal interest of 20G. I take the loan out just to have some cash on hand to start with. Since our salary is 100G plus the money we already had on us (another 100G) we should be able to manage to repay that in time. Back outside, there's another ranger standing across from the HQ building...  In the northwest corner of the town is the power station:  Let's check inside!  Technician has some info for us: Interesting, so they are using some electric catfish to provide the electricity for the town! There is another person upstairs in the same building.  Well, that's depressing. Our next stop is the DOG building, which houses the dog shop and the veterinarian.  Here you can buy dogs, and also fix them if they get injured in battle. Since dogs are also animals you can "collect" for the ark, it's possible also to catch a wild dog and bring it here to become your party member. More on that later. For now I will just buy one more dog, so we can have two in our active party, togethe with Ken. This should help us in the early stages.  You can only use a maximum of two katakana letters to name a dog, which is not a lot. Nevertheless, I decide to name the dog "Haru" (=spring) because I somehow managed to forget that it's already Summer in the game! Oh well. The names don't matter anyway, so... let's just move on. Over by the fountain is equipment shop.   Love that knife on the table... Anyway, the ranger has the following to say: Sounds like a good skill to have. I'm sure we can figure it out eventually. Next, the shop owner: Yeah, so instead of, you know, "Mithryl sword" or something, here you have stuff like "squirrel knife", "rabbit hat" and so on, depending on which animal you used to make a particular item. Our next stop is the butcher shop/animal trader, but there is also a person in front of it:  Right, actually nobody really said the name of the town (although the game does give you a location title initially), but now that they have, let's check out its description.  It's true, 100G really is a pittance, when you consider that I had to pay 200G for that one dog I bought earlier! But worry not, this game's economy is definitely broken in the sense that there are items which you can sell for more than the price of the components used to make them, so we'll avail ourselves of that soon enough. I guess when you have a fair number of moving parts, it's hard to ensure that such things are impossible for every case. Inside, the butcher guy:  Uh, ok... sure. To be clear, the difference between this shop is that here you can actually process animals into equipment, while the other one sells you already pre-made equipment. Not sure why they needed to separate that, but ok. On the other side is the animal trader.  Actually, as it turns out, both squirrels and ostriches can be very easily caught just outside this starting town, so there is absolutely no need whatsoever to waste money on buying them right now. Next to the animal trader shop is some ranger housing.  Most people here give you hints about what each controller button does, but there are a couple of rangers worth listening to.   Okay, buddy, calm down, You can stay and get hit by a meteorite, no worries. But there does seem to be some dissent in the ranger orders. We won't dwell on that too long, since it's time to visit that staple of every 1990s JRPG, The Inn! Or, in our case, The Hotel.   There's another person sitting here in the lobby.  Indeed. The change of seasons on the planet does also bring about the change in behaviour of various animals. Something to go into more detail about at a later date, though. Upstairs is a nice lounge/bar. Let's have a chat with the bartender. Well, let's have some cobra milk. It replenishes your HP, although Ken hasn't lost any yet, so... The bartender will offer you to drink again, but a second drink will definitely bring about the "lost" status effect where all your controls are temporarily reversed. Very silly, but maybe not so silly when you're trying to run away from a battle. There's a couple of rangers standing here too, so let's see what they say. The game has a handy-dandy coordinate system which makes it easy to find things! Ken also has a navigation/map device, which I will show you shortly! Over to the left, there is another ranger.  As we'll see next time, wild dogs are no joke, so this is good advice! Also, the older guy: Well, that's all we can do here, let's head out. Outside, as Ken is walking around town, he is suddenly approached by a person dressed in a Santa Claus suit.   No idea what this whole Room 102 business is about, not to mention somebody wearing a Santa suit in the middle of the summer, but I think it's high time to go and get ourselves registered at the ark, don't you? In order to do that, we can just head through that exit which was previously blocked by rangers.  Here is what a typical exit/entrance area for a town looks like. On the left is the phone I mentioned where you can save your game and check your messages, etc. The people here mostly give gameplay tutorial info, so we can skip talking to them. The one thing of note here is "left luggage" service. This allows us to clear out some inventory spaces, and best of all, the items can be retrieved again at any other station in the world!  Exiting Hardia, we can see that the Ark is just outside. Also, human towns appear to be in some kind of enclosures too. Also also, please ignore (for now!) what appears to be some sort of a ruin in the bottom left!  And here we are! If we talk to the ranger standing by the entrance, he has the following to say. Hm, go and see Linda? But we are not level 3 yet? Also, does he mean in Minago or in "Room 102", whatever that may be? Hmm. Well, let's just head in for now.  Inside, there are levitating robots everywhere. Let's try talking to one of them...  I guess we are quoting from the Genesis now? But, it said we should go and register ourselves, so let's do so. It's over in one of the rooms.   Uh, sure, but... does it hurt? I guess, let's do it?   Ok, that went... fine, I guess? We don't actually have anything else to do here for now, since we haven't captured any animals or anything like that. So let's head back out!  As we are walking out, the guy by the door interrupts us. Ostriches and squirrels are definitely nothing to worry about, even at level 1, Ken can handle them just fine! It's like somebody telling you to be afraid of Goblins in a Final Fantasy game! Anyway, there's a little shed there we can go in and talk to a few people.  Well, thanks, that's nice! So we should have a comfortable journey. Talking to the other guy: Well, that's good to know, and it's also the second part of the explanation about what happens when you die in a battle. So you basically lose one of each captured animal and are simply revived and can continue. This can be a problem if it's some kind of a rare animal, but generally it's pretty lenient. The only way to get a game over in this game is to let the time run out. About TransCargo, it is essentially this game's answer to the question "how can the party carry all those items with them". Essentialy, TransCargo backpack is able to decompose and resythesise the matter, so a lot more ends up fitting in a small backpack than you would expect! Clever! Note how there's also a phone here too, and like all phones it can be used to save the game. So it's not really that bad but you DO have to go inside to save, no saving on the overworld directly. Going outside, there's just one more person to talk to...  I'm sure this is totally unimportant.  That monolith is also still here in case you want to read "the message from god" again. But I think we should just go and try to pay a visit to Linda in Minago--everybody seems to want us to do so. I know we aren't yet level 3, but maybe she'll want to talk to us this time? We won't know unless we try. Although there's still that "Room 102" thing which I'm not sure about. Let's head back out to the overworld.  When on the overworld, Ken can use his navigation computer to orient himself:  Our curent location is the big square on the left (O-14) and we need to head to Minago eastwards across the river at Q-14 (currently being pointed at by the black line). That's actually even closer than it looks here, so let's get to it!  We're already at the river, and you can see Minago peeking there from the right. Incidentally Ken is able to walk over rivers and other shallow water, but his walking speed is reduced.  There we go, Minago!  "Minagoroshi" means "annihilation" in Japanese. Upon going inside, it has a similar entrance area.  These people actually have a couple of more interesting things to say. First the person standing: Hmm, I see. That maybe explains a bit the Santa guy, but I'm not convinced. We'll have to see. Well, let's talk to the person on the sofa. Interesting, but nothing we can do with this information for now. But we can read that announcement on the wall, next to the telephone. NK EXTRA NEWS BULLETIN Satellite crash in the southern area Due to the radioactive contamination, the entire southern area has been declared a special danger zone and is off limits to all visitors. There has been only one confirmed survivor, but for the rest of the inhabitants, there is no hope. Basically the southern part of the overworld is blocked off and we can't go there. Ok, now let's head into town.  They have a nice cemetery here. Let's first talk to the old guy. ...and then the woman. A few steps north is the said church and also another person who we can talk to.  As we were told, Linda's house is to the left of the church.  So let's go inside...  Linda's room is on the second floor...  Ah, here we are. Let's see.    Clearly we'll have no luck here until we're actually level 3. Well, let's finish here for today, and then next time we'll try and capture some animals, in hopes of raising our level to at least 3. Maybe then Linda will stop hitting us every time we meet. By the way, this last bit at Linda's house is totally optional, you can just go out and start gaining levels etc. without ever seeing this scene! I'll try to include as many such little bits as possible. So I know this was a bit long, but I just wanted to get the story going--as you can see, there is a TON of background information on this world which needs to be conveyed somehow! From now on it shouldn't be so much of an information overload constantly though, although there will never stop there being a ton of NPCs around to talk with. I kind of don't really want to skip too much here as it really helps with the world building (which is pretty awesome in this game!), but let's see how it goes. In the meantime stay tuned for some additional content!  So that the actual update doesn't get too overwhelmed with information, here I will post some additional background info about subjects that come up during the gameplay. This game really goes the extra mile and then some when the world building is concerned! NEO-KENYA The Federation outpost planet no. 643 is the most popular tourist destination as of AMD 1991. It has abundance of nature and is home to all kinds of animals. The planet has many features that don't make sense compared to other planets and often confuse visitors. Walking around here without basic knowledge of how to deal with the animals you encounter can be quite dangerous. BEASTIANS The indigenous people of Neo-Kenya are known as Beastians. They had only a very primitive civilisation when the Federation team discovered them, but traces of artificial genetic tampering were also found. How they arrived on Neo-Kenya is still a mystery. The Beastians have their own beliefs and have a basic philosophy of worshipping animals as their ancestors. There has already been an amount of miscegenation with the Federation settlers. FEDERATION NATURE CONSERVATION POLICY The Federation has an unusually strong policy of nature conservation. The fact that all the towns are enclosed in domes is a sign of this policy, and since there are no roads between the towns, the only means of communication is the bird line on the huge island of Pterano. In order to maintain the ecosystem, only licensed hunters are allowed to hunt animals. However, the carrying of firearms is forbidden. THE RANGER CORPS It is a public institution originally established on Neo-Kenya, and it has both police and rescue functions. Currently, they have a strong role as a participant in the Neo Kenya Escape Project. The purpose at the time of the establishment was to protect wild animals from poachers and conversely to protect civilians from animals, but the current situation is that there are few members because the salary is small compared to the difficulty of the work. It also seems that some of them abuse their privileges to excavate ruins and obtain huge fortunes.  As mentioned, I will usually try to post a couple of illustrations by Tatsuyuki Tanaka, normally something which is relevant to the current update, but if not then just whatever looks interesting. So here are a few for today, hope you enjoy them! "It's a promise!" "Looking for the ark crew" ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Sep 5, 2021 22:24
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Hirayuki posted:This is fascinating! I've never heard of this game, and I'm hooked. (And speaking as a professional J-E translator, you're doing a great job.)  Kaboom Dragoon posted:Oh hells yes! I've been fascinated by this game ever since I saw a compilation of some of the cutscenes in the game (probably most people's first exposure to the game, and I bet you know exactly the one I mean). From what little I know of it, this game is gonna loving go places. Polsy posted:The thread title entry box for regular users is pretty restrictive but I don't think there's any technical restriction on the title itself, a mod could probably edit it in if desired. 
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Sep 6, 2021 21:31
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Randalor posted:Wait, do her "tests" actually deal damage, and if so, can she actually kill Ken with them? Luckily, Ken doesn't actually take any damage during those scenes!
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Sep 8, 2021 05:13
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differentiating posted:Excited to get in on the ground floor of another ivantod lp! Agreed with everyone else that the premise is already super interesting. No, he's saying that the retirement money "is bad". I just made a ridiculous typo there that I somehow didn't notice. Sorry about that, it's fixed now! I guess the end result is still that it doesn't make sense to retire because of that.
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Sep 8, 2021 05:35
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 Last time, we covered the initial story of the planed Neo-Kenya where our adventure is set and met our main characters, Ken and his girlfriend Linda. It, however, became quickly obvious that she is not going to want to talk to Ken until he reaches level 3, but he's currently only level 1. Well, since we do have animals to gather for the ark (and potentially our own purposes), then I suppose, let's get out into the world and try to find some. This should allow us to reach level 3, and then hopefully we can finally have an actual conversation with Linda. Back to the overworld it is!  Here is Ken, just after leaving Minago at Q-14, after his unsuccesful attempt to talk to Linda. (By the way, that overworld theme above is pretty awesome so definitely give it a listen!) As far as animal gathering is concerned...  ...here in the general area of the ark, we can already see some pigs. As mentioned, there are no random battles in this game, all "enemies" are visible on the overworld like this, so you know what you're getting into (sort of). Pigs are pretty harmless, so let's approach. Incidentally, approaching an animal from the back does give you the preemtive strike!   So, how does this work? The battles are mostly presented in a Dragon Quest-like style. On top you can see the enemies and their HP, in the middle is your party, and at the bottom all the actions/results are displayed as plain text. It's also where the menu appears for our party members to choose their action. Our party can consist of up to two humans plus up to two dogs. One of the humans will always be Ken, but for now we have there one empty spot next to him. The other two spots are reserved for dogs (if you put them in your party). Here like this at the beginning it's useful to have both dogs present as both of those we have already start at level 5 and are therefore stronger and sturdier than Ken and will help out if we are fighting a lot of enemies. Speaking of which, I'm sure you've noticed the cross in the bottom right corner. This shows you the battlefield configuration. Our party's position is in the middle and the enemies can be on any (or all) of the four sides. In this example, there are 3 enemies in front, and 2 to the right (it might be a bit hard to see). So in addition to standard functions, you can also change the direction you face during the battle, to attack a particular enemy. This arrangement is one slight difference from a typical JRPG of this period. There is one other quirk here, which I will cover shortly. In any case, the disadvantage of dogs is that... you cannot control them--they will act on their own in the battle. It's not a huge problem, but something to be aware of. For our situation, since dogs are higher level than Ken, they will generally act first.  Eventually, Ken will get his chance to choose from a menu, as you can see above. The game helpfully displays you also his stats, so here we can see that there are actually only three different kinds of stats! From left to right, they are: attack power (100), defense (91) and speed (76). So you won't have to worry about a complicated mess of numbers like in some other games. The options available in the menu are: +--------+-------------+ | Attack | Transform | | Item | Spec. skill | | Defend | Escape | +--------+-------------+ All of these options are pretty standard, except probably "Transform". We'll talk about it more another time, but for now I can mention that it allows you to temporarily transform into a "beast" and be able to use more powerful abilities to fight enemies. The drawback is, of course, that these abilities consume BP (Beast Points) to use. But Ken has currently 0 BP, so this is a no go for us at the moment. And so are the skills, since he has none of those yet either.  Anyway, Ken attacks, and deals 54 damage to the female Pig B. Pigs are pretty basic enemies (the most basic there is in this game), so this battle goes smoothly and we end up with the following transferred to our TransCargo backpack: Pig♀ 3 Pig♂ 1 So, this doesn't quite fit the number of enemies that were on the field, what gives? Ah, well, here is the tricky part. The goal is not to kill the animals! Therefore you must ensure that you don't deal too much damage--i.e. you must not "overkill" them! If you deal too much damage/overkill them, then the animal is considered not usable, and is lost. This also means that you mostly have to be careful in which order you fight different species, because e.g. leaving these pigs until you are much higher level would make it more difficult to capture. But, luckily, they're just around the opening area so we can deal with them right now! No money is received from battles (for that you will have to rely on your salary and whatever you can sell/trade), but Ken does get a fair chunk of experience (and so do the dogs--they also level up as the gain experience!). Here is a small info card with some basic detail about the pigs... ...but in the meantime I will go and capture a few more. For the ark we only need one of each gender, so the rest is up to us what we do with them. After the second battle with the pigs, Ken gets enough experience to become level 2! The next animal on our list for today are squirrels!  There are some here nearby, but they are a bit annoying as they will try to run away from you, so you might have to chase them for a bit. But, eventually:  There is again nothing to even remotely to worry about here, they are just as easy as pigs. The only annoying ability they have is that they can change position on the battlefield, but considering that the battle system is strictly turn based with no real time elements, it's not a big deal. However, again I want to draw your attention to the cross in the right corner which, as I've mentioned, shows the configuration of the battlefield. Now we can see that it also shows the terrain configuration! This is important for one simple reason, each animal (including humans) has a favourable terrain type, which is usually its natural habitat. This means that if you manage to fight it on a terrain that is disadvantageous to it, it will be weaker and not be able to deal as much damage. In case of squirrels, their natural habitat is, as you can imagine, forest, therefore here they have their full abilities. Which is still not much, so you don't need to worry about this when squirrels are concerned. But this can be really imporant if you manage to get an aquatic animal near the coast and fight it like that. It does also apply to our party, e.g. if we end up fighting in water, our abilities may be slightly decreased because of that. Anyway, fighting a few more squirrels finally gets Ken to level 3! In theory, we could go and see how Linda is doing now, but... since we're already here, let's just capture a few more species! Next on our list is... ostrich! Here are some:  So, let's get into battle!   Again, nothing of particular note happens here, so we end up with a few of them in our backpack. I will mention though, that some of these abilities Ken and/or Linda will certainly be able to learn later on! Soon, as Ken is walking...  ...he receives a notification that there is a message waiting for him at the phone answering service! Hm. Wonder what that could be about? Well, since we do have to find a phone anyway to listen to our message, let's then first stop at the ark and hand in these animals we've captured!  This time, we'll go through this door here...  ...which leads to...  ...the chamber where we can register our animals. If we walk all the way to the front...  ...here is a device which allows us to do it. We get a screen like this:  ...which shows us all animals we currently have in our TransCargo. There are a few of both male and female pigs, squirrels and ostriches. To repeat, only one of each needs to go into the ark, the rest are left to us to sell or use in any way we need.  Every time we hand in a male animal, Ken gets a small increase in all his stats (HP, BP, attack power, defense, speed). Here you can see +1 in each of those. When we hand in a female animal, it's Linda who gets the stat bonuses (even when she's not in our party, like now). In some cases you might also get an ability from the animal you handed in, but that will come later. After handing all 6 animals in, you can check them out sitting in their pods in the ark:  From left to right: pig, ostrich, squirrel. I'm not generally going to bother showing this screen since the animals look exactly the same as on the battle screen, so there's not really any point.  If you talk to this robot here, then he will show you how many animals/species you've captured and how many are still remaining to capture in this scenario. Here you can see that the total we need is, as we already know, 30 species/60 animals, out of which we already have 3 species (and 6 animals in total). The maximum in the game is 120/240, but that's not even theoretically possible in this scenario, so we don't need to worry about that. The other robots standing around here will explain you about the stat gains and abilities you may get upon registering an animal, so we can skip them and go see about that message now!  For this, we can use any of the phones found in all towns. Here, Ken is using the one in the Hardia entrance, but actually you might remember that there was also one in that little shack by the ark, so we could have used that one too. In any case, it turns out that the message is from Ben, the Ranger commander. Uh, so has something happened to Linda? I mean, he kind of missed to say the most important part there... You know what, let's just go quickly and check in with Ken's mom, she might tell us something more?   Uh, sure. But at least that explains the message--it seems that Linda has somehow lost her memory? But how? Well, we'll head over to Hospico soon enough, but for now let's head out and do a little bit more hunting. So, anyway, back outside...  ...if we head out a bit north of the ark...  ...there is a bunch of weird shaped peninsulas or whatever they are. Here we can usually find...  ...some rats for us to collect! In any case, this goes pretty easily and we end up with a few of them in our backpack! Rats are a bit annoying on the map because (a) they will keep trying to run away from you when on land, and (b) their tiny sprite looks a bit similar to a squirrel (which are much more plentiful around the area). I will go ahead and try to catch some more rats. I should mention that level and HP are just approximate/average and it can vary a bit between encounters. Also, some abilities are only used by higher level versions. Apologies if sometimes the ability descriptions are not detailed enough, that just means I wasn't able to find the information! By the way, when walking around this area...  ...try to be careful not to run into a pack of wild dogs! If they see you, they will chase you around the map and you will probably have to use the sprint function to escape. The only problem... in this game, sprinting costs HP! It's not actually so bad because the main character's default moving speed is already pretty fast so this only really needs to be used to escape from an unwanted encounter with a stronger enemy.  You, know, something like this. The dogs are indeed a bit too strong for us right now, so we'll try to avoid them!  This is the last species we're looking for, for today: the dragonfly! They can also be a little harder to find and take a bit of walking around to get them to spawn.  Here we go! Here you can already see a bit of an issue. They are relatively rare in the Summer, but it's still better to catch them now while Ken is at a very low level! Also, even though they're weak, you should be a bit careful of their fire attacks, especially since they also have the ability to reduce your fire defense! So that's about it for hunting for this time, but I just wanted to show you something. The animal designs in the original PC Engine version are sometimes slightly different. For example, here is what the pigs used to look like:  So that looks pretty different (and cool)! But on the other hand, rats seem to have stayed mostly the same between platforms (well apart from the fact that PCE doesn't support as many colours on the screen as PS1 does!):  Ok, now we can head to Hospico. It's located a bit further to the east from the ark...  ...but there's this mountain range in the way!  Luckily, there are tunnels which go under the mountains, and here you can see the entrance to one of these.  They literally go under a mountain, and allow you to quickly cross to the other side!  Here we are, on the other side! Now a just a little little further to the east...  ...and, here is Hospico at coordinates V-13!  Let's head inside!  The entrance hallway is pretty much the same as always...  Passing through, we get to the reception building.  Inside, we can talk to this friendly nurse at the reception desk. Oh, we learn Linda's full name! Also, neonatal unit? I guess when so many of your patients are pregnant women... Well, if we head straight through that doorway on the north...  ...we go through a courtyard, giving a nice view to the actual hospital building. This place does have many of the normal town facilities and services. For example, right inside the hospital building is a pharmacy:  I haven't talked about it yet, but if you process the caught animals into meat, eating that meat could give you various positive or negative effects. This shop, however, mostly sells recovery potions, this time in the form of medical capsules:  Like for example the capsules which recover around 50 or 100 HP, or even stuff which cures status effects like an antidote capsule or a neutralising spray. The pharmacists has a bit more to say... These are indeed some slightly higher level enemies in the game! Well, we're here to see Linda, so we'll just head up those stairs right behind Ken, to the second floor. We might as well ask for directions at the nurses' station!   Heading down the hallway, past the newborns, there is a ranger here we can talk to: Hold up! The entire population of Minago disappeared and only Linda was left, but without her memory? And commander never thought to mention any of this in his phone message? Really? We can also talk to the doctor-looking fellow standing at the door there! Sounds like a plan. Let's talk to Linda and see what she has to say.  (Ken fills Linda in about their shared past starting from the time they were children.)  Even if it makes no difference in the game, no need to be a jerk, right? Anyway, that's all we can talk to Linda about for now, so let's go back and talk again to the hospital director outside. So this is a little bit of a hint. The crabs are level 7, so basically we can go on with our other tasks and should expect to hear from him around the time we're level 7, in order to then proceed with obtaining the memory loss treatment for Linda. Since the gameplay is kind of bounded by actual time passage of 8 years, but the game also has a proper plot, then it kind of "gates" your plot progression in this manner so that you also have time to do animal collection and other stuff in between the "plot moments". Anyway, since we're done with this, why not check out the room for the newborns, too?  Cute, but let's talk to the nurse for a second.  You have a dialogue portrait! Why do you have a portrait? I guess we'll find out? Maybe? Interesting. Well, since we're done with our main task, visiting Linda, let's take this opportunity to do our usual tour of the town and see what people have to say about stuff! If we walk over to the nurses on the other side of the floor...  Ah, yeah we read about the satellite crash on that news bulletin! The other nurse, over by the stairs... Well, that doesn't sound too good! Hopefully she recovers soon. If we go up the stairs, there is an entrance to the roof and also a person standing there:   That sounds interesting. Perhaps at some point we should try to find out more about this. Anyway, there's nothing else here, so if we go back down and then again down to the ground floor, there's more people we can talk to...  ...like this pregnant lady here!  Over here in the corner, is the staircase leading to the basement, so let's check it out.  Well, that definitely looks like a morgue, complete with a corpse. Uh, well, let's talk to the guy here. Uh, moving swiftly onwards, or rather leftwards to that room next to the morgue!  Well, turns out, despite being somewhat unconventional in many of its mechanics, still this game does have plain old treasure chests, and in fact there are two of them right here!  The one on the left has a "Recovery Tablet 100", and the one on the right "Antidote Capsule", both of which you could also buy at the pharmacy earlier. But it's nice to get some for free! If we exit the basement, and go all the way around to the other side of the ground floor...  ...we find another one of those power stations. So, this is just another of the last few bits of tutorial! But I kept it because it's phrased in a funny way. If we go through that door...  ...we pass another of those electric catfish pens, confirming that this was indeed the power station for this town!   And I guess this is that building where the Mayor is kept? Let's find out! Let's go back around...  Oh, cool, a place for dogs to exercise! Anyway, on the other side are some nice houses.  Let's go in!  Oh, I guess those are the "scientists' labs", mentioned in the town description. Let's see... So I guess he also got killed by the fallout from the fallen satellite?  There's another pregnant woman standing in front of the next house down... Cheery. Going into the house, it's another lab.  What's with the Christmas tree over on the left? Isn't it Summer? And what kind of experiments are even being done here? It looks a bit weird... We've learned about quite a number of new places today... we'll should probably go and pay them a visit at some point!  And the third and final house... I guess another lab? What. Well, there is actually a person to talk to here.  Speaking of flowers...  ...as long as it's weather, right? Yeah. You can talk to the blue flower. All right, let's leave... but as we try, we get stopped. Yes, indeed, you really get all those choices on the screen:  Check out that box on top with all the fruit names to choose from! Anyway, Ken chooses "apple". If you do choose the banana, then she's happy with you! Anyway, let's try to leave... again. She kisses him anyway. Ok, we need to get out of here.  There's another pregnant lady sitting here on the bench by the fountain... That's not bad... I guess? With this, we've kid of made a loop of the whole hospital complex, so let's go back inside as there are a few more people to talk to.   Like these people here in the waiting area. First the one on the left... And the other person.  There's also this person here. Not sure why this office also has a whole bedroom included? We kind of already found him, but thanks for the info anyway! As mentioned, the hospital does also contain some other facilities normally found in towns.  Like the bank! Possibly, I should mention at this point that collecting all the animals is not simply a matter of going around the world to the places where they appear on the overworld. You can do that for quite a few of them, but the rest require other, more or less complicated methods in order to obtain. We'll obviously have a chance to see that over the course of the game. But we have still another place name to add to our list of places to visit.  As we did before, we can check again Ken's bank book, which shows the total currently at zero, after our withdrawal last time. Well, it makes sense, it's still Summer so our next salary hasn't been paid yet, since in this world they are paid quarterly.  Next to the bank is this gentleman here...  We can also stop by the butcher shop, as usual. We don't have anything to do here, but a bit of chat is always nice. Nice hint. If we process an animal into meat, we can only carry that meat with us for a limited time, typically one season, otherwise it will go bad, so we should use it one way or another before that time! This also applies to other kinds of organic matter we can have in our possession.  Here is our old friend, the animal trader! Hm, well, I guess we can think about that if and when we even have any "protected" animals in our backpack. I take the opportunity to sell some of our extra pigs, squirrels and ostriches for a bit of extra cash, although despite what he says, his prices really really aren't good at all. After this, we can go to his neighbour, the equipment shop.  Well that makes sense, the clothes and equipment will take on the properties of the animal it was made from. We can do a bit of shopping here also.  We'll get a "Rabbit Knife" for Ken, which gives +24 to his attack power. We're a bit short on money, so that's what we can afford for now.  I remember to also equip it, which raises Ken's attack from 107 to 131 as you can see there on the top right. Neat. Ken's previous weapon, in case you're interested, was "Squirrel Needle", and his clothes are also all "Squirrel" level (waistcoat, goggles and slippers). The smaller numbers you can see there on the right (2, 4) are various resistances to things like physical attack, fire, electricity etc, which are the effects of some animal attacks. By the way, if we check quickly the party menu screen:  The right side is empty of course because we don't have a second person, but for Ken we can see that even our three stats the game is assigning a "level" based on different animals, so our attack and defense are "mole-level" while our speed is "squirrel-level". This game does have a bunch of such whimsical touches, I like it a lot. For one last thing for today, let's head back outside...  There we find the typical dog shop/veterinarian combo, with a nurse standing outside. North of this building is actualy that dog pen we saw earlier.  We can also go inside, although mostly here we get some gameplay hints about managing the dogs in your party etc., so we can skip those.  Although, we can talk to this person for a bit. Ok, that's funny. But for real, we do need to be careful with our dogs since we don't really have control over them in battle.  In any case, that's all we wanted to do here for now, so we'll head back out. Next time, we'll do some more hunting and then we'll see what else is around! There certainly seems to be a lot going on in this world! And we have learned already of a fair few places that are potentially interesting, however, we might find something on our own too! THE ECOSYSTEM OF NEO-KENYA There are a number of strange features to be found in the animals of Neo-Kenya. Sometimes they seem to have the characteristics of an animal that should have evolved in a completely different environment on another planet. There are also obvious sings of genetic tampering, such as the presence of extra organs from another species, and sometimes also various biological defects, such as explosions caused by chemical reactions of unknown substances in the body. It is therefore necessary to be careful of things like sudden fire and ice attacks from animals. For today, first we have some storyboards used for the cutscenes we saw last time: It seems that part which is in the middle column didn't actually end up filmed. And, to conclude, here is a silly one from the PC Engine era, with the slightly different look for the characters: Please don't ask me to explain it! ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2021 22:04
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Night10194 posted:This seems very, very odd. Fantastic Foreskin posted:Those're some wicked monster designs. Booky posted:also its kinda funny that running costs HP in this... gives me lunar dragon song vibes In any case, running consuming HP isn't such a problem as Ken already moves on the overworld at decent speed, so sprinting is really only needed when you actually really want to run away from something. So it kind of makes sense how they did it.
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Sep 19, 2021 20:41
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Randalor posted:I'm assuming that it's a different storyline for each scenario, and not just different amounts of animals/time limits in place? Because I really hope Linda doesn't lose her memory each time.
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Sep 21, 2021 15:52
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 Welcome back to Linda³! Last time we made some effort to get up to level 3, but then it turned out that there was a strange incident in Minago which made everyone there disappear! The only survivor is, apparently, Linda, who was taken to the "medical town" Hospico, but she seems to have lost her memories, and therefore doesn't even know who Ken is! However, Ken was informed that there is a possibility to cure Linda's amnesia, however it will take some time to arrange, and so Ken was told to continue the task of animal gathering for now. Also, Ken had a chat with a talking flower! In this episode, Ken will be, among other things, heading to the North Pole!  Last time, when we left him, Ken was standing here in the entrance/exit area of Hospico. We really should go and collect a few more species, but there is something else we could check out first, and it also might yield quite a good reward if we're lucky!  So if we head slightly northeast from Hospico...  ...passing by some animal species which don't look like anything we've met so far...  ...we reach a place called Paraside, which we've heard about last time a bit.  Well, seems like an inviting place, but nevertheless, let's head inside!  Rusty metal shacks and stuff... yes that pretty much seems to be what it was described to us as. Let's talk to the person here! Luckily, this is not what we are here for today! So, we'll just head around the corner.  This is the place we're looking for!  The shack houses what I like to call the "animal dismantler". It's basically a guy who will turn some of your caught animals into random items. Well, the items are random out of a set of a few that a particular animal can yield. And even better, his services cost nothing! You just lose the animal you had in exchange for an item (or sometimes just nothing). This guy is also one easy way to earn basically infinite money right here at this spot where we are in the game! But more on that in just a minute, let's first talk to him. Yes, let's. In particular I want to see what we get from male and female rats. First, let's start with a male rat I have from last time.  Here, I have highlighted the male rats and we can see that I have 3 of them. The fact that they are highlighed in yellow colour means that I haven't handed them in at the ark yet (that would be indicated by white). That means I can "spend" a maximum of 2 here, as I have to keep one for the ark, as always. So let's "dismantle" a male rat finally: More on what this item is at a later date. Let's do one more male rat: Well, this is definitely a good outcome. Golden nugget is one of those typical items that you can just sell for money! This one brings us a whole 6400 G! So we'll be making use of that soonish! It will also allow us to already repay our loan. Anyway, I also have 3 female rats, so we can try to "dismantle" 2 of them and see what we get. The first one: Ugh. Ok, the second one: Another decent outcome, actually. Swallow cutter is another weapon we can equip, and it's in fact very slightly better than the one I bought last time:  It brings Ken's attack from 131 to 134. Not really much, but why not, right? Also, swallow cutter is the key to infinite money at this particular point in the game. You can head over to animal dealer and buy rats for however much money you have (they only cost 20 G apiece). Then you bring them here and hope to get as many swallow cutters as you can (of course it's random, but you'll get a few probably). Then you go to the equipment shop and sell the cutters for around 1400 G each! And voilà--as much money as you want, until you get bored of repeating the process. I should note that this is only really possible to do in the early game, since the animals that the dealer sells change to higher level ones as Ken's own level increases, but it's there at least if you need help to get started. For now, we have our golden nugget which we can sell, so we'll just be on our way.  Exiting back to the overworld, we find that it's still actually Summer. I mention this for two reasons. One reason is, if this is your first playthrough and you spend time wandering around the overworld, looking for different animals, here is typically where you might be caught with the season change. It seems that one season on normal difficulty (2) lasts around 15 minutes, but as mentioned, time stops in towns and during battle. The other thing which is interesting to note is that the season change timer is only checked on "screen change". This means, as long as you wander around the overworld, the game just scrolls around the map without an entirely new screen loading, and so the season change will not happen. It will only be actually checked when you enter/exit from a town or a tunnel or something like that. Therefore as long as we stay on the overworld, it will remain Summer and we can spend as much time as we like. Once we enter a town or cause a screen load in some other way, we can probably expect it to become Autumn soon. Anyway, there is one other piece of the puzzle regarding time passage which I haven't covered, and that is what happens with the time when you're in a dungeon. But, we'll talk about that when we actually are in one--as mentioned, only some of the species can be found like this on the overworld, but many can't and for those we need to dig deeper so to speak. But for now, we can still catch a few new species around the East area!  This flying thing we just saw on our way to Paraside, so let's see what it is!  Oh, it's just a bunch of rabbits! Of course! They honestly don't have any exciting abilities so not too much to say here. I should however mention, that the nubers for level and HP that you can see on these info cards are just "average" and both level and HP can vary somewhat, both up and down. But you're not going to suddenly find a level 20 rabbit or anything like that. Incidentally, rabbit is one of the species whose design has changed drastically in the remake. Here is what they used to look like in the PC Engine version originally:  I'm not really sure which version I prefer, they both are interesting in different ways. Anyway, let's move on to our next species. For the record, Ken starts this update as level 4. Also, for now, I'm not going into a lot of detail because I'm still using just the simple attack with Ken. Once things start getting more complex in battles, I'll be sure to show that off. As usual, I will catch typically a few more of each species as I wander around. But soon enough, we run into something else new:   You can kind of already tell on the overworld, but yeah, it's a buch of crabs! Also, nothing much to fear here either. The "lost" status effect just inverts your controls for a little while, but has no other detrimental effects. Luckily, also we're not fighting them on their native terrain (water) so that makes things easier here! Here is number three on our shopping list today:   Some proper Neo-Kenyan moles! Again a pretty simple enemy, so we can quickly move on to the next.  To find our next species, we'll have to step into the water.  It's a group of stonefish! Unlike the stonefish we know in our world, these don't seem to be actually venomous. But they can definitely hit a bit hard so you may want to be careful with them anyway! As you can see, they are bit higher level than Ken is right now! It is manageable, however (but I did have to reload the save state because they nearly murdered me once!). The final species on today's list is also around this area:   This time, it's a pair of monkeys. They are less dangerous, although will chase you on the overworld, so if you're not ready... I hope you have some HP to use for sprinting to run away! In any case, I fight a few more animals on the overworld in order to reach level 7, as we were instructed to do by the hospital director. And just as all that is going on, Ken again gets a notification that there is a phone message waiting for him. So with that in mind, let's head back to the ark to first hand in our backpack content, and then we'll see about the message.  Since we're on the east side of East area, in order to reach the ark (and Hardia), we'll use again that tunnel which we previously used to reach Hospico.  As we exit on the west side, the game helpfully informs us that it's now Autumn 1991 and we only have 7 years and 3 seasons left to finish the task. It also mentions that we still have 27 species to collect, but of course that doesn't include ones in our backpack which we are about to hand in.  Not a fan of this weather, it's a bit too rainy for me. As a matter of fact, as if it doesn't have enough unusual mechanics already, this game has changing/random weather too! So this rain is kind of coincidental, it's entirely possible for it to also be dry in Autumn, or even snowy in the more northerly parts. To help you out, one of the functions that you can invoke on the telephones is to check the satellite weather forecast for a particular area! This of course also has to do with which animals may or may not be out and about in which weather and so on. Anyway, heading into the ark...  We have quite a bunch of species to hand in (all which are written in yellow): crab, rabbit, rat, dragonfly, monkey, mole and stonefish (this includes the ones from last time which I didn't hand in). This results in the usual stat increases, but also this time in some new abilities for our characters! Linda gets a start on her "crab" abilities with Armored skin and then also gains Escape Jump, while Ken gets Desperate attack from a rat and also Fire attack from a dragonfly. We'll try this out soon, especially now when Ken actually finally has some BP to use on this stuff.  Finally, the helpful robot here informs us that we have successfully collected 10 species so far out of 30 we need, so I guess you can say that we're a third of the way done, except that doesn't take into account that it's not always going to be this simple! Anyway, while we're here, we can go and visit Ben, the ranger commander, to see what he thinks about the whole Linda situation. He's over here at his desk:  Ok, now back to the entrace to finally listen to our message!  The message is from Dr. Chen, the hospital director over in Hospico: All right, well, let's do that! We really do need to sort out Linda's memory loss if we can. We'll go through the tunnel back to Hospico and then, in front of Linda's room:  He means Ken's newly gained fame as the second crew member of the ark. Well, that sounds awesome, but could it really be this easy? Somehow I'm not sure. Either way, we have no option but to head over to Eterna. Although before we head over there, there is something I forgot to do last time, which is to visit the hotel:  It's just up here, not really even marked properly!  Honestly, it's worth visiting places if for no other reason then because of funny lines like this. After this, I visit the animal trader and sell all my extra animals for a bit of money which we will need shortly, and then let's check out our navigation device to figure out where we need to even go.  So here's where we are right now, at the eastern side of East area, in Hospico (pointed at by the black line).  And here is where Eterna is (the line is pointing at it), at the far north of the North area (which we haven't even visited yet). It seems like quite a trek, and that's not even taking into account that Eterna is also behind a big mountain range and what appears to be a very large lake too. So... what to do? Well, we can take the public transport to get there. It will cost us some money, but at least we don't have to walk, right? Because, of course this game has also a fast travel system, and it's even available from the very beginning of the game! Therefore, let's go and sort out our tickets!  You might have noticed in every entrance/exit area these stairs in the corner, that we havent used so far. Well, now we'll finally go up to the second floor.  There we find the local service counter of the planet-wide Bird Line. Basically a form of public transport on this planet, but also our means of fast travel. So let's talk to them. That's pretty funny, but let's see about those tickets...  There are various destinations listed here along with the prices. The prices in the left hand column are for direct flights, whereas the ones on the right are for a flight with changeover(s). Changeovers are just a minor inconvenience, so there's no reason not to save money here. The flight to Eterna with changeovers costs 410 G (highlighted on the screen), which is not exactly cheap. Oh, if only there was a way to not have to pay for the flights... ah, well, there probably isn't. The service agent gives us some last information: Let's see...  Whoa. Actually that's pretty cool! Some time later, we arrive at Ozport  At every changeover point, you can have a chat with the people at the service desk! Ah, yes, another game mechanic -- drop off and pick up anywhere on the overworld! We don't need it for now, though. Let's continue our trip.  Our last changeover point is Battle Park. There we go--I was wondering about this on the map of North area, but now she's explained it. Along with the weather situation, which I already mentioned. All right, let's hop on one more time and finally head to Eterna.  And here we are!  Before heading in, a quick chat with the Bird Line person: Well good to know I guess! I'll try to remember it when we are looking for weasels. Ok, enough of that, let's put on our Christmas cheer and head into town!  Man, it's full of Santas and Christmas trees! What is even going on here? Let's head over to the inn and see what's up.  Talking to the Santa: And the girl:  There's another person upstairs:  On the other side of the path is another house, somehow also an inn.  Wow. Apart from some weird Christmas obsession, there seems to be also a massive personality cult going on here! Upstairs:  And the other person...  There are also two Santas hanging around here, so let's talk to them too, as usual. And the other one:  But... all houses seem to be inns, even this one here right next to you? Kind of a touristy place? Let's go inside.  I guess we could also stay over in this one, Ken does need to have his HP replenished after all that hunting and leveling up. This is a real inn with HP replenish and everything, but you can pay whatever amount you choose! Let's pay a few G so that Ken can rest. And well, might as well show an update where Ken is currently stat-wise:  He is level 7 and his strength is crab-level (148), his defence is rabbit-level (112) and his speed is squid-level (122). Oh well, I'm sure we'll improve soon. Before we leave this house, let's check upstairs.  Interesting. I'm sure we'll be checking out Lina Valley at some point, so we'll see what that's all about.  The house on the other side is somehow not an inn!  Instead, it houses the animal trader and the butcher for some reason! Talking to the animal trader, we get some good advice: And the butcher... Checking out his inventory...  ...he does indeed sell a pork sausage for 2G, in addition to dolphin roast for a whole 32G. Well, you know what, let's try the sausage. I buy a sausage and eat it. * Ken ate a pork sausage * * Ken's HP is fully recovered. Also, it tasted like rusted metal. * So HP recovery is kind of a default result for eating meat. But depending on the kind of a meat, there could be other, good or bad. Also this game sometimes gives really funny messages! There is also a girl upstairs in this house:  I don't know where to even start with this one, so I guess I won't!  Over here there's three more Santas, so let's finish our tour before going in the big mansion (which actually you can't see because it's a bit further down the path). The second one: Yeah, I see what you mean. Ok, the last one: Oh, so that's what they mean by refugees! Well it makes sense, I guess. You in fact can actually donate money in game, if you want. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually do anything (except taking your money!). Ok, it's time to go in the mansion!   Here there is a Santa who seems to be like a... receptionist? I don't know. Luckily we can go anywhere we like, so let's go right first.  * Ken receives a pork sausage! * That was the Santa, and now the other person, presumably one of the refugees? There's also this other person over by the shelves:  On the left side, there's also three people, another Santa and two refugees. Let's start with Santa. Well, we already got out food, so we're fine. Now the two refugees:  And then there's this other person by the desk... This is all getting weirder by the minute...  There are definitely two chests in that room, but there's also a locked door. So nothing can be done for now. Therefore we continue around the mansion.  Sure, let's head up, maybe we can also meet her. I mean, she's supposed to be expecting us, right?  And finally, we can go inside.   We start by requesting Memorin Z which was promised to us (sort of). Here you can definitely choose to ask about food, but she just tells you to go down to the ground floor where we've already been. So I guess let's leave. I guess that's that for here. We now have to wait to get a call from this Panheim guy, who apparently is able to make the amnesia medication for Linda. However, things do seem to get weirder by the minute, so we'll have to see what that's all about. There seem to be a lot of things about Green Pharmaceuticals and its chairwoman and employees which can be qualified under varying degrees of "odd", that's for sure. If we go back down the stairs, there is also this dude in the garden, whom I forgot previously:  Cheery. But for us, it's time to head out.   Well, that's it for today. But a question poses itself... where shall we head next then? That's definitely something to think about, but for now I will tell you, although the game didn't specify, that the call from Panheim will arrive around the time Ken reaches level 9, so not too far in the future! Whether that will get us any closer to the medicine, remains to be seen! For now, enjoy some more illustrations! For today, we have a first a full drawing of Elizabeth and then also another silly one from the PC Engine era! ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2021 19:56
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Randalor posted:So if a season is supposed to be 15 minutes long but only transitions after a screenspchange, what happens if you spend 30 minutes before doing a screen transition? Does it just jump to the "correct" season, or does it go to the next one in order? No, it doesn't skip. It goes to the next one in order. So this is a way to give yourself a little extra time in certain situations.
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Sep 27, 2021 20:32
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Black Robe posted:Growlithe, Rockruff, Yamper, Furfrou, Poochyena, Lilipup It is at times like these that I regret the fact that the game only allows two katakana letters maximum for the names of dogs!
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Sep 30, 2021 10:35
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 Hello everyone, and welcome back to Linda³! In his quest to restore Linda's memory, last time Ken went to visit the town of Eterna, all the way up in the North. There he met Elizabeth Green, the chairwoman of the Green Pharmaceutical Co. She promised him that she can produce for him a quantity of "Memorin Z", a medication which allegedly cures amnesia. She promised Ken that someone named Dr. Panheim will get in touch with him over that (we've already head about him previously as one of the three most renowned scientists on Neo-Kenya). Also, in Eterna it seems to be a permanent Christmas time and everybody wears Santa Claus suits. Before we continue with todays episode, I have to make a correction--last time I was referring to Eterna's location as "North Area", but that's not entirely accurate: even though it's located quite far to the North, in fact the game considers this to be the "West Area" instead, due to the shifted arrangement of the areas on the map. There is, in fact, no "North Area" in this game at all! Well, with that done, let's go and catch up with Ken, who has just finished his meeting with Elizabeth.  So, let's head outside.  Oh, good, it hasn't started snowing yet! Snow can be a bit of a problem as it slows down your movement by quite a bit! But as I said, luckily, it's not snowing at the moment, although it's very possible to do so at this time of year at this kind of northern location.  Another thing, you might recall that Eterna is situated north of a rather large lake. For now, we want to pay a visit to a nearby place which is to the west, so we'll just go around the lake and follow the mountain range which separates this whole northern region from the rest of the map.  Eventually, over here, there is a tunnel leading west. If you recall, again, last time one of the Bird Line employees told us about the tunnel which is the only way to access the locations north of coordinate 7 (which is where we currently are). Taking this tunnel will lead us to a place called Battle Park, which we passed through during our connecting flights. Today we're going to explore it a bit just to see what's going on in the world.   Here we are, on the other side of the tunnel! The sign with the arrow simply points out that going east leads to Eterna and Lina Valley which we already know. So let's start with our usual tour of the place!  We'll start with this lady over here. I can't help but notice that she also seems to be pregnant...  The tent to the left of her is empty. This is a bit unfortunate, as sometimes you can find here a guy to whom you can sell those medals (like the one we got last time). But he only has some percentage of showing up, and apparently today we're not in that range so he's not here. We could have sold the medal for about 1000G, but that's ok, I'm sure we'll find him another time. So for now, let's check out the other two tents which are immediately next to us.   This is good advice, because you genuinely might miss them otherwise because they are kind of hard to see. But, yes, fleas definitely count as animals we need to catch in this game, and we'll be doing just that a bit later today!  Located centrally, there is quite a large tent here, so let's check that out.  Near the entrance is the bar, where Ken can order a drink to replenish his HP. But as usual, make sure to only have ONE drink, as having more will inflict the "lost" status effect for short duration--you know the really annoying one which inverts all directional controls!  That's pretty cool... I wonder if there's ever going to be a musical performance here? Hmm... well, never mind.  What we do have here, is a waitress. I just love how philosophical some of the NPCs in this game are. It's just plain fun to talk to everybody, because you never know what kind of crazy thing they may say! There's also that guy standing at the blue desk, over there.  Uh, what do you mean? Helpfully, we can ask him for an explanation. Ah, so this is some sort of battle arena, where you have a gauntlet of 8 fights in a row! In fact, you can see the fighting area over the the left. What he didn't mention is that there are three different rings, in order of difficulty, and this one where we're standing right now is the hardest. Eithe way, we're a bit busy, so we won't bother with this right now, but we'll definitely check it out later.  You can also talk to the dudes inside the ring... that is, you could if the waitress would finally decide to move! But NPCs in this game have somewhat randomised pathing and sometimes just. don't. want. to. move! I literally had to exit and re-enter the tent to reset her position so I could talk to that guy!  There we go, that's better! They DO NOT have particularly profound things to say, that's for sure! Further to the left is the second (middle) ring.  And the guys inside: Still a bit further to the left is the first ring!  Ah, I guess this one is the easiest. I'm going to take a wild guess that the prizes are not nearly as good. By the way, if we become the "champion", as mentioned, we get one of those medals that can be sold to that special guy who only appears sometimes in one of the tents outside. We can also see what the waitress here has to say.  The guys in the ring, as always, have nothing particularly profound to say... But then there is also that guy hanging just outside the ring... Most of these dialogue options really don't change anything, so I'll generally just try to pick whichever one is funnier. Anyway, moving swiftly onwards to the guy in the corner who is wearing a lab coat... Oh, right, this is one of those doctors who "revive" you when you die in a battle. The official explanation is also that your body is transferred into the backpack, hence why when it happens you lose some of your captured animals, to make space! Let's head back outside...  There are two guys standing outside the tent entances. As you can imagine, their purpose is to get people to come inside! As opposed to that medal item we have, champion's belt is a higher level award. Anyway, there's this other guy here...  I think it was mentioned before, but Hume is, of course, Linda's dad. We haven't met him over the course of the game, though. Next, let's head into the equipment shop.  This will become important already today! In any case, there is not really any useful equipment to buy here, so we'll hold off on that (we'll anyway find some good stuff shortly for free). But I will sell some of my not needed stuff like the old weapons, and in particular, this thing...  The famous "gold nugget" which we got previously, and which, as you can see, actually sells for 6400G! Not bad at all for basically no work! And then the guy in the corner who seems to be... sharpening knives? The joke here is mostly because the word for "slingshot" in Japanese is "pachinko", which is also used to refer to the popular pinball-like game! There is also a butcher to the left...  There's also one more guy here in the corner... Yeah, that's pretty bad, not to mention the radiation preventing anybody (us) from going down there...  Here is the tunnel leading west, on the other side of the town, an a person standing in front of it... Ah, sure, whatever you say... The sign, by the way, indicates that a place named Koshikata is to the west. We've already heard about it... apparently the former mayor of this place is being held captive in Hospico because of some kind of an "incident" that happened there? Let's now head into the dog shop...  One of the hunters is here...  And the person at the counter... So, remember how we bought a hunting dog. In fact it's possible, when you catch wild dogs, to bring them to the dog shop and register them to be in your party! And so what this guy is saying that apparently there are some illegal shops which will even let you register wolves as "hunting dogs". Maybe that's something we'll try at some point. I wonder if there are still other kinds of animals you can add to your party...? But in order to try that, we would also have to find someone willing to do it first... Next, we'll head into this building here:   It houses the inn, and also the bank! So if we talk to the guy at the reception desk... So, a few things here... it was mentioned to us at the very beginning of the game that Ken will at level 4 learn the "Camp" ability, allowing him to camp anywhere on the overworld to restore his health--this ability is entirely free and basically eliminates any need to stay at an inn/hotel. And so I also mentioned that seasons will change only when the screen "reloads". Using the camping option counts as "reload" and may cause a season change if the time has come. Using the camp option on the overworld also provides access to some other functions, which we'll actually have a chance to see later today! Talking to the woman standing next to the INN sign... I guess this just reinfoces the gameplay notion to simply get on with the collecting work when there is nothing better to do, until you get contacted by someone. We are definitely heading into a more plot-heavy section of this scenario, however, so we don't need to worry about this so much right now! Anyway, let's stop by the bank too...  Yeah, people keep mentioning this... but there's just SO MANY THINGS to do in this game! I'm sure we'll get there eventually. Since we are pretty loaded with money, I take the opportunity to pay off that loan we took out at the start of the game. It helped us out to get going, but now there's no reason to keep paying the interest when we don't have to! Let's also have a look at Ken's bank book:  Here we can see a few things... First of all, that "20" was the seasonal loan interest that was taken out from our account at the start of autumn. Second, the "600" figure is Ken's autumn salary. As you can see, when Ken's level goes up, his salary will also increase--makes sense. Finally the last "100" at the bottom is me showing that you can also deposit money into the bank if you want--although at present we don't really have any particular reason to do so. Having done that, we'll exit through that door on the right.  This brings us in front of a farm-like thing. If we talk to the girl... Um, ok. But the more interesting conversation is to be had from the woman standing on the right. I definitely want to hear this one! Hmm. I'm not sure what think about this. We can also go into the farm building...   Right by the entrance is an animal trader, and he has a good hint for us!  A bit further inside is another person... Some of the dialogue in this game is genuinely funny! However, I know you didn't miss those stairs in the corner, leading into the basement, so lets check that out!  What even is this down here? Some kind of machine room? Anyway, there is a guy here to talk to. Does he mean that he's just going to stay on the planet, or what? In any case, yes, that is definitely another chest in that room over there, and yes, that is also definitely another locked door that the chest sits behind. So nothing can done with that right now.  Looking around the room, yeah I guess it's some kind of machine/technical room for the farm upstairs. And that's where we'll return now.  Back upstairs, there is another person here... Luckily, there's an option here to ask him to explain. Animal breeders, it seems. Well, let's add this to our list of things to check out later. This is already a very long list, but worry not. Even though we seem to be pushed along by the plot for the most part, I promise you there will come a time when we'll really be able to explore this world in detail and try out anything and everything that this game offers!  Further to the left, we can see where some of the animals are kept... those are definitely rabbits in the first compartment, flying around. There is also a persom here! This isn't quite true. Different animals have different ways of choosing whom they will attack, and believe it or not, this information is actually outlined in the game guide book I have! All right, we're kind of done here for the moment, so let's head over to the entrance area of Battle Park.  One last guy to talk to, though. Maybe they don't, but we will use it today! Let's leave this place for now.  Upon exiting, I'm happy to realise that it hasn't been snowing, so that will make our life definitely easier! Let's do some hunting! Although, before we start, there's something I forgot last time. When we were fighting stonefish, I forgot to post a picture showing what they used to look like back in the PC Engine version:  I'm sure you'll agree with me that not posting this screenshot would have been entirely unforgivable, right? Anyway, NOW let's see what we can find in these parts! First of all...   ...here we have some dolphins! Other than slightly higher HP than what we're used to, there's still nothing special here. But check out what they used to look like in the PC Engine version:  I'm just going to leave that there with no comment, all right? Anyway, when you're around here, try to avoid these birds flying around... those are eagles, and they will mess up your day. In other words, we're not strong enough to take them on. I will catch a bunch more dolphins, because if nothing else, we can sell them.  So let's just be careful with that one.  As you can see on the screenshot above, one other animal we can find here are fleas. What do you mean, you don't see it? All right, here you go:  Well, I guess, it's not like we haven't been warned to be on the lookout for tiny flying dots! Anyway, here they are in battle:  They do have one interesting ability, which is to split and multiply creating more enemies on the field. This can be a bit annoying, not because it's threatening, but because it also halves their HP making it VERY difficult not to over-damage them--and they have pretty low defense stat to begin with. Another point to take from the screenshot above is that there can be quite a few enemies at once in a battle! Let's keep moving.  Here's the next species on our list for today:  Otters! Here we can already see a hint of complexity that will come into play for catching animals eventually. For example, otters become extinct over the course of time, and can no longer be found in the later parts of the game. So if you don't get them while you can, you never will!  Ugh, no, please eagles, not today! Unfortunately, they will chase you and it can end badly, like here! Anyway, here's one other animal we can find here for now:   Some koalas! All right, well, that's enough for this area for now. Let's go and find that tunnel leading back to the East Area!  Ah, there it is. After exiting the tunnel, by walking just a bit to the south...  ...we reach again Hardia and the ark! But, before we go and hand in our animals, let's go and exact a bit of revenge first!  Down on the southern coast, we can easily find...  ...dogs! I mean, make no mistake, they're still pretty strong, and they will still mess up your day, but we can just barely deal with it now, unlike before! "Lick wound" is of course a healing ability, and it's actually pretty neat, because our own dogs also learn it as they level up. So you will sometimes just get a random heal in a battle from one of your dogs, completely free! Let's head back to the ark and hand all of this in...  As we approach, Ken gets another one of those notifications that he has a new phone message. We'll check that later. In the ark...   ...today, we'll be handing in the following: dolphins, fleas, otters, koalas and dogs! By handing in a dolphin, Ken learns their "ultrasonic wave" ability. Linda learns her first "dog" ability, which is again the aforementioned "lick wounds" heal thing. Apart from that, it's the usual tiny stat boosts for both. Let's check the situation with the friendly robot...  Nice, we have collected 15 species so far, so I guess we're halfway there. You know, I just realised there is another species we can easily catch while we're here, so let's just go and do it. It's a bit north from the ark.  Here we can find...  ...some squids! As you can see, they can cause the "pheromone" status effect. This is mostly important after battle when you're on the overworld as it, expectedly, causes most animal species to start chasing you. So you might want to avoid being afflicted by it.  As Ken is heading to the nearest phone to check the message, he receives a notification of another message! So, let's go and listen to both of them!  All right, so, first message: It was mentioned before that if we carry meat for too long (usually longer than a season) it will spoil. Therefore we need to bring him goat meat before it spoils. Second message: Well, our task is clear. We need to go back north and find some goats (and hope that it doesn't snow). However, before we do that, I think it's about time to go and check on Linda! I'm sure you will agree with me. So, let's first go over to Hospico!  Going inside...  ...before going upstairs to Linda's room, we can head over here to the right and find another person we know.  What even is this room she's in? Looks like some kind of control room with computers and stuff? A few moments later in Linda's room...  ...it looks like she might be doing a bit better?  Cute. But now, if we want her to get better, we have a task to perform! Dr. Panheim mentioned that goats can be found around Koshikata (although he also mentioned something about the town being abandoned). So let's see if we can travel over there...  If we check the list of destinations of the Bird Line...  ...Koshikata is definitely listed! So let's buy a ticket! Ah. Well, I guess it probably has something to do with the "abandoned" thing. Ok then. The closest place to it we CAN travel to, is indeed none other than Battle Park, so let's go back there again!  After arriving in Battle Park, we'll head straight to the west side...  ...where that tunnel leading outside is located.  At the other end of the tunnel, there seems to be some kind of an office! In fact it's the "Rent-A-Animal" service desk! Let's see. Well, that explains why those dolphinse there appear to have saddles on them, at least. We can ask for a further explanation. So number 2, at least, is simply because in different seasons you will get different animals to ride. Were it winter and snow, we would have gotten a polar bear instead of a dolphin! But otherwise this seems pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be, more or less like riding a Chocobo in a Final Fantasy game. All right, let's rent ourselves a dolphin (even if we really don't need it since it's not snowy outside). Here we go...  ...hop on, and...  ...off we go! As mentioned, this would be much more useful in the snow as it allows you to move at normal speed instead of being seriously slowed down.  Going past Koshikata (there in the corner)...  ...we do indeed find some goats. (Of course, I had to hop off the dolphin to be able to fight them.)  Here. We. Go. So this is a bit of a precarious situation (slightly), since there is a fair few of them, and they have relatively higher HP. Therefore, I decide this is the right time to try out turning Ken into a "beastman". So, if we select that option from the menu...  ...we get a whole bunch of options to choose from, which animal we want to transform into (there's more if you scroll down), including, on top, the option to turn back into a human. Ken is a bit low level with his beast prowess, so for now he only turns into a "beast-boy", not yet a full "beast-man", that will come as he learns more abilities. The number on the left shows how much BP will be consumed by the transformation, and on the right you can see what effect it will have on your stats (HP, attack, defense, speed). So here I have highlighted the "rat" option, which does decrease our attack by 21, but also brings our speed up by a whole 55! So I turn Ken into a rat-boy, which is even reflected on the battle screen:  ...and now we can proceed with this battle as normal. Our increased speed almost gets us to a point where the enemies are basically not getting many turns... but when they do get a turn, they decide to use the "call reinforcements of another species" ability, and, well... a whole bunch of weasels show up too!  Luckily, we were pretty much already finished with the goats by this point, so we finish this easily. So we got weasels summoned here by the goats, but normally you would have to find them yourself. As mentioned above, and as we were told previously at some point, you can't really see weasels on the overworld, because they masquerade as trees. So what you have to do is walk around in wooded areas...  ...like here, where there's plenty of them, and they will eventually pop out. Regarding the beast transformations, there is also one good one which you may want to use: if you transform into a dolphin, your HP and defense go down slightly, but your attack power is increased by 51! Here is what Ken looks like on the battle screen as a "dolphin-boy":  But anyway, now that we have a goat, we should finally head over to Eterna!  Here we are... but there's one problem. We have a goat, but we've been asked to bring goat meat! Luckily, as he's been leveling up, Ken has also learned an ability to process animals into meat. He can use it by activating the "camp" option...  ...like so. This allows us to choose what each party member should do while they camp out. Default selected option is to simply sleep, but here we can choose for Ken to process the meat. We can then pick a goat and the end result will be that we have processed one of our goats into goat meat that we can give to Panheim. Also, as we wake up the next morning... turns out, winter has come!  Seven years and two seasons left, 15 species still left to hand in!  Also, there was some snowfall over night it seems! Well, no matter, we'll head into Eterna...  ...straight into the mansion! Let's go talk to Elizabeth.  Turns out, we can find out a bit more about the whole Christmas deal, so let's do that before we get to the topic of Panheim! Well, enough chit-chat.   Ken hands over the goat meat to Dr. Panheim Before you ask, there's no variation in dialogue here no matter which option you pick! Anyway, I think we're ready to be on our way here...  We're done talking to them, but before we leave let's have a snoop around the house a bit more!  On the same floor, in the southeast corner there is a staircase leading down.  Hm, let's keep going down. There seems to be quite a lot going on here under the mansion, huh?  Now if we head down that hallway to the right... it's a bit of a long hallway, but eventually...  Oh, hey! Two chests which are, for once, actualy NOT behind a locked door! The first one contains "sheep sweater" a clothing item, and the other one contains a weapon: "jellyfish needle". So, here's where Ken is now with his stats:  Let's check out the new gear.  First, the jellyfish needle brings his attack power from 169 to 175, so a small upgrade, but either way no reason to not do it.  The sheep sweater brings his defense up from 134 to 157 and increases a whole bunch of resistances, so even if it does lower physical and fire resist by 1 point, it's still pretty good. Overall, it's been worth coming down here. So, let's return to that spot where we came down on the stairs...  We can use the stairs in the top corner to head further down...  Errr... Well, that door where Ken is standing is very definitely locked, but, uh, why does it look like there are people here who are imprisoned and are being watched over by dogs? What even is this situation? But, well, the door is locked, so all we can do is go back the way we came.  Finally, there's a convenient shortcut here--if we climb that ladder there...  ...it deposits us directly outside, next to the mansion! Let's head out of here for now, then. Well, that's it for today. We'll see what happens next, but at least we seem to be getting closer to having the medication for Linda! In addition to that, I'll try to remember to talk a bit next time about all the abilities that Ken has learned over the course of the game and what they do, since I've been neglecting it a bit. Also, I just wanted to warn you that next time things are going to get a bit weird plot-wise, so be prepared for that. As for our regular art section, today we have two illustrations from the PC Engine era. First of all, a pretty cool one of Elizabeth and Panheim... ...and then another silly one of Linda:
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Oct 9, 2021 23:27
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TurnipFritter posted:I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the game's structure so far. On one hand, stuff like "Come back at level 5" and "It should be ready by the time you go visit Linda again" is refreshingly transparent, but on the other the "Go level up while we devise a treatment plan for Linda/Go level up while you wait for my employee to call you/Go visit Linda again while I get the medicine ready" story beats are a little weak given how otherwise intriguing the setting is. Though I guess that's fixing to change. To be honest, this is one thing that people do sometimes point out as a bit of a flaw in this game, so it's not just you. But I think it's also not such an easy task to fit together a timed task you have to accomplish (collecting animals), but also to have somehow a plot which progresses in parallel as you do it, and then also to allow you to explore the world in parallel with both of those things. I could say more about this, but it would go somewhat into the spoiler territory, so I'll refrain for now. TurnipFritter posted:Honestly from how most of the animals in this game look perhaps we should just set the ark on fire. Hirayuki posted:e: Also, the "animals" are all pretty drat grotesque. Um, nice job, artists? (Also thank you both for kind words! I try to give this game the kind of presentation it deserves--it's truly a shame it was never released outside of Japan.) ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Oct 10, 2021 |
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Oct 10, 2021 19:19
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SloppyDoughnuts posted:Do you gain stats by leveling up too or only from passing in animals and equipping better gear? Yes you do gain stats also from regular leveling up. This is how it works. In battles you earn experience. When you earn enough experience, you level up. This level up causes you to gain stats and also sometimes you learn new abilities. These are considered "human" abilities (like "Camp" or "Process Meat" that we already saw) and they are free to use (don't cost BP). When handing in animals you gain (smaller) stat gains and you also may learn an ability sometimes. These are considered the "beast" abilities (mostly stuff like various attack or heal abilities) and they cost BP to use. As we saw, also certain equipment may have a positive or negative effect on various stats. Hope this clears it up, but if not ask.
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Oct 12, 2021 08:15
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 Hello everyone, and welcome back to Linda³! Last time, Ken continued on his task to get the amnesia medication for Linda, so with that in mind, he delivered some goat meat to Panheim, because apparently goat meat is one of the key ingredients. We also did a whole more bunch of animal collecting, so we are well under way towards our goal of at least 30 species. So, as we start this part, we find Ken just about to leave Eterna, after having finished his meeting with Elizabeth and Dr. Panheim.   Outside, at this northern latitude, everything is white and frozen now that the winter has come. This is annoying, because it slows down Ken's movement.  However, it does open up the possibility to catch some animals who feel right at home in such a climate!  You guessed it, penguins! They don't really have anything super unusual, other than the (somewhat expected) ability to do various ice-based attacks. Mostly I handle them by transforming into a dolphin for highly increased attack. But, I must say, I love their colours, looks great. However, in the PC Engine version, they looked... different:  Um. Yeah. Anyway.  Even in the snow, I manage to find that tunnel which leads into Battle Park.  As we go through the tunnel, Ken gets another message notification.   Incidentally, we're not staying in Battle Park this time. So we'll simply take the southern exit which takes us out of the snowy areas! We'll check the message shortly, but before that, a couple more species to capture around here that we didn't do last time!  The next on our list...  Well, horses, of course! Even though they have relatively high HP and attack, they will try to run away from you on the overworld, so best is to try and corner them against a mountain or something like that.  Finally, you might remember that this was the area where eagles live.  Last time we avoided them, but we have a couple more levels since then, so why not, right? So this thing about a "powerful sword", probably warrants a bit of a comment. We'll certainly look at that in the future, but there's one other thing. This weapon (eagle sword) is among those which allow Ken to attack all enemies in front of him at once, with a single attack. Obviously this is very beneficial in battle, but our current weapon doesn't have that ability, so we may want to upgrade to the eagle sword soon. Although I didn't mention it at a time, we had previously used one other weapon that could do this--the swallow cutter, so that helped us quite a bit in the early part of the game to capture the animals quickly and avoid taking damage. Eventually, we make our way over to that tunnel which leads to the ark. On the way I have to fight several batches of fleas, because you can barely even see them on the screen!  After exiting the tunnel, first let's stop in a nearby town of Ozport just to listen to the message...  Well, that's good to hear. Although I guess her memories are still not back... Anyway, let's go and see her in Hospico. For travelling between towns like this, generally I use the Bird Line. It does consume money, but we have a decent amount, and also it counts as being in town so it doesn't use up any time on the game's seasonal clock!  Over in Hospico, let's head straight to Linda's room.  Hm, what's up?  Well, it's nice to see that she's recovering, despite the whole memory loss issue.  Before we leave, the nurse here has another fun tidbit for us. Cute. We're finished here for now, so let's leave. On the way, I stop by the pharmacy to buy some HP recovery tables, because we may need them later today. We'll head over to that east-west tunnel between Hospico and Hardia, but on the way...  ...we get another message notification. Perhaps it's Panheim, telling us that the medication is ready?  Exiting the tunnel...   ...we arrive at the ark, to hand in the animals from our backpack.  This time, we'll be handing in: squids, goats, weasels, penguins, horses and eagles! From squids, Ken learns the "black curtain" ability which allows him to hit all enemies in front of him with "black ink" and reduce their hit accuracy. From weasels, Ken learns the "smelly fart" ability which releases smelly gas, reducing attack power of all enemies in front of him. From eagles, Ken learns the "gale cutter" ability, a strong attack against all enemies in front of him. As for Linda, from penguins, she learns the "snowscape" ability, which allows her in battle to transform the terrain block in front of her into a snow field (thus affecting the stats of animals for whom that may not be the native terrain type). Other than that, the usual bunch of small stat increases for both.  Checking with the friendly robot, we're now at 21 out of 30 species done. So that's going pretty well, but also we'll soon be taking a bit of a break from hunting, too. Nevertheless, it hasn't even been a year and we're already 2/3 done, so that looks good for finishing the task before the meteorite impact. However, it is also true that so far we have only been collecting the species which can be easily found on the overworld so that also needs to be kept in mind for the future.   In any case, that shack next to the ark actually has a phone inside, so let's listen to our message. As expected, it is Panhem. It's nice of game to warn us about needing to have two empty slots in our inventory, but we actually have plenty of space still, so that's not an issue. Although I wonder, why two slots and not just one. In any case, we don't really have any other pressing business, so let's head back to Eterna once again via the Bird Line !  As we enter the town, we are intercepted by that Santa we saw at the very beginning of the game!  Hmm, that's true, he did mention this before about room 102, but Linda was definitely not there (wherever it is) since she was in her hospital room all this time! However, like a typical Star Wars character, at this point, I am definitely having a bad feeling about this situation, so it may not be the worst idea in the world to go back to Hospico and check up on Linda! But first, let's just go and get what we came here for, and then we'll head to Hospico.  Into the mansion it is and to Elizabeth's room.   Ken receives "Memorin Z" from Dr. Panheim. Ken receives "Hollagin C" from Dr. Panheim. That's nice. So we get some random medication from him that we don't even know what it does! What could possibly go wrong! Actually, nothing much. As mysterious as this sounds, it's simply an item which can be used in battle. It causes the person who uses it to get random stat increases for the duration of the battle. There's a bunch of these kinds of medications in the game, so it's not anything plot related to worry about. Since we're done here, let's now continue with our idea to go to Hospico. Maybe Linda can even start the treatment?  After arriving in Hospico, we head into the reception building. It looks like there's some weird stuff going on, so perhaps we should gather some info first before going to Linda's room.  For example, this person working on the reception desk... Um, dressed up as Santa? No, that definitely wasn't us. What is going on?  Or, this little girl over here... Is... is there a rogue Santa going around pretending to be Ken? But why?  This all very odd, but let's also check with this guy sitting here in the waiting area. Ok, there's definitely a Santa going around pretending to be Ken. Maybe it's our weird friend whom we just saw in Eterna? But, again, why? I think we don't need to waste any more time, so let's head over to Linda's room!  Oh. She's not here. But there is a nurse here we can talk to... What. is. going. on. Also she said "back garden"! All right, we know our next destiation. But, me being me, of course I'm going to stop on the way for another small bit of lore with this nurse here:  Ah, the performance enhancement drug we've heard of before which the hunters were abusing. The pharmacist previously told us about this happening about 10 years ago or so? Ok, anyway, just wanted to pick up that little bit of dialogue and now on our way to the back garden.  Around the side of the hospital building...  Here we are... and there's also that shed where we were told that it maybe has a big underground complex below it and where supposedly the former mayor of Koshikata is being kept imprisoned. Why is the hospital director standing here, of all places? Let's try to talk to him and find out? Ken hands over "Memorin Z" to the hospital director. But then, suddenly... And he... just runs off! Taking our medication with him too! Also, is it just me or did he not seem quite right? Also also, he mentioned again room 102! Well, the only option we have at this point, is to go through the door. So I guess let's do that.  At least it seems that there really is stuff underground below this small building... down the stairs it is.  Doesn't seem there's much cleaning/maitenance going on here. The whole place is dirty with rubbish lying everywhere.  And then we reach some cells? Well, that's definitely Linda there in the second one, but what's with all the blood? Believe it or not, after quite some time, the moment has finally come for another cutscene, which will provide the details!  Ah, um, well, sure, why not. It's not like there isn't already about a million moving parts in what's been going on in this game, why not add more! But, hey, at least we now have some idea who that weird Santa was, right? Although Linda doesn't seem to be at all well, so that's not so good. Before we go on, I thought it might be interesting here to see what this scene used to look like in the PC Engine version, so here it is. I do have to apologise here a bit, because I had to transcribe this purely by ear without any kind of subtitles or written transcript and so there were a couple of small bits where I wasn't able to make out exactly what was being said--but we're really talking just a couple of words in two places, so hopefully it should not be a problem, but I just thought I should mention it anyway. All right, now to the "original" version of the cutscene!  This is actually a bit weird, honestly. First of all, the dialogue is almost the same as in the remake, but not quite. This means they actually went to the trouble to record it again even though the changes are mostly minor at least in content. But it has to be said that Nek definitely feels less "jokey" in this version, at least to me. Other than that, I just though it's a bit funny how it reverts back to the standard in-game graphics for the last couple of lines. Why couldn't they animate those too? Anyway, let me know if you would like to see more of these "original" versions of cutscenes in the future and I'll see what I can do if there is interest. Also, massive props to whoever decided to name this character "Nek". Ok, let's continue.  So it seems Nek has escaped through that hole in the north wall of the cell... In the meantime, other rangers arrive:  A short time later, in commander Ben's office...   Ken explains to the commander what actually happened in Hospico. The phone rings, Ben goes to pick up...  Hanging up, he turns back to Ken...  I think situation has escalated a bit since the time Ken was hunting penguins... But we are finished here, and before we leave we can have a word with commander's secretary.  Ok, let's go. On our way out, downstairs, there was this lady:  If you recall, she can also save our game, but she mentioned we should come and visit for a chat every once in a while. So let's check what she has to say... Um, ok... not sure this is really relevant to anything. Across from her, is the bank counter.  Here, first let's check out Ken's bank book as always...  So here we can see, that not only has Ken's salary gone up to 900 G as he is leveling up, but also that in Winter he gets an additional bonus payment in the form of an extra salary amount! So that's pretty nice. In any case, we really aren't hurting for money at the moment. Especially since this time I do remember to withdraw all the money that's been sitting here. Also, since we are already in Hardia, it might be worth it to see what Ken's mum has to say about the whole twin brother situation. Because Ken surely didn't seem to know anything about it until just now! Let's head over to Ken's house!   Ok, so this might be a weird place to mention this, but bear with me. In this game whenever an animal name is mentioned, be it in dialogues or somewhere in the equipement menu or wherever, it is ALWAYS shown in a particular colour, depending on whether you have already caught it or not, and if yes, whether you already have it handed over in the ark. For example, the animal names you have in your backpack but have not handed in are printed in yellow, and those you have handed in are printed in white. The species which you have not yet caught have their names printed in red colour. Maybe you already are guessing where I'm going with this explanation. The word "dragon" in the above dialogue is shown in red colour. Somehow, somewhere in this game there are dragons to be found. Just think about that for a second. But, this concludes our business here in Hardia for the moment, so I thought, for the rest of today's episode we might try something a bit different. Namely, since we have a bit of time before the plot catches up with us, why not go exploring a little bit? I mean, I said we will have A LOT of time for that eventually, but it doesn't hurt to get a bit of a taste, right? And it will also allow us to catch a couple more animal species, so it won't be a total waste. I'm glad you agree. Let's go. (Oh yeah, I sold a bunch of extra animals from my backpack before heading out.)  First, we'll head over to where Hospico is, and then walk south east from there.  After looking around for a bit, we find what looks like a cave entrance in the side of the mountain there.  We can definitely head inside into what at first glance looks like some sort of an archaeological dig...  Walking a bit further in, we find some people and tents, confirming our notion that there is some archaeology going on here. Let's talk to the person. I mean, how bad can it be? We already fought three-eyed squirrels and flying rabbits. If we go into the left tent:  There's a guy here... I love the detail of having a sleeping bag inside the tent! A purple lion, you say? Interesting. Well, let's be on the lookout for that.  The person in the other tent... That's it for the people present here. It's time to explore a bit. In case it's not already clear, this is one of the "dungeons" in this game. But it's a bit different perhaps than what you're used to. There's usually not going to be a dungeon-end boss as such or anything like that, it's really more about exploring and uncovering this planet's secrets. Before we go further, I should probably mention that as far as time passage goes, it does indeed pass while you're in a dungeon, but only at a ¼ the normal rate, to give you a bit of time to explore without feeling rushed. This dungeon, as the game helpfully informs us with a location title, is called "Marblepolis" and I am only sure of two things right now: (1) We should definitely be on the lookout for a "purple lion", whatever it is; and (2) We definitely need to try moving the stones! I mean everybody is so adamant that we shoudln't, so of course that means...  Near the tents is this staircase leading down, which I guess we'll take.  It leads to a dimly lit hallway.  At the end of the hallway is this weird passage, somehow conveniently blocked by a stone. Well, I guess we have no choice but to move it!  There is no surprise here. Moving the stone triggers an enemy encounter!  Well, I guess those are the creepy-crawlies the lady mentioned. Or, to be more precise, a bunch of earthworms. So they have this unusual ability where females can transform into males and regain full health, but more interestingly, our dogs are quite afraid of them and may retreat from battle leaving you to fend for yourself. Luckly, there's no lasting consequence to the retreat, and they will be right back in their spots in the very next battle. But just something to keep in mind, together with the fact that the earthworms will often appear in large groups, so you do need to be careful. On the other hand, it will also cause you to gain a few levels while here, but as we already discussed a couple of times, try not to go overboard with that. After defeating these guys, we can go through the passage...  ...we enter some weird open area with pillars and more of those moveable stones.  Before we go on with our exploration, though, there is another species of animal we can catch here...  ...although they are very hard to catch, even if you use the dash function (which, reminder, depletes your HP!). But, eventually I do manage to corner one group...  ...and it turns out it's a bunch of chickens! So these two species are an example of a species which cannot be found on the overworld. You actually have to come down here to capture them. But this is still easy as you simply have to go to the right place and pretty much nothing else--we will encounter much later some species where there are very special ways of finding them and/or catching them. For now, though, just be careful of really strong fire attacks these chickens will unleash on you! Now that we have captured earthworms and chickens, let's finish our exploration of Marblepolis.  If you look around this big hall, you will find in the center a big staircase going up. Let's take it.  It leads over a couple of floors upwards...  ...until we get this unusual little room. There are many questions here. What is the meaning of that symbol on the back wall? What is that thing next to the left wall? Stepping on it does nothing at all. Concluding that we are probably missing some information and/or items, the only thing we can do is go back down to the main hall, unfortunately.  But, as mentioned, there are other moveable stones around here. And if we play with them long enough (all the while fighting the earthworms), eventually we'll cause something to happen.  A previously hidden staircase leading downwards will reveal itself! Obviously we need to take it!  It leads to an even weirder looking room where seemingly the only thing we can do is go further down!  Oh, yeah, and there's again this weird symbol on the wall. But anyway, let's head down.  And further down...  And even further...  Finally, we get to this place. A few more of those weird pillars or whatever they are, and what looks like four animal statues. I can't help but notice that the bottom right statue very definitely looks like a lion. The blue thing in the middle pretty much calls to us to step on it...  And when we do, we're instantly teleported... somewhere. Well, there's only one way to go, which is forward (well, there's also the teleporter, but we don't want to go back yet, of course!). Walking through that narrow hallway...  ...brings us to this very interesting room! What is even going on here? Those pods look exactly the same as the ones our captured animals are stored in on the ark, no question about that. Also, are those like weird animal parts against the north wall? Let's try to interact with one of the pods, they seem to have some kind of panel on them.  Well, whatever it is, we have nothing to put into the slot. I will say though that the animal in this pod definitely again looks like a lion, in fact it looks the same as that statue earlier, pretty much. By extrapolating, it can be plausibly said that the animal in the pod on the right side of the room looks very much like a lioness, which would indeed make sense. Either way, it doesn't appear we are able to do anything here right now. However, before we go, if we stand right next to the left wall...  ...we can see that to the left, there is what appears to be a room identical to the one we're in.  And the same thing on the right. But that must mean, there are other teleporters somewhere. And does that mean there are four such rooms, one corresponding to each statue at the teleporter location? Well, for sure I have absolutely no idea. We will simply have to come back here later when we are better equipped to understand all of this. This is not going to be soon, though. Despite how it may look (maybe), this is NOT a small game. For now, we'll head back to the surface. While Ken is climbing all those stairs, let me quickly show you where he is regarding his stats at the moment:   And well here we are back outside! Let's finish up by heading back to the ark to hand in the two new species we collected.    This time we only have earhtworms and chickens. But check out how many earthworms I have (23 and 20) from all those stones in the dungeon! As for abilities, this time Linda learns "fire carpet" from the chickens. This ability "covers the floor with fire", causing continuous fire damage to the enemies, so I guess something like poison, except with fire! Since we've bean talking about those pods, where animals are kept, as a reminder, after you hand them in in the ark, you can have a look what they look like "in storage":  As you can see, these pods are very similar to the ones we saw after going through the teleporter. Finally, as always, we'll check in with the friendly robot...  ...who informs us that we have collected 23 species out of 30 that we need. Not too bad. Well, I don't know about you, but I think this is a good moment to stop for today, since Ken has had quite an eventful day and needs a bit of rest for sure. He'll also need some time to ponder all the unusual things that happened today. Next time on Linda³: Moar party members! Today a couple of illustrations related to the events with Nek! ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 22:13
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Hypocrisy posted:Did we already know Ken was adopted? Seraphic Neoman posted:Also hey when can we use our own murdereagle as a party member? ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Oct 17, 2021 |
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Oct 17, 2021 22:09
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purplestuffedworm posted:Now I'm curious whether this room had the same creepy flesh/baleen plate vibe in the PC Engine version. It was actually more creepy looking originally in the PC Engine version...
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Oct 19, 2021 10:46
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peachsynapse posted:I am one hundred percent here for those PC Engine graphics, both ark-wise and enemy-wise. Those penguins... amazing! It is definitely my intention to keep showing bits and pieces from the original PC Engine version whenever I can! Also, if there's something specific that somebody wants to see, then just let me know and I'll see what I can do!
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Oct 21, 2021 11:13
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Last time, Ken had an unpleasant experience of meeting an individual claiming to be his twin brother, Nek. Nek also claimed to have killed their "real" father, whatever that means. The whole thing happened in the "special observation cell" which we've heard before is supposed to be housing the mayor of Koshikata, who was imprisoned there some years back after an "incident". Nek in addition, seems to have managed to frame Linda for the whole thing (and who is still missing her memories, btw). However, it seems that later on she actually managed to escape from custody and a couple of her guards were found dead. After that, Ken went exploring a bit in a cave housing an archaeological dig and there we found some weird pods, looking very similar to the ones we have seen on the ark.  When we left off, Ken had just finished handing in some animal species at the ark. But I think we should head back to Hospico now, to try and find out more about the whole situation from the last time!  I don't feel like using the Bird Line today, so we'll just take the tunnel and walk over.  But a weird thing happened, I managed to accidentally walk back out, and just as I did...  ...the game decides it's time for Winter 1991 to change into the new season of Spring 1992! That's no problem, we're way ahead of schedule anyway. We have 7 years and 1 season left until Summer 1999, and 7 species left to collect to fulfill the winning condition of 30. Theoretically in Scenario A you can capture a maximum of around 80 different species (out of a total of 120 in the game), so I think we'll manage! I should probably clarify that when I say "a total of 120 in the game", I mean that this is the number of species that can be captured. There are in fact a few other enemies in the game which aren't actually possible to capture. But we'll have a chance to see those later--probably not in this scenario. In any case, let's go back inside.   As we (almost) always do, we'll head into the building and have a chat with the receptionist! Uh, ok? Let's proceed on to the actual hospital ward building.   There are some new people around. For example, this pregnant lady here in the hallway. I suppose she's practicing breathing for the childbirth?  Over in this room, there is another person: Man, the pregnant women in this hospital have some really dark thoughts...  Going back to the other side, over here is our friend Sachiko:  Somehow, during this conversation, Ken again gets a message notification! We'll check that out in a moment. First, there's this other person in the computer room:  Interesting, but let's head back out and check out the "special observation cell", where weird stuff happened last time.  The entrance seems not to be guarded, so let's head in!   Inside, we find Chen, the hospital director. I'm actually surprised that this guy somehow doesn't actually have a portrait for the dialogues? I assume that was before she somehow escaped? Hmmm, so was the murdered person actually the mayor of Koshikata and was he truly Ken's actual father? I guess we'll find out (maybe).  If we check out the cells, there seems to be nothing new there and we can't go in anyway. So let's just head back to the town entrance.  Let's listen to our new message! It's from the commander. All right, back to Hardia it is!  To the Ranger HQ, where we go up to commander's office.  As always, when it doesn't matter, we'll go with a funnier dialogue option!  Before we go... since it's now the year 1992, I guess the "fan service" calendar must have changed? Let's have a quick look.  Looks like it's Sachiko this time. We are also done here for now, but as Ken starts to leave, Ben stops him...  And as that lady in the hospital said, that makes him practically unnoticeable! So at this point, I figure we might as well go a bit north to try and catch some eagles so we could try out that sword... But just as I was getting started...  ...you guessed it, Ken receives another message notification! Ok, fine, we'll head over to Battle Park to hear it.  The message is from Ken's mum! What could it possibly be that's so urgent? Well, not like we have a choice, so let's go! Back in Hardia...  ...Ken's mum is waiting in front of the house!  And inside...  ...it's Linda in a dressed in a Santa suit! So THAT'S how she escaped!    This party is interrupted by the arrival of Commander Ben! I'm sure you've realised by now, but for today's episode the game has decided to switch into a full on sitcom genre! But I'm positive there's something gruesome waiting around a nearby corner somewhere!  They go over to the side...  She turns to Linda... They go over to the side...  Well, whatever it is, they seem to have agreed! The two of them go away to the downstairs room for a moment...  After a few more moments, Ken's mum comes back...  Linda comes up the stairs...  ...and now she's a ranger too! Does that mean she'll also join our party? Spoiler alert: yes it does!  The ranger uniform used to look slightly different back in the PC Engine days, so here is the same screenshot from that version:  And before you ask, no the Santa outfit did not have a close-up in the original version--that was added for the remake. Well, it's clearly time to be on our way, but one last chat with Ben first... Well, that's nice to know. The commander certainly seems to be an outstanding guy. And one final chat with Ken's mum: All right, now it's time to go for real!  As we come out, Linda notices the swing in front of Ken's house (or rather what used to be both of their houses, since as was mentioned, Linda's familiy moved to Minago at some point in time).  To be clear, despite what she's saying, the only place where we actually need to go is Ozport (one town which we definitely haven't visited at all so far), but there are a couple of other places where you can see some optional scenes/dialogue. In fact, those optional scenes were added in the remake--in the PC Engine version at this point you would more or less just proceed to Ozport directly. Before we proceed with anything, however, since we now finally have Linda in our party, let's check out the party stats screen!  Well... I guess there was no reason to expect otherwise for a game of this vintage, but yes indeed Linda joins us at level 3, more or less where we left her. At least in this game there is a plot justification for this situation, since she spent most of the time since the start of the game actually in hospital! But that's ok, because for example fighting Earthworms in Marblepolis gives a ton of EXP, so she can get up to speed pretty quickly if needed. We'll take a bit of a break from capturing for the time being, however. All right then, so the first thing we can do is, sit on the swing.  Well, one of the things that happened here was that Linda proposed to Ken when they were little kids. But this is kind of glossed over a bit in the prologue cutscene in the remake, even though it was shown in more detail in the PC Engine version. Anyway, next thing we can do is go into that little shed.  You can actually choose here, but it doesn't matter because it continues the same way regardless, namely like this:  Before we leave though, over there on the back wall there is a photograph we can look at:  The two happy families, some years ago! Incidentally, here is what this picture used to look like in the PC Engine version: All right, let's move on.  As we head out of Hardia, I guess I can point out that this game uses again Dragon Quest style, so when you're in town both of your characters are visible, instead of getting "collapsed" into one like in Final Fantasy games. Anyway, let's get a move on. As we walk through the entrance area, Linda seems to get a bit uneasy...  Sure thing. In fact, let's just head to Minago first!   As always, it's just across this river!  As we head to Linda's house, there's a ranger here that we can talk to. That's interesting, because, yes, there's still that whole story about how all the residents of Minago had disappeared, too. Lots of stuff going on in this game, that's for sure. Linda's house, you will recall, is in the northwest part of town, so let's go there now.   We want to head over to Linda's room, but first, in the kitchen...  Some more meat to use! We should remember to not let it spoil, as we're heading into the summer soon! All right, now up to Linda's room one floor above.  Ken sure seems to get a lot of message notifications these days! We'll listen to it on our way out of Minago shortly. But anyway, where were we...    Ken takes 15 HP damage! Ken takes 13 HP damage! Ken takes 10 HP damage! Ken takes 15 HP damage!  Another wrestling move, by the way. But, that's all for now, so it's time to head out! But, as we leave the house, Linda...  We do... And then:  Well, at least she seems to be slowly remembering bits and pieces... Heading back out, we'll pay a visit to the church. There isn't actually anything for Linda to remember there, but let's just check it out see what's inside, right?  Also... there's again that weird symbol above the door. We've already seen it in that underground area, but that stuff seemed pretty technlogically advanced, and we know that the Beastians weren't really like that when the settlers discovered them, so they probably weren't the ones who came up with it. There are many questions, and discovering the answers to those is basically what the overall plot of this game is about, of course. So we should expect it to take playing through all scenarios in order to get a complete picture, but I guess that's not a surprise. Anyway, inside.   Looks neat. Let's take the stairs.  This place is pretty big. We'll keep going upstairs.  Still climbing.   And... there's a lone ranger all the way up here that we can talk to! Oh, so the Koshikata incident everybody keeps talking to was also a Christmas-related thing and it was one of those Beastian autonomous towns too? Interesting. Since, yes, indeed, we only came to the church to talk to this guy, we'll head back out now!  On the way back down, we pass by this room containing a chest. But do you know what? The door is locked! What a surprise! Needless to say, we'll be coming back here. But for now, let's listen to that message, finally!  The message is from Nek. This is a bit clunky here, but of course there has to be some way of making sure we actually finish the plot before taking off. Otherwise we could just go right now and finish the capturing and take off, right? In any case, the ark was anyway where we were going to head next with Linda, so let's do that.   So, until now we were only really coming here to register the animals, but I'm sure it didn't escape your attention that there's that staircase going up on the right side. In fact, there are two more "decks" on the ark. So let's head up!  But, over here...  ...is a staircase leading further up!  There's a bunch of doors here (and also on the floor below), but we'll check that in a moment. For now, let's walk all the way to the other end of the ark.  On the way, we pass by this door. You might recall that at the very beginning of the game, one of the rangers hanging about the ark mentioned to us that he's built a "love nest" for Ken and Linda to live in while they travel! So, that's this room here! We can go inside...   But other than some storage and a bed, there is actually nothing here--it's completely empty! So, you might be wondering, what even is the point of this? Well, I'll tell you! Because this game definitely needs more things to do in it, this is yet another game mechanic we have not encountered so far. There is in fact... a furniture store in this game (!), and you can, well, buy stuff to equip your living quarters on the ark! We probably won't come to this until much later in the game, but actually by sheer coincidence we'll be passing by the said furniture in the next update so we'll get to at least see it even if we don't use it yet! So, we'll just continue on our way. Near the far end of the ship, there is a robot...  I see. Well, that's good to know for the future.  Ah, there's the door robot was talking about. But, as we approach the door...   Linda suddenly collapses in pain!  So I guess, Nek was telling the truth. We aren't going to be getting in there any time soon. Let's head back one floor below.  As before, it has a bunch of these "shacks". If we go into one of them...  ...we find out that that's actually where the pods are located housing the animals we've captured!  If we look at a pod, it shows us the basic stats of the animal stored in it! So it's kind of like a bestiary option, really, except you have to walk around instead of choosing from a menu! For animals not yet caught, of course, there is nothing to see. Having done this, let's head back out. It's time finally to visit Ozport!  As you might remember it's located just slightly to the north from Hardia/Ark. Here we are, it's located at P-10:   Inside, there are the usual facilities (plus some unusual ones, too). Up the escalator is the airport/shopping mall (they actually implemented the escalator fully-it's functional and you can ride on it!), but we'll do that later (i.e. next time). For now we'll explore the western part where the public park is. But first, let's talk to that guy standing in front of the animal shop.  I have no idea what he's talking about. Eggs? But he said to go in and find out, so let's?  First thing inside is the usual animal trader... That's ok, we'll be taking them with us on the ark anyway. But thanks for the info.  A bit further in is this... thing. It looks like there are eggs being incubated here, so I suppose this must be the "Big Mama" the other guy was talking about? We can find out more from that lady standing in front of the picture of an egg. And well, yes. We've found ANOTHER thing you can do in this game--growing and hatching the eggs! To be honest, this is also something we'll be exploring in a lot more detail in later scenarios, but not so much in this one most likely. For now, let's head into the park to the west.  There is a sign at the entrance: In the park are prohibited the activities which can cause nuisance to other people, such as: playing catch, lighting bonfires, etc. -- Ozport Public Park Administration Good to know. There is also a person sitting on the bench by the entrance. Inside the park, situation is not great, there are definitely vagrant tents and bonfires...  If we go inside the first tent...  If we go to the other tent next to it...  So this is a flower shop, where you can buy flowers! This is again something that we'll be talking more about later since we have no need of it at the moment. But you can see the flowers there in the back that she sells.  There is also this person here standing around by the tents... So you can give him money, but for right now it doesn't accomplish anything. And finally the tent in the top right corner.  This one is actually the equipment shop! So yeah, you might recall that there were some animal attacks named "<Something> Gas". That is what this is about--your headgear influences your defence/resistance against such attacks. He doesn't really have any useful equipment to buy, so we'll move on. Our next stop is this counter here...  ...which again has something to do with the whole egg thing! So this is actually an egg shop. It's true you can find them, but you can also buy some here, if we check out his list of stuff on sale:  So here on sale we have, from the top: smooth, rattling, lumpy, chubby, coarse, thorny, and squishy eggs! But the problem is, at least on the surface of things, you don't really know what you're going to get when it hatches! If you thought it was going to be so easy to just buy an egg of a specific animal, think again! But, as I said, this is something for much later, so for now let's continue to explore the park. Next to the egg shop, there is one more tent to explore.  Well, that's cool, but we don't need it for now. What I find more interesting is that this location (as you can see in top left corner of this screenshot) is labeled as "Mysterious Tent". I wonder why that is. Well, I'm sure we'll find out eventually. In the meantime, we'll move on to the northern side of the park, where there is this lady we can talk to.  If we go through that gap in the hedge, we can reach the tree (also, what is this, Tokimeki Memorial?).  First, let's read what's written on that sign next to the entrance: The Red Thread Cedar There is a legend that if you carve your lover's name on this tree, your love will come true. It is forbidden to unnecessarily damage this tree, because it can cause it to die. So please don't do it. -- Ozport Public Park Administration Before we check out the tree, there are a couple of people to talk to here. First this lady here, who also seems to be pregnant: What this means is, when Ken and Linda are both in the party (like now), you should definitely use the "camp" option since sometimes they will have a conversation you can't otherwise get to hear. We'll definitely do this when we're out in the field, as there are also some quite funny ones to be found! And then this guy here.  All right, well, it's time to check out the tree I guess!  Ken examined the trunk of the tree. He found, at waist height, the names of Ken and Linda written inside of a 🎔.  I guess let's do that. Ken examined the trunk of the tree. He found, at chest height, the names of Paul and Linda written inside of a 🎔.  Ken examined the trunk of the tree. He found, at eye height, the names of Ken and Sachiko written inside of a 🎔.  Ken examined the trunk of the tree. He could faintly read the names of Anne and Gene written inside of a 🎔.  This is all very silly, for sure. If we keep looking at the tree... Ken could find many names on the tree, but none which rang a bell. This is our cue to leave. But as we do...    Sure thing, but that's something that will have to wait for next time, since we've already done a lot today! And speaking of "a lot", is it just me, or does it seem to anybody else that there is enough material in this game for like 2 or 3 "normal" JRPGs of this time period? I mean it's pretty wild the amount of different things that they bothered to implement for you to be able to do! Anyway, tell me what you think, but until next time, enjoy another couple of illustrations! Today, we first start with a high resolution version of the family photo: And then a drawing of Linda in her ranger uniform: ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 22:51
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Randalor posted:And that tree scene is cute, but do both people have to be there for it to count (so Ken would have had to be with the nurse when she carved it) or was that just a thing Ken and Linda did together, while normally it's just one person who sneaks in and carves their name and their crushes name? I'm pretty sure it's implied that both people DON'T have to be there because that lady says that she has to keep coming to check if somebody had put her name there. So this would mean that the Ken & Sachiko thing was probably done by Sachiko without his knowledge or something like that, I guess. SloppyDoughnuts posted:You can get 80 animals in this scenario? When you said you needed 30 I just sort of assumed that was ALL you can get. So you can get more than required? Yeah, you can. The south area is not accesible, but most of the rest of the map is, so you can literally go and do whatever you want. The game gives you a lot of freedom in capturing how you want to do it. But in this scenario there's nothing extra to be gained by capturing more than the required 30. Booky posted:that pc engine version of the ark looks kinda.... gooey You know that's not a bad idea... I will add it to whatever update this first appears in. About the family photo, I honestly don't know, one is a scan from a book and the other is the screenshot from the game so who knows what happened in between. But this also reminded me that I forgot to show what this photo looked like in the PC Engine version, because it was actually slightly different: I'll add this too to the previous update, thanks for reminding me! ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2021 19:48
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will it get added to an update? also i like how both ken and linda are posing in their status screens 
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 Last time, Linda showed up at Ken's house, still without her memories. After a brief consultation with Ken's mum and Ben, the ranger commander, it was decided to "disguise" her as a ranger because apparently because nobody would think to look for here there! Ken and Linda then proceeded to visit several locations, in an attempt to jog her memory, and it's kind of working a bit. When we left off, they had just finished examining a tree where they carved their names as kids. Presently they are on the way to buy a 2G ring, which is the same thing Ken did back then to commemorate the ocassion. Therefore, we'll join them as they are making their way to the Ozport airport shopping mall!  And here are Ken and Linda, leaving the Ozport public park...  We'll head over to the airport and shopping mall, where there's this guy, standing in front of a "WELCOME NEOKENYA" flower bed. Presumably what they meant to say here was actually "WELCOME TO NEOKENYA", but it's close enough, I guess. This is actually even worse, because the Federation knew from the start that the time is limited before this planet is rendered uninhabitable. Yet they still continued without telling this to the settlers. Not nice.  Over here by the escalator (or, alternately, by the tent, if that's your preference), is another ranger. Hmm, that's pretty interesting, but we have no idea what he really means. We haven't even come across any flowers in the wild anyway. So let's just add this to our list of things to "remember for later". Incidentally, the tent is empty. The stairs and the escalator (which, as I already mentioned, is actually fully functional in game!) lead directly into the airport proper...  ...so we'll go over to this entrance here, which leads into the shopping mall part of the complex.  Here we go. Immediately next to the entrance is the wedding shop.  We can start by talking to this lady here who seems to be admiring the mannequins. Is it just me or do the mannequins actually look like Linda? Well, that's just... By the way, the Japanese character on the wall there next to the dresses means "congratulations"/"best wishes". It has a couple of other meanings, but I guess that's the intended one here.  To continue, there are two people working here at the counter. So, let's start with the first one. Well, let's see what's for sale here!  Hmm. So there are three things here. The middle thing (which costs 500,000 G) is a Diamond Ring. That's pretty clearly outside of our price range for now (the blue colour indicates we don't have enough money to buy this). At the bottom there is our 2G ring, in fact it's labelled as "Promotional Ring"! This is quite embarassing, but if Linda really wants it... Anyway, we'll check that in a moment. The thing at the top of the list is something named "Ziade's Ring" and it's indicated that it sells for "market value", whatever that means. But, what even is a "Ziade's Ring" and what is it for in the first place? I mean, we could try to buy it, we still have some money in the bank due to Ken's regular salary, so we won't be destitute.  Let's simply offer all the money we have. I mean what could go wrong? Oooh, what a sick burn! Well, clearly this is not happening today either (and, spoiler alert, it's NOT going to be happening in Scenario A at all--this particular mystery will have to wait until later in the game!), so we can just go ahead and buy the 2G ring, as it really does seem this the only thing which we can really afford right now. Although our "list of things we need to explore" is getting quite long at this point. As you can imagine, you're not meant to uncover/understand everything over the course of one scenario. It isn't even possible to do so, considering that one third of the map is blocked off in this scenario to begin with! A side note: You could say, we'll let's just go and grind money so we can buy the diamond ring. While this sounds good in theory, don't forget that fighting animals will also level you up, thus at some point making it impossible to actually capture those same animals, because of the overkill issue I discussed at some point. So this won't really work in a general case. Therefore, for now, as mentioned, let's simply spend the 2G on a ring that Linda anyway said is the one she wants (at least for now). So, if we buy the 2G ring... Linda puts it on... Well, no matter. Let's talk to the other salesperson here in the wedding shop. There is some geuinely clever/funny writing in this game, I have to say. Anyway, what is for sale here:  The 5000G item is a "engagement gift set", but it's a mostly useless item so we're not going to worry about buying it right now. The other thing is a "luxury wedding dress" which again sells for "market value". If we try to buy that second one with all our money... Yeah, so... at this point we'll just move on! Our next stop is...  ...the furniture store! I told you there was one here! The Japanese text on the banners says "Interior Shop". There are two ladies working here, so let's start by talking to the one on the left. Well, let's just see what you have for sa...  ...aaaaah, look at those prices! Are they actually serious! No, I don't think we'll be buying anything here today. But, IF we had the money, we could buy stuff like a double bed for 110,000G, or a wardrobe for 45,000 or a coffee table for 10,000 or a reproduction of a Rousseau painting for 40,000. Presumably the Rousseau here is Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), a post-impressionist famous for his paintings of jungle animals, so that surprisingly fits with the theme of our game. Also, I know you're curious, the 800,000G item is a rotating bed. Either way, we're way too poor for any of this, but don't worry, the time will come! We can also talk to the second lady working here at the furniture store... Here, there is a whole other set of items to buy:  The prices are slightly more affordable and here we have things like a kitchen cupboard for 20,000 or a pair of bookshelves for 30,000 or even a stuffed lion for 30,000G. Anyway, we'll move on for now. One thing I should mention is that because this town is just a few steps away from Hardia, the game expects that you might visit here pretty early on, so there are a few people here who give you early-game tutortials. However, this is all stuff we already know by now, so unless they say something really interesting and/or funny, I'll simply skip them here. We're here a bit late in the proceedings, but that's only because there's no real reason to come here until Linda is back with us, but of course, if you're playing the game for the first time and simply exploring, then it's likely you'll stumble here early on.  We'll stop briefly at this counter. This is your typical "general store" consumable/item shop.  One interesting item in their inventory is the "Air Free Pass" for 28,000G. As you might guess, this allows you to use the Bird Line for free after you buy it! This is also something to consider for later, but right now we don't have the money, or, honestly, the need for it.  Over here in the corner is the butcher. Also, from now on, if you see some chests on the screen and I don't mention anything, just assume that they are behind a locked door, ok? So we'll move over next door to the equipment shop!  The warning against over-leveling as we are already aware. Kind of a nice way to incorporate an "anti-grind" measure directly as part of the plot! The "destroyed" animals, don't even give EXP, either! (Funnily enough, though, we ARE going to do just a small bit of grinding today after all!) And so, luckily this is not a video LP, because at this point I spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling around with what equipment I want to buy and/or equip for Ken and Linda. Since we have quite a few earthworms from Ken's adventure at the dig site, we can craft some equipment. First I make earthworm goggles for Ken as headgear. This increases his defence to 198:  And then, earthworm clothes for Linda:  This gives her some nice defensive bonuses. Linda, by the way, starts with Rabbit equipment (Ken started with Squirrel equipement originally). Then I also make earthwork goggles for Linda too, for a further defensive bonus:  This brings her defence finally to 142. And now, I spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out who should use what weapon, even considering to make an earthworm whip. But it's a normal weapon that hits one enemy only, and the increase in power is not worth almost 3,000G that it costs to make. So I give up on that idea. Finally, this is what I end up with. I give Linda Ken's jellyfish needle, which takes her attack power to 144 (although it only hits one enemy):  And Ken goes back to his old swallow cutter, which, while its attack power is slightly lower, has the amazing benefit of hitting all enemies in front of him. So this is what he ends up with:  So his attack power goes down to 207, but as mentioned the fact that it hits all enemies is worth it. Finally, we can also talk to the other person here at the equipment shop: Yes, equipment breaking is definitely a thing in this game. Again, something we'll cover when it actually happens. I do sell some of starting equimpment here that we're definitely not going to need, though. And finally, after spending way too much time here, let's keep going left.  Over here we can read the sign. Winter Lottery Winning Numbers Announcement 1st Prize (100,000G): No. 4089 2nd Prize (50,000G): No. 4090, 4088 3rd Prize (10,000G): No. 9804 4th Prize (1,000G): No. *086 5th Prize (100G): No. **87 Valid for redemption only this Spring! I'm sure nobody's surprised any more at this point that still more new things pop up that you can do in this game, and, well, lottery is one of them. We can talk to the guy at the counter next to the sign to find out more! Our next stop is the bank.  First, let's talk to the guy here. Ummm, I'm not sure about that, but you do you, Yamada.  Checking out Ken's bank book, we find out that his salary has gone up to 1,400G this Spring. Still, considering the prices, that's pretty much nothing (as most characters are happy to point out), so the money does have to be earned in other ways. Usually this is by selling animals, so again there is a balancing act between having enough money to function in this world and not being overleveled at the same time. Still, we seem to be doing ok on both fronts for now, so I guess we should just continue with what works then? As mentioned, the woman sitting on the right is "Miss Maki", so let's see what she has to say.  We can go around to the back where the bank offices are, although there is a sign on the wall which says: "No unauthorised persons beyond this point!".  There are two guys here. So let's start with the first one... And the other guy... Funny, but I happen to spy...  ...some actually accessible chests here! And there's three of them too! Let's see what they contain. The left one...  The right one...  And finally, the middle one...  So, uh, I guess we got three tissues? But what are they for?  I mean, here they are, right in our inventory (I've highlighted one) and it seems they can be sold for the whole 1G? Hmmm. We'll see. Incidentally, in the PC Engine version, there was only one chest and therefore only one tissue to be found:  All right, well, if we go back to the furniture shop...  ...there is this staircase leading down next to it. As we get down...   Down here, we have a bar but I'm not going to drink anything as having too much affects you with the "lost" status effect, which is annoying!  Also here is an information desk with a person in a bunny suit. Interesting. Also, you can just see a couple of chests in that storage room, but, well... you know.  As mentioned, over here really is the casino with slot machines and a roulette table. We can talk to the roulette guy. Surprisingly, being able to gamble in a casino is NOT one of this game's mechanics! Or, perhaps not so surprising when you consider that Japan has pretty strict gambling laws and casinos are not generally legal. So I suppose maybe they just didn't want to put it in the game. Also the waitress here: And well, for now that's all we can do down here. We'll head back up, trying not to get too annoyed about that chest in the locked room there. I didn't mention that this is not simply a matter of finding a "key". You need for each room to find a SPECIFIC key that opens only that room!  We'll go by the bank and take this staircase up...  This leads to the VIP Rooms. But there is a few people here and we can just go into the rooms to talk to them!  Like so. If there's one thing that you learn quickly in this game, it's that nothing is random and even for the most mundane things, there will be some in-universe justification why they are the way they are. Lots of attention to detail that you don't often see.  Most of the rooms are empty, but on the other end, there is another person. He's talking about the ticket for using the Bird Line instead of walking through that tunnel that we've used many times. Considering that you can actually see the enemies on the map, I don't think it's that bad, but... We'll take that staircase right outside the room...  This brings us to another floor with rooms, with a couple more people to talk to.  Like this lady here. Ah, right, it's been a while since we visited Eterna... Perhaps it might be an idea to go there soon again, especially now that Linda is with us? Further down the hall is the actual reception desk of the hotel...  That santa there just collects donations for the refugees, so we'll again go up the stairs.  Here, there is a person on the rooftop! Basically telling us that running consumes HP only on the overworld map and dungeons, but not inside towns or tunnels. If we go back down, there are some more rooms here...   In this one, there's a boy we can talk to. Maybe this is something we should try visiting? Anyway, let's make our way back all the way out.  We are now at the top of that escalator we saw at the beginning. As always, we'll talk to the person.  Ah, here is the emitter. So let's head in through the glass door.  This brings us into the actual airport part of this whole complex. First let's read the sign on the wall! Milky Way, the last paradise! The nature is waiting for you! --Neo-Kenya Travel Just an outdated advertisement, it seems.  Additionally, there are people here. First the lady at the desk. And then the other person, sitting at the computers.  Here by the transporter pad, there is a technician.  Let's use the transporter.  As mentioned, it takes us up to the orbital satellite Ozsat. Of course, we're here mostly to talk to people at this point. For example the person sitting at the desk.  Over here there are two more people. First, the woman sitting at the computer: You don't say. Well, that's definitely going to be worth looking into once we have some time to actually explore this planet in detail. The technician: Going back to the person sitting at the desk, we'll take the staircase that was there.  This leads us to a whole other area on the satellite. I'm pretty sure those beds have restraints simply because of low gravity, though.  We can talk to this lady here. Well, tehcnically we didn't, but...  And another person over here. No idea who that message is from, but yes, as time passes we can hear different messages for Ken and Linda here. So we might visit from time to time. If we pass through that door on the "north" wall, we go into a hallway...   ...which ultimately leads to another person! And in the observation area...  We're done here for now, so we'll head back to the transporter pad...   ...and return back to the planet surface!  We take this staircase down...  ...which brings us to another kind of "waiting" area at the airport. Let's have a chat with this lady. And the other guy. And finally the woman sitting at the desk behind... We can't actually see him on the screenshot, but if we move a little bit...  There he is. I can see why he may look intimidating. Well, that was not particularly englightening... But in any case, we continue by taking that staircase down.  And that takes us to this area, where we can talk to the lady at the information desk...  Next to her, there is some kind of thing. If we read the sign... ☆Neo-Kenya: One Hundred Years of Progress☆ An introduction to Neo-Kenya, from its discovery to the present day, in an easy-to-understand format! One hundred years of progress is all it's going to get too, so this is a bit ironic. Unfortunately, we can't look at the exhibit more closely, which is a shame, as that would have been interesting. No matter, we'll discover all of this planet's secrets ourselves soon enough. But not exactly in this scenario, though.  This guy is sitting at the bar... Yeah, so I'm not going to be buying anything to drink anyway. You can restore HP by buying a drink, but why do that when a camp will do it for free? Anyway, this was all a relaxing walk/sightseeing, but now is the time to get back to work again. So, let's head outside!  We'll need to do soon a bit more hunting, and Linda is still only at level 3! So we need to take care of that a little bit. For that purpose we'll head through the west-east tunnel and then due south east in order to make our way to Marblepolis.   Inside, I figure we might as well make camp for the night, in order to restore everybody HP and so on.  So I set everybody to "sleep" and set up camp. But there is a bit of a difference this time: when Ken and Linda are together, when you make camp, they will often have a short conversation. Such is the case today, too. And so, next morning...  ...if we check our inventory, we find out that one of our three tissues apparently got used overnight. It used to be right there where there is now an empty spot. Well anyway, we have a thing we came here to do, and that is to level up Linda. This can be done pretty quickly by fighting earthworms, since they usually come in large groups and give a pretty good chunk of EXP. So Linda will pretty much be gaining a level after each battle for a while!  It goes pretty much as expected, but if you want to see it all in action, I have put a video below which shows a bit of dungeon traversal and a battle with a bunch of earthworms. To explain a bit. Everyone's attacks go in order of their speed, including our two dogs, so nothing unusual there. Near the end of the battle, one of our dogs runs away (as I already explained before that it can happen here). After the battle is done, Ken goes up to level 21 and Linda to level 10. You can also see that after the battle Ken is flashing orange--this indicates some kind of adverse condition. You can go into the "party condition" menu option to see, but there I find out that the only problem is that Linda is very low on HP, which I solve by giving her one of those tablets. Anyway, level 10 is enough for now, so we head out, but unfortunately there is one unavoidable battle in a narrow passage, so Linda gains another level there. And so, here is where we are after all this:  That should be ok for the time being, I think. The closest town is Hospico, so let's head there for a bit.  First of all, we go to the animal trader...  Because, as it turns out between this and previous visit to Marblepolis, we have collected quite a quantity of earthworms:  Yes. That's 47 males and 35 females, no joke. So I sell all of that, which results in a pretty nice sum of money.  That says 48,107 G, yes. So we should be set financially for a good while for sure. Another thing I do here is buy a rescue beacon from the Bird Line shop. As mentioned, it allows us to be picked up from anywhere in the world. So we might use it to save time at some point, or something. When we are already here, let's just check in quickly with Sachiko...  Today, she is here at the nurses station.  Ugh, she keeps saying these odd things and I'm never sure if I should take her seriously or not! And, well at this point, as I'm walking around the map, the game decides that it's time for Summer of 1992 to begin!  There is exactly seven years left and also seven species to still collect. I hope everyone enjoyed taking a bit of a break, but in our next episode it's time to do some hunting and to pick up the plot again! Today we have another typically silly one from the PC Engine times: ...and also a sketch which looks like an advertisement for the game or something: ("Coming Soon!") ivantod fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2021 23:32
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Odd Wilson posted:The concept art continues to be great, though Ken never seems to catch a break. If you like the illustrations, then you might want to check out the two "Cannabis Works" books by this game's illustrator/character designer/cutscene director Tatsuyuki Tanaka. They have lots of other works besides those related to this particular game:  
ivantod fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 16, 2021 |
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Nov 16, 2021 20:15
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Robindaybird posted:Wait, he's one of the key animators for Akira - no wonder I kept thinking the style looks familiar. Yep, that's him! He worked on Akira and also a whole bunch of other well known animes from that time period like "Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water" and others. For Linda Cube he basically did also all the cutscene storyboards/direction and character design and other stuff.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:55
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SloppyDoughnuts posted:If you get all the animals required for a scenario can you just gently caress off and get on the ark or do you HAVE to wait until the time limit is coming to an end/the plot says you can? You cannot leave until the plot says so. Remember how we went to the ark control room and Linda started convulsing in pain because Nek set some kind of thing up there. We can only leave after that situation is cleared up via the plot progression. At that point, we're mostly free to finish capturing the remaining species and take off with the ark at our own leisure, but not before. But no worries, as I mentioned, over the course of the game we aren't always going to be so tightly restrained by the plot.
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Nov 24, 2021 22:41
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 Previously, Ken and Lind had a bit of a wander around Ozport, where the main airport was related. Today we'll definitely continue a bit with the hunting, since that's been somewhat neglected for a little while. Also, it's time to start picking up the plot threads once again! To start with, since Nek keeps appearing in a Santa suit, it might be interesting to head over to Eterna with Linda and have a chat with Elizabeth about that.  This is actually an entirely optional scene, and it's pretty easy to miss, too! Namely, you will recall that we've been told that we're free to visit here whenever we want, but that she may be busy and not be able to meet us. So I ended up having to try going back and forth a few times, until finally she was available for a chat!  As always, we want to go through all three of these, so let's start with the first. A joke here, but not one easy to translate into English. The point is that she is spelling it out from katakana into latin letters, but also the fact that "neko" means "cat" in Japanese. Whether she's just pretending to not get it, or if something else is afoot, we'll have to figure out later. Let's move on to the next one. Ah, yes, that old story about how Elizabeth has managed to retain her looks even at an advanced age.   And, as always, Panheim crawls out from under the table! Ken receives from Dr. Panhein medication "Binbin A". This guy... keeps giving us different pills every time we visit! If you're wondering about the name "Binbin", it's one of those typical Japanese "onomatopeic" adjectives, this one describes something kind of strong or loud, like music or a headache. It is, also, a slang for "erection". Considering also, that the effect of using this item in battle is a random increase of all stats (same as the previous one we got), I think it's safe to say that he's trying to peddle variations on the Viagra pills if you ask me. In any case, we're ready to go.  Heading out, I think it's time to capture a few more species, don't you?  Over here in that big lake just south of Eterna, which is now not frozen because it's Summer, we can find...  ...a bunch of hippos! This is one of the designs which haven't changed a huge amount since the PC Engine version:  Incidentally, while wading through the lake, Ken receives a message notification. We'll sort that out in a moment, but first more hunting.  Here's another species which we can find in the lake...   This one is a bit more obvious (although I still think it looks awesome!). Of course, we have here a pair of turtles! Nothing too unusual ability-wise, but definitely very high HP, so just need to be a bit careful there. In fact, we're probably a bit underleveled for these guys, especially Linda! There is actually here one other species which we can find during the summer...  These are tree frogs. But as you can see on the screenshot, they are all males. In fact, in this general area of the northern lake, it's basically impossible to find any females. Both males and females appear in another location, so whenever it happens that we run into both sexes, we'll talk more about them. For now they are not of any use to us, as in order to hand them in at the ark, we have to have at least one male and one female. In any case, we'll do some more hunting later today, but right now let's head back up to Eterna and listen to the new message!  The message is actually from a person we haven't had a chance to meet yet! Here it is: Hmmm, the plot thickens. What does he want now? Only one way to find out: we'll take the Bird Line to Paraside and talk to him. Paraside, as you might remember, is that half finished junk town. Notable things you can find there is the guy who "disassembles" animals, and also hunters for hire.  Here we are. Before we go and find Hume, we'll do the usual "tour of the town", which for Paraside we haven't had a chance to do yet! To begin with, let's talk to this guy standing in front of the hotel. We have in fact already talked to this guy last time we came here! Let's head into the hotel.  Well, ok, but we probably won't be staying either. Next is the gentleman on the sofa. This story about a phantom beast in a blizzard was definitely mentioned to us before... but, we have barely scratched the surface of this game, so we'll just have to be patient until we have a chance to get to the bottom of this. In the end I decide to stay over just to fully refresh our HP and everything else. So here's where we're at right now:  As you can see, Linda is catching up pretty nicely. This is good as we'll be catching some relatively tougher animals later today.  For now, though, let's head to the butcher shop which is right next to the hotel.  So there will be some tutorial messages still here too. We mostly already know this stuff so I'll skip some of the less interesting ones. Now let's talk to the other guy here in the shop.  Our next stop is the dog shop, which for some reason in this town has both a MAN and a DOG sign outside! We'll find out in a second why that is.  Starting with the person on the right... Ok, that's pretty funny. the "human" doctor is simply indicated with the "MAN" sign. The other person here simply reminds us to bring here an injured dog so it can be fixed.  On the other side of the building, by the dog pen, there are two more people. First the woman standing by the sink... If dog is knocked out in battle (0 HP) then you have to bring them here to be healed, but usually at very low HP they will on their own run away and leave the battle. They will, however, be available again for the next one, so this is not a big issue. We have anyway already experienced that when fighting earthworms. There are some animals where you have to be a bit more careful about your dogs, but we'll see more on that topic next time! The ranger standing there by the wall:  Outside of MAN/DOG shop, there's this person...  We continue our tour of the town with this person... Well, we've heard this before about Hume. But who is this Gomez person now? Spoiler: we'll find out in just a few moments!  Back over here, there are also a couple of people sitting on pipes by the fire. This seems kind of inconsequential, but actually remember this comment for later (not today though)! The other guy:  Ok, enough of that, let's finally head inside, into the famous "Junk Palace", which is apparently built like a maze inside!  The first thing we find is an animal trader. Yeah, this Gomez seems to be some kind of a celebrity around these parts... The ranger standing there gives us another, pretty literal bit of tutorial: Again, this is something we already know, the different "elemental" resistances shown on the screen where you equip the weapons and clothes.  Now let's talk to this lady here. Does it have something to do with that performance enhancing drug that all hunters seem to be talking about as "good old days"?  And finally one last person in the immediate area. I still love it how this game always makes sure to give "in-world" explanations for its technical limitations, such as the fact that all animals of the same species use the exact same sprites, but might have a varying level which drives their HP, attack and defence! Next we'll head up those stairs.  Here we have like a bar area. First let's talk to the guest sitting at the table. The waitress:  After going past the bar, we'll take this staircase up to the third floor.  First, let's quickly chat with this person sitting on the bed... Turns out, Linda's parents are divorced! Anyway, heading into the big room...  ...this is actually where all the hunters for hire are hanging about! We'll talk to all of them in order, starting with the one standing next to the staircase! So I decide to pay this guy 2000 G and see what we can get out of it. We're told to come back in winter to find out the result of his hunt! Luckily, it's now summer, so winter is not too far away. Let's try to remember to stop by here at some point! Next, let's talk to the guy standing by the table. I hand over another 2000 G to this guy, and am told again to come back in winter. Let's see what he comes up with. Next is the person leaning against the wall... This is actually kind of interesting, as escaping from a battle is not so easy in this game, since Ken has to first let Linda go and only then can he go himself! Of course, when he's on his own, then he can just escape directly. Again I hand over another 2000 G to this guy too like the previous. Finally the last one, standing by the counter. This guy turns out to be a bit more expensive, so I hand over 5000 G. Let's see if it's going to be worth it.  With our hunters hired, let's now talk to the person standing in the centre of the room.  You have a portrait. Sure. Unfortunately, this guy is quite expensive, so I decide not to hire him at this time. We'll exit this room through the southern door, which brings us over to this staircase:  The person on the bed there on the right is actually Hume, Linda's father. We'll be back here shortly, don't worry!  Down the stairs, there are a few more people to talk to, and also what seems to be a "mini-church" with that mysterious Beastian symbol.  First in this room, there are two people. The first person gives us a bit of (obvious) tutorial... Obviously, monsters with "elemental" affinity result in elemental weapons, but that's more situational really. Also, you have so many other tools at your disposal (including elemental abilities), that I'm not sure how useful this really is. Anyway, the guy sitting on the bed has more interesting things to say...  In the room down here, there's another person. Indeed, keeping watch is one of the things you can do during a camp, in addition to things like sleep, process meat and so on. Why this matters, we'll find out over the course of the game.  And one last person here, before we go and talk to Hume... I guess what he means that those separate numbers 1-7 are the ones which drive your resistance to elemental attacks. But, of course those are still not absolute numbers, and they do depend on the difference in levels between you and the enemy. It just means that you can have physical defence as high as you want, if your elemental resistance is low, then it's not going to help. So basically what is called magic defence in some other games here is split into several different stats, one for each type of "element".  Actually, I forgot this counter here, which is the hotel reception. We mostly figured this one out on our own. And now for real, let's go and talk to Hume.  As mentioned, he's the somewhat large guy lying on bed in this room here.  And one last bit before we leave...  Well, that was kind of funny, but it also explains how Linda managed to escape from Nek and get to Ken's house. We'll catch up with him soon enough, but for now there are a couple more things to do around Paraside. (By the way, I just love that name "Paraside". It just fits with the overall vibe of the game.) First of all, if we take that staircase next to Hume, we get to this room:  Here we find one of those Beastian priests/shamans, or whatever they are... Presumably this is the crazy hacker elder that was mentioned before, who broke into Federation's databases?  That was quite weird. But we need more information before we can figure out what he's talking about. Now we'll make our way all the way back down to the first floor.  There we are faced with this individual. And he let's us through! Well, I was never going to pay him 100 G, especially since you can get to that spot also from the other side of the building, but I thought it was just a random funny bit, in a game which, admittedly, has a fair few of those!  Anyway, here are the equipment shops, but all they have to offer are some fairly low-level tutorial comments, so we'll just walk past them.  I do want to stop by the bank before we move on, though. I don't forget to withdraw the money, especially since Ken again got another salary in the meantime.  I think I might have forgotten to mention this, but if you keep your money in the bank, it does in fact earn interest as you can see above (it's the 42 G payment). It's pretty small, only 3%, so it's not going to help you a whole lot, though. It is, like everything else in this game, paid once every season. All right, now we can leave the Junk Palace. As we exit...  Well, it was explained before that Linda is a child from a marriage of a human man and a Beastian woman, and she certainly seems to have taken her looks from her mothers side, so this is not too surprising. Now, we have one last place to visit here... the animal disassembler!   So, today, we'll disassemble some of our extra hippos. By disassembling a male hippo, we get the following items: - some carrion (we'll need this soon!) From a couple of female hippos, we get the following: - ill fitting shoes - torn clothes But you might be wondering what even are these last two items? As the names might suggest, they are in fact pieces of equipment that you can wear. So if we try, for example, to equip the "ill fitting shoes" on Ken:  We find out that they give even lower stats than his starting "squirrel slippers". So, in the end, these are just useless items honestly (I guess they are supposed to be the remains of someone who was eaten by an animal), but there's a bit more here. All equipment/weapons in this game is strictly tied to a particular species of animal, right? They all have names like "<species_name> <equipment_name>". But these don't have such a name. So, what gives? Well, you can poke around the save file a bit and hack things in a bit, in order to find out how this was actually implemented in the game! Here, we'll continue with the update, but if you want to read a short bit about the technical side of how these items are implemented in the game, check out the "Extras" section at the end! But for now, let's exit the shop...  There is a guy here, but he just collects donations. There IS in fact some consequence to donating the money, but again this is one of those things that we don't need to concern ourselves with just now.  In the mean time, on the back wall there are various graffiti and stuff. Like here: ｜の の ゛ ｜ も ｜ へ ／ Is that supposed to be a drawing of a cat? I'm not sure.  To those who know Masaki Ooki from from Amagasaki, Hyougo prefecture: I will be going to Kagoshima. Are you doing well, Masaki? Well, these are all places in Japan, but of course there's no Japan in this game, since there's no Earth. I'm sure this is some kind of in-joke, but not sure what about. I looked through the credits and didn't see this name there. So your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, more graffiti:  To you who is urinating right now at this wall here: don't forget that you're holding the future of humanity in your hands. Also, warning: this game contains strong language (joking, but check out the left side of the wall!).  There's a Santa behind you! Ok, that's the last (and the creepiest) one! After having done this, we do have time to do a bit more hunting, which will also allow me to demonstrate another game mechanic at the same time. I think this species is worth catching because it's one of the more ridiculous animal designs! But anyway, in order to catch it, we do need to descend into an underground dungeon. We could of course take the Bird Line to the nearest town and then walk over there. But if you have lots of money, why walk? You might remember that the Bird Line also offers another service, which allows you to be dropped off (and picked up) anywhere on the map, within the current area! The location I want is actually in the West Area, so we first need to travel to a town there. So let's pick Battle Park, it's as good as any.  Once there, if we go to the Bird Line counter, and select the Shoot Service...  ...we are literally presented with the map, where we can freely chose which coordinate we wish to be dropped off at! We'll be going to C-12, which I've already highlighted. As you can see, you can only select a coordinate within the current area, hence the need to first travel to Battle Park, since Paraside is in the East area.  And just like that, we're dropped off at that exact spot!  You might already notice the cave entrance on the mountainside in the top left corner, and in fact that's where we're headed! Let's have a brief look at another dungeon and increase our species count by 1 at the same time!  This place is called Urma and, as before, we are not going to explore too deeply at this particular time, we are mostly here to catch a few animals of a cool loking species!  Walking through the cave, we soon run into some creatures... maybe you already have an idea what species this is?  Up close, we can easily(?) tell that this is simply a pair of tigers. I mean what else could they be, they have the orange and black stripes, right? But seriously, please don't ask me to try and explain what in the world is going on with their anatomy! But I have to say, this is probably my favourite design of all the species we've seen so far! So these guys are kind of tough, they have strong attack and defence and also their HP is nothing to sneeze at (high defence unfortunately also means that our dogs won't be doing much damage to them)--although strangely they don't have otherwise much in the way of abilities, they mostly rely on brute strength. So you do need to be careful. Luckily they only appear in small groups of 1-3 animals typically, which makes them perfect candidates to use Linda's "Cobra Twist" skill. Basically she will hold one enemy in a "wrestling chokehold" so that they are unable to act. Obviously, Linda is also unable to act during this time, but it does leave Ken able to deal with other 1-2 enemies in the meantime, while our party takes overall less damage than it otherwise would. This is especially useful right now, when Linda is at a lower level and can't deal as much damage, nor does she have a "all-hit" weapon. I haven't found a definitive info, but basically the chokehold status lasts all the way until the enemy is defeated. Of course, Ken will also be mostly transforming into a dolphin, for a huge increase in damage--with these guys you really do need as much power as you can get. Because I forgot to mention that tigers can also heal and buff themselves. Also they can and do dodge our attacks, too. Yeah. You might notice also the high price they sell for--this is because of the protected animal designation, therefore the normal animal dealers won't buy them. We'll have to see if we find someone who will. Incidentally, here's what the tigers used to look like in the PC Engine version:  You will probably agree with me that this definitely one of the cases where better resolution and colour depth of the PlayStation console has resulted in a much improved look!  Anyway, as we walk through the cave, we go past a staricase in order to open a chest (or in this case a crate!). Ken found Champions Belt! This is another of those battle arena items that can be sold to that guy in Battle Park who never seems to actually be there. I have been checking, believe me, but so far no luck! After this we can head down the stairs.  Another staircase up...  And another crate... but this one unfortunately contains no items, only tigers. Like in older Final Fantasy games, it just triggers a battle. But unlike those games, enemies in this one drop neither items nor money when defeated, you only earn EXP.  And, as always, as we are wandering around this cave, Ken gets a message notification! It's time to exit this dungeon!  Before we exit, I thought I should show you this... Like on the overworld, our navigation device works in dungeons too--it actually shows us the map of the current floor/area of the dungeon we're in! That's pretty wild, actually. Ok, now let's exit.  Here I activate that rescue beacon I bought last time...  ...get picked up by a bird...  ...and finally we get dropped of directly in Battle Park, where we started from! That's pretty convenient, I have to say! Before we finish our journey for today, let's just listen to that message!  The message is from Nek! So, there's our next plot pointer! Before we finish, here is where our characters are right now:  As you can see, Linda has completely caught up in levels and also while she was leveling up in that cave she also learned the ability to tame wolves and also dolphins, which means that both of those species can now become members of our party in those two extra slots! That's about it for today, and if you're interested, please keep reading to get some more info about those weird useless weapons and equipment we found earlier.  So, here's a bit more detail about those items. I mentioned that in general all weapons and clothes are tied to a particular animal species, so the question was which exact species do these items belong to. Turns out, none that you can actually catch in the game, but by some clever hacking of a save file, we can find out that there is actually a partially implemented "human" species in the game:  On the screenshot above, we see in Ken's TransCargo backpack 7 human males and 4 females!  You can even bring to the animal trader, and try to sell them--but they sell for exactly 0 G!  Like any species, they can also be transformed into meat. It costs 0 G to do so.  And, finally, like any other species they can also be transformed into weapons. In this case the weapon you get is called "Bone Remains".  Also, they can be transformed into equipment too--these are the items we've already seen earlier: "Torn Clothes", "Tattered Cap" and "Ill-fitting Shoes". As you can see, both the weapons and clothes have terrible stats. So this is kind of interesting, because there's definitely no capturing humans, processing them into meat or anything like that in the game itself (neither in the remake nor in the PC Engine original), so it's not clear why this is all even implemented, unless they had to do it to be able to have those equipment items in the game in the first place--it may not have been possible to have a "just a weapon" without it needing to be tied to a particular species. But in any case, there it is. The first illustration for today is actually the same one that we already saw last time in PC Engine version--but the illustrator actually did another version in the PlayStation era: And then we also have some concept art of Hume: ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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Nov 26, 2021 00:04
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Odd Wilson posted:So, weirdly, I know what this is somehow. It's Henohenomoheji. From what I understand, it's kinda just a goofy face. I don't know if it's got any long history like "Kilroy was here", but there it is. Huh, I had no idea, that's pretty intesting, thanks! I guess they had to simplify it a bit in the game since there is only three rows of text available in the text box.
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Nov 26, 2021 01:09
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SloppyDoughnuts posted:Does the japanese make it clear if his name is Hoo May or Hyoom? If you mean how it's spelled in Japanese, then it's: ヒューム (Hyuu-mu).
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Nov 26, 2021 23:04
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Last time, Ken and Linda explored Paraside for a bit and then checked in with her fathere, Hume, who seems not to be doing too well, especially as he's still quite hung up on his ex-wife, Linda's mother. After that, some tigers were caught for our collection, and then Ken got a message from Nek to meet him in Koshikata, for a little "game" in Koshikata, as he put it. After tiger hunting, we used the Bird Line pickup and so were returned exactly at the place we started from, which is Battle Park.  And so, here we are. Nothing else to do, but head over to Koshikata, and luckily, Battle Park is actually the closest town to it (yes, I planned this!).  As before, to reach Koshikata, we'll simply take the western tunnel out of Battle Park.  You might remember that there is a "Rent-A-Animal" office at the other end of the tunnel. But this person here has something intersting to say! In fact, I do have some rotten meat which I got last time from disassembling hippos, but I'm definitely not throwing it away since I actually want to attract hyenas so I could capture them. Hyenas do indeed only appear when you carry rotten meat on you, so it seems that the ones from Neo-Kenya are also the scavenger kind of sort. Before we head out, just one thing. Someone commented previously how on the menu screen the characters are making a pose:  Actually, if you press R1 or L1 button on the controller, you can change the display so you can get a look at the portraits in their full glory, like so:  So that's pretty cool (in a game full of fun/cool little touches literally everywhere!). Oh, in case you are wondering why I suddenly have more money than last time, it's because the dude in Battle Park finally decided to show up and buy my Champions Belt for 10,000G! Anyway, let's head out and capture a few hyenas while we walk to Koshikata.  If you have carrion with you, they will even come to you, no need to chase!  Hilarious. They usually show up in very large groups, so it's not uncommon to encounter 10 or more of them in one battle. If you look carefully at the bottom right battlefield display on the screenshot above, you can see that I have indeed encountered 10 of them here. They can be a little bit of a problem to capture, actually, but not because they are particularly strong--if anything, it's the opposite. They are quite weak, and it can be a bit difficult to not "overkill" them at the level that we are. In addition, as soon as one of them suffers a lot of damage, most of the others will immediately run away. Hence the fact that they come in groups 10+ doesn't actually matter because after 1-2 turns most of them will run away anyway. Therefore I employ the following tactic: transform Ken into a rat (which lowers his attack, but greatly increases speed) and then use one of the elmental abilities that hyenas are not weak to (e.g. gale cutter). In this way, you should be able to lower your damage enough to the point that you can actually capture them--it may still take a couple of tries to do this without them running away, but it's not too bad. Note also that I have temporarily removed dogs from the party, because they definitely do too much damage at this point and I can't really control it. Anyway, with this done, we can proceed to Koshikata, the abandoned Beastian town (whose mayor it seems, was Ken and Nek's actual father).  Here we are. I should probably mention that "koshikata" in Japanese means "past", both in the sense of time and also in the sense of a place that you went past. Let's head in--by the way, you might want to remember to put the dogs back in your active party at this point.  The place certainly looks abandoned. But our gaze is drawn to the left...  ...where we have one of those elaborate Beastian churches...  ...on top of whose bell tower, there seems to be a Santa, waiting for us. Well, let's head inside and find him, since that's clearly Nek.  There are some wolves roaming around, but they don't attack us, so that's good.  So we'll start going up to the bell tower.  Man, what IS it with this game and chests?  Anyway, we're heading up.  And up, while desperately trying to not pay attention to that chest there...   And after a few more steps, finally we reach the place where Nek is standing:   His "friends"? He can't possibly be talking about... wolves? He goes away.  Yes, Linda, but now we need to go! We go back the way we came, but by the time we're down from the bell tower, the three bells have rung, and...  ...wolves are no longer docile.  But that's totally ok! It gives us a chance to collect another species on our way to 30! There's honestly not that much to say here. They are pretty easy at the level we are, and I really haven't been doing any grinding--it's really not ever necessary or even really useful in this game, as we already know. The wolves can buff themselves and all that, but still they don't pose a huge threat. One last interesting thing to note is that, not unexpectedly, they have mostly the same abilities as dogs.  Getting to the ground floor, probably the easiest way is to go around the back   ...and finally take a side exit!  We make our way to the main entrance... only to be confronted by Nek, again.  Linda sounds quite listless here... She moves over to Nek's side.  He and Linda exit the stage...  ...and Ken quickly finds himself surrounded by dogs! However shall we get out of this one? No problem, because help appears just in the nick of time:   Well, ok. Let's stop for a second and see where we are. Clearly we've lost Linda again, but we do now have Hume in our party:  Or like this, if you want to take a look at the picture properly:  So he has fixed stats that you see there, doesn't level up, and you can't change his equipment either, and also he has no BP and therefore no special abilities that he can use--therefore, brute force attacks are his thing. Luckily he's pretty much at the level where we need him to be and also has relatively higher HP for his level (but he's a pretty large fellow so that's not unexpected anyway). So we should be able to make do temporarily, until we recover Linda, at least. All right, well, there's nothing really to be done here any more, so let's at least make our way back to Battle Park and regroup there.  On the way back, Ken gets a message notification! We'll check that shortly.  Let's hear the message. It's from Ben!  All right, let's head back to Hardia, it has been a while! As usual we'll take the mountain tunnel southeast of Battle park...  ...which drops us off just a bit north of Hardia and the ark. So, let's visit Ken's mum first!  Nek is pretty crazy, huh? But also, on this topic check out at the end the concept art section! I don't feel we were particulary reassuring there... but nonethless, time is of the essence so we head to the Ranger HQ next to talk to Ben.  Commander gives Ken a radio-receiver.   You know what, let's just go. But we get stopped.  You know what, let's just go. But we get stopped.  You know what, let's just go. Not having any other ideas right now, we'll just head out and see what the receiver will tell us.  In order to use the receiver...  ...we just go to the item menu and use it as any other normal item. It shows us the world map like this:  The position of Linda (and Nek) is indicated by a small circle. Curiously, as you can see, currently the circle is pointing at the ark itself! So I guess let's go there and see?  Oh, there they are! I mean, if they're twins, that makes sense sort of.  Nek and Linda go inside.   Uh, now what? Well, I know that we should be chasing Nek down, buuuuuuuuuuuut... there's also another place we could pay a quick visit to.  Obviously we're going to go and see Elizabeth again. The following scene is, like last time, entirely optional. Also like last time, it might take a few tries until she actually decides to see you. Anyway, here we go, hold on to your hats!  It really hasn't been that long, actually. But ok. I'm pretty sure she's just playing dumb. Let's see what happens now! And the last thing...  Uh, ok, I guess let's leave. Like I said, now that we've done this, let's head all the way outside and check our receiver:  So, it looks like Nek and Linda are now in Ozport. Is he using the ark to make a tour of this planet, or what is going on here? Well, anyway, let's head to Ozport--I mean it makes sense, there's a wedding shop there.  First, let's check out the park again.  This lady has something new to say... Ah, we better check the tree, then!  Ken examined the bark of the Red Thread Cedar tree. Inside a 🎔, he found Nek and Linda's name written together. [ Put Ken's name back. ] / Leave as is. Ken erased Nek's name and put back his own! Ok, now that we've fixed that, let's check out the situation at the wedding shop.  As we enter, we are immediately approached by someone. Ugh. Now he's just trolling us. Well, anyway, I know we're in a kind of a rush, but still, there's a couple of new people here that are worth talking to!  Like this older gentleman here. This statement sounds entirely inconsequential, however I would suggest remembering it for the future!  Also, this guy down in the casino/night club area. Uh, wow. I hope not. But in any case, it seems that Linda and Nek are no longer here, so let's go outside and check our receiver again.   Hmmm... The little circle now indicates around coordinates S-09, but this is right in the middle of a mountain range. Also, the location is not known on our places list on the right hand side of the display either. What could it possibly be? Let's head over there to check.  Getting there, there does seem to be something there in the mountains, but more importantly, a cave entrance which we can assume leads to it! Let's head into the cave, then.  This particular location is called Nebul Road.  It features enemies like crabs and squids, which we do not care about at all at this point. If we take the northern route, we get to this staircase.  It only leads to another staircase up.  This one leads to a tent.   Hm, ok. if we take two floors up from here...   ...we ultimately arrive this wall here. And also one floor up...  ...is this weird structure. But, as the man said, there seems to be no way in, or anything else that can be done. So, we have no option but to return to where we came from.  This time, we'll take the southern route, and then immdeiately go down a staircase.   Proceeding eastwards, we run into something chilling in a pool of water. It is not a species we've seen before, so let's check it out.  Ah, but of course. It's just some "entrails". Er... so, uh yeah. Well, anyway. They are actually pretty weak, so the same strategy applies like with hyenas: remove dogs from your party and reduce your attack as much as possible, and you'll manage to capture a few! Also, Hume should not attack the females, since they are even weaker than males. Oh, and I know what you're thinking. How crazy must these have looked in the PC Engine version, right? Turns out, they looked exactly the same:  Well, anyway.  After finishing that, we take another staircase down.  Then we head back west, passing by a crate which contains "entrail clothes". That's certainly an item you can equip (but we won't as it's slightly worse than what we currently use)!  We'll take a turn south to a staircase leading up.  We head again east from there...  And again up, at the end of the hallway.  From there we go through a doorway, which this time is open. This takes us into the "secret town" of Nebul! Before we leave, I should mention that there is actually one other species you can find in the caves, namely the crocodile, but I guess we didn't come across them this time!   There seems to be a system of bridges over that muck (whatever that is), but first, we'll talk to the person here. Also, yes, the auction house is another game mechanic. Some species of animals can also be obtained that way, and we will visit over the course of the game.  One of the tents is empty, but in the other...  We should add this to our "later" list. Also, "dai" literally means "big" in Japanese.  Leaving the tent, we head across the bridge to where there appear to be some structures submerged in this muck.  Most structures actually seem to have an entrance on the roof! What a weird setup.  First, we talk to this guy here. Back south across the small bridge, we'll take the stairs down into the hotel.  Here, as always, we can disturb the guests:   Walking past the reception, we take the stairs down...  Here we can talk to this guy... If we climb back out of the hotel and cross the bridge to the left...  ...there is a woman on the bench here. So, finally here we are. I guess we've found a place where it's possible to trade in some forbidden goods!  Taking the bridge south from there, we can enter the bar.  First, we can talk to the waitress... And then the gentleman sitting at the table. Don't forget that the general population is not aware of the human "life-force" issue, so they don't know that this planet is an experiment of sorts!  Leaving the bar, we'll now take the staircase next to the bench lady.  We reach an area where all the equipment, meat, etc. shops are. We'll start by talking to the woman standing by the sinks. Well, I'm not entirely sure about the "unrelated" part, but we'll see.  We continue our tour by talking to the gentleman in blue here. The animal trader next to him:  We can also talk to this person in white shirt, who's made his way to us in the meantime.  Here is the animal disassembler:  Our next stop is the equipment shop. Ok, I guess we will do that. In the mean time, I buy two crocodile caps, for a bit of extra defence. One is equipped immediately on Ken:  It gives a very slight defence increase.  Next is the bank: Rabbit knife being of course one of the weakest weapons around.  There is one last person to talk to, and they are over here. Cool. But also, if you thought we've see all you can do in this game, I guess you were wrong. Because here is yet another thing. And we will, just not today.  We're mostly done exploring, so we'll now take this lift up. Yes, you do have to push the button yourself to call it!  It takes us here, to an area looking suspiciously like a typical town entrance/exit. And indeed, if we go upstairs...  ...we reach the expected bird line service desk! And there are also Nek and Linda (apparently in her wedding clothes)! But before we can do anything...   ...they get on the pad and disappear as a bird picks them up. Well, drat. Ugh, I guess we'll have to check our receiver somewhere again. Bird Line has a somewhat more reduced amount of locations you can go to from here, but the cheapest one is Ozport, so let's go back there for now.  Outside, we check the receiver:  Here we can see that the circle is indicating Paraside, so we'll head there.  Indeed, the ark really is here.  Inside, we can talk to this person here. It seems we've just missed them again... Let's head back out.  Indeed, the ark really is gone. So, well, nothing else to do but check the receiver once again.  This time, the circle is definitely pointing to Eterna--to no one's surprise. I think we may be nearing the end of this particular chase. Obviously we head straight there. As we arrive, Hume has something to say.  As we proceed, Hume takes Ken to the side.  They head back behind a building, and after a few seconds...  ...come back out disguised as two Santas! I guess they must have beat up a couple of people and stole their clothes! Just as we are in front of the door, Hume stops us yet again.   And he leaves to go around the right side, leaving Ken on his own. Let's finally head inside.  Inside we find that a door is open, which wasn't open before! If we go in...  ...we find that it's some kind of a lab, with what seems to be a bunch of female corpses preserved in some pods or whatever those are. Over on the left...  ...the whole gang is here! Including Linda, who appears to be sitting on the floor.  It's been a while, so it's definitely time for another cutscene! Well, that explains a lot, and specifically a thing which was mentioned long ago about corpses of Beastian women getting stolen from the hospital morgue. Also, those who were wondering if her last name might really be Báthory, I guess you had a bit of a point. Although in the case of real Elizabeth Báthory, a 16/17th-century Hungarian noblewoman who was accused of killing virgin girls and bathing in their blood in order to prolong her youth, the accusations were never actually proven and it may all have been just a deliberate conspiracy against her, as she at the time owned much of the territory that is today Hungary, so she had a lot of enemies. In any case, as for our Elizabeth, we've now seen her true form, and also she's dead. So we don't need to worry about that for the moment and should focus on freeing Linda from Nek.   He takes Linda with him and runs up the stairs. I guess we should follow, sooner rather than later. But we'll leave that for next time, which will incidentally also be the final part of Scenario A! Although, if you were keeping count, you will remember that we're still at only 29 species, including those we haven't handed in. So, there's still some more work to be done on that topic, and who knows what else might happen anyway. In the meantime, enjoy some illustrations! Today we have a couple of drawings related to the current Nek/Linda situation! This first one seems like a cutscene storyboard which wasn't used, or something like that.
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Dec 4, 2021 22:18
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Last time, things happened... a bit. First Ken and Linda went to Koshikata and met with Nek--that ended up with Nek kidnapping Linda. Then, Linda's father showed up and with Ben's help they managed to track down Nek and Linda. Then it turned out that Nek was supposed to deliver Linda to Elizabeth, who was using young Beastian women to keep herself young. Then it turned out that Nek actually wanted Linda for himself and was going to board the ark. And then, he seemingly invited Ken to a fight on top of Elizabeth's mansion in Eterna. Whew. And so, let's continue right where we left off, as Ken follows Nek and Linda up the stairs over several floors!  You know, it's kind of weird when Ken is also wearing a santa suit! Anyway, he catches up with them one floor up.  We go one floor up...  And one more floor up...   Finally, we're on the top floor. Ken follows them outside through the door.  And here we are, a confrontation with Nek right in front of a Christmas tree! For us, though, it's cutscene time! There's going to a few of those in this update!  Well then, after this...  ...Nek goes over and locks the door.  And they start this silly fight! We do actually have control over Ken, and it is possible to approach Linda standing there and try to talk to her...  ...but she's still basically catatonic, so nothing useful comes out of her. Anyway, after a while of this nonsense...  He doesn't finish whatever he was going to say, because a large Santa carrying a large knife appears from the other side.  Hume, I guess? Well, let's see what happens.  That was... oddly excessive! Ken does take the advice, and starts to get Linda away from this whole mess...  ...while the large Santa is about to corner them:  Luckily, before anything can happen, a bunch of rangers bust through the doors on either side!    But then...   Let's hear it, then.  Before we continue, it's interesting to make a comparison with this same cutscene in the PC Engine version! Just as a reminder, the old warning for PC Engine cutscenes does apply: I have to transcribe these purely by ear, so I apologise in advance for any mistakes--the overly compressed audio quality doesn't help here either. Anyway, the PC Engine version of this scene:  So there are a couple of unexpected differences here! The major one is that in this version Nek actually outright tells Ken the "keyword" and what to do, instead of Ken being left to figure it out. The other difference is that in that in this version, for once, Linda doesn't get randomly violent with Ken--but in that version, Nek warns Ken that she might! But either way, like in a fairy tale, "true love's kiss" wins the day! Also, sorry if you thought there was going to be a boss fight with Nek! Because there is definitely no such thing in the game! However, don't worry too much, because we WILL in fact have a boss fight later today... or at least as close as this game gets to one, because as you might have noticed by now, proper boss fights really aren't this game's thing. Well, all right, enough of that. A little bit later we find Ken and Linda, together with Ken's mum, all talking to Ben in his office in Ranger HQ building!  Oh, yeah about that. You probably noticed Nek mentioning something about catching a few species and leaving them for us in the ark. This is actually true. We'll check this out at the end, when we hand in everything, but for now let me say that the game does indeed "gift" you a couple of species in this way, so you don't even need to collect all 30 that are required for successful completion! The game REALLY goes easy on us in this first scenario, but that's ok because they do indeed get more difficult as you progress through them in sequence. Anyway, we'll see what animals Nek gave us a bit later, although I won't go into detail about them until we actually get a chance to catch them ourselves. The commanders phone starts ringing... Well, I'm not entirely sure about that "was not there" part. He finally goes to pick up the phone, though.  So this bit is better when heard as audio, but I'll try to transcribe as best possible. There are two voices heard over the phone, Hume and Ann, alongside various sounds. quote:Hume: You want me to read this message, right? He comes back over to Ken and Linda.  I like this turn of events. Ben was always presented as someone who always has a trick up his sleeve, and so is the case now! In any case, we can leave now and try to find out Hume's location, but before we do that... Ken's mum is still standing here, so let's just have a quick chat!  There is also the commander's secretary sitting there, and we can briefly talk to her. Going back downstairs, we're approached by one of the rangers...  Well, I guess we would be interested. However, there's one other thing I should mention right now. You might recall that we were prevented from using the Ark because of Nek messing with Linda's head. But... her memories are back, and there's nothing wrong with her any more. So, does that mean that we can... just go and start the ark and leave right now? I mean, with the animals we got from Nek we definitely have at least 30. So, we should be able to just ignore all this and leave on the ark... right? Yes. Believe it or not, yes. You can entirely ignore whatever plot is left in this scenario and leave right now. Everything from this point on is totally optional. It's completely crazy. Obviously, the stated goal of this LP is to explore this game in as much detail as we possibly can, so clearly we won't be leaving just now. Instead, I know we have what looks like an urgent situation, but let's just check Panheim out before we set off, ok?  We can take this staircase to get to the basement, where the detention cells are (remember that rangers also act as a kind of a police on this planet too!).   Panheim is over there in the other cell, but first let's just talk to this other guy whom they have imprisoned here. I guess this guy must be in jail for poaching or something! Anyway, over to Panheim.  Of course, let's hear it. Well, we'll never know, will we? Well, ok, let's slowly make our way out...  Oh yeah, this ranger has something to say... Because you're crazy? But also, I think we can potentially conclude that Elizabeth is not actually Ken and Nek's mum. Since Nek previously killed the man in the underground cell (presumably the former mayor of Koshikata) who he claimed was their father. So then the person found in Elizabeth's basement should be someone else, right? Well anyway, there's still plenty more of game left to figure all of this out, I think. So we should not worry too much right now. Before we go, we can also talk to the lady behind the desk here. Some time after her husband's death, Elizabeth started desiring to remain forever young. So I made her an elixir from animal hormones and gave it to her... This worked for the first 30 years. However, as the years went by, the effects of the elixir started slowly to diminish. One day I came in possession of a corpse of a Beastian women, so I decided to try that as an ingredient in a potion. To my surprise, it worked better than expected, so I hired two "Vigour II" junkies to gather more ingredients. The new drug got us through the next ten years. But as the Grim Reaper drew near, the population started to slowly dwindle, so I decided to experiment with a new idea. My final target was Linda. So I decided to perform an operation on Elizabeth, after I had collected data on a sample similar to Linda... And that's all there is here. Let's head out. Now that Linda has recovered her memory, we should go and try sitting on the swing in front of Ken's house again!  Of course, we know that it was the other way around!  On the way out, we should check that news bulletin on the wall... Green Pharmaceuticals Was Doing Human Experiments! Is the chairwoman the perpetrator or the victim? The bodies of missing Minago residents were found at the home of Green Pharmaceuticals chairwoman in Eterna. The body of an important suspect, herself, was also found. Currently another suspect, Panheim is being investigated. Well, ok. We'll head over to Hospico to talk to a couple of people, and then we'll be on our way to find Hume.   In this room, we find the hospital director... Presumably also what contributed to the whole divorce situation...  On our way, I stop by the pharmacy to buy a few healing tablets. We're going to need a couple in the near future.  One last stop is by the room for newborns. Our old friend Sachiko is here!  I'm not sure where to go with this one. Now we're ready to head out and see what our receiver says!   Hmm, so it appears that it's pointing to a place in the far north called "G Factory". Hmm, "G" for Green? But the bigger question is... how to get there? The whole area seems to be behind an impassable mountain range somehow. Well, the only thing even remotely close to it seems to be Eterna (and that other place next to it). So let's actually head to Eterna and see what it looks like there now that both Elizabeh and Nek are gone and Panheim is in prison!  Upon arriving, we find that it's apparently no longer permanent Christmas here, and also all people have left!  All the houses are empty and shops are closed! We'll head over to Elizabeth's mansion. We want to have a look around, especially that lab that we didn't have time to examine properly.  All the female corpses have been removed from their pods...  Over in the top right corner is a staircase leading down...  As we go down, we see that all those people who were imprisoned here have been freed too! But we'll take the staircase up.  This leads us to a hallway in which we've already been. It's a long straight hallway leading east.   At the end of the hallway are two chests which we opened a long time ago, but the door here which was closed is now open! So we can go through!  Before we head in, I remember to give Linda that crocodile cap I bought last time to increase her defence slightly!  Through the door is another underground cave!  There is at least one new animal species to be found here, but I think it's only males, so we won't bother because we have enough at this point (although I won't stop you from trying to guess what this even is!). By the way, that lighter coloured stuff on the floor is some kind of liquid which actually damages you if you walk in it! But in a true 1990s Final Fantasy fashion, sometimes there's no other way!  Staircase down...  ...leads exactly to a place where you HAVE to damage yourself to get through!  C'mon, game.  We pass by another one of those weird statues and also what looks like an inoperable teleporter in front of it...  Back up again...  On the way there's even a chest with a tablet that heals around 100HP. Well, I don't mind! We'll get that other chest another time!  Walking west, we find another one of those man made gates...  ...and we're out! Judging by the fact that there is snow here in the middle of summer, I think we've found the right place. Now we just need to head west to find G-Factory! By the way, in this last dungeon you can actually find a tent which houses a literal drug dealer, from whom you can buy stuff like "Vigour II" among other things!  It's an easy journey since we're bounded by mountains on the south and by water on the north. So we really can just go straight west.  Ah, here we are. So this woman built a hospital town AND a factory town. Not sure what to say. But, heading inside, Linda has a problem.    And she leaves anyway. Oh well, let's at least have a look what's here.  As expected from the description, looks quite industrial...  We can head here up the stairs.   All the shops are abandoned, however. Even the bank branch seems to be closed today, too.  But, outside we have these factory buildings. They have numbers 1-4 on them, so let's explore. First, the building number 1.  No people, just industrial stuff and robots. You can actually talk to the robots and they tell you stuff like Production line operational. or No production defects detected. so it's not exactly enlightening.  Whatever is in those vats, doesn't look too inviting. I'm sad to report though that they didn't implement the conveyor belt and you can't ride it.  Next is bulding 3, which sits behind building 1.  Mostly the same sort of thing. So we'll head to the next one, which is building 4.   Also pretty similar...  ...except here in the corner, there is a chest, huh!  "Vigour III", you say. Huh, I thought they might have stopped the whole thing when everybody started going crazy after "Vigour II", but I guess not. I'm pretty scared to try it, though.  And finally, of course, the building number 2.  But, just as Ken is about to go in, Linda comes running!  Before we go in, I will rearrange our equipment a little bit. Ken gets equipped with the jellyfish needle that Linda was using, because it's a stronger weapon:  It only hits one enemy, true, but we have a fight coming up where that won't be an issue. Linda will take his trusty swallow cutter, although honestly she isn't even going to need a weapon at this time:  Well, let's head in.   At first glance, doesn't look very different...  ...but a bit further forward, we find that large santa, who is almost certainly Hume! Without any kind of dialogue, we head straight into a fight!  The fight is against "Murderer Santa"! But this is a complete joke. If Ken transforms into a Dolphin to increase his attack power...  ...one hit deals a whole 177 damage to the Santa. Santa has no special abilities, so this is over in three hits basically. However, this is definitely a case of "this isn't even my final form", because just as the battle finishes, we head straight into the next cutscene!  What even. Well, he did at one point say that he wanted to keep Ann close to his chest. So, uh, I guess this is what he meant. And with this, we head straight into the second phase of this fight, which is a bit more serious and probably as close as Scenario A ever comes to even having anything like a true boss fight!  This time, fight is simply against Hume. As you can see, he has 720 HP, but his strength and defence are a lot better than in the first fight. So we have to employ a bit of a strategy here. In fact, Ken and Linda will have to divide duties, with Ken being the attacker due to his bigger strength and Linda will be on defence. We'll start by transforming Linda into a crab for a +46 to her defence. After this...  ...Linda will use "Armored Skin" ability on herself, for a further +41 in defence. I like how in this game the "transform" option actually doesn't count as a turn and you can still do your regular action after that! Next, Ken will do his usual transformation into a dolphin, for a +90 in attack power. From now on, he will use his "desperate attack" ability to attack Hume:  It gives him an attack which adds a further +111 to his attack power, but at a cost of -111 to defence in the next turn!  It results in a nice 187 HP damage to Hume! However, we must not forget that his defence is now almost halved, and this is where Linda comes in. Like pretty much any turn based JRPG, "defend" is of course one of the possible commands. Except... in this game the "defend" command acts more like the "sentinel" ability from Final Fantasy X. Namely, the character who is defending can choose whom they are defending! So with Linda, she can defend either herself or Ken. Therefore, she'll keep defending Ken so that he can keep using his "desperate attack" for a much greater damage per turn.  It's a bit more complicated than that, since his attacks are pretty strong. So you'll have to find time also to heal Linda from time to time (Ken will never get damaged, of course). Even with all her extra defence, one of his attacks still will do 1/3 to 1/2 of her HP! That's why we bought those healing tablets earlier!  He actually has some special animations for his attacks! But then at some point, he does this...   The description of the attack indicates that this is him spewing a mixture of blood and gastric juice. Nice. Other than making my MPEG4 encoder scream in pain, this attack also causes your defence to go down significantly. In this case, Linda eats -60 to her defence stat. This is apparently caused by her vomiting violently from the smell--at least that's how it's described in the game! Ken does manage another "desperate attack", leaving Hume at 141 HP, i.e. one hit from defeat. Even though Linda will not survive next hit due to decreased defence, I still use her to protect Ken since he needs to actually survive to be able to do that last hit!  As expected, the next attack gets Linda down to 0 HP, but it's Ken's turn next and he doesn't miss. So this battle is finally over. If you're interested, you can have a look at the video of this fight, just to see how it looks in practice:  And now, the aftermath.   He climbs up on that vat of green goo...     Well, there's nothing to do but leave at this point. Except...  There is absolutely no reason to do so, because none of the computers seen so far in the game were in any way interactable, but... if you check this one here in particular...  TransCargo IN: Ladybird ♀: 1, Ladybird ♂: 1. So, yeah, if you check this computer, you get a pair of Ladybirds you can hand over in the ark! It's another freebie the game gives you, although this one you kind of either have to be very metodical and check everything, or to already know that it's there. By the way, here I've shown you one way to fight this battle normally, but it's totally possible to 100% cheese it. If you check out the item "Vigour III" that we just got, the description says that it has high probability to cause negative status effects. If you use this item directly on Hume, most of the time it will actually put him in a "sleep" status which lasts more than long enough for you to easily defeat him using "desperate attack", without him ever being able to do anything to you at all! All right, now we can leave. Some time later, we find Ken and Linda back at Minago cemetery, presumably just after the funeral for her parents.  As we leave...  We're mostly done with this scenario at this point, but... there are just a couple more things we can do before leaving. First of all, let's go and have one last chat with Ben a the ranger HQ.  Well, thanks for that, but we're kind of done with collecting, so... Our next stop is down in the basement where the prison cells are.  First this ranger has something to say... Strange, indeed... And then, if we check Panheim's cell...  ...I guess all of this might have just been too much for him it seems. All right. It's time to head out and go to the ark!  I know we don't actually need to, but we'll make camp here one last time, because it gives some nice dialogue between Ken and Linda! The next morning, first we head over to that room to hand over all of our remaining animals! By checking with the friendly robot here...  ...we find out that Nek left us 3 whole species here! Because last time we were here, we were at 23 and now we are at 26. Checking the pods, it turns out that a pair of animals from the following species were already registered by Nek: gorilla, cat, leech. After this, we can finally hand over all our remaining stuff which we have been carrying for a while now! Namely, the following species: hippo, turtle, tiger, hyena, wolf, entrails and the ladybirds we just got. And so in total...  ...that brings us to a cool 33 out of required 30. Nice. But take note that there is still 87 species which we haven't even seen yet! And now, up to the control room, and let's activate this thing!  Here it is... but as we try to activate the door...  The game will give us a few chances to change our mind in case there's still something we want to do. But in our case, we're done here, so let's go!    And finally...  ...we are inside the control room, which has a whole bunch of huge pulsating hearts. What even is this. We can sit at the controls, but before that...  ...there is actually a chest tucked away here in a corner!  Hmmm... another one of those rings with odd names. Well, it's going to have to wait for one of the following scenarios until we figure out what it's for, because right now, we're leaving the planet! Let's go and sit at the controls.  We get two more chances to turn back, but we wont take them of course.  And then they finally launch the ark... straight into one final cutscene for this scenario: [Photosensitivity Warning: The following video features brief instances of rapid flashing.]  By the way, about that song that plays over the credits, it is performed by Linda's voice actress, Minami Takayama. But I also mentioned before that the Sega Saturn version of the game had an included soundtrack CD. This CD featured slightly rearranged music from the game, but it also included alternate versions of all songs, too. So here is also that alternate version of this song, in this version the vocals are perfomed by none other than this game's music composer, Ryouko Kihara:  I'm honestly not sure which one I prefer! But while we're here talking about alternate versions, you might find interesting the PC Engine version of this final cutscene. It's actually not as detailed, in fact it mostly focuses on the fun part of Ken and Linda's journey. Well, fun for them, anyway! Here it is:  So it's even more opaque than the one from the remake, if that's even possible! In any case, well, that's that. That's more or less it for Scenario A. It actually only took us one year of in-game time to finish everything, even though we could have used full eight. In all honesty, this first scenario is really more like a tutorial than anything else--there's actually a bit more to be said about this, but it's kind of a spoiler, so it will be saved for later. Also, yes I know. There are many unanswered questions. There are many unopened chests. There are many characters whose purpose in the game is not clear. We have basically not explored the planet to any kind of depth at all. But no need to worry. That's why there are multiple scenarios. To repeat myself, I promise you we will have the freedom and the time to figure everyting out and to solve the mysteries of this planet (which we have only just barely scratched the surface of!). Anyway, every next scenario does get harder than the previous, so next time when we start Scenario B, we'll see what the winning conditions are for that one! For now, I hope everybody is enjoying this so far, and see you in a few days! As for today's illustrations, let's start with the concept art of Hume having gone nuts: "Beat you up" And then another funky one from back in the PC Engine era:
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Dec 12, 2021 20:09
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King of Bleh posted:I guess Linda's comment towards the end was meant to imply that Hume was crazy the whole time and he was the one who killed everyone in Minago, leading to her memory loss / fugue state from PTSD? ...Maybe? The game definitely doesn't spell it out, but I believe this is the case. Panheim mentioned something about hiring "two junkies" to look for corpses, but also Nek said that instead looking for corpses they started killing. That's why also Nek saying at some point to Santa Hume about how Hume was supposed to let him have Linda or something like that. It's a bit harder to tell without playing the game with fully voiced dialogue, but if you watch the Hume cutscene, you can also see that he is speaking in two different voices (and also the same in the part where he beats up his ex wife while on the phone with Ben--that part is actually fully voiced in the game), so there is some indication that he might be suffering from some kind of multiple personality/dissociative identity disorder. The Christmas/Santa obsession from Elizabeth is, as far I see, a completely random thing which has nothing to do with anything. Hume was wearing a Santa outfit because he and Ken disguised themselves before going into Elizabeth's house--I don't think there's too much more there than that. Geemer posted:Also, I'm guessing that animal in the cave leading to the factory was a sheep. Based on it looking fluffy and having horns. And also one of the two chests by the door leading to the area having the sheep sweater. Ha! You got it right! It was indeed a sheep there. I totally forgot about the chest, but you're right there too. The other chest has the jellyfish needle which I just used in that last battle. Also, I have a question for everybody here... just to check about posting some of the PC Engine cutscenes in addition to the ones from the remake. How does everybody feel, should I keep doing it?
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Dec 13, 2021 00:20
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Hirayuki posted:It feels like one of those "bad endings" from old NES/SNES games that were just incomplete, leaving major plot questions unanswered because the makers wanted you to play again and not skip all the secret rooms or whatever. Which is pretty much what's going on here--presented as a starter scenario--but with a TON more content and plot available to explore (and answers, I hope). I should clarify things a bit: the different scenarios have unrelated plots that don't carry over as such--so this whole story for example about Hume and Ann's divorce etc. is finished. However, the "lore" of the world itself is common between all of the scenarios, so that means that we may in a more indirect way gain understanding of something that we saw in another scenario. And certainly also over the course of the game the understanding of the world itself, inlcuding stuff like the origin of the ark itself and so on. Tallgeese posted:Did we ever get an explanation of where the transformation ability comes from, by the way? Not exactly, no. Ken and Linda gain ability to transform into various animals as they hand in species at the ark, but that's as far as we know for now. Certainly I don't recall any NPCs mentioning anything about that part.
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Dec 14, 2021 09:32
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Ghost Car posted:ivantod, I really appreciate the photosensitivity warning, but for videos where that's a potential issue, would you mind including a quick summary of what happens in them? I thought enough to include a warning because of flashing lights, but somehow didn't think to continue that thought to conclude that people who are not able to watch the video because of it might need a summary of what happens in it. I'm so sorry! I will include a summary from now and will also go back and add a summary to the previous video in the next few days! The good news is that there is only a couple of videos with this issue in the game so it won't be a big deal. Please accept my apology, I'm very much in favour of taking accessibility issues seriously, but I did fail a bit on this one! ivantod fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 10:57
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Hello again, and welcome back to Linda³! Last time, we of course finished Scenario A, so now we need to "push the reset button" and try something different! We're back at the main menu, so I guess let's just select "Start" again! We of course get the familiar scenario choice menu, but this time... ...we'll be going for Scenario B! Let's see what are the winning conditions. So, here we go: - Collect no less than 50 animal species. - Take off with the ark. Actually the only difference from last time is that we have to collect 50 species instead of 30--of course that means one male and one female of each species, like before. As always, we'll be playing on "normal" difficulty, but if you do choose the "hard" option, then you have an additional restriction: you are not allowed to have dogs in your party (or indeed any other animal that Linda can train for that purpose); this is in addition to a slightly faster passage of time. Also, in the PC Engine version these winning conditions were phrased differently and contained surprisingly a bit of a spolier for the plot of this scenario, but in the remake obviously that was fixed and the spoiler removed. I'll mention this when it's no longer a spoiler! All right, enough talking, let's get started. The start, however, finds Ken in a familiar situation of eating breakfast at his mother's house. The phone starts ringing. She goes to answer the phone. She finishes the conversation. And, so, here we go! As before, we can talk to this girl here to get a free dog, since her family is leaving the planet and they can't take the dog with them. We'll get the second dog shortly, but for now, let's head into the HQ building. As it turns out, most people in this town don't have anything new to say compared to what they were saying in Scenario A. Therefore, we won't need to make a big tour this time around. We will however check out a few things which are different or which I may have missed last time. So with that in mind, let's head quickly down into the basement where the prison cells are! This guy who is imprisoned here I think we haven't come across previously. Funny. Let's quickly check the lady sitting at her desk: Yeah, there are a couple of chests here in the locked room: ...but we can't get to them as we don't have the key. One of these days. One of these days, we'll find somewhere, somehow, a key that opens one of these locked rooms with chests. Well, to be fair, for this particular door, we could go and get the key more or less right now, but we'll hold off a bit until we get the plot going! By the way did you know that in this game there is actually a chest in a locked room which simply contains a key for another locked room with chests? Yeah. But don't worry. We'll open all those locked doors when the time comes. Now, let's head upstairs for our meeting with the commander. Yeah, so it's the same meeting like last time, where Ken has to apply to be part of the ark crew. Ken does so. If you say yes, the same exact cutscene plays which we've already seen in the first scenario where the commander explains briefly the situation. Since we've already seen it, we can simply say "no" here to proceed directly to what happens after. There is, like before, no other option here but to push the button and become a crew member. Although if you try to leave, the ranger next to you tells you something like "can you please push the button already, I need to go to the loo". So that's funny. Anyway, Ken pushes the button. But, as everybody leaves, another person comes into the room... Who is that? He leaves. I guess we'll go and talk to him at some point a bit later. All right, we're done with this and can leave now. Before leaving, I check behind the boxes that Linda is not hiding there again with the intent of beating Ken up with a large stick! But no, she's not here this time, so we can go in peace. Also, I'm not going to check the calendar there in the corner because of course it restarted with 1991, so we don't need to worry about that until 1993. Anyway, as we go down the stairs... ...Linda and her mum are waiting there! Where did they all even come from? Why is there a little girl among these people? Everybody claps. Everybody claps. Loud cheering. Everybody claps. Loud cheering. Linda starts to leave while everybody claps and cheers. Just as she's about to leave the building... And she's gone. But Linda's mum approaches Ken... Everybody claps. Loud cheering. Everybody claps. Loud cheering. She also leaves... ...and then so does everybody else. As you can see, this time there is no "you have to be level 3" kind of thing, so we COULD just head to Minago right now. But we'll do a few other things first. Like getting 100 G from the bank and taking out a loan up to a maximum possible 400 G. This gives us a total of 600 G in the pocket, enough to get started. The maximum loan amount, by the way, is equal to your yearly salary at that moment. Ken starts with a salary of 100 G per quarter so the maximum loan is 400. Don't worry, we're going to employ the money making trick in a few minutes and will quickly earn a lot more than that. But we need the loan to get started. The other thing we should do is get ourselves a second dog. Because right now Linda is NOT in our party so it would be nice to have some backup. As before, we can only use a maximum of two katakana letters to name our dog, so this time I decide on the name Aki (=autumn). No, I didn't actually forget that the game starts in summer this time, but I have decided that because of that initial mistake I will never ever name a dog "Summer" in this game. Luckily, the names of all four seasons in Japanese actually fit into two letters, so we should be good. With this done, we're almost ready to head out. But first... ...over here in the hotel, there is something different! If we go inside and up to to the second floor where the bar/lounge is... ... we can see that there's a whole bunch of people here now, including even a singer! Let's first talk to the guests, maybe we can find out more what this is all about. First, the ranger standing by the counter. Yeah, probably. We can also talk to the guests to see what they think of the singer. Well those seem like some pretty favourable opinions. We can also talk to the pianist lady. Awesome. Then, let's talk to the singer herself! We do need to give a small tip, but if we do, she does indeed sing a song for us! It's yet another (third) different version of the "Lullaby" song we've heard last time, and you can listen to it here: Well, I liked that. I think that's probably my favourite among the three versions of this song. Incidentally the vocal for this version is also performed by the game's music composer, Ryouko Kihara. Angela travels around the planet and visits different towns, so maybe we'll run into her again later on. But for now, that was a nice break and yet another cool touch in a game full of them. As we pass through the entrance area, we can read the announcement posted there. As always, it gives us an update about the current situation of the world: N.K. NEWS SPECIAL BULLETIN A massive pathogen spill in the west area! A large quantity of a mysterious pathogen has leaked from a Green Pharmaceuticals research facility; already the fourth investigation team has been lost. It is now certain that the entirety of the West Area will be declared a special danger zone on a semi-permanent basis. Ah, well, there we go. So this means that the whole West Area (which really should be called North Area because it's actually in the north) will be inaccessible to us in this scenario. But instead, we have access to the South Area, which we didn't have before! Anyway, before we exit, there is one more thing we can quickly do. If we go up to the Bird Line counter, and talk to the person on our RIGHT side... So that's pretty inconsequential, right? You can figure it out wihout needing an explanation. However, if you talk to her twice more, she will just repeat the same thing again. But on the fourth attempt... ...this happens! What could it mean? Well, if you check the destinations specifically with her (and not with the person on the LEFT side), you see this... Basically, we have now unlocked the Bird Line route to Nebul! If you recall, Nebul is that "secret" town built inside a mountain that we had to traverse a cave to reach. Well, if you talk to this person 3 times, you unlock fast travel to that destination also! Pretty cool! This does work regardless of which scenario you're in! Ok, now that we have done this, we can head outside. We should go and register at the ark! As before, we can talk to the floating robots, but this all the same as before, so we simply go to this room... ...where Ken uses his right hand to register! Ok, now that we're taken care of all the preliminaries, we can finally get started. First, let's break the game's economy a little bit. I have talked about this previously, but now let's see it for real! As you might recall, I said that it's possible to quickly gain whatever amount of money you want, right now at the start of the game (and also it doesn't even cause any time to pass!). Here's how that works. First, we take the Bird Line over to Ozport. By the way, completely unrelated, but while we're here... ...you can actually walk through this passage here. If you do so, you reach a little secret area with a chest in it! The chest contains a weapon--the dog sword! If we equip it on Ken... ...we can see that it's a fair bit stronger than his initial weapon! I'll equip it for now, but we'll replace it with something else before he even uses it. Still, not bad to keep it in reserve at least. As far as this secret area goes, there is in fact a secret within a secret, but we'll leave that for later. For now, let's go where we originally intended to... And that's over here, where the animal trader is. We'll buy as many female rats as we can, while leaving just a bit of money for the Bird Line trip to Minago. In Minago, in this house, you can find the animal dismantler! Dismanle all the rats, chances are probably about 30-40% of them will result in a "swallow cutter", a weapon we're already quite familiar with. While a single rat costs only 20 G, this weapon sells for around 1400 and has a pretty good drop rate when dismantling. So now we go over to the equipment shop in Minago... ...and sell all the weapons you got for lots of money. Now just go back to Ozport and again buy as many rats as you can... Unfortunately, you can only hold a maximum of 99 of any animal--as you can see it only costs 1980 G for that, but we already have 7077 from our first trip! In any case, you can now go back to Minago and repeat the whole process until you get bored or until you decide you have enough money! Here is where I stopped (it only took about 20 mins to get here): Just short of 100,000 G. Anyway, I did keep two swallow cutters to actually use. I equip it on Ken: It's just slightly less powerful than dog sword, but as we already know, it has the benefit of hitting all enemies in front of us, instead of just one! Now that we have so much money, let's do just one more thing back in Ozport. In the Ozport item shop, apart from the normal stuff, they also have this thing here for 28,000 G. It's the "Air Free Pass" item I've mentioned before. Let's just buy it! It lets us use the Bird Line services completely for free! Indeed, if we go to the Bird Line service desk... ...we find that the prices for all destinations are now set to zero, as expected. Nice. All right. It's time to do get a bit of a start with animal collecting. To begin with, we'll collect a bunch of species which are easily found here around Hardia, Ozport and Hospico. These are all species we've seen before (and not very strong ones either), so I will not go into details other than listing them here. Ostrich. Pig. Rat. Squid. Squirrel. Stonefish. Monkey. Mole. Crab. Rabbit. That'll do for now, I think. We can head back to the ark to hand these in. On the way back, we are informed that it's now Autumn 1991. Over in the ark... ...we'll hand in all that we have (and I'll just sell the rest afterwards!). Talking to the friendly robot... ...informs us, of course, that we've collected 10 species out of needed 50. So we should be ok on that front for the time being. After doing all of this, I remember that I should really go around these few places here and see what the animal traders have for sale, to save some time with species that we've already had the chance to encounter. First I pick up a male/female pair of dragonflies, they CAN actually be found around Hardia, but are a bit of a pain to get them to spawn, so it's an easy shortcut especially since they cost next to nothing. I also buy a female dolphin, just in case we ever find anybody selling a male--dolphins are mostly in the West Area, thus not really accessible to us in this scenario. The final animal that I buy is a female crocodile. The crocodiles can actually be found in Nebul Road cave, but I have a vague impression that females are a bit rare, so we have this one as backup. Speaking of buying animals, I had a chance to watch a Japanese LP of this game where the player actually manages to collect ALL 50 species needed in this scenario without ever fighting a single battle. He obtains all species through other game mechanics, such as buying, auction house, eggs and so on! So even that is possible in this game! Anyway, I know. We should really go and see Linda. But it's really weird right? Time passes in this game, but not for the plot itself. You can actually take YEARS before going to see Linda in Minago and it won't be a problem! Funny. So with that in mind, before going to Minago, let's make a quick trip again to Ozport. Specifically, we'll go and visit that bar/casino area in the basement of the hotel/shopping mall building. There, it turns out that Angela the singer has now moved! We won't ask her to sing for us, since she does indeed have only one song, but let's just talk to the other people here. First the two guys sitting in the middle. Last time they had for us some conspiracy theories how it wasn't a satellite crash but a targeted assassination! Let's see what they say today. Really? No conspiracy theories today? Disappointing. Then the other guy sitting on the right... Pianist has nothing new to say, so... we're finally going to Minago! Here we are. There is a ranger here who has some not so nice things to say. Downstairs, there's another guy here. Wow, ok. Let's go inside. It took us a while, but we got here in the end! Before heading to Linda's house, let's make a quick tour. This place is quite small compared to other towns, so it will not take long! Over to the right is the inn. But if you go in they don't even let you stay over and just tell you "aren't you staying at Linda's house anyway?". So we'll head instead into that building behind the inn. That's definitely a bit messy, but we can talk to the guy in the lab coat. Yeah, Ken actually does have an animal guide with him! I didn't really show that, but when you're on the overworld you can press a button on the controller, and it allows you to scan any animal you can see around you, to find out what it is and some of its stats. Of course, the more "unusual" the animal, the less information is available on it. You can also check the animal guide here in this house by using that computer next to Ken. It allows you to search for an animal by the first letter of it's name! And then you can see some of its basic details and stats (like in this example for a mole). Of course, for "rarer" animals there will usually not even be a picture much less anything else, until you encounter it personally. This guy does have one other function, but we'll probably not encounter that until Scenario C. All right, let's go outside and continue our tour of Minago. Next, we'll head over into this building. This is the butcher shop. Let's start with the guy sitting there on the side first. Uh, do you actually mean that... actually, no, don't answer that, please. Let's just talk to the shop owner. I assume this is how you're supposed to know about how to catch hyenas. There is this lady behind the shop, so... This whole story about the ark's origin and all that did get a bit neglected, but do not worry! We'll get to it. Also, I seem to be saying "we'll get to that" a lot, but the game just has a bit of an unusual structure, so there's no other way to say it really. Next we go in here... It houses the animal trader and the equipment shop, just barely visible in the corner. We can also talk to this person sitting at the table. The animal trader: True story, there are animals in this game which you can sell for millions of G! But the trick is how to find them! Let's move to the other side, where there are two more people. First the guy in white shirt: The equipment shop owner mostly has a small bit of tutorial. Certainly another true story! I also randomly buy the "rhino cap" from this guy because it increases Ken's defence +16: (Even if it does cost 3300 G!) Anyway, we continue our tour outside... ...with this lady here. Back across the bridge to this guy here... I'm always up for another mystery! So, yeah, definitely! We're almost done with our tour! Over here is... ...our old friend, the animal dismantler. There does seem to be a bit of a tension between the Federation people and the Beastians, doesn't there? Finally, we're going to Linda's house. For some reason, there's a person loitering in front of it!? All right! We're going inside! But this update is horrifically long, so it doesn't actually fit into one post! Please continue reading in the next post! ivantod fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Dec 25, 2021 23:49
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Inside we run into Hume! (BTW, yes, Ken can still steal the duck meat from the kitchen, no problem.) Upstairs, Linda is in her room, together with her mum. She also seems to be a bit dressed up? In any case, it's cutscene time! There were a couple of small differences here in the PC Engine version. First of all, the cutscene was very slightly different: But more interestingly, in the original, there was actually a dialogue choice here (yes/no). It didn't impact anything, but it was a bit funny, as if you said "no", then Linda would yell something like "Mum, Ken says that we should alter the dress so that it emphasises my boobs more!". But this was removed in the remake. Anyway, moving on. Before we leave, we can talk to Linda's mother... It would have been nice to have some custom responses for each of these options, but... sadly no. It literally doesn't matter what you choose here. So, yeah, we're just going out for a walk with Linda going like that in a wedding dress. In any case, we're intercepted by Hume, who has a somewhat creepy comment, although I'm sure he's just trying to be funny. I think we should just move on, really. Outside, the loitering lady has another comment... Is she... like a fan club president or something? Anyway, we'll walk over to the church... Inside. And so, they do the "wedding walk" thing... And then... There is indeed the sound of church bells heard. There is no actual day/night cycle in the game, therefore this is the only time this will actually happen. This game is genuinely funny a significant percentage of the time! Anyway, some time later, in Linda's house, after the dinner is finished... Uh, someone's had a bit too much to drink, huh? And he falls of the chair and is promptly asleep! He falls asleep again, but... She pushes him towards the bedroom! Meanwhile Ann tries to put a stop to this madness! And she does just that! And so... ..ken is left alone in Linda's room. What to do, what to do. Oh, I know! Let's rummage around! First of all, Linda's diary is there on her desk, so let's start with that! Diary Entry 1: I can't wait until Ken applies to be the crew member! 🎔 Diary Entry 2: Why has that idiot still not applied? Then over by the mirror, there is a photograph on the wall. It's the same picture we have at our home, of all of us together in front of the swing. The teddy bear: I had a stuffed animal that looked like this when I was a kid. It looks very similar... Wait! Isn't this... And then, finally the dress hanging on the wall. Is that the same dress she was wearing eariler today? Oh, Ken... But while he's doing that... ...Linda shows up and knocks on the door! He is, and she comes inside! You can actually hear loud snoring noises in the game right now! But before she can finish the sentence, there is a loud crashing noise heard from downstairs! They both quickly run towards the stairs, but in the meantime we'll watch a cutscene to find out what happened! I have no idea what just happened. Oh and before you ask, there's actually no PC Engine version of this scene. In the original version, this scene was presented entirely through normal in-game graphics, complete with the usual tiny character sprites from that version. So it was a pretty obvious decision to add it in the remake. Anyway, a couple of moments later, the attackers manage to intercept Ken and Linda. Ken and Linda run back into her room, but... They fire at Ken. A shot is fired. Linda screams. * * * Some days later, Ken wakes up in the hospital. The hospital director Chen is next to him. Ok, lots to unpack here! First, Linda is alive and her surgery... was a success? We're definitely going to need to find out more about that. But also, Dr. Emory? You might recall that Dr. Emory is one of the three geniuses of Hospico, alongside Dr. Panheim, and Dr. Flora. However, in Scenario A he was killed in the satellite crash so we never met him (and oh boy I'm waiting for the reactions when we DO meet him later today!). Then we have the ever confusing Sachiko. In Scenario A she was the only survivor of the satellite crash, but apparently without her memory. So let's see what all this looks like now that both Dr. Emory and Sachiko are alive and (hopefully) in good condition. So let's get out of bed and have a look around! First of all, there is a ranger standing outside of Ken's room, so let's talk to her. Wait, again? But what about Dr. Oid, the ethnologist? Or the animal encyclopedia guy? Are we really never going to find out what their stories are? Sachiko is not in the room for newborns this time (does she even work as a nurse in this version of events?) so we'll just continue on. This guy here... We can also talk to the nurse whom you can see standing at the nurses' station there. So, people like Sachiko's flower beds, it seems. Next are the two nurses here... Oh, you're just precious, aren't you. The other nurse: Next we have this person here in the computer room. And if we do go down to the morgue... Over here are, of course, these two chests, somehow in an unlocked room! They yield a 100HP healing tablet and an antidote. The contents of chests don't generally change between different scenarios. Then, back outside, we have this ranger lady... And before you ask, this entrance to the underground cells is still here, and there are still rumours about the former mayor of Koshikata being imprisoned here. We never got a proper answer to that one either... Next, we'll head back inside and... ...talk to the lady at the reception here. We can also talk to that kid nearby... Mayor of Koshikata, perhaps? Over here, we can also talk to several people. First, the guy in blue. And also the guy at the bank counter. Well, we've already been there, and indeed discovered some mysterious artifacts! We'll definitely go again! The guy at the equipment shop has a thing to tell us... Dr. Flora, if you recall, is one of Hospico's genius scientists, who always seems to want to kiss whoever comes to visit her lab. But, anyway, now is the time finally to go see Dr. Emory. Therefore, we find ourselves again in front of these three houses which contain the laboratories of the three geniuses of Hospico: Flora, Panheim and Emory. First, we'll talk to that pregnant lady standing in between them. Well, that's great to hear, hopefully then everything will go well with Linda, too! So let's first check out other two houses, before we go to Emory. First, Dr. Panheim's lab, with the obligatory Christmas tree! Yeah, so looks like Panheim was killed in that pathogen incident and will be "sitting out" this scenario, so to speak. Well, ok. Let's visit Dr. Flora next. Ah, yes, all the crazy flowers. Rose Garden is actually a place we can visit in the South Area. Among other things, we can fight roses there. They are pretty tough. As before, Flora has the talking plant over in her room. Ah, so these "MC Alice" plants are not actually unique, and we can buy one for ourselves too. We'll definitely do that. I'm actually not joking. All right, finally... ...Dr. Emory's house. As mentioned, it has a nice flower bed in front of it. Let's go inside. As we come inside, Dr. Emory approaches us... Oh, just say it already. Clearly the surgery didn't go as "perfectly" as he says! I guess those four pods are the "artficial wombs" then, huh? And Linda is currently in one of them. Let's just humor him for now. And that's all he has to say for now. Well, gee, thanks a lot Dr. Emory. Now that she's lost her left arm, how the heck is she going to be able to activate the ark anyway? (Just in case you were wondering how we would be stopped from leaving early this time!) Well, that was sure a lot of stuff happening today, so let's stop here for now. And to those who expected that the game was going to dial down the crazy in the beginning of the next scenario, well... maybe not! Today in this section, we have a few drawings of Linda trying on the dress! "Isn't it a wonderful dress?"
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Dec 25, 2021 23:49
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Arzaac posted:Please, please tell me they made a Linda sprite where she's got her hulk arm They absolutely did. They made a cutscene about it, too. We'll be seeing both soon.
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Dec 26, 2021 09:47
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I was hoping for some at the end of the update but no such luck, I also hope for this! Of course there's art of Linda's "new look"! The main reason I'm not posting it yet is because there's also a whole (hilarious) cutscene where her new look is revealed, so I was going to post it after that! I generally try not to post art which could be considered "spoiler" until after it's been revealed by the game itself. Also: as mentioned above in addition to a cutscene and associated concept art, there's even an overworld sprite for Linda looking like that! We should get to that point in about two updates or so--it won't be in the next one, but probably the one after that. BTW: I have come across an article written by this game's designer/director, Shoji Masuda, in which he explains the process which led to this game being developed and how we went about it. It's also a bit spoilery still, but I might split it into a few parts and post over time. It was originally printed in a brochure which was included as a first-press bonus for the PC Engine version back in 1995. BTW BTW: Speaking of Shoji Masuda... I am potentially considering as my next LP to play "Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru", but we'll see. In any case we still have way more than half of this game to go through first anyway. ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Dec 27, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 19:17
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JamMasterJim posted:I love the Linda LP, but the STOCKS are drifting further and further away Yeah, "Kabu Trader Shun" is probably not going to happen, or at least not any time soon.  Sorry about that!
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Dec 27, 2021 20:40
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Well, thank you all for saying nice things about my LP! I'm glad people are enjoying this! About editing the images: It just seems to me like it's easier to read this way when the translated text is put directily into the screenshot itself, that's all. And to be honest it's not actually some kind of extra effort on my end. I take screenshots from a recorded gameplay video, so I simply make sure to take the screenshot at the moment when the on-screen text box is still empty for all screenshots where it's needed. Then I just make a flat file with all translations and simply run it through an ImageMagick script to render the "translated images". So that's actually a lot easier than it seems!
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Dec 29, 2021 20:58
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