|
SITB posted:I'd wager a new party member will join Manjimaru's group this chapter, or by the end of it. Commander Keene posted:Come to think of it, we haven't seen those ninja girls in a while, I figured they were going to join the party. Or at least one of them was. Oh, hey, new page!
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2023 15:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 03:49 |
|
|
ivantod posted:
We did it!
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2023 13:16
|
|
|
 Welcome back! Last time Manjimaru and Kabuki finished off the business with the second orchid. After that we spent a lot of time exploring Jipang's capital city, Kyoto where a few main and sidequests made themselves known. After that we obtained the permit to enter Mt. Haku, where apparently the Root Clan has been looking for something. On a completely unrelated note, it's time for us to obtain our next means of transportation--this game sure has a lot of those!  Here we are in Kyoto, in front of the inn (宿), where we've just had a bit of a rest after fighting those relatively tough enemies in the palace. Spoiler alert, the tough enemies will not stop today either, and anyway it's manageable, you just can't win by mindlessly mashing the attack option from the menu. Today, we'll go and explore a bit outside the city walls. But before that...  ...we'll make a quick visit to this consumables shop here.  We have a small fetch quest coming up shortly, so to save us some time, I'll already buy the item we need for it: the hundred year old ginseng. Luckily, we have enough money already as it costs a whole 10,000 ryo as you can see.  We'll head east through this narrow valley between the mountains.  And as we walk, we get also our next new enemy, "Hell Dance". As you will see below, the dance is more precisely "kagura", a traditional Shinto music/dance style.  Their strength is about typical for this part of the world, so we'll still keep using our spell sword. To be clear, the strength of the spell that the sword casts is not really dependent on our own stats, so we'll certainly outgrow it soon(ish). But for this point in the game, it works well enough for a little while--it's kind of like when you find the Drake Sword in Dark Souls: it's much better than anything else you have at that point, but it doesn't scale with anything, so after a short while of using it, it simply can't keep up any more. Of course the game then chooses to give you the lightning spear soon after the drake sword stops being viable which is again a lot better than anything else you have at that point. Well, I mean you have to go a bit out of your way and fight a mimic in a small room to get the spear, but still. Sorry, which game were we talking about again? Oh, right, Tengai Makyou II. Sorry, got distracted there for a moment.  Anyway, while I was talking, Manjimaru and Kabuki have headed north along this river.  There's a small village here, called Shigaraki.  Here is the other side of the "100 year old ginseng" subquest. Well, it's barely even a subquest, more like a small fetch quest really. But first, let's as usual have a chat with everyone. First let's start with the five people you can see on this screen. Ah, so that's what those are. Now let's also check out a couple of houses here.   A few people here in the hotel also... Fujiwara pass is just another route to get over to this part of Jipang Interesting. We'll go and check out that situation shortly.  Here is the mayor's house and true enough, someone is blocking the way in.  So, uh, there is a person (?) in bed over there, so let's first check with the other two! Well, that explains the comment we got a short while ago about our hair. You know, I was wondering... what would it be like if had an actual dog in our party? Just wondering, apropos of nothing, because obviously this will never happen. All right, let's talk to the mayor in his tanuki form! That's true, if you go back the previous episode you can see them in the screenshots everywhere on the streets! Manjimaru received 10,000 ryo! So as you can see, this fetch quest is even easier than it seemed since you don't even have to spend your own money! Of course, since ginseng costs exactly 10,000 ryo, there isn't going to actually be any change we can kep, but oh well. You actually have a pretty long time frame in which you have to do this, so it's even possible to use this as a "short term loan" if you really need an extra 10,000 ryo right now for some reason! Anyway, we already have the ginseng, so we'll just talk to him again immediately and his form changes immediately... to that of a young woman:  This time he changes into his natural form of an old man:  Manjimaru obtained the "lingering fire" scroll! So, all this was finally to get another spell! The "lingering fire" (残火) spell. This spell is interesting, because it creates like a "carpet of fire" which deals fire damage to all enemies for a few turns. So, since I've been talking a lot about Linda³, you might remember that this exact spell was present there too and it was even called "fire carpet" there. Anyway, we'll try it out at some point, but for now were finally done here. As we exit, the guard at the door has one last thing to say.  Exiting from the village, we'll continue on our way north.  We get to another border crossing location, this one is Ousaka pass (逢坂).  There's only a couple of people here.  One person in the shop here we can talk to... Bijodaira (美女平) is, like pretty much everything in this game, a real place in Japan and I guess the joke here comes from the fact that "bijodaira" in Japanese means "beautiful woman plateau". Also they've really been throwing quite a lot of place names at us lately, many of them still to be visited in the future. Don't worry about remembering any of that, I will remind you when needed.  With this, let's continue our journey.  As always, enemies lurk. Of course with this many enemies at once, fighting them one by one is not viable due to the amount of damage you will take. So, spell sword it is, once again. At least these are not too bad, even though they can cast a fire spell on us.  Continuing on...  ...over to the east, we can see the Lake Biwa, not looking too great. For now, let's pop into that village there.  It's the village of Ootsu which has been mentioned a couple of times recently. This seems like a good place to gather some information about the Lake Biwa situation, so let's get to it. As usual we'll start with the people visible on the screen.  Blood Pond Hell, or Chinoike Jigoku (血の池地獄) is, somehow, somehow, an actual place in Japan. It's a hot spring which due to minerals present in the area is red in colour. Check it out:  Pretty crazy.  And the kid... Let's also check out a few houses here.  We'll be checking that out as soon as we obtain a boat!  A couple of people in the inn...  "Saikyo" written as 西京 could be interpreted to mean "west of capital". Also, as another weird similarity with Linda³, you might recall that one whole part of the game world there was called "The West Area" even though it was actually in the north geographically. So perhaps this is just a running joke that the writer of both of these games likes to include? Before leaving...  ...let's also stop by the weapons shop.  We'll take the opportunity to buy "Messenger's Straw Sandals" for Manjimaru.  They increase his speed by 5 points, so not too bad. With this, we can head out and continue on our journey.  We'll start by heading east...  ...and then take a left turn towards the north.  Of course, as always, there are enemies on the road. Compared to some monsters we can encounter in these parts, this one is not too bad.  But let's continue into that cave you could see on the previous screenshot, because that's none other than Mt. Haku.  As expected, there are two losers blocking the entrance. They're extremely dumb. But no matter, in we go!  At first, we snake around across these bridges, over what certainly looks like it could be a canal of sorts if the bridges were to open--which they look like they are able to do.  Sure game, do your thing. Apart from these, which are not particularly threatening, there are again some pretty tough enemies here.  Eventually we get to a staircase leading up.  But getting up takes some effort! The new enemy, Ghost Light (Shiranui) is kind of middle ground, still not overly hard.   Anyway, upstairs there's a whole bunch of chests. Some are empty (as expected), some, like this one, just contain enemies and the rest have some actual items. So let's see what we can find.  But before that, one more new enemy... Flame Warrior. And this one is a real pain--high defence coupled with significantly higher HP than other enemies in this area equals trouble. Our spell sword takes a whole four casts to get rid of him, which is not ideal. So this particular formation of enemies can definitely be a slight problem. Incidentally, in the PS2/GameCube remake version, the game difficulty was nerfed somewhat by having enemies do less damage while at the same time give more EXP so you level up faster.  Also, that thing on his forehead is the kanji for "fire": 火. Then we can get to the next chest.  So I've already talked a bit about these. There is a few different kinds of these "elixirs", but which one has which of the possible effects is assigned randomly when you start the game (I mean by this, when you first pick a save slot to use). So for the duration of one playthrough the effects will not be the same as in another playthrough and the only way to know is to try it out. Luckily, this is not a From Software game so you CAN simply save the game and try and then reload withou any penalty.  Still more stuff. But some good stuff here. Manjimaru found "Magoroku of Seki"  As it turns out this is a weapon, which will give Manjimaru plus 4 in attack power. We'll still keep the spell sword for now for casting though. As for the name, it's a reference to a famous school of sword craftsmen that operated in Seki, Gifu prefecture around 12-13th century. Today it's mostly a brand of kitchen knives. The other chest is, of course, empty.  After passing a few more chests with just consumables (or empty), we are back to the staircase we used to get here.  Back downstairs, there is another staircase leading to the other half of upstairs.  Chest-wise, the situation is similar on this side too. Both of these are empty, however.  One is empty, one contains enemies and one contains a return stone. Decidedly not a great deal if you ask me.  This chest is tucked away a bit, huh?  Haori is an overcoat worn on top of a kimono:  In our case, though...  ...it means +3 defence for Manjimaru compared to the turtle-shell armor he had previously. In addition to that, it has the effect of halving all the lightning element damage. But in all honesty there haven't really been any enemies with lightning attacks recently. However, we'll remember it for the future if it becomes necessary.  Interesting. Wonder what these are.  But at the end is another staircase up.  And finally a way to get down into that canal.  Let's see...  But of course. Let's hitch a ride!  Nice.  The canal is now filled with water so our ship can float out of its resting place.  Be aware though that all the bridges are now permanently up. So, uh, if you missed to pick up any items here... well, you missed them forever, since without the bridges you can no longer traverse this place to reach the chests. However, if you recall, the cave entrance was on land, so, I wonder how we'll be able to get to the lake with the ship?  All right, well, I guess that works. So now we can traverse the lake without issues. Maybe. (?)  Certainly there are enemies on the lake. This one is pretty manageable and anyway, we'll go and stop at the village to rest at the inn just after we finish the fight.  Anyway, sailing north...  ...we reach indeed, as we have been told, a strange structure, accessible via a pier. Let's investigate.  We can walk on the pier to get to it.  What could this possibly be?  Very odd. Can't help but notice the flame things in the back of the pool though. The strange light speaks to us.  So, it's an end game thing, looks like. Well, as she said, let's try and remember to come back here when the time is right. For now, though...  ...let's head over to that beach right in front of us.  A few steps to the west is another small cave.  This is the "West of Capital" cave, that we've heard about. Obviously it's pretty clearly actually north of it.  This guy has a bit of agility so the attacks miss a bit more than usual, but is not otherwise problematic.   On the west side is a chest. It is empty.  Over here is a bit of a weird staircase down.  I guess I accidentally went into a dead end, but I can see some chests on the other side. Let's try and get to them.  To be honest I'm not even sure exactly what's going on with the enemy designs at this point, but I like it, whatever it is. The new enemy here actually is not super bad--it has strong defence but doesn't hit so hard. On the other hand, it has an attack which ignores your defence stat, so be a little careful with them anyway.  And so we finally reach that area with the chests...  This is an interesting situation. First, the chests. One of them contains "The Elixir of Blood", the second type of elixir. A second chest contains a scroll with a new spell. This time it's the "kongo" spell (金剛). Kongo, or "vajra" is a legendary weapon combining the properties of diamond (as in being indestructible) and thunderbolt, and the weapon of king Indra. It's both a Hinduist and a Buddhist symbol, but despite this "grand" description, all this spell does in our case is increase one ally's defence for a few turns. To be fair, the increase is acually by a whole 50%. So that's actually pretty useful, especially when it only costs 5 MP to use! But this got me thinking again. Like if you were doing the localisation of this game, what in the world would you do about the spell names? In Japanese, they are all exactly two kanji so the meaning is half-compressed/half-implied (many of them depend on pre-existing "cultural" knowledge of a potential Japanese player of this game), but I'm not sure how well that sort of thing would work in English. If you were localising this game back at the time of release, i.e. you had to fit whatever names you came up with into a space for a VERY limited number of letters, what would you do? I have no idea, honestly. In a completely unsurprising twist, the remaining four chests are all empty. It is however, possible to check out the three gravestones. They belong to Crow and Benimaru, two Fire Braves from one thousand years ago, and the third one is of a person named Torii Dousaburou, presumably another one of the braves from a millennium ago. If so, then we'll probably meet his ghost (the name Dousaburou is unambiguously male) when we obtain one of the remaining holy swords. Also, what about the other four braves? Well, perhaps we'll find their resting place at some other point during our journey. For the moment, let's head back upstairs.  In the northeastern corner of the cave, we find this situation. The normal chest contains just an healing consumable, but we also have here a red chest. A couple of episodes ago (it was back in Ihika village), we have been warned to not under any circumstances open a red chest. So, for the time being, we are actually going to follow that advice. In any case we are at present not equipped to deal with what's inside, so it would be kind of useless to even try opening it. But, let's make a note of it a come back here later. I will, however, make a note that there is a total of four of these red chests in the game. That's all there is to be found in this cave (I did say it was small), so we can now head back out.  Let's head back to our boat.  This time, we'll go northeast, towards that river mouth.  Our boat is a bit too big to fit under these bridges, so we'll have to park here for now and walk the rest of the way.  Luckily, we don't have to go far, because right here is the city of Kanazawa which we were (sort of) looking to reach. But as we enter the city, we get another glimpse at what's going on in the villains' lair with the three sages and the evil ball of light called Yomi!   And she does. No pink swirls this time, though. I guess that was only Kikugorou's thing. Also, by "clam", I mean literally the kind that lives in the sea. After this...  ...we return to our regularly scheduled programme, just as Kabuki and Manjimaru enter the city of Kanazawa. Yeah, probably not.  Let's see, there are "about" five people "or so" on this screen. And also the kid. As usual, "uncle", "aunt" is simply a polite way for kids to refer to adults to whom they are not necessarily related. So let's check out the houses also. First the house which was just mentioned.   Somehow, I'm not sure this is right. There's probably more to it. Especially since we know that all seven orchids were defeated 1000 years ago.   Let's not forget about this gentleman here. Yes, one of the sages did say something about the illusions...  One person over in the inn... Of course there are mermaids in this game. Because why not? It certainly seems to contain most everything else already. Obviously, we'll be going to check out the show, but not just yet. That's mostly all the people in town that have anything to say, so...  ...now let's try enter the castle and see what is going on in there. First of all, there's this guy blocking the entrance. Right, so before you can enter the castle you have to leave all items, spells, weapons and equipment at the "left luggage" facility. The game is actually being somewhat clever here about something that's about to happen, but either way, I have already gone and dropped off all our items, so we can proceed in.  And with this, he moves aside and we can go in!  By the way, did you notice that most characters actually have two different sprites, a smaller one for the map and towns (like on the previous screenshots) and a larger one for dungeons and castles (like on this one)? Anyway, let's talk to this guy and try to find out what is going on here. I know you can see that chest there in the corner. It contains another certificate of ownership of a lump of salt.  In the meantime, the only way to go here is up.   Let's head across to the other side of the castle.  Interesting room, but there's nothing here. As you can see there, we can go up or down. So let's head down first.  Down here is a person and a chest. No new information here. I guess they do this in case you miss some people that you can still get the info. As for the chest, it only has a healing consumable. So let's head back...  ...and then upstairs.  I guess that's the lord. And then...  ...an arrow carrying a letter flies in through the window and hits him literally in the hair!  (He also gains a portrait now.) Well, not like we have a choice. However, before we can be on our way, Kabuki decides to say something...   And he takes off...  ...only to return immediately!  Your answer doesn't make a difference here.  And he takes off again... Kabuki Danjurou has left the party. Sigh. I was hoping we'd finally gain another party member, but no. We actually lose even the one we have due to his own vanity. Ugh. Also this is why the game forces you to leave all items in storage before coming in here. It prevents the situation like in older Final Fantasy game where a character leaving the party also takes all their equipment with them, except here it would have been much worse as also all items and spells are divided among characters, in addition to just equipment! So in this way you're prevented from losing access to any of that when Kabuki leaves. But he is gone, at least for a while, so we'll have to continue this journey alone for now. We can talk again to the lord...  Well, ok I guess, if that's the case... but still. Either way, nothing to do here but head back out. On the way out, however...  ...our three ninja ladies appear again!   And just as they have arrived, they leave.  And so, there we are. We lost a party member, but our journey must proceed on our own for the foreseable future, but hopefully not too long. Maybe Kabuki will see the error of his ways (yeah this is not happening), or maybe we'll meet someone entirely new. Either way we'll continue next time. Take care and stay safe.  Although I don't have quite such a treasure trove like with Linda³, there are still a few fun illustrations/sketches related to this game. Most of them are still in a spoilery stage since they show characters we haven't yet met, but here and there I will post a couple. Such as this "artist's vision" of the apocaliptic rooftop fight between Kabuki and Kikugorou!  KABUKI VS. KIKUGOROU: THE DECISIVE BATTLE AT THE WAKAYAMA CASTLE TOWER "I'll show you right now that I am the most handsome man in Jipang": The most ridiculous battle in the world has begun--who has the best morphing skills, Kabuki or Kikugorou?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 22:21
|
|
|
I still miss Kikogorou. I also love that for so much of its span this game just looks like a, nicely sprited, but unexceptional jRPG, then you get stuff like the arrow, the interface between the red lake and the blue river, all the goofiness with the vehicles, etc. it never stops being impressive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 22:59
|
|
|
Is this game going to be a revolving door of temp companions? Or will we get a proper party at some point?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 23:17
|
|
|
LJN92 posted:Is this game going to be a revolving door of temp companions? Or will we get a proper party at some point? There are actually no temp companions at all as such in this game--Kabuki is a proper party member who just leaves the party now for a while but will be back. As for the the other question, yes, as a matter of fact pretty much as of this chapter, we're actively working on finally gathering our whole party together. I know the game has been taking its sweet bloody time with it, but in the end it's just a REALLY long game and I guess it has time to spare.  But as I said, we're finally truly on the way to completing our party (of four people in total) during this chapter and the next.(There are no actual chapters in game or anything like that, but it's convenient to consider each orchid part as one chapter I guess). Hope this clarifies things a bit.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2023 23:23
|
|
|
LJN92 posted:Is this game going to be a revolving door of temp companions? Or will we get a proper party at some point? It seems more like a revolving door of transport vehicles to me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 00:05
|
|
|
LJN92 posted:Is this game going to be a revolving door of temp companions? Or will we get a proper party at some point? Blaze Dragon posted:It seems more like a revolving door of transport vehicles to me. It can be both!
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
Do we at least get a time where all the vehicles we've used Voltron together into a Super Sentai robot? Including the scribbleboat?
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Do we at least get a time where all the vehicles we've used Voltron together into a Super Sentai robot? Including the scribbleboat? Blaze Dragon posted:It seems more like a revolving door of transport vehicles to me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 23:06
|
|
|
After defeating the final boss, the traffic cops catch up with Manjimaru and fine him for multiple instances of months-long illegal parking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2023 23:12
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Do we at least get a time where all the vehicles we've used Voltron together into a Super Sentai robot? Including the scribbleboat? ..... Alright. Okay. That sure is an idea. I'm DMing a game on Thursdays and I think you just gave me the dungeon I needed for the Enhancement sphere of magic (which is where Animate Object-type spells are in this system). It's gonna be a graveyard of obsoleted vehicles from various RPGs, all animated by their loneliness and grudges into, effectively, massive golems. Like if Transformers were powered by outrage instead of energon, and if you lose you get strapped into the pilot seat forever like a ghost pirate captain. The scribbleboat may end up as the final boss of the place just for the sheer variety of bullshit it can become.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 03:48
|
|
|
Raitzeno posted:..... Alright. Okay. That sure is an idea. I'm DMing a game on Thursdays and I think you just gave me the dungeon I needed for the Enhancement sphere of magic (which is where Animate Object-type spells are in this system). It's gonna be a graveyard of obsoleted vehicles from various RPGs, all animated by their loneliness and grudges into, effectively, massive golems. Like if Transformers were powered by outrage instead of energon, and if you lose you get strapped into the pilot seat forever like a ghost pirate captain. That sounds absolutely amazing! Please tell us how it went after the game!
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 09:32
|
|
|
Gonna be a while before we get there, the group is currently blasting their way through Luminous Labyrinth to stab the temporarily-insane King Blue with Rouge's Shadow Dagger. There's another dungeon to go before getting to some metastory in between major cycles, and that's where the Angry Vehicle Dungeon will be. I'll let you know when we get there. (Also, I may steal Kikugorou just because he's so entertaining. I have no idea how this group will react to him...) (If it wasn't obvious, the setting is sort of an Everything But The Kitchen Sink dimensional endpoint. I've already thrown them into Preamarl from Lufia II, Satorl Marsh from Xenoblade, the Scarlet Devil Mansion's Great Library from Touhou, and had their airship attacked by a Tanzer offshoot on the way to the twin cities of Luminous and Omble. It's an incredible mess.) Raitzeno fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Mar 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2023 17:16
|
|
|
 Last time we did some more exploring, and in process obtained a boat that allowed us to traverse the cursed Lake Biwa. Finally, we reached the city of Kanazawa where we found out that the local lord is a bit... weak. In any case, the whole thing ended with Kabuki having his vanity used against him and ending up being tricked into leaving our party. So now Manjimaru is alone again. Therefore our main task for today's episode will be to find ourselves a replacement second party member, as the enemies around here are a lil bit on the strong side for Manjimaru to be able to fight them on his own for long. Anyway, we have a LOT to do today, so let's get started!  Here's Manjimaru, standing in front of the Kanazawa castle... without Kabuki. First things first, of course. So let me go quickly and pick up our equipment and other stuff from the storage. Obviously we can't take everything, since Kabuki is gone so we've lost half of our limited inventory slots, but we'll pick up a few important spells and such. Before we go, though...  ...I figure we might as well pick up this iron soldier's helmet for Manjimaru.  It gives us +4 in defence.  And also this moonlight armour here.  This one gives us an additional +4 in defence and replaces Benimaru's robe (which we pretty much only just got--but we'll keep it around because as mentioned, it halves lightning damage).  Let's head out.  But as we do, the five Ashimoto brothers show up here! Um, sure, you... hurry on ahead, ok. I wonder what they are up to. Anyway, they leave town. We can also talk to that woman standing by the door. As for us, we don't need to worry about Toyama just yet, so for now, we'll make our way first to Fukui village where the dark orchid has popped up.  Therefore, we'll head south.  Before we proceed, we can make a quick stop here. This is the Konoha pass, and normally it would serve as a border crossing, but clearly the orchid roots are blocking the other side, so we can't pass. But let's make a quick stop here anyway. By the way, Konoha (木ノ葉) means literally "tree leaf".  It's a very small place with only two houses! But first, let's talk to the welcoming committee here! He should probably try not to pop a vein over this, though. Seems a little agitated there.  Hello! Um, we knew that, but sure. The two houses are the item shop and the inn, so let's see if there are any interesting guests at the inn.   Well, that was kind of a waste of time, so let's proceed south.  On the way, there are of course new enemies to be encountered, such as this guy with, for once, a completely straightforward name!  The enemy difficulty is still kind of the same as last time (with an ocassional spike, as we'll see), so in order to make it possible for Manjimaru to survive, we'll make extensive use of our new "kongo" spell--how nice from the game to let us get it just before this section! It increases our defence by 50%, but this is actually misleading: as I've mentioned before, the damage formula is not linear, so 50% more defence in reality can lead to damage reduction of up to 90%, depending on the enemy stats. In particular for this guy who deals around 20 damage normally, by using the kongo spell, it's brought down to only 1-2. So this will be very helpful for our survival, until we sort out the party situation.  Some more new enemies, although these are definitely a palette swap from an old enemy. In this kind of situation with 5 enemies at once, of course, the spell sword is still indispensable.  I should explain the name of this enemy. The phrase "human bullet" (肉弾), or literally "meat bullet" comes from a 1907 book of the same name by Sakurai Tadayoshi, which contains his reminiscences from being a soldier in 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war, where the soldiers were considered as Japanese Emperor's "human bullets" in his service.  A bit further south and here we are at Fukui village. Here is another of the dark orchids too.  As always, the place has been plunged into darkness. Let's see what the people have to say then. The other person there at the top of the screen looks like a ninja! We'll check that out later, there are a few of these hidden ninja villages in the game.  Not really that many people here. Huh, that seems pretty scary. Certainly we want to investigate that in due course.  As we've heard before, there's a bunch of monks here, but most of them are just praying like this: "Namu amida butsu" is a Buddhist prayer (in this case in Sanskrit language transliterated into Japanese). It means something like "I entrust myself to the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life".  All these monks are saying the same thing. Also as we can see, this particular orchid happens to be yellow in colour this time.  This one monk over here has something a bit different to say.  As always, we'll check out a few houses too. Let's see also the guy in bed. We've heard about this already, how the evil god Yomi is feeding itself on people's energy via the dark orchid.  Well, 100 ryo is... not really a lot, but as we see, Kabuki is still up to his old tricks and still scamming people out of their money! Let's check out also the temple buildings.   I'm sure there aren't, just as I'm sure that our next party member who hails from just that village is certainly not one of those descendants. Now, you're probably thinking that in the previous sentence I'm just being ironic and that this person will of course turn out to be a descendant of Fire Clan from 1000 years ago, right? Well, you're actually completely on the wrong path with that line of thinking, that's all I'm going to tell you for now. Anyway, we're done here now, and will come back once in possession of another holy sword of course.  Let's head eas and see what we find!  We reach a place with a narrow valley, but then...  What even. A big boulder falls from the sky to block the way. There's also someone standing on top of it.  I'm sorry, I can't help but chuckle every time they say "Princess Clam" (the Japanese name is simply はまぐり姫, so not really anything more elaborate than literally "Princess Clam"). It's just funny. Also, who the heck is this loser anyway. But ok, if we can't get through here, let's head a bit north for now.  But as we head north...  Yep.  Proceeding north along this path leads to...  We already know how this goes, but do take note of that little clearing to the right, surrounded by forest on all sides. We'll come back to that in a minute. Meanwhile...  So, uh still a little further up north along the path...  By my count this is number four, so only one more left after this one.  Nope. Also his name means "sea cow". Anyway, a bit more north, and here's the last one.   Well, that's all of them. Anyway, bottom line is, our passage eastwards is completely blocked and we're going to need to deal with that. So, let's back up a bit for now. First of all, just a bit to the west of this whole situation...  ...is another Tengu's hut. So it's time to learn one more spell!  Let's see what we get. Manjimaru obtained the "spring water" scroll! This "spring water" (清水) scroll, is exactly as he said, very situational. It allows you to traverse the areas which damage you when stepping on them (e.g. poisonous tiles on the map, etc.) without taking the damage you'd normally take there. So really not something you'd need to use all the time. So now let's leave here and backtrack to that litle clearing in the forest I pointed out earlier.  More enemies on the way, of course! Not anything special about this one, one of the easier enemies in the area.   And of course still more! Before you ask, "yes, indeed", that last enemy even in Japanese has the exact same name as the boss from Demon's Souls! It's also the toughest enemy you can find out in the open in this part of the world (note the careful phrasing here!), so just try not to get killed (definitely use the kongo spell here too!).    All right, here.  And what do you know, it's a secret ninja hideout! Not quite sure why after like 20+ Tengu's we found the game feels the need to tutorialise like this, but sure.  There is another ninja here...  The house is actually an inn where we can rest, and also talk to the lady there in the corner. What IS it with tutorialising here? In any case, as I'm sure you've noticed, the game has "expanded" a little bit after the second orchid and it does seem like we are currently working on more than one plot strand at the same time (unlike before). Including there what seems like more long term stuff, such as the story of Ayako, the bride who married a demon (?), which is definitely part of the main plot and not a sidequest. Anyway, that's all here, so after resting up, we'll be on our way.  If we continue north past the boulders...  ...and then turn west...  ...eventually, we reach a coastal village.  This is the Oshimizu village (which we were recently told supposedly has a living descendant of the Fire Clan living in it.  Let's see what information we can gather here--well, the game did say we should be doing that at all times! First, the two old ladies standing in front of the house there. Let me get my notebook to write this down, so we can check that out in a bit. Next on our tour is that gentleman behind the house. We'll go soon and check out what's up with the mermaid circus show (and mermaids in general).  Hmmm. What's up with that boulder there? Well, let's start with the elderly gentlemen in the bottom right and then we'll see. Into the notebook it goes. Sorry, I'll stop with this now. But it seems like the kid may be able to tell us more about this boulder thing. Well, if this Fire Clan person is from long long ago, then they can't possibly be still alive, right? Anyway, let's talk to the other older gentleman here. Certainly sounds like someone we would want in our party, but again... these are all stories from 1000 years ago, so. Also, those gravestones there don't have anything special about them and you can't even examine them.  Let's see what these two have to say. Sure. I mean, we were going to end up there eventually anyway, so no problem. Huh? Sleeping in the temple? Really? Well, it's that building just there, so let's take a look.  Amusingly, the name "Chiyo" (千代) actually means "a thosand years"! So it seems that this Gokuraku dude might really be dead. Oh right, since I'm talking about the names, the name Gokuraku (極楽) is the Japanese word for Buddhist paradise/pure land Sukhavati. Well, before we move on, let's just check the other houses.  For example, the inn here. There's a few people to talk to. So it looks like there is some friction (racism?) related to mermaids for some reason? The name of the cave, Ouse (逢瀬) means in fact "lovers rendezvous", so at least that fits. And finally the travelling merchant guy. So, we can answer here yes or no as usual, but actually both answers here are interesting and different from each other. First here is the "yes" dialogue. And this is the, perhaps more interesting, "no" dialogue: Huh, so it looks like Gokuraku's lover was also a mermaid... As you can see, today's episode is quite focused on mermaids! All right, so that's all here for now. Now we have some idea about this guy Gokuraku who apparently was really strong and had a mermaid girlfriend. And all that happened a thousand years ago during the last war with the Root Clan. Cool.  We were told about some caves, so let's head north.  Reptile dogs you say? Well ok, let's go with that. A bit on the moderately stronger side, but ok.   Here is a cave, but actually... we're not going to go into that one just yet. It has a couple of enemies inside which are significantly stronger than those outside.  As we're loitering about here, more new enemies. This one is pretty weak in comparison. Also, "human-face stonefish", there is literally nothing I can add to that, is there? Well, it's a bit annoying because it can poison you, but poison is not too dangerous in this game at least.   Before going into any caves, we'll visit this village here.  Finally, we reach Wajima, the place where they do mermaid shows. Actually, how does that work? Are they kept in captivity like dolphins or something? Well, I'm sure we'll find out. For now, let's gather info as usual! Hmm. This is starting to sound more and more suspicious by the minute. What is actually going on here.  Well, the place to the left looks like where the mermaid show goes on. But for now let's talk to this person in white here. An island? But how do we get to it? We left our boat(s) somewhere and I don't feel like going back for it. Before we talk to the guy standing in front of the mermaid building, let's visit a couple of houses too.   Hmm, are you all right there? I see. Things are becoming clearer now. We just need to find the cave (it's not the one we just saw a short while ago).  All right, now you. Do you sell tickets for the mermaid show? Gone fishing? Wait, fishing... for mermaids, perhaps? What in the world is going on here. Well, clearly no show yet, at least that's clear.  Another thing that sometimes happens in Wajima is what you can see here, an open air market. These people are all vendors and some of them sell items you can't find elsewhere.  For now, I will purchase this thing here, a "small jackhammer". It cannot be used by Manjimaru, so I'm sure you can figure out what this is going to be for.  Let's be on our way.  Woah. You loook scary. Again the kongo spell effectively makes the enemy harmless so we can deal with it.   By going all the way east...  ...and then south, we reach another Tengu's hut. This one, however, is a little bit different from the others we've encountered so far.  But I'll let the gentleman (?) explain what's different about him! So we don't actually get a new spell from this Tengu, as you can see. Instead, he can decrease the MP cost of one spell for us; we can freely choose which spell (or none at all) and he doesn't ask us to pay him for it or anything. If you go through with this, for the chosen spell, the cost of casting will be decreased by 1 MP. So, things being what they are (or このまま, if you prefer), considering that the decrease in cost is by only 1 MP, it probably makes most sense to apply this to some low cost, but relatively useful spell. Without thinking too hard about options, I can see at the moment two good candidates: our basic heal spell (original cost: 3 MP) and also possibly the kongo spell (orignal cost: 5 MP), because there it feels like it could really make a difference to give you an extra use of the spell or such. Needless to say, no matter what you choose, the impact on gameplay is going to be fairly minor in the end. You can talk to him some more after but he just repeats the whole story about how Yomi feeds to the energy of the people in the area via the dark orchid. But we've heard that story already several times, so let's skip it this time since there is no new information to be had.  That bridge there is the one which leads directly into Wajima village. To the west is the cave I mentioned we're not going to be going into just yet. But as you can see, directly south of the bridge, there is yet another cave.  This one, we will go in right now.  This is in fact, the Ouse cave we've been told about shortly. With some luck this will lead to the mermaid island.  This cave is very short and consists of just one straight route...  ...going directly to the staircase leading back out. I don't think there are even any random encounters here.  Exiting from the cave, we can see what looks like an island with some huts on it over to the east, but we have no way to reach it. There is however another cave entrance a few steps to the west! So let's go in!  We might be on the right track here, as the walls look very coral-y.  This one is a bit more complex, but it still has only one floor leading to a single exit, so... However, as we keep going through the cave, who do we run into but...  These guys are very definitely fishing mermaids out of the sea, aren't they? Uh, can I look into your baskets please? No? Ok. Well, clearly whatever they are doing to mermaids needs to be stopped, but for now...  ...we'll let them be on their way, and we'll also continue on our way forward. Exiting at the other end of this cave...   ...it would appear that we have found the mermaid village! Nice. It's not a big place, so we'll make a quick tour and then see what we can do here. Uh, you have someone imprisoned here? What did he do, anyway?  Hello! No, we definitely don't associate with those kinds of guys.  So, as you probably guessed (or at least suspected) by now, the man in the cage is in fact the original Fire Clan person from 1000 years ago (Gokuraku), but still alive to this day thanks to mermaid tears! On an unrelated note, it's possible to go into those huts you see.  But there is nobody inside, however you might find some items in those pots you see. Mostly healing consumables, but one of them has an item called "burning water". It's a consumable item that does a fire based attack.  The centre hut has a tunnel leading to another part of the island.  In one of the pots, we can find a "bug elixir", part of the strange elixirs family of items we learned about last time. In the other is another burning water.  Let's talk to a few more mermaids! But, it's not really a lie?  One last mermaid, before we talk to the queen (whom you can see there on her throne). Ugh, that's not great. But... let's talk to the queen! Before that, though...  Do you see that bunch of flowers right next to Manjimaru? It looks like just a part of the scenery, right?  But it's not scenery! It's a key item! Of course, we don't know what it's for. And now, the queen.   I'm pretty sure I know who kidnapped her... Then she orders the cage to be brought to land.  And so they bring the cage over and we can have a brief chat with Gokuraku (although we can't see him very well just yet). The deal is pretty good indeed. All we need to do is save the mermaid queen's daughter and we got ourselves a new party member! Before we go, one last comment from the queen...  All right, we have our next task! Of course the most likely place where the queen's daughter was taken is probably Wajima village, so let's head straight there. But since this is a "two-parter", please continue reading in the next post!
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 22:23
|
|
|
 After leaving the mermaid village, we're back in Wajima.  We'll head straight for the building where the show is supposed to take place. So. It somehow costs a whole 3,000 ryo to see the show. Not cheap, but unfortunately we have to do it in order to progress the game. I guess if you don't have it you have to go out to grind. Luckily there's an random encounter enemy combination just outside of town which nets you about 550 ryo. So at least it won't take long if you need to do it.  Ok, so I guess it is like a dolphin show or something like that. However, before watching the show, let's head upstairs for a bit.  Ah, there's the five brothers... Let's see what they have to say for themselves! The second brother: If you say no, he asks you if want to do more than just watch the show, so, uh, these guys really deserve whatever they get in the end for this. Anyway, on to the third brother: Number four: It would be nice for sure, but alas there's no such thing in the game for that kind of low price. Finally the last brother: So these guys are creeps. But we are here to save a mermaid and her boyfriend, so let's just watch the show for now.  The show begins...  Ok, I was right about the dolphin show thing it seems. But if we head over backstage...  It seems that the mermaid's boyfriend is imprisoned right here. But let's talk to the mermaid first.  Let's talk to the guy behind bars...  After opening the door... Well, that was easy. Obvously, since she doesn't have feet, Sanda gives the mermaid a piggyback ride. This is very cute:  Except... this alerts those two Ashimoto brothers' goons who are standing right there.   Well, this is bad. Except...  ...our trio of friendly ninjas show up again! Ok, watch this:  What.  And, as always, just as quickly as they arrive, the three of them leave again. Well, until next time, ladies. All righty, looks like we're done here for now. So we should head back to the mermaid village; however, before that, let's make a quick stop at Oshimizu and have a look what kind of reward we got from Sanda. By the way, Manjimaru's "charred" look is just a visual gag. It reverts to normal upon exiting the building.  As mentioned, here we are at Oshimizu.  More precisely, we're heading into the hotel operated by Sanda's parents.  People here don't have anything new to say, but if we stay the night...  ...a new chest will appear by the door. Let's open it. Manjimaru found the Robe of Shiny Scales!  Yeah, we get +4 in defence here, so why not. For once we get an actual useful gift! So, after this little detour, let's head back the mermaid village to report on the situation!  Here we are! Some of the mermaids here have some new things to say.   The mermaid princess and Sanda are over here, so let's talk to them. First, Sanda! And then the princess.  And now let's go to the queen, so she can fulfill her side of our deal.  It is most definitely possible to say "no" here, however, as we'll soon see, further progress through the game is blocked without Gokuraku in your party. But even if you say no, you can simply come back here and she will ask you again.  The opening of the cage occurs in a cutscene introducing our new character!   Gokuraku Tarou has joined the party! We'll check him out in a minute, but for now some parting words from the queen.  We can leave now, but a few mermaids have some more words for us now that have joined with Gokuraku, so I will summarise them here without repeating the screenshots. So wait, is she a clam or is she human now? Ah, I'm sure we'll find out. Ah, him too? Anyway, now we can go. The game will for a while now play the Gokuraku's music them. It was heard already in the cutscene, but here is the better quality version from the remake.  Before we proceed...  ...let's have a look at our new companion's stats. As it turns out, he has more than double Manjimaru's HP and significantly higher attack power, but lower defence and agility. He also can carry 9 items as opposed to Manjimaru's six, but this is compensated by him being able to carry only half as many scrolls. On the other side, he has no MP and will hardly gain any over the course of the game, so it doesn't really matter because he'll never use magic anyway. In addition, despite high initial stats, his growth is slower than Manjimaru and he won't gain them so quickly. But, he is what we need right now to make the fights a little easier. He comes with a few taijutsu ("body technique") moves, such as the scissors wrestling move and others. The scissors move is pretty similar to the "cobra twist" from Linda, as it blocks the enemy from acting for a few turns while doing low damage each turn. Gokuraku is also blocked from acting for the duration as he is "holding" the enemy in scissors. Headbutt deals normal damage, but stuns the enemy. Depending on the stats difference between Gokuraku and the enemy, one or both of them may get knocked out in process. Body slam deals normal damage to a whole group of enemies, however, depending on the stats, Gokuraku may suffer damage himself in the process. As always, these techniques do not consume MP and he will learn a few more as he levels up. In general, he's pretty much a pure physical attacker at least for now. As you can also see, he comes with no items or equipment, which makes sense, having spent 1000 years in a prison; however it does mean that we'll need to take care of it. Unfortunately, due to his large size, he can only use special equipment. So, we'll head back to Wajima for now to give him a bit of equipment.  First of all, the small jackhammer for a +21 in attack power. And then, over in the regular item shop (not the equipment shop!)...  ...we can buy a large sake barrel.  This serves as an armour piece for Gokuraku with +19 in defence. We'll get more stuff for him later, but this is enough for the moment. All right, now...  ...let's head into this other cave, which we were not strong enough for before. Well, Manjimaru still kind of isn't, but we have a helper who is now!  It's mostly an unremarkable looking cave.  But there are some unique enemies here. As you can see by the HP, these are definitely stronger than what we're used to outside. Gokuraku can deal with then, but Manjimaru on his own definitely not as they can two-shot him easily. Well, I guess flapper on its own is not that much of a problem, but the eyes thing is deadly to us right now.    At the end of the cave is this place. Chests are either unimportant (one has a moon elixir) or empty (the other three), but we can definitely pick up that flower in the middle. Manjimaru found a dark peony flower! Let's add this to our plant collection. In truth, there is still some time before we need it, but since we're already here, why not pick it up. Now then, one last thing for today.  Now that we have a really strong person with us, let's see what we can do about these boulders that are blocking the way. Let's watch that part as video, shall we?   All right, now that the way is free, let's go through here first.  As it turns out, there's another Tengu's hut here; we've been told about this one earlier today ("a Tengu's hut by a large field of flowers").  Manjimaru received the "Heavenly Fire" scroll! Well, we've definitely met Crow and he gave us our second holy sword! Anyway, the spell we just received is a stronger fire attack.  Ok, let's take one of the other paths.  Nice beach.  Also, some more new enemies! Incidentally, "obo" is a weasel-like youkai which is mostly a thing in Gunma prefecture in Japan!  After following the path...  ...we reach another village, but clearly not one we'll be passing through due to road being blocked on the other side.  Welcome to Tateyama! But we've already had an eventful day, so let's stop at this point and we'll have a look around next time and also figure out where to go from here! Until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 22:23
|
|
|
Gokuraku's fun. Hopefully he stays an effective companion despite his stats being front-loaded.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2023 15:03
|
|
|
Honestly, I was sure the next companion was gonna be a dog given all the hullaballoo in the Tanuki village.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2023 15:55
|
|
|
Man Gokuraku really hates rocks.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2023 21:20
|
|
|
We've gone from a traitor to someone that has a long list of negative qualities but at least swore absolute loyalty to our protagonist. That's an improvement. Can't wait to see them interact with each other.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2023 23:07
|
|
|
Well, I mean, does Gokuraku actually have those negative qualities? That part I'm not clear on. It seems like it could be mostly a misunderstanding on the part of the mermaids.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 02:03
|
|
|
Yeah, we definitely don't have the full story on our new party member yet. All we really know for sure is that he pissed off the mermaids, presumably via the whole "drinking mermaid tears" thing that's the reason he's still alive after all this time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 08:27
|
|
|
And that mermaids very rarely cried, so ~obviously~ he must have done something terrible to her. I'm going to bet that he actually made her laugh so hard she cried.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 18:16
|
|
|
My guess is, Gokuraku was actually a somewhat fairly swell guy, but wound up saying or doing something stupid, causing his mermaid waifu to leave him, crying. Distraught, he drank her tears as a weird way of remembering her, then went to drink his sorrows away, and caused much property damage, resulting in him being locked up, with the rumors getting twisted as the years passed. edited for possible spoilers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 19:41
|
|
|
There's the line about him running back because the mermaid was dying of a disease. It could just as easily be a thing of "I'm sorry I have to leave you." But yeah I'd bet on there being some comedy to it. EDIT: Actually, I'll make a different bet: his wife got transformed into Princess Clam. It neatly explains everything, I would say. Tallgeese fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Apr 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:47
|
|
|
Honestly, I don't know that we'll be learning more about Gokuraku's past than we already have. Guy's basically well-meaning but all kinds of dumb, there's a bunch of ways things could have gone badly even if he wasn't a jerk.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
I don't know. The mermaids were talking so negatively about him that it feels like there has to be some kind of payoff.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 21:23
|
|
|
https://i.imgur.com/VBGM3LW.mp4
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:58
|
|
|
"If they wanted to stop me, they shoulda brought Mt. Fuji!" loving slayed me, holy poo poo. XD
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2023 07:00
|
|
|
Hey all! Sorry about (yet another) delay in posting here, I had to deal with a bit of a family situation. However, the updates should be able to resume finally next week. I'm working on it already!
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 07:41
|
|
|
Well, if you're working on an LP update I assume things are going better now at least.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2023 05:36
|
|
|
Well, since the next update is clearly not ready yet (I was still a bit busy with other things, sorry), I thought I might give you just a small preview of what to expect: Don't worry I'm now truly back on this and it's coming--I have never abandoned a LP and I don't plan to start now! "Please look forward to it!"
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2023 20:35
|
|
|
Attack of the Clones looking good.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
Finally, party members that won't abandon Manjimaru.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2023 23:40
|
|
|
Previously Manjimaru spend quite a lot of time dealing with what I like to refer to as "The Mermaid Situation". To summarise, it turned out that one of the Fire Clan members has been imprisoned by the mermaids for about 1000 years after having gained immortality by drinking mermaid tears, presumably those from his mermaid girlfriend. Thus, after losing Kabuki, Manjimaru managed to gain back one party member, one Gokuraku Tarou, who, while not dabbling in magic, does hit pretty hard. This was somewhat helpful in dealing with random encounters within the immediate area. But now it's time to venture forward and see what awaits us. Apart of course, from even stronger random encounters, where even just having Gokuraku around doesn't seem to be enough to ensure survival. Well, let's see. At the end of the mermaid adventure, Manjimaru and and Gokuraku made a stop in Tateyama village for a bit of rest. This is a very small place, but nevertheless, we'll make our usual tour! The four people we see on this screenshot are all that can be found outside. If you recall, Hida province was where we started from, and where Manjimaru's house is. Indeed, we've cleared that area out completely, but you can't reach there by land still--we had to use a combination of various boats and other means of travel to get from there to here! Yeah so to explain this a bit, we started from Hida province and proceeded on south and then west and then all the way north and back east, so in actuality we made a big circle clockwise and ended up (for now) just north of where we originally started the game! Well ok, no real useful info here. In the houses are only shopkeepers, so not much to talk to them about. Obviously, the way south is blocked, so we have to go back the way we came, i.e. north. Anyhow, we were only stopping here for a brief rest. For now, let's continue eastwards. Eventually, Gokuraku has a few comments for us... First of all, you were imprisoned for most of those 1000 years, so... not sure what you're trying to say here. In any case, Manjimaru ain't nobody's servant, ok. Well, at least Gokuraku's funny, so that's something. Continuing northeast, we finally reach this bridge which takes us into a new town! Welcome to Toyama! We here heard about this place some time ago, it was mentioned that the Lord of Toyama is trying to organise a force to resist the Root Clan invasion. In fact if we read that little sign by the bridge... Any sightings of the Root Clan should be reported to the castle! -- From the Lord. Nice, but before we visit the lord, of course let's talk to townspeople--starting with the white haired gentleman here. We were already told about this place (based on a real place in Japan, of course)--the "bijo" part from the name indeed means "beautiful woman". The other place, Midagahara (弥陀ヶ原), is in real life a wetlands area near Tateyama, but in the game, we'll mostly be interested in the cave and what's inside. But more on that later today. There are actually not that many people outside, but here are two more. We'll see a bit later what's the meaning of that comment about castles, but for now I'll just tell you that this story about clams breathing out mirages and images of illusion is certainly an actual part of Japanese folklore! I guess we're approaching the New Year celebration, huh? Our next person is right here. And finally one least person hanging around outside. The southern gate, a.k.a. the gate you can see right there in front of us. Anyway, now let's see what's going on inside the houses. There are many more people to be found there. This house has parents and their adult son. First the parents. And finally the son: The expression "three kingdoms" referes to Japan, China and India but really it just means "the whole world". Over at the inn... As mentioned, several buildings here also have an upstairs, so here we go. Well, I guess here it gets spelled out for us to keep an eye out for those flowers lying around that we're able to pick up. We don't quite know yet what they can be used for, so we'll just have to keep collecting them for now. Well, let's talk to the son. I don't even want to think what he might be talking about. In any case we'll find out soon enough. Let's see what's happening in here... First we'll talk to the woman. The man in bed is not exactly coherent: With every passing minute this Midagahara place just sounds better and better, doesn't it? As mentioned, we'll be going there soon anyway, and (spoiler alert) it's actually pretty bad in more ways than one. Anyway, let's continue our tour of the town! We'll stop by the equipmenet shop and buy these white deerskin shoes for Manjimaru. It's a cool +5 upgrade in agility for our main character. In the next part of the game every little bit of extra stats will help (somehow a common refrain in this game). I kind of play the game normally with only a small amount of grinding--mostly only on occasion of a upcoming boss fight to get over to the next level and take advantage of the full HP/MP refill, but really not much more outside of that. But this has the result that even with random encounters, you're always only just barely surviving; the random enemies really hit ridiculously hard in this game. Anyway, let's proceed into the castle. We can talk to the guards (they both say the same thing): Let's head inside! Sure thing, we're on it! Let's head up! Across to the other side! The chest just has a consumable that allows us to teleport to other places--but we have the spell for that so don't really need the item. Going back downstairs via the staircase in the top right corner... ...takes us to another part of the ground floor. The chest has a MP recovery item, and we'll take again that staircase leading down. It leads to what appear to be some kind of jail cells, but there's nobody in them. So let's head back all the way up. Finally we take the stairs to the top floor. Another chest with a HP recovery item, and... Finally we can talk to the lord! I guess we'll head in that general direction, but we will have a few detours along the road! This gate is now open for us, and we can proceed eastwards, as we were told that we should! Here are the destroyed bridges we've been told about. I guess we can't go that way, so we'll have to make our way through the caves. There are of course enemies in between. As far as that goes, they are pretty run of the mill. But here is the (in)famous Midagahara cave we were looking for. It's extremely annoying, as you'll soon see. Everything seems normal to begin with, at least. Walking east, we find a staircase leading down... ...but it's literally a dead end! So let's just head back up. But, coming back up, we don't end up in the same place where we started from! And why is there another Manjimaru here? So first of all, this cave is heavy on illusions and going up and down always changes where you end up! Second of all, I guess we'll have to fight fake Manjimaru's here. Well, at least the encounters are not random because you can actually see them on the map! So, yeah, as the name says, these are kind of mirror images of Manjimaru--their hair is oriented in a clockwise way, unlike Manjimaru's normal counter-clokwise one. As I have mentioned in the introduction, both orientations of the swastika symbol exist in the wild, but I guess the counter-clockwise version is the more common one (the Nazi swastika is clockwise, but also tilted 45°). Anyway, these guys do hit decently hard but are in the end not too much of a problem in battle. The bigger issue is that there is a ton of them around, and a battle is triggered even if you just come near one without touching them. This makes the cave a bit of a pain to navigate around, unfortunately. Although there is a trick which I will show you now. The game has a bit of a weird way how the in-game menu is implemented. When you open the menu, the characters on the screen still don't stop moving around; however no battle is triggered if they touch you. So if you're overwhelmed and/or all these fake Manjimarus are blocking your way to where you want to go, just open the menu and wait until the way clears! So that's a nice side effect of how the game is implemented that we can make use of to help ourselves a bit here! Eventually, we find another staircase leading down! We kind of want that chest there. This is an interesting item. It's only purpose is to sell it for lots of money, however, it's also a dangerous item to hold in your inventory: if you take too long to get rid of it, eventually the egg will hatch and the resulting insect will slowly start eating items from your inventory! Therefore, the best thing to do, is to exit the dung eon right now and go and sell the egg to the person who collects them (it's been a while since we met them, but they are in all the way back in Kyoto). Before we can make our way out, though... Although the fake Manjimarus look the same on the map, on this lower floor, you get a much more powerful version! Apart from the high HP number, they will also absolutely annihilate you because of their high agility. So, uh, try to avoid them if you can as they are a massive pain! Anyway, here we are, back in Kyoto. We're going to this house here. So. An easy 10,000 ryo. You can find more of these eggs in the game, but be careful to not take too long to sell them! Or alternately, go watch "The Trouble with Tribbles"! On the way back to the cave... ...we stop by the item shop. They have this thing, "large tanuki earthenware". As you can already guess... ...it's a piece of equipment for Gokuraku, which replaces his previous large sake barrel that he was wearing. It gives +3 in defence compared to before. I like that Gokuraku is so large, he cannot use normal equipment, but instead he has to wear as his armour oversized storage containers! Another new enemy on the way! Cone Shell is a kind of a sea snail, but these enemies are comparatively easy compared to some you can find in this part of the world! Back in the cave, here we are again on the "hell floor", trying to use the menu trick to make our way past all of these "large" Manjimaru fakes... Why are there so many of them! Like, seriously? We'll just go up this staircase... ...and then back down, to of course a completely different floor. All the way on the other side is another staircase leading up... ...into more hell. And, finally! We found the boss. As predicted, the boss is one of the "five guardians of Princess Clam"! Let's take a moment to heal up and then we'll see what's up. Wait, "sea peoples"? Are you perhaps responsible for the Mediterranean civilisation collapse back in late bronze age? Ah, perhaps not. Well, all right, let's see what the situation is here. His regular attack can do about 45-50 HP damage to us, but Gokuraku can do the same to him, which is not too bad. Isohana can also skip a turn to charge up his strength; in the following turn he will do a double damage attack like so:  The problem is... this attack has a high chance to crit, so it means you're potentially looking at 130+ HP damage. If you're unlucky and didn't have a chance to heal, well, it's going to be a one hit kill then! In the end, we'll let Gokuraku attack and Manjimaru's task will be to make sure that both characters have at all times the "kongo" spell applied for a reduction in damage. Otherwise he can heal them or alternately attack if there is nothing else for him to do. For attacking, he's a bit too weak to be able to properly damage the boss, so you will probably have to resort to using the spell sword for at least some damage. Incidentally, the kongo spell reduces the damage from charged up attack when it crits to only about 20-25 HP. So that's pretty nice. From here on, it's just a matter of rinse and repeat until down. And out we go... finally! Outside, we find ourselves next to what certainly looks like a Root Clan castle. But we've been told that it's not so simple in this case, so we'll see about that a bit later. Making just one step on the map, triggers a battlw with one new enemy in the mix. Obos we've seen before and they are nothing special. The swamp monk is new though and as you can see, quite a bit stronger. Unfortunately, we're also coming out of a tough dungeon so this gets a bit dicey, but with some judicious use of the kongo spell (again!) we come out alive on the other end! Walking around here, we can see a whole bunch of these "castle" things. Luckily, just a bit to the south there is a village where we can rest a bit. As it turns out, this is Bijodaira that we've been hearing about. Well, let's take a break from our adventuring and gather some info. First, we'll talk to this gentleman with a sword who is standing right next to us. (I know the resolution is low, but trust me, he's holding a sword in his right hand.) Luckily, this is in fact the guy whom lord Toyama dispatched to investigate the Phantasm Castle(s). So let's hear his report! Mostly as expected, I guess. Over here are two other people. Hello! We'll be going there shortly, so I'm sure we'll find out! Not quite sure what this guy is trying to say, but let's keep going. Let's see what's happening inside the houses, first we stop by the inn... Ginza is a shopping district in Tokyo, so I guess it's because you can go shopping for spells here? The inn does also have an onsen on the other side which a nice wall decoration! Hmmm. Miho was supposed to marry that guy from another village. What is going on here? This house looks special. Let's talk to the guy at the door. Inside there are some women hiding, apparently. Let's talk to the two by the door. Not sure if it's possible to easily tell on the screenshot, but the girls have all been turned into clams. This explains the previous comment about the lack of beautiful women and about Miho who "almost" got married! It's also possible to talk to the girls, but they all say the same thing: That's all we can do here for now, but at least now we understand the situation. We'll have to defeat this Princess Clam soon(ish), that's for sure. Let's head out, but before we continue our adventure, maybe we should visit a few of those Tengu! There are of course new enemies along the way (well, we're in a new province, so...). At least this one has a straightforward name! Alone like this it's manageable even without using "kongo", but in a group it would be necessary. What is going on with these simple names? These guys hit really hard (60+ HP), but don't have a massive amount of defence at least. Also, despite a straightforward name, there is a bit of a spelling quirk here in Japanese: イワヲ which translates into I-WA-WO, where the WO character is used for O. The WO character is no longer used in Japanese in regular words because it has been replaced by O in all except one place. So it's interesting to see the game using this kind of phonetic spelling here for the 巌 kanji. Anyway, let's heal up and keep going... ...into another battle. Ah, finally here are again the weird names we all know and love! Compared to other enemies around here, this one is hardly even worth talking about, except for its ability to split into two (with half HP each), which can make these battles go on for a bit (but you do get full EXP for each, even if split, so it might be worth it if you want to grind!). This can result in a funny situation where you're suddenly fighting four of them with 2 HP each. Be a bit careful about their high agility, though. We do pass by the cave we want to go into, but not just yet. There is also what is most likely another ninja hideout there if you look carefully. We'll come back here shortly. But for now, we find a Tengu cabin here. So "the power of he king" (力王) is basically the offensive equivalent of "kongo" as it increases the attack power of one ally for a few turns. The only problem with it is that while "kongo" costs only 5 MP to use, this one costs a whole 12 MP, so you can't use it as much. But it might come useful in a pinch, although it's definitely not as useful as "kongo" in my opinion! On the way to our next destination... ...we encounter more new enemies. Again another enemy which is fine as a single, but when the game gives you a group of five, then things can get very dicey. Nevertheless, here is another Tengu hut! As a reminder, Mari is the "good" god who together with the "evil" god Yomi participated in the creation of the world. Also, the new spell is actually pretty useful: upon casting it, it turns off random encounters for a couple of minutes! I should explain the name, I guess. In Japanese it's written as: 花道 which literally means "flower road", however it's also a term used to describe the elevated walkway that leads to the stage in a Kabuki theatre. Regardles of which version you prefer, both of them kind of end up with a similar meaning of making it an easy trip by not having to deal with the enemies for a bit. Another good news here is that even though Gokuraku has no MP, he still has capacity in his inventory for 7 spells (half as much as Manjimaru), so we can get all these new ones without having to fiddle back and forth with the item storage. All right, let's conitnue our journey. This is the kind of problematic situation I was talking about before. It can get very dangerous when you get this many enemies. The random encounters in this game are really surprisingly difficult sometimes. Actually scratch that, this one is even worse. But, eventually we make our way to the east, where we reach what appears to be another Tengu's hut. Turns out, it's actually another small place called Jigokudani. The name of the place (地獄谷) means simply "Hell Valley", but it is, of course, a real place in Japan. It looks like this: So the name is a bit apt, but it comes from sulfurous fumes coming from the ground. Anyway, let's see what is here. To start with, in front of us is an inn, so let's visit it first. And the kid... Apparently, this Tengu's got a nice cabin... but I can't help but notice the flowers over there! As expected. But we don't know what to do with these yet. So let's go up and talk to Tengu! So, no spell this time, I guess. We'll have to wait to meet up again with Kabuki until we find out what it was! There's nothing else here for now, so let's continue our journey. We'll head back west, to the place where we've been told all the Phantasm Castles have sprung up! Here we are. It's basically on the other side of those broken bridges. There's a few of them here, but as we've been told, they are all fake. But, as it turns out, we have one more Tengu to visit for today! The "water mirage" (逃水) scroll allows the whole party to escape a battle at once (normally you have to issue commands to party members one by one to run away), so that's actually not so bad. The one little issue is that it costs a whole 20 MP, but you know how they say: if you gotta go, you gotta go. Anyway, now that we've done that... ...let's head back over to where the cave entrance and the (presumed) ninja hideout were. As usual, the hideout is a tiny place, with just one house. Let's talk to the people. Let's see what that third guy is on about... So again here we have a bit of tutorialising, in addition to giving you a bit of a hint about the spells you can learn in a particular area. The problem with status effect spells in this game is that unfortunately their hit rate on enemies is a bit lower than you would like, so I often don't really bother and rather try to apply a buff on my own party instead, as those don't miss when cast. The person in the middle is the "innkeeper", but he actually has a bit more dialogue than is typical for them. In case you've forgotton, Mikoshi is the youngest of the three ninja sisters. So this is just a fun little extra bit of dialogue here. But for now, we're ready to go on into the cave. We go straight down. It's not as annoying as the last one, but I would be lying if I didn't say it has its quirks too. For now though, we have a couple of people to talk to here! I guess this must be the expedition from Toyama that was sent to find the craftsman in Sanjou, that we've heard about! To clarify a bit here, by "floor" we mean here literally the ground you walk on, and not that there is an invisible level in this cave. Here's what this is all about. If we look through that passage on the north side there... It looks simply like an empty chasm. But apparently parts of it are actually invisible floor that can be walked on, and that's what we need to figure out. Think of it as the crystal area in Dark Souls with its invisible bridges, except here we don't have prism stones to throw, but will have to figure out a path in a different way. So for now let's explore the rest of the cave. On the other side, there is one more person. What he means is that some parts of the floor in the cave will do damage to you if you walk on them. Luckily last time we got a spell which negates such damage, so we might use it here to make our life easier! Let's head down the stairs. So far, looks pretty ordinary. Here, the dark coloured parts of the ground will do damage to you if you walk on them. But mostly there is a safe path to the chest, except for that last bit. The chest only has a HP recovery item so it may or may not be worth it to you. On the west side is another chest, beyond a (smaller) chasm. But how to get across? Here the path is kind of simple, so you can even brute force it (falling into the hole just takes you to the lower level of the cave without taking any damage), but there is actually a proper way (although it is a little bit hard to figure it out, I think, maybe). In any case the chest here has only a return stone, so probably not worth bothering. In fact, if you do fall down, you end up in this place on the lower floor: Here there is a narrow path in the middle, surrounded by the poisonous ground--the path doesn't seem to go anywhere but the wall, though. However, if you look at it carefully, does it not seem that this little area has pretty much the exact same shape as the area we were in on the floor above? So, what you're supposed to conclude here is that this here should be used as the blueprint for the smaller chasm above, and the non-poison part is the same shape and location as the invisible path is on the floor above. So if you walk across the chasm by veering slightly to the left as you go, then you'll make it. I hope I'm making this clear! So, all we need to do now, is find a blueprint for the big chasm too, and we're done. But, as it turns out we've already found it! It was the other poisonous area with a twisty path on the floor above. Don't worry, I'll show you a diagram in a bit! In the meantime, that chest there in the corner has another golden scarab egg. So if you want to bother going back to Kyoto for another 10,000 ryo, then pick it up. The enemies in this game are mostly the "three eyes" monsters we've already seen, but... ...there is also one new kind to be found. They are really easy, especially compared to some others we've seen today. Anyway, back to that big chasm. Here are some maps, first, this is what the chasm looks like: And then, here's the poisonous area on the floor below: Sorry for the really poor quality of these pics (they are scans from the game guide book), but hopefully you can see how they fit together, and how you can walk across the chasm by following the same path as the non-poisoned path on the floor below! Although a bit obscure, I still thought this is kind of a neat puzzle in the end. They even go to the trouble of giving you a smaller version of it first which almost directly tries to teach you how to solve it, because when you mess it up you fall directly into the area which shows the solution. Pretty nice game design, I think. Anyway, walking across... ...reveals our next boss encounter, with the second of the five guardians of Princess Clam! And the fight begins... Like every boss, he too has just a bit more HP than the last. By the end of the game boss HP will get into tens of thousands, don't worry!  He has a normal attack, which... deals normal damage for this part of the world (about 30ish HP, although this is with kongo applied!), so nothing special there. You do want to apply the "kongo" spell on both of your party members at all times, though, because of what's coming later. Obviously that and healing will have to be Manjimaru's duty since Gokuraku has no MP. This does mean that Manjimaru mostly won't have a chance to attack here. You need to be always in a good state of healing because he'll also not hesitate to do this:  This is an absolutely NASTY attack that our kongo spell will NOT block--it only works on physical damage. But this is the reason for needing to be at a decently high HP at all times. This attack will deal upwards of 80 HP damage to ALL PARTY MEMBERS--for Manjimaru, this is about half of his HP. It's absolutely awful, but the worst part is you might get unlucky and get another one even immediately again in the next turn! You can try and equip Manjimaru with that Benimaru's Cloak item, which will reduce lightning damage by 50%, however then you get increased physical damage instead. I guess it's an option, but with just a little bit of luck, it IS possible to do this without it and also without excessive grinding. The good news is that Gokuraku can do 50ish HP damage to him in a single hit, so as long as you don't get too unlucky with the lightning attack, you should be fine. For those of you who are interested to see what this game looks like in motion, I have prepared a video of this boss fight, so please take a look: (Photosensitivity warning: a couple of seconds of rapid white flashes in the first part of the video; start at time 0:25 to avoid them--you don't miss any part of the boss fight by doing so.) As you can see I did get at some point the lightning attack twice in a row and it got quite dicey there for a while near the end, but somehow we mamaged to pull through! I should probably mention that "makigai" means a spiral sea shell, kind of like what he has for a hat there. After defeating him... Let's get out of here! Exiting finally into Echigo province, we find ourselves next to a village. And that village just so happens to be Sanjou, where apparently there is a person who can help us find the Phantasm Castle! But more on that next time! Until then, take care!
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2023 23:07
|
|
|
So when Kabuki rejoins the party, does he always have the tengu's scroll, or just if you talk to the tengu first?
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2023 03:45
|
|
|
You referred to the first fake Manjimaru as both Clockwork and Reverse Swastika in different images.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2023 03:53
|
|
|
ivantod posted:this story about clams breathing out mirages and images of illusion is certainly an actual part of Japanese folklore! The fun thing is very similar lore exists in the West too; it's also called fata morgana where it was a castle made of mist where the fairy queen Morgana lives. (same one from Arthurian Legend)
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2023 15:01
|
|
|
Blaze Dragon posted:You referred to the first fake Manjimaru as both Clockwork and Reverse Swastika in different images. Thanks, I'll fix it later. Japanese names for monsters are quite, how to say, "compressed" (well it's easy when you can just put 2-3 kanji together) and unfortunately have to be translated into a more "descriptive" English name where that kind of "compression" just doesn't work. Here I was trying to decide between the two and I guess I messed up a bit! Sorry about that!
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2023 19:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 03:49 |
|
|
Always fun to see another update of this charming game.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2023 22:41
|
|