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I feel like a big company translating this would probably just start making up names for some of them.
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Sep 22, 2023 01:42
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| # ? May 14, 2024 05:49 |
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Oh certainly, most times that'd be less interesting but sometimes you get gems like Y burns out of it.
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Sep 22, 2023 01:55
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Blaze Dragon posted:How many innocents did our Fire Heroes kill here? There was no other way out but...still pretty chilling. Considering that they seemed to be in a fate worse than death, I think what the heroes did was more of a mercy than anything else. Also... is anyone else expecting the plot twist that the Root Clan are reviving the wrong god? That's totally the setup at this point, right? It's not just me?
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Sep 22, 2023 04:12
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 Last time, Manjimaru and the party entered Tanba province, but as we learned, there's not much there. We found two temples and a couple of border villages, but that was mostly it. In addition to that, we learned that Duke Pepe is now a wanted fugitive, but that didn't prevent him from trying to fight us. Unfortunately we had to break up the fight when his pursuers appeared, which was pretty annoying. However, we also learned that our old friend Hoteimaru (the "easygoing missionary") is in the area and travelling towards Kobe. So in this episode we'll try to catch up with him and see what's going on.  Anyway, so. As mentioned here we are just outside the blue temple. We were instructed to head south and then all the way west if we want to reach the only village in this province, Kanoko. So let's see where that gets us.  Checking the map, we can see that there is a pretty clear path leading straight west just a bit south from where we are right now, so let's take it and hopefully it will lead to somewhere useful/interesting!  Here we are on the path leading west, and we'll have to cross that bridge you can just barely see in the bottom left corner!  Except... Yeah.   Nevertheless, we go into a boss fight! It's all the same, except he has a bit less HP than last time. I guess he got injured/tired while running away from the Root Clan pursuers! Anyway, it's an exactly the same fight as last time, so let's just fast forward to his defeat. Or, rather...  Pepe has run away! The pursuers leave chasing after Pepe! And so, again, we don't get to finish the boss fight.   Well, let's just continue on our way then.  Although there are not many villages here, you might take notice of those four suspiciously arranged trees.  It is of course, another ninja hideout!  As always, you can rest for free in the house.  Well, all right. In order to continue we'll have to cross that bridge you can just about see on the left edge.  Except... Yeah.   I guess it's a boss fight... Except he now has even less HP and is now pretty visibly injured from the ordeal of running away from his pursuers! All right, let's fight. As you might expect, this goes exactly the same as previous two times, until...  Pepe has run away! The pursuers leave chasing after Pepe! And for the third time in a row, no money or EXP for us! Well, at least this is the last time we fight him for the foreseable future--which is not to be taken to mean that he won't be extremely annoying later today anyway! But for a brief moment we're free to do our own thing without interruptions.   Continuing west, we reach the end of the road with the options to continue either north or south.  North is another tucked away tengu's house!  Manjimaru obtained the "blooming flower" scroll We add another scroll to our arsenal, "blooming flower" (花咲). This one is pretty simple: it increases the hit rate of one ally's spells. So if you want to use a spell that has a low hit rate, you can help yourself a bit by using this one first!  Getting back to where we were, and heading south a bit...  ...we finally reach Kanoko village! Let's see if Hoteimaru is still here!  We'll make a quick tour first, of course. Well, we know--Hoteimaru. That's who we came looking for anyway. That definitely sounds like Hoteimaru... Hmm, more than one thing going on here it seems. We'll check that out also before we leave for sure.  Notice that there's another part of the village across a small bridge!   Yeah... Naniwa province (and its main city, Kobe) are quite something, but we'll get there soon!   There seems to be a bit of confusion here due to the presence of TWO people who are not originally from the village.   Going across the bridge, there is the (large) garden shed and also one person to talk to! Clearly we need to find out who this other old man is (take a guess), but for now we should head to the inn and see if Hoteimaru is there.  But this gravestone certainly reveals it pretty obvuously who the other guy is: My beloved wife sleeps here.  All right, to the inn!  A bunch of kids on the left side there... Well, all right. Since Hoteimaru is standing right there in between all the kids, let's finally talk to him and find out what's going on.  I truly do apologise once again for not really being able to make come across Hoteimaru's insane way of speaking in a completely mangled mixture of English and Japanese (what he really does is speak mostly in English, but with the random addition of Japanese -masu and -desu suffixes at the ends of the words). So I'm sorry about that, so just try to imagine it in your heads instead.  I'll tell you what. Let's just go into this shed and find out what's going on there. I think we already know who's taken up residence.  Well, looks pretty normal so far... except: the game labels this location as "Miniature Garden Castle" (箱庭城) so I guess technically, it's a Root Clan castle. Although... Well, anyway, as you can see there is only one way forward and there is a bit of a... I guess you'd call it joke from the game's developers. Being a Root Castle, of course, there are random encounters here, and the joke is that, well, the probability of getting an encounter on every step is pretty much 100%. So traversing through here will take some time as you'll get interrupted by an encounter every half a second or so! Still, it's hard to get annoyed because anyway the place is small and it's all clearly being played as a joke (you don't get any random enemies here that you can't reasonably handle), so you know, just go with it. The one piece of advice is, though: do NOT bother with the chests for now. You can get them later.  After making a few steps, another person shows up from the other side! Of course, it's exactly who you think it is.  Well, all right. Our goal for now is to try and make it over to the other side where he is waiting. As mentioned, the random encounter rate here is pretty silly, so it will definitely take a while to do it, but it should not be something too difficult nevertheless. Most of the enemies here are the same ones you find outside on the overworld anyway.  So we've made it to the top! Now we just go back down the other side.  And a while later, we're finally there!  He starts to leave, but then...  And after that...  ...he just leaves. So this technically counts as "defeating" a Root Castle, so it does remove the tornado problem that was blocking the way, but unfortunately we DO NOT get a holy sword this time. So yeah. That was all very weird, but let's go back to Hoteimaru and get ready to journey to Kobe. Somehow, we'll mostly make use of public transport facilities in order to make this journey! Before exiting this place, I should just tell you that all the chests have just pointless stuff in them, and their only purpose is as a distraction that makes it take longer to get through the building. Outside, Gokuraku has a comment!   All right, back to the inn, and let's check in with Hoteimaru.  Hoteimaru joins the party! No, not really. He just follows us around, but doesn't participate in fights: he can't attack and is not a target that takes damage. So it's still just four of us when the fights are concerned. We're more here to ensure his safe passage to Kobe than anything else. Also, in reality it's called Osaka bay, rather than Kobe bay, but the cities are next to each other anyway, so...  But as we make our way to Kobe, you will definitely be able to see him at the end there as the fifth person in our group! So our first step is to find a border crossing into Naniwa province, where Kobe is located.  Well, this looks like it.  Sasayama crossing, and as always, only a couple of people to talk to here. Oh do they now? Last time when we saw a gondole ferrying people across it was in the Ihika people territory. I wonder if we'll come across them again? That would be nice as they have some cool technology!  Welcome to Naniwa province! As usual, before we can proceed, we get a short scene from the villains lair!  Note on the previous screenshot, Duke Pepe is actually standing there on the right side!  First of all, under the sea? Whatever, we just need to obtain a submarine, and seeing as we're likely heading into Ihika territory, we shouldn't have any problem finding advanced technology there! Second, as you can see, unfortunately, we're still not done with the annoyance that is Duke Pepe. But at least he won't bother us any more for the remainder of today's episode, so there's that.  A bit to the south, we see a village with a gondola. This gives us good hope that Ihika people are around! But you can also see a (for once) not hidden tengu's house up there too. So let's just tick that off first!  Manjimaru obtained the "purple lightning" scroll! So the purple lightning (紫電) spell hits all enemies for about 100 HP in lightning damage, but as mentioned has low hit rate. You can of course use the spell we got earlier to increase its hit rate if you want.  Let's be on our way.  Of course, outside we find some new enemies, but as you can see the designs are really starting to repeat at this point with just changed colours. These are really garden variety enemies around here, the fact that they are in larger numbers here doesn't matter too much as we have a few free multi target abilities anyway which work well here.    A bit west of the town, you can find this curious clearing in the forest. But not so curious, because...  ...it is of course a Ninja hideout, as always. Sure, good to know. But let's check the map just to get an idea.  Yeah so we're basically here at the southern tip of the biggest Japanese island, Honshu, and as you can see, in order to get from east to west you kind of have to go the long way around across the northern part.  Anyway, let's finally head in here, which is the Arima village we've been told about.  This is a new one. We've not had a situation before that a big town is completely blocked off like that. We'll see what we can do about that of course.  Takarazuka is just the place on the other end of the gondola, so we'll definitely be stopping by there. And indeed it will be worth it as he says, very much so. Notice also there one of the "mechanical" looking buildings, so we're definitely in Ihika territory here, which is great. I'm sure they have a submarine we can borrow, right?  One more person here... In a moment.  In the inn here, we can again harass the naked people who came here to enjoy the hot springs! Underground railway, huh? Well, I did mention that we'll be making use of public transport this time to get to Kobe! This part of the country certainly seems more technologically advanced. Also, those burial mounds are very important.  Let's see what's going on other houses.  The joke is that "Uruwashi the rose" and "Noisy old hag" sound very similar in Japanese! The other person here has a similar, but different story! These two phrases don't sound anything alike in Japanese.  Anyway, that's about it here, so we'll now go through this queue control area to reach the entrance there. Let's talk to the man first. Okay, so the gondola leaves from inside as expected. Let's go in.  The guy behind the counter just sells consumables, but we can talk to the other guy.  Upstairs we can board, after talking to this fellow there. Good advice and so we'll proceed to do just that!  And then we go across, just like that!  Pretty cool, if you ask me.  And here we are, at the other end in Takarazuka!  As we were told, there aren't any men here, so... Well, we won't be taking advantage of that. In fact, the only person who will benefit from us passing though here will be... Kinu! But, as usual, let's make a quick tour of the place before we proceed on to Kobe. By the way, the person behind the counter sells consumables, but also a "smiling face" for 0 ryo. If you try to "buy" that, you're told that they are all out. Also, before leaving Arima, I took all our money out of storage, because we'll be spending quite a bit here and also there aren't any money stealing enemies to be encountered for the moment.  Let's see what else is here.  They really do, although it has prices to match, too, unfortunately.  A few people in the inn, too. First the person by the entrance: Well, good for you. Now let's talk to the first person on the left side. If you say yes, then everybody in the inn just does a bit of dancing on the spot. There is no point to it at all. Finally the last person here, this one is a foreigner. As you can imagine, this person also speaks in very broken Japanese.   So like, for a while now this game has been openly talking about women who ended up having to prostitute themselves to earn money. I'm just imagining a (fictional) situation in the 1990s where someone is actually working on localising this game and bringing it to the west. Can you just imagine? There's absolutely no way something like this would have been allowed to stay in the game back in those days. Absolutely no chance.  There's even one man standing here if you look carefully! Hmm, yeah, whatever. The game certainly decided again to get a bit dark as you can see.  These are two elderly brothers here... Wow, ok. And the other brother. Signs of Ihika technlogy were unmistakable for sure, but it's good to have it confirmed. A submarine is looking more and more likely by the minute.  Anyway, so, as you've seen already many times, shops have normally signs on them indicating what kind of stuff they sell and so on. Here we have a new sign on one of the shops which hasn't appeared before, it's the character for "woman" (女), so I guess this must be the shop that sells goods intended for women. Let's go in and have a look.  Before we start shopping, we'll first talk to that guy there. Expectedly, lots of creeps in this place. But we do indeed want to buy something for the "woman travelling with us", so let's see what the shopkeeper has to say. Yes, indeed!  So there's only a few things here, everything is as you might expect, equipment for Kinu. Although the pricess are steep, there's actually some good stuff here, so we're going to spend a fair chunk of money.  First these "Moonlight Shoes" for just 33,800 ryo!  Yes, that's a whole +22 in agility!  And then this "Purple Breath Robe" for an eye watering 142,000 ryo.  But... it's a crazy +31 in defence! So well worth the money! There's actually only three other pieces of body armour in the game that have more defence than this, and all three of them are for Kinu! That's all we're going to get here at this point. Thanks to us doing the red chest, Kinu already has the "Moon Helm" which is better than the "Morning Sun Veil" you can buy here. If you're lacking the money for the "Purple Kimono" you can get instead the "Moon Reflection Kimono" for 100,000 which not as good, but still pretty good. What I'm saying is: when you're playing the game, if you don't have enough money when you arrive here, go out and grind for money so you can buy this stuff for Kinu. There's no alternative, really.  And well, now it's time to continue our journey to Kobe. The railway station is, of course, undergound, and we access it through this entrance here!  The train platform is downstairs, but there is a person loitering here!  The actual train is waiting downstairs. Everyone refers to it as a "steam" train, but it's clearly something quite a bit more advanced if you ask me. In any case, looks pretty slick. Yeah, it's pretty clearly the Ihika guys as I've already said a few times. It will be surely interesting to talk to them, as always! So let's board the train!   And then shortly after...  ...we arrive at Kobe, as promised!
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Sep 23, 2023 00:19
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 Let's see what's going on here.  Yes. One of the main reasons for coming here.  But for now, let's just head outside and see what's up here. We should be on the lookout for Ebisumaru, presumably he is somewhere around the Kobe port.  First, let's actually head outside to the overworld so we can get our bearings.  Checking the map...  ...we can see that the train has taken us pretty much directly south from where we were. It doesn't even look like it would be so difficult to walk, but I guess you save some time and it doesn't cost anything anyway, so...  So all right, back into Kobe then.  It's a decently sized place, it has a proper cemetery... The gravestones are an absolute nightmare of wordplay and kanji-play hiding a big joke, but more on that shortly.  ...and even a port. That guy standing by the ship looks suspiciously similar to Hoteimaru, so that's probably Ebisumaru. But let's leave that for after we've talked to the citizens!  So let's start back here anyway! Yes, yes, yes. In a moment. But for now the other guy hanging about there at the bottom of the screen! As mentioned, there are a lot of foreigners here who don't speak the language properly.  I guess a bit of a hint on how to find those, altough we'll be visiting the first one already today.  Here is the entrance into the Ihika underground village, but also two people to talk to. If you look back to the screenshot with the map, you can see the (large) Awaji island. It does exist also in real life in approximately that spot. The "black ship" is not a ship painted black. The "black ship" (kurofune) is a term used to describe foreign ships coming to Japan from overseas, esp. between 16th and 19th centuries.  A guy standing on the docks... Surprisingly there's not a lot of people out on the streets here, but we'll check out some of the buildings of course.  There are a few of these warehouses here, but not anybody inside them. Usually on the upper floor most of them have a chest containing a consumable. This one just has a stupid cursed piece of equipment (the blonde wig, which we've already seen a long time ago back in Kikugorou's castle).  Although in one of the shops, there is actually a person. Ugh, what is the Root Clan even doing with Pepe any more...  In the inn, surprisingly nobody on the ground floor (except the owner, of course).  But we can find two people upstairs, though.  Some of the warehouses do have people inside.  He mixes Tagalog there in among the countries, but, ok, I guess?  Well that was a bit random!  Like in every big place there's more than one inn, so here's the second one. Uh, ok, I guess hints on locations? Would definitely help if they didn't talk like Yoda.  In one of the storage rooms, we find a ninja. Actually sooner, but we already know from the "villains lair" scene that the castle is indeed this time at the bottom of the sea.  No, no, he's making a lot of sense when you know that the Root Castle is in the sea!  Here in the weapon shop there is one other guy to talk to. This is one of those "where do I even begin with the explanation" jokes. Actually for this one I will need a visual aid too, so let's start. First of all, "seigaiha" (青海波) in Japanese when read literally based on each kanji individually.can be understood to mean something like "blue sea wave". But in actuality this is a proper word which is the name for a typical Japanese-style wave pattern design, like this one:  So I guess the joke is that they just literally translated the name for overseas sales without bothering with the real meaning of the word. Anyway, moving on.  Obscure Kanji pronunciation jokes? Why not! I'm here to explain as always. The character which means "head" in Japanese is 頭. Like other kanji, this one too has a couple of different ways to pronounce it, one of which is, somehow, "kobe". I don't think you'll ever run into this pronunciation in real life, but well, you will definitely find it in a dictionary, so. The name Kobe is of course written as 神戸 and I'm pretty sure it was never written with the character for head. That's just an invention in the game.   All right... the cemetery, finally. Ok, now. Some of the graves have names of the persons buried underneath, written in kanji. However, by carefully choosing which pronunciations to use for each kanji, you get references to the names of various game characters. So here are the explanations for each name and which game it's from: 1. The first one is 林句, but this is easy, as 林=rin and 句=ku, so together "rinku", so this is just Link from various Zelda games. 2. Second we have 麻里魚, which we can pronounce as "mariuo", so that's Mario. 3. Next is 呂戸, which is "roto", so Loto (or Erdrick for the western release) from Dragon Quest. 4. Now the next one is hard: 悪胡瓜. Actually this one means "evil cucumber" if you read it literally, but as for pronunciation, with a lot of straining you can come up with "warukyuuri", and well, you'll be forgiven for not knowing that this a reference to the title character from the 1986 Famicom game Valkyrie's Adventure (Valkyrie no Bouken) and its sequel! 5. Next one is the grave of 嗚呼佐亜. Normally this would come out as "okosea", but that clearly means nothing so we'll have to strain again to make this into "aasaa" which is kind of close to how Japanese would say the name "Arthur", so this is a reference to Ghosts 'n Goblins (first released in Japan under its original title Makaimura/Demon World Village) whose main character is named Arthur. 6. Next one is another easy one: 死門. Just by using the default pronunciations for both characters, this comes out as "shimon", so this is Simon from Castlevania. 7. Next one is 亜土留 which also easily comes out as "adoryuu", so this is Adoru from Y's games. 8. And the last one is 競押王子. The last two characters actually just mean "prince", so the name is only the first two. Again we can force it into "seriou", so this would be Prince Serios (or Logan) from Dragonslayer: The Legend of Heroes. And well, congrats if you got through all that! As a final note, I'll mention that when they were doing the GameCube/PS2 remake, someone got a bit of cold feet, so all of this was removed from the game, although surprisingly the version of this game included on the Japanese version of TurboGrafx mini does still include it intact because it is based on this original release and not the remake. Anyway, after this long detour, it's finally time to go talk to Ebisumaru back at his ship!  Here. Hoteimaru is understandably excited!   His Japanese is ever worse than Hoteimaru's although I'm not really sure how that's even possible. In any case, we don't really have anything to ask him to help us with, since we don't even know anything about things like where the castle might be or such. So the time has come to go down into the Ihika village and as you know, lots of lore always gets dispensed when we talk to those guys (and not to mention advanced technology, hint hint submarine). But before that, let's just stop briefly at the equipment shop.  We'll buy these "XXL Straw Sandals" for (who else) Gokuraku. One of poor guy's few equipment upgrades in this game.  But hey it's +9 in agility, so actually pretty good compared to how his upgrades normally go!  So now let's head in here.  Hey guys! Thank you for the explanation, but now let's take the lift down.  So here we only have a few connected rooms with a bunch of people to talk, so it's going to be somewhat of a lore dump, like it always is with Ihika. We've already discussed about the spelling issue a few minutes ago.  Room number 2. Yes they did, and we've met them already!  Room number 3.  Room number 4 has a whoooole bunch of people in it, so let's go in order. Well, that spells it out pretty clearly, but things don't exactly fit. I mean how is an armoured tank going to reach under the sea? And why is it named "Speedbird"? Yeah, good thing Ebisumaru is here! It's pretty much all the way since the beginning of the game since this was mentioned, but "Deroren" is also the name of one of the three sages, the one who likes to tinker with mechanical contraptions, so it means that he is of Ihika ancestry (remember that Ihika people were originally part of the Root Clan too). That's good to know. Interesting, but then... what's in the other three mounds? Ah, well, here's our submarine. Although I expect probably some complications here, but we'll see.  Before we leave, there's also two chests here. One contains just a consumable, but the other...  ...the other has a spell in it! The echo (山彦) spell allows whichever of our party it's cast on to reflect back 50% damage to the enemy. So this is the same effect as that "mirror" item we've also been carrying since the beginning of the game. So you can potentially now free up an inventory slot by ditching that mirror since the spell can be cast on anybody and the mirror was only usable by the one person who was holding it!  All right, let's go back outside...  ...and straight to Ebisumaru, who I'm sure will be happy to transport us to Awaji island!  Definitely.   We don't have to steer the shop ourselves, Ebisumaru just takes us straight there. It's also a sneaky way to prevent from using the ship to sequence break, so well done developers of this game, I almost didn't notice what's really going on here. In particular, I could say that they don't want us to be able to access prematurely whatever that metal structure is that we can see there on the opposite coast from Kobe! We know of course that it isn't the Root Castle we're looking for since that is under the sea, so... what could it possibly be?  Anyway, after a short trip, we land on Awaji island, directly in front of the burial mound. Let's have a look.  There's some sort of electrical barrier preventing entry, but I'm sure that's easily solved with the password. However, before we can even reach that password entry panel on the right...  ...well, it's a boss fight out of nowhere! And because having a double boss fight is just not metal enough, now we have three at the same time. Luckily, their HP is adjusted accordingly. So these three handsome gentlement are from left to right: Darkness Assassin, Shadow Assassin and Night Assassin! Yeah it's definitely a little bit random this time. Nevertheless, we're not getting into the burial mound without defeating them! So this fight is not really super easy, but also doesn't really require much of a strategy. The only real question is which order should you fight these guys in? That's actually kind of easy to answer, at least one part of it. You definitely definitely want to start with the middle one. He has by far the strongest attack but also the lowest defence stat of all three of them, so you really can and should get rid of him quickly to reduce the amount of damage you're talking. And you really do want to be careful of his attacks because they can crit, hitting you for upwards of 200 HP damage! After that you probably want to go with the one on the left since he has the next strongest defence, and then finally the one on the right because there you won't be doing as much damage in one hit. Other than that, Kabuki's ice dragon works well here, especially agains the middle one, but you can use other stuff like the new "echo" spell to reflect some damage (or alternately "kongo" to reduce it, or also Kabuki's buff--it certainly took a while to get to this point, but at least now we are finally a bit spoiled for choice for buff and debuff options!). One thing of note is that the three buff speels that Kabuki has (speed, attack, defence for everyone), the three of them also can cast (one each) so you may have to use our spell with the "dispel" effect on them just to remove it when it happens. Other than that, not much else to be said here except take care that you can endure the critical hits they will sometimes do to you.     After this, we can go and enter the password on that panel.  As mentioned, the password is "deroren".  And the way inside is clear!  So this thing is a bit like a maze of corridors. There are a few chests to be found in the maze, so I'll let you know if anything interesting pops up!  It's quite a maze here!  But our main goal is to find these stairs leading down to the lower level!  Lower floor is full of these statues. If you walk in between a matched pair, they fire lasers at you which causes a lot of damage...  ...so, uh, don't do it. You generally want to find a way to walk between the backs of two statues.  Kind of like this.  In one of the corners, we find a switch! It turns off the statues.  Also, we find these stairs, leading further down!  Down here, there are several narrow corridors...  ...with a chest at the end of each one.  Oh, right, there are random encounters here, but the rate is quite low so it's not a big problem. The only thing these guys have is lots of HP and also the fact that they will defend each other so you can never be sure which one you will damage, whith might keep in this case both of them around a bit longer than you would like.    This one is quite unremarkable, so we just move on. Well, be a little careful as they can paralyse your party members (one at a time).  And so is this one.  And then finally...  ...we find what we came here for!   That's it! Let's head back outside!  Actually, before we head out, there was also this one chest tucked away in the corner. Manjimaru obtained the Giant's Shoes! That sounds like something Gokuraku could make use of! Let's see...  Oh, yeah. That's a +9 in agility for him, not bad at all.  Now we can head out. Except... things start to happen very fast!   The end result is our heroes washed out on a shore somewhere, apparently saved by our friends the three ninja ladies, whom you can see standing there.  But OF COURSE this Root castle is in the shape of a starfish. I mean, how else could it have been, right? Where are we? And what should we do next? Also, looking back on that screenshot... aren't we missing someone? Those are certainly questions which will be answered next time! In the meantime, have fun and take care!
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Sep 23, 2023 00:19
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That intro for the STARFISH CASTLE really reminded me of older anime in a great way, not exactly sure which anime but it just kind of had that vibe, with the mix of camp and serious and feeling like it takes some cues from non-animated TV.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:54
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If this update had ended with the first post, I would've made a joke about going to Kanto. The Speedbird sounds cool, can't wait for Manjimaru to abandon it somewhere.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:12
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Jipan has a surprisingly robust public transportation network in certain places.
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Sep 23, 2023 18:35
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 Previously, we picked up Hoteimaru and travelled with him to Kobe to meet up with his brother Ebisumaru. Along the way it turned out that Naniwa province is full of Ihika people. Then we found out that the next Root Castle we need to visit is actually underwater! But we have also been told that various parts of a supposedly amphibious tank are located in the four differend burial mounds of the legendary Fire Hero by the name of Saburou, from one thousand years ago. To start with, we obtained the plans for the tank in one of the four locations, which was then actually promptly destroyed by the individual going by the name of Right-Handed Garnin, another one of the Root Clan henchmen.  In any case, at the end of the last episode, we found ourselves washed out on a shore somewhere in Naniwa province, presumably rescued by the three ninja ladies (as usual). If you count the people on the screen you can also easily see that Hoteimaru is missing, so hopefully he hasn't been lost to the sea. But let's see what happens now!  Um, what? No, we don't suffer from amnesia or anything like that!   And as usual, they leave as quickly as they came. But all right, let's get our bearings. First, let's have a look at the map.  So, as it turns out we are in a place called Kishiwada, in the far southern part of Naniwa province. It's actually a bit interesting situation on the map, because there are a couple of areas where there is no bridge across a river, making them not really accessible by walking. Of course the fast travel still works, but you can only fast travel to towns you've already visited on foot. But we'll see what happens.  For now, let's get back into the village and talk to the few people that are here. Well, ok, I'm sure we can find something to buy, although I expect the prices to be "rare" too. Although to be fair, we have reached that time in every JRPG where you suddenly realise you're being showered in money. In fact most random battles nowadays give us like 1000+ ryo a piece. About our belongings. In fact, as it turns out, in that whole situation, the Speedbird's plans were lost to sea! But maybe we'll figure something out.      Oh, good. Looks like Hoteimaru has survived! In any case, that's everything here, so let's head out.  First of all, from the ship (oh, actually what happened to Ebisumaru?) we managed to glimpse what looked like a building made of metal. Since we're now in the right place, let's go and quickly check that out first.  On the way, we can see another burial mound across the river...  ...and also the location of the dark orchid, too.  Of course we also get accosted by some enemies while going there, but what can you do. However, the new enemy is quite weak and has no special abilities whatsoever, so no problem.   Well, here it is, but it doesn't seem like we can do anything with it. Looks afwully like a Root Castle though, if you ask me. I guess we'll have to leave it for later then. So let's move on for now.  Returning back south, we can see a town on a little island connected to the mainland via a bridge. Very cool, but this also happens to be Sakai. So let's go in there and try to find Hoteimaru.  Also, from the end of this peninsula, you can actually see the whirlpool. I guess once we obtain a submarine we need to go in there somehow. Anyway, back to Sakai.  Well, that does look nice. Good. But first, we have a town to explore and another person here to talk to. You can tell he's a foreigner because of the hat! Let's just go in the inn.   This inn also has an upstairs, too! Yeah I'm also wondering what that castle is.  Well, that IS the question. So far we've been told that it's a tank, which are not generally know for being able to dive to the bottom of the sea. But who knows. Also... we lost the plans, so how... did they build it?  There are a couple of warehouses here too, those are the buildings with big doors. But this is not the one where Hoteimaru is waiting for us.  Huh, so they already built the tank then, huh? Ah, a "wind spirit mechanism", whatever could that be?  Over here is the equipment shop (武) but we'll stop there a bit later when we have more money! As expected, for rare equipment, the prices are also appropriate.  Oook. Sure thing.  Weeeeel, we hope not, acually or at least not only!  Here we have two more people!  I think we should go to the warehouse and find out what's been going on there.  They have drawings of tanks on the back wall!? Anyway, let's first talk to the two Ihika people. Ah, so that's how they did it while we had the plans all this time with us (and subsequently lost them too)! Well, the foot mound has already been looted, but the other two yes, I suppose. And then, of coruse, our friend Hoteimaru is here too!  I like how you're led to assume that Hoteimaru is a bumbling idiot because he doesn't speak the language well, but in actuality, he's come through for us already more than once!  This red button here. Let's push! Push!  That... is really a tank. Why the heck is it named the Speedbird then? Ok, ok. Hoteimaru has joined the party! Again! Like before, he's just there for show but does not actually participate in the party in any way. Anyway...  ...after leaving the town, we find our tank waiting for us outside!  As you can imagine, a vehicle like this certainly does have an extra attack command in battle, in this case it's "shelling" (砲撃) and it hits all enemies for around 100 HP damage.  We already saw the burial mound previously which is right next door.  Just cross over this bridge and go a little south...  ...and here we are. The tank can't go inside so we'll have to walk from here.  The password to disable the barrier is "deroren", the same as always.  Also like before, it's a small maze of corridors, so in the interest of brevity, we'll focus only on important parts.  As expected, there are also enemies here. This one has strong defence, but not much more to it.   Anyway, staircase leading down!  This is again a big open area with the robot statues with laser eyes.  But no problem, because here is the switch to turn them off. In this big room there are also a couple of chests. Like this one.  As you can imagine, this is an equipment piece for Gokuraku.  Yeah, that's defence +16! Very good!  But we go further down!  Another big room here.  But oh no it's full of deadly robots! You don't really want to approach them, because...  Nothing about these guys makes sense, however they have higher attack and defence stat the rest of the enemies in this area, so quite tough for us. It is however doable so if you want to grind, then you might want to come here for it because of course they give a lot of money and EXP. Be careful though as they can cast a a strong fire spell and call up additional allies--figting more than one at the same time might be a touch of a problem!   Mostly you want to reach this chest here.  Well, it's not the Wind Spirit Mechanism we've been told about, but it'll do for now I guess.  There's also another useful chest here! Manjimaru obtained Hiruko's Sword! Hiruko is one of the names for the Shinto god of commerce and trade. I say one of the names, because the other is "Ebisu", the same one which gave the name to Ebisumaru! Who we still hope is somehow alive. So I'll give this weapon to Kabuki:  It's a cool +16 in attack power, so why not. It also has an additional effect; if you recall, in this game your HP/MP recovers slowly while walking around, and so this sword when equipped, speeds up this recovery by a factor of 2! Also, as you recall Kabuki's original sword is the one which can also cast a powerful fire spell on a group of enemies when used as an item, so now that it's free, I'll shuffle it over to Kinu. Of course she is not able to attack in battle due to her chains, but... she can use items, so due to that, she's still able to use it like that to cast the spell! This should help a lot as we have a very tough boss fight coming up soon. Two, actually. So that's pretty much all here, so...  ...let's get back to our tank! Anyway, so you might be wondering what is this "Wave Spirit Mechanism". Actually you can go back to Hoteimaru's warehouse and they'll explain it to you. But to save time, I'll just show you when we get to use it the first time. But for now, let's head to the next burial mound (the third one).  This one is just a few steps east of Takarazuka, so I've fast travelled back there.  Coming inside, we can see that the barrier is already disabled. So it seems that this ie the one where lord Himeji has already taken (stolen?) the Speedbird part from. Nevertheless, let's have a look around, maybe there is other stuff to be found here.  It's the same kind of maze of hallways as usual.  Some interestingly named enemies here, too. They are again not too much trouble.   A staircase...  ...and a room of laser eye robots, of course.  Again going further down.  And over here, four chests. One of them is empty, presumably where the Speedbird part would have been. But one of the others is interesting.  So the name is probably unclear, but this is actually a weapon. A "jitte" (十手) is a weapon commonly used by police in Japan during the Edo period (17th-19th century). It looks like this:  By Samuraiantiqueworld - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10403229  In any case, we'll equip this on Manjimaru, for a +10 in attack power. This frees up his Bone Sword, but of course since it has the crazy broken MP recovery ability, we're not going to sell it. Instead I'll pass it on to Gokuraku. Of course, he can't equip it, but like Kinu before, he CAN use it as item in battle to cast the MP recovery on one party member, which is all we really need! The Jitte itself does not have any special abilities when used as item.  A bit further in, we find this! The normal chest only has a consumable, but it looks like we've found our fourth and final red chest! We are more than capable now, so let's go for it!  Between the fire-spell sword, Kabuki's ice dragon and the new sword for Manjimaru, we literally decimate this boss this time around.Let's see what we get for our effort, though! Manjimaru obtained the Shadow Armour!  This one will go to Manjimaru for a +17 in defence! It's important to protect Manjimaru as if he's knocked out in battle you're sent back to the nearest town and have to go through the dungeon or whatever again. For other characters, they just get revived after the battle is done (or you can use that silly expensive item to revive them in battle if you want).  And that is all in here. We didn't get the Speedbird part, but it was quite worthwhile otherwise for the equipment upgrades, I think!  All righty then, we're back south near Sakai and also back in our tank! Let's go and find the last burial mound.  It's a bit north from the orchid.  Except, there's a problem. There's a river here but there are no bridges to cross over! No problem! We will activate our Wave Spirit Mechanism, and...  ...we can cross over easily. Using the Wave Spirit Mechanism on our tank, it transforms into a vehicle that can go on water! And that does also include the sea. The only little annoyance is that it's not automatic. You have to manually use the item to transform it (and also to transform it back to be able again to go on land), but since this is not a real-time game, that's not a real problem.  This allows us to reach the fourth and last burial mound!  As always, we have to deactivate the barrier by entering the password.  It looks similar to others, as expected.  This one is a little bigger than the others, so there are a couple of different staircases you can take to the lower floor.  But this staircase leads to a part of the basement where there is nothing useful to be found.  But in return, you can run into this particular enemy formation. I can tell you right now, you won't be surviving this one.  You actually want this staircase down instead.  This looks more like the place we're looking for!  You know the drill already with the switch.  Before we proceed, there's also an important chest here!  Idaten (or Skanda in the original Sanskrit) is one of the Buddhist guardian deities, also known as a particularly swift runner. The shoes, however will be given to Kabuki, because...  ...well, it's a +13 in agility! These burial mounds really have some high level equipment just lying around, huh? As a technical note, it's actually somewhat important to keep up with your agility stat and not just because of how many turns you will get in battle and the ability to dodge attacks. In the calculation formula, you will actually suffer a penalty in damage you deal if your agility is too low compared to your attack power. Vice versa does also apply; you will be granted a slight increase in damage you deal if you agility is high compared to your attack power. Here of course I'm talking about a character's total attack/agility stats and not just the increases granted by the equipment they have on them. Actually before we move on, here is a moderately long tangent so feel free to skip it! On the previous screenshot you can also see a funny spelling quirk. The name "Idaten" should be written in kanji as 韋駄天 but 韋 is a very uncommon kanji, which the authors of this game didn't expect the target audience to be able to recognise/read, so the name is written in the game as イ駄天 where the first kanji is just written out phonetically as イ ("i"). There's been a few instances like this in the game already. This reminds me of that time where a game I was playing here just casually used the 匁 kanji without any kind of explanation (that one is also a very rarely used kanji representing "monme", an Edo period currency and weight unit). It was even funnier later when I watched that part of the game in a commentated Japanese LP and the LPer was just completely stumped and had no idea what it means nor how to read it. That last one is also in the relatively smaller group of kanji which were created in Japan and do not exist in China. All right, before I put you to sleep, let's continue exploring here.  As usual, we go downstairs.  Ugh. This again.  If you go straight through, you can switch them off here.  Even switched off robots will trigger a fight if you come too close, so be careful.  Anyway, here are some chests! The important one is on the right side.  So another upgrade for our tank! Again you can go back to Sakai warehouse to find out what this is for, but I'll just show you.  I've driven us over to the coast.  We'll activate our Wave Spirit Mechanism to be able to drive on the water surface.  Yeah, of course here too, there are random encounters. Despite somewhat high HP, this one is quite weak.   But hey, look what we found. A tengu's hut, which can only be accessed from the sea as it's surrounded by mountains on all other sides. How about that.  This one actually has things to say that are quite a bit more interesting than usual! Manjimaru obtained the "starry night" scroll! Well, that was a lot, but as a reminder, Mt. Ooe was where we originally found Kinu and "chief demon" refers to Shuten-doji, the demon leader who makes his lair at Mt. Ooe, according to Japanese folklore/mythology. Here is a very cool looking 19th century woodblock print showing several warriors fighting Shuten Doji (in the middle) on Mt. Ooe: By Yoshitoshi - National Diet Library Digital Collections: Persistent ID 1310286, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103227291 Anyway, the "starry night" scroll (星寝) puts the whole group of enemies to sleep, except... as he said, we don't actually have anybody in our party who is able to use it! So we'll have to wait and see what happens with that whole thing. Also, apparently, in addition to Demon Sea Castle and whatever that thing is that thing is on the northern cape, there is one more castle, the Silver Castle down near Hiroshima which is in a province we haven't been to as yet. In theory, there should only be two orchids remaining for the total of seven to make sense, but we'll also have to see how that develops too. All right then. Let's go and do something unorthodox here. We'll head to Kyoto just for a moment, actually.  In fact, I want to head to the mercantile exchange over here. Over the course of the game we've collected a bunch of those certificates of ownership, and while I haven't really engaged in market speculation, I figured now is as good time as any to check the prices and maybe just sell so that they don't take up space in the inventory any more.  Looking at the prices, it seems like wheat is the only one that really went quite a bit up, while the other three have more or less stayed put. Oh well, it's still going to be a free few thousand ryo for us so why not.  And then it's back to Sakai and more precisely to the equipment shop.  We'll just going to pick up this Zeus's Armour for 142,000 ryo. Man, the prices of equipment are crazy in this late game stage.  This will go to Manjimaru. It's only +3 extra defence this time, but...  ...it also allows us to move Manjimaru's former Shadow Armour over to Kabuki who thus gains +9 in defence. So all in all not too bad in total.
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Oct 7, 2023 22:27
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 Well, then, let's see.  Ok, it's whirlpool time I guess.  Of course, we use the Wave Spirit Mechanism to get to it across the sea and then, as you might already have predicted...   ...we use the Tidal Spirit Mechanism to get down to the bottom of the sea! Because of course our tank is a submarine too!  You can definitely explore around the sea bed, but being that this is not Final Fantasy VII, there's unfortunately nothing to be found here.  So we'll just head straight into the Root castle.  We get to see a nice closeup of our vehicle!  The usual welcoming committee is here, of course.  Ok, so wait. There's this castle, and also Silver Castle near Hiroshima, and then also that thing being build is also a root castle. But in the meantime, there's only two orchids left. Hmm. Well, anyway, let's just do what we came here to do.  Actually, this castle is very simple again. It's of course starfish-shaped with a few floors, but there are mostly no corridors or anything like that, it's all pretty much open. There are also no chests with items to be found or anything like that, so you can simply make a straight run to the boss.  These things are water jets which take you to the next upper floor.  Random encounters are definitely present, of course. There are a few pretty nasty ones here, however this is not one of those.   Around the castle, you'll find a bunch of traps which damage you if you step on them, or in case of these ones here, if you come near them.  I like this enemy design! Although they have a lot of HP, there aren't any special attacks, just the normal physical damage which you can easily mitigate.   This is not a great combination. Well, the wolf is nothing much, but the fish has crazy high defence and agility and can cast all sorts of lightning based spells, plus also poison and acid! And most of their spells attack the entire party! If you get like three or four of these at once, you're pretty much dead. Because of high agility they all will get to go before you do, and well... you can imagine what that looks like. So I feel this enemy is just a touch broken. The fish also might drop an item, a weapon for Gokuraku with high attack power, but it's cursed, so don't equip it as it will seriously lower his defence if you do! I never really mentioned this, but enemies in this game CAN drop items upon defeat, but it's a very rare thing. And I mean like you can play the game for several hours and not get a single item drop during that time rare. So it's kind of not worth thinking about, especially since there aren't really any "amazing items you can't get any other way" to be found among the drops.   And then there's these guys. They actually have a slightly higher attack stat than the next boss--this means at our level about 120 HP damage per hit! But luckily, also much much less HP than the boss. Also, no special attacks, so you can reduce the damage with Kabuki's buffs. I should explain the name here. It's a reference to the old Japanese folk tale of Urashima Taro, a poor fisherman who gets taken the to the undersea palace of the Dragon King. The fairy tale itself dates from way back in the 8th century and if you want to know more, Wikipedia has you covered.   Probably best to go around.  Finally, we reach the top floor where the ruler of this castle, Right Handed Garnin is waiting for us!   Of course, a boss fight. And we have maybe gotten complacent since last few boss fights weren't super hard, but here now comes a bit of a skill-check! This one can be pretty hard if you approach it the wrong way. Among the issues is the reatively large HP amount of this guy so either way it will take a little while to whittle is down. He actually doesn't have a large repertoire of attacks, but he doesn't really need it...  ...when even the regular attack hits for around 130-150 HP! Then on top of that add another attack which he uses every once in a while which hits EVERYONE for around 100-120 HP, so does he really need anything else? Anyway, it easily becomes obviuous that keeping on top with the buffs and (possibly) debuffs will be the only way to win this one. So a judicious use of Kabuki's three buff spells for attack, defence and speed is highly recommended, especially the one for defence! Luckily his spells target the whole party at once so that makes things a lot easier. In addition to that you can use the single person attack/defence boosting spells (King's power/Kongo) if you want a bit more. Apart form that, just use whatever your strongest attacks are for each party member. For Manjimaru you can use one of his sword techniques which guarantees a critical attack, for Kinu it's probably best to just cast fire spell with that sword formerly used by Kabuki, poor Gokuraku kind of just has to use his regular attacks (unless you bought another fire sword at some point), and for Kabuki of course it would be his ice dragon spell, but he will be quite busy with maintaining party buffs as they only last a few turns each, so he won't be able to use it all the time. Whoever has the bone sword also needs to make sure that Kabuki and Kinu at least are topped up when needed as Kinu will also have to be on healing duty (although since she is casting fire spell with the sword, you can also make Manjimaru into a healer as he is also able to use those spells). Kinu can also use her chains as item on the boss as it will decrease termporarily his attack power if it lands. Of course, if you want to, you can also use those weird summoning spells that bring "shadows" into the battle, which will hopefully deflect some of the attacks, but I feel you will be too busy to manage that too on top of everything else. Anyway, more or less, this should take you to victory.  After the battle...   But hey, this game is nice. So we are back in the dungeon and can, if we need to, leave to heal up and rest and them come back for the second round! I still have trauma from playing The Last Remnant which has more than one instance of multiple hard boss fights without the ability to save the game in between! So, let's go for another round then!  Well, that's quite something. As you might expect from the transformation, all his stats have gone up slightly, including the HP!  His attacks remain the same technically, but of course deal more damage now. So the regular attack will easily hit one person for 180-200 HP and the other one which hits the entire party will do around 120-130 HP each. I wish I could tell you there is some other way to deal with this, but there isn't. You will more or less simply have to employ the same strategy like in the first phase. Since his damage is so high even with buffs, it may be worthwhile to employ the "mountain echo" spell (or its equivalent by using that mirror item--you do still remember it). This will damage him back for 50% of the original damage you took, but this time even 50% is a lot so its worth bothering with this to help yourself defeat him quicker. Other than that, he now also has a spell which seals one party member's magic spells, but since it's only a single target ability, you can easily heal that immediately after. He can also remove/dispel your buffs, so be careful to reapply them.     But then... a weird thing happens!  Ugh. This guy. This guy. Can we be done with him already, seriously? (The game says no.) Also, why does he have to keep reminding us who he is every time? But anyway, I guess Hoteimaru has been kidnapped and taken to that new castle that the Root Clan has been building. We'll have to deal with that shortly, but for now...  ...we have a new holy sword to pick up! This one used to belong to Saburou! Let's pick it up. As always, we meet the ghost of the long gone warrior, this one quite young as we've already been told.  Manjimaru here gains a new technique as usual ("Saburou slash"), this one will cause an insta-death on an enemy. But the catch is that it has a very low probability of actually working, so... Actually the probability of success when you use it is only 8%. There's no consequence for failing, but you have wasted a turn. So this is in the end pretty useless (not to mention that using it against bosses takes away the fun of fighting them normally).  Well, all right. Let's leave this place now and head to the orchid, which is luckily nearby and easily accessible.  Let's head to the orchid.  There's still one enemy we haven't previously met. It has the ability to insta-kill one party member, but also it doesn't use it oftent and it rarely lands, so...   Well, here we go, the grand shrine and the orchid next to it.  This place is dark and (mostly) abandoned.  Even the bridge here is broken.  We have tow alk around the outside of the lake.  Of course, the random encounters are presnt. What is even happening with these names at this point? Well, in any case, despite the name, these aren't very dangerous, due to low agility.   The main building here is the only one that has people inside.  "The hundred prayers", or "Hyakudo Mairi" (百度参り) is a Japanese religious custom in which a person visits a shrine and pays his respect to gods one hundred times. This is done especially when the reason for the prayer has some urgency, as is the case with this gentleman. The miko just reminds you about the four burial mounds, so we'll talk to the monk instead. So this dialogue sounds a bit better if you come here a bit earlier, but we didn't, so...  ...let's just deal with the orchid!  That was number six, so I guess there is only one left now! Right?  Let's go back to the building for a short chat. First the gentleman that was worrying about his daughter! And the monk:  Well, all right, so that's done now. By the way, here is a picture of a real Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine, located, as expected in this exact location in Osaka prefecture in real life:   As for us, we will now head to Himeji, since the town has been liberated from the "orchid blockade". We should probably find out what the local lord is up to, as it seems he's not exactly aware of the kind of threat he's facing from the Root Clan.  But before that, a quick stop at the northern cape, since Duke Pepe indicated we should stop by.  Well then. Looks like our next castle is going to be "in the sky". Too bad our tank can't fly. Oh well.  But it can swim, and Himeji is across the bay, so let's head there finally.  Ah, here it is. That narrow passage between the mountains would have been blocked before.  Looks cool with all these canals (they do exist in real life). Before we visit the castle, let's talk to people.  Hmm... I wonder what kind of Speedbird part was there that he looted.   I'm not having a particularly good feeling about this. Especially after Duke Pepe mentioning about having "some business to take care of in Himeji".  Ok, so this the weapon/equipment shop. I'm not actually going to buy anything here for reasons I will explain, but in general, there's one item you might want to consider getting.  It's this one, "Benten's Helm" (remember Benten the goddess, from the beginning of the game?) for 108,000 ryo. It provides decent protection for Kinu (although there are better ones), but more importantly, when used as an item in battle it also provides a free 150 HP heal for one party member. Since we lucked out with the Bone Sword and got randomly on it the ability to replenish MP, we don't really need a free heal in addtion to that, but if you get less lucky with those random elixirs and their equipment counterparts, then it's probably a good idea to get this here, especially since it's not super expensive anyway. All right, let's continue talking to people then.  The guy in bed has a surprising amount of things to say! And the other two people here.   Speaking of castles, we have a castle here that we should visit! The guards just welcome to the castle, so nothing interesting there, but...  ...there's this lady here, hiding in a corner! Unfortunately she doesn't have anything to say we don't already know, but I really do want to get the last Speedbird part! Incidentally, the real-life Himeji castle is one of the best preserved feudal castles in Japan, dating from 14th century. Here is a picture of it:  By Niko Kitsakis - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40135622  As for us, let's head inside. Oh, really?  Also there's a bunch of chests around the castle. Mostly they have low level gear that we have no use for. But it shows you how actually unprepared they are for the battle.  You know, this is depressing, so let's just head upstairs. I'll let you know if anybody actually says anything interesting, but they all seem quite indoctrinated so far.  I was saying about chests having low level equipment, but actually this one contains that Wave Pattern Sword that was being sold for a lot of money back in Kobe. But you can get it here for free! It's slightly weaker than the weapons we already use for Manjimaru and Kabuki, however, when used as item in battle it casts that powerful "ice dragon" spell that only Kabuki can use. By keeping this sword we enable another person to be able to use it, so we'll keep it for now.  I'm skipping talking to most soldiers here as they are all just spewing short rah-rah nonsense sentences, so we'll just head upstairs and talk to the lord!  Sure, sure.  Over here is the lord and his daughter. Let's talk to the daughter first. I see. Well, let's hear it from the lord himself.  They move by the window and watch the action. And so will we, in the following cutscene!  Well. That ended about as good as anyone with half a brain could have expected it to, really.  Well, let's see, what does the lord have to say about all of this? Manjimaru obtained the Wind Spirit Mechanism! Ah! The final power-up part for the Speedbird. But what does it do? Also, not being so cocky anymore, huh? Should have left this to trained professionaly, but well, here we are. The guy standing next to him has also changed his tune. Probably. If we talk to the daughter... ...she gives us a hint about that tengu who is only accessible from the sea. Unfortunately as we've seen already, the spell we got from him we can't even use, so... not really any help in this case! So, since we got what we came here for (but at a high and avoidable cost), we can now leave. The guys in the castle all change their tune and if you talk to them express variations on a theme of "please help us", "you're a true hero" and so on.  Well, all right. Back outside in our little tank. Let's use the wind spirit mechanism  Nice. It can fly now, too! Well, then, I think our task is clear.  We need to find the Steel Castle floating in the sky...  ...and dock with it! (Like you do.) All right then, we'll take a break here, but I guess in the next episode we have again the next Root Castle to deal with. What is this, some kind of a speedrun. Or at least a speedbird maybe. Anyway, take care and see you soon! ivantod fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 22:27
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I love the design of the Speedbird, it's rad. Also really? There's nothing else undersea? Despite it, presumably, covering all of the game's sea? Or in the lakes or anything? Sad. Additionally, what's up with those "Orangutans"? Odd translation or just an odd name?
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Oct 7, 2023 23:23
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quote:You are master Manjimaru from the Fire Clan? Well, thank you for your effort so far, but you can leave the Fire Clan to us from now on! I imagine the second Fire Clan is supposed to be Root Clan. You also have a Stell Castle somewhere.
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Oct 7, 2023 23:56
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what's interesting is the two guys in upstairs room of the inn have the stereotypical thief/burglar design, just in case the dialogue isn't obvious enough.
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Oct 8, 2023 01:24
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Wow, we aren't dropping this vehicle after one use? And it keeps getting new functionalities? That's the biggest surprise in this game so far.
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Oct 8, 2023 02:23
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Tallgeese posted:I imagine the second Fire Clan is supposed to be Root Clan.  PurpleXVI posted:I love the design of the Speedbird, it's rad.  I'm not sure there's anything else to it beyond that. As for the bottom of the sea, the vehicles can't really cross from one province to another, so there is only the bottom of the sea in this particular province and the others don't even have it. I would have honestly expected there to be at least something, but I guess not.
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Oct 8, 2023 09:05
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ivantod posted:Orangutans are I guess just a reference to the real life orangutan apes: Oh, yeah, I mean, I know what orangutans are. Just, those enemies did not seem very orangutan-y. So I was thinking that maybe in Japanese the name for orangutans is close enough for a pun to reference some demon or something.
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Oct 8, 2023 11:44
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh, yeah, I mean, I know what orangutans are. Just, those enemies did not seem very orangutan-y. So I was thinking that maybe in Japanese the name for orangutans is close enough for a pun to reference some demon or something. Ah well, now that I looked at it a bit more turns out there is a kind of a "demon" which is supposed to be like an orangutan with a distinct fondness for alcohol. In fact the demons came first and then the ape was named after them: https://yokai.com/shoujou/. Sorry about missing this. The one time I decide not to look into it further it turns out you are right and there was more there.  Apologies. ivantod fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 12:56
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ivantod posted:Sorry about missing this. The one time I decide not to look into it further it turns out you are right and there was more there. Oh, no, that's fine.  I'm just glad you're providing all this neat context.
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Oct 8, 2023 20:04
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Poor Duke Pepe is just lonely and latched on to the first people who wandered along (after killing his wife). The animation of him walking in, throwing the rope and kidnapping the one guy would have just been top notch if he just left right after, but I guess they kind of needed to nudge you in the right direction. Also, the cannon was the logical endpoint, but I was kinda expecting the massive buildup in music, then Duke Pepe just landing the castle on the army or just... sailing peacefully over them, because what the gently caress is calvary and archers going to do against a flying castle?
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Oct 8, 2023 22:30
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Randalor posted:Poor Duke Pepe is just lonely and latched on to the first people who wandered along (after killing his wife). The animation of him walking in, throwing the rope and kidnapping the one guy would have just been top notch if he just left right after, but I guess they kind of needed to nudge you in the right direction. Also, the cannon was the logical endpoint, but I was kinda expecting the massive buildup in music, then Duke Pepe just landing the castle on the army or just... sailing peacefully over them, because what the gently caress is calvary and archers going to do against a flying castle? I'm just going to leave this video here. I swear it's relevant to the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJsFhkb8e4Q Oh, and here's a fun game for everybody: how many times do you think we'll still have to fight Duke Pepe before we're finally done with him? Post your guesses. 
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Oct 8, 2023 22:52
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ivantod posted:I'm just going to leave this video here. I swear it's relevant to the topic. 0, he has a change of heart and is actually the one that can use the unusable scroll, his steel castle becomes our final vehicle,and they all lived happily ever after. Besides, you pointed out that there's more castles than evil plants at this point, and Pepe has become a lovable scamp.
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Oct 8, 2023 23:42
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ivantod posted:I'm just going to leave this video here. I swear it's relevant to the topic. Partially to help push to the next page, and because I was thinking.... I'll guess 10. Including one superboss postgame, which is more of what I'm guessing than the actual number.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:39
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It's 8. (No idea)
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Oct 18, 2023 23:46
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20, but they're all half-fights where he escapes when he hits a certain health threshold. Yes, that means he survives the game.
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Oct 19, 2023 01:07
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Commander Keene posted:20, but they're all half-fights where he escapes when he hits a certain health threshold. Yes, that means he survives the game. 50, he survives the entire next game as well.
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Oct 19, 2023 01:27
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He just randomly shows up out of nowhere and starts calling this other dude "Manjimaru" and antagonizing him for no reason.
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Oct 19, 2023 01:35
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Duke Pepe everywhere system
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Oct 19, 2023 03:08
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Ha ha I like this. The number of fights is thankfully in single digits and even the reward you get after the final defeat is very much worth it. To be honest when I say about how annoying it is I'm more joking around, I don't actually find it annoying and this game is for the most part very much actually fun to play. They do manage to strike the right balance without generally going into annoying territory. Also, apologies once again for updates being a bit slow (and definitely slower than I would like), but we're not so far from the end of the game now so there's not a huge amount more to go! Thanks everybody for reading!
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Oct 19, 2023 11:50
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I'm not sure how many fights Duke Pepe has in him but I hope he survives the game. Killing off the protagonist's love interest for drama is boring and overused.
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Oct 19, 2023 14:37
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0 is still a single digit, I'm still in the running 
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Oct 19, 2023 14:38
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I shall guess that 3 shall be the remaining numbers of Pepes. But then we will start fighting CyberPepe, and finally MechaPepe
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Oct 20, 2023 17:54
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Given the amount of swastikas in this game, I'm okay with any amount of Pepe as long as he doesn't turn into a frog.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:52
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 Previously, Manjimaru and the gang defeated another Root Clan castle (the underwater one) and thus managed to cut down another dark orchid. This in theory leaves just one, the seventh. However, during this process, the annoying pest by the name of Duke Pepe managed to kidnap Hoteimaru and take him to yet another Root Clan castle, the steel one. In addition to that, the lord of Himeji was being a bit stubborn and refused to accept help from the Fire Clan. This resulted in his army of 50,000 people being completely obliterated by the Steel Castle; however, he then finally stopped being stubborn and gave us the last upgrade for the Speedbird, the one which allows it to also fly in the air! And so we ended the last episode with our heroes having successfully docked with the Steel Castle!  There isn't really anything left to do at this point but to enter the castle, of course. And for those who are wondering, yes, indeed, this is the point at which this vehicle gets abandoned, never to be used again. But, you may ask, this vehicle seems quite capable, it can go on land and water, and it can even fly? And, well, it's like this: while it can indeed do all that, the problem is that there is no way for it to leave this one province. All roads between provinces pass through border villages which vehicles can't go through. So that limits its usefulness a fair amount, especially where there is something better coming up soon. Believe it or not, it's finally time (soon) to obtain a vehicle which we are NOT going to be abandoning until the end of the game! But for now, let's just get inside the castle.  Here, of course, the welcoming committee already is waiting for us!  Uhhh, maybe this is the time when we can finally be done with Duke Pepe. But as for that talk about the tiles, probably it hasn't escaped your attention the small clusters of differently coloured tiles on the floor. Stepping on them causes various negative affects, such as draining your HP or MP, or even worse putting your entire party into "magic sealed" status. Since you don't want any of that to happen, especially that last one, you should make sure to not step on any of them. In some cases this will mean using the spell which allows you to pass over dangerous floor without taking any of the negative effects (kind of like "float" in older Final Fantasy games). But in any case, this place is quite small, and there's hardly anywhere to go anyway. All right, so the dots you see in three of the four corners of this room are actually teleporters! So we'll start by stepping on the bottom left one.  It takes us to this side room. Here of course you need to use the "clear water" spell so that you don't suffer ill effects from stepping on coloured tiles. The chests only have consumables...  ...so we can just use this teleporter to return back to the main room.  This actually puts us at the bottom right, which only leaves top right teleporter to try.  Just walk across without a care in the world!  Well, except for the random encounters! But these guys are pretty easy.   Of course, there's another teleporter at the end of the room...  ...which leads already to Duke Pepe and also a bound and gagged Hoteimaru there!  This guy is just...  And, well, here we go, it's a boss fight... AGAIN! Sigh. How many times has this been so far? Well, in any case, this one is definitely real, and oh my god look at that HP. Nevertheless, this is actually a fair bit easier than the last one. Although he's faster, his attack and defence stat are quite a bit lower than even Garnin's first form! So although he has a bit more HP, this is in the end less dangerous.  He has his normal attack, which is under 100 HP without defence buffs, but you need to be careful because he can sometimes do it twice in one turn. He's lost the ability to do attack/defence/agility debuffs on you, but has gained an immensely annoying ability to remove a piece of equipment from one of your party members. Luckily he doesn't use it much at least. As usual, use the all-party buffs from Kabuki constantly and make sure you're healed and you should be fine here. When his HP falls below 25% of maximum, he will only use a heal move each turn ("Duke Pepe uses a steel plate to patch his body"). But it only heals him for 100 HP, so this is your time to go all out and finish him--you should be EASILY able to to more than 100 HP damage to him per turn. Anyway, after the battle...  Oh, did you think we would be done with this guy after just a single fight? Ha ha. No such luck. But soon, I promise. He goes away, taking Hoteimaru with him, who screams for us to save him! So let's go looking for Pepe again (but do remember to check that all your armour and weapons are properly equipped before continuing!).   Well, all right. Other than the teleporter we used to get here, there's two others in this room. One leads to a short hallway with some treasure chests. They only contains consumables, plus a cursed equipment piece. The lift in the top left corner leads back directly to the starting room, so the only remaining way to go is the third teleporter.  That one leads to a hallway where... surprise, it's Duke Pepe waiting for a fight with us again!  This is slowly getting crazier and crazier. But nevertheless...  ...we have (again) a boss fight on our hands. It's not really that much harder than the last one, but there are some differences. First of all, all his stats have gone up a bit... except agility. I guess the idea is that his new armour is making him slower.  His main attack hasn't really changed (it's of course a bit stronger now), including the probability that he will sometimes attack twice. Apart from that, he can now also cast a powerful fire spell ("war flame") or even steal your MP ("mistletoe"). But thanks to his noticably lower agility, you will be getting a lot more turns than he is, especially if you use Kabuki's "wind snake" spell to further raise the agility of the entire party! As before, once his HP is below 25% he will stop attacking and simply heal on every turn. But it's still a measly 100 HP, which we can easily outdamage. So in the end, again, the only reason this takes a bit is because of a relatively large total HP amount. And so...   Oh, did you think we were done with him this time? No. No such luck.  We'll just follow him by taking that teleporter.  Here we have a lift which we can take upstairs, but also some chests. The one on the left has a "Blazing Fire Armour".  Giving it to Manjimaru results in further +5 in defence stat.  Kabuki will take over Manjimaru's former "Zeus's Armour" for a +3 compared to his previous equipment. Not too bad. One of the other chests contains another piece of equipment, "The Helmet of Silence", which as you can probably guess, is a cursed piece of equipment which disables your usage of magic spells/techniques so we'll ignore that one. It could be potentially something Gokuraku would be able to use even as cursed, but it is of course not equippable by him, since even when cursed equipment is concerned, he still needs special ones due to his size! Anyway, let's take that lift.  It takes us one level up where there is a tied up Hoteimaru.  But he is soon teleported away, leaving the active teleporter for us to use. Taking the teleporter...  ...brings us outside on top of the "castle", with Duke Pepe seemingly having turned himself into some kind of fully mechanical contraption? Let's see.   And, well, it's time for a boss fight. Finally, this is the last one! Like in the previous one, all his stats have gone up, except his agility is now really severely lowered due to this entire contraption.  His attack is now quite strong, and he will almost always now attack twice per turn so you do need to be careful. The damage number you're seeing above is with Kabuki's defence buff applied, so normally it would be a lot more than that. He does still have a fire attack, but also a new annoyance, the ability to use the "castle wall" spell ("Duke Pepe is blowing high temperature gas from his radiator"). This renders him invincible to physical attacks for a few turns. Although his attacks are stronger, his agility is quite low by now so he won't be getting a whole lot of turns, and also the switch to healing only when at low health still happens even in this version ("Duke Pepe is fixing some frayed wires on his body."). The heal is still just 100 HP, so basically completely useless.   Huh. The person among us with the strongest attack power is never attacking, you say? Are you talking about Kinu, perhaps? Answering that question is certainly something we'll be concerning ourselves shortly, but for now, and I know this is hard to believe, we are actually done with Duke Pepe for good. He's been a thorn in our side for way too long, but is really, truly done now.  After quickly freeing Hoteimaru, he has a few things to say!  Manjimaru obtained the Electronic Signal Flag!  Believe it or not... we FINALLY have an airship (and yes it's even armed)! I mean it's a 1990s JRPG, so an airship is kind of a given, it's just that it took most of the game to actually get to this point. Somehow... Manjimaru obtained the Steel Castle! Yes. This game did the "somehow" joke several decades before it became a meme! As for the castle, it's actually even better than you think, but before we talk about it in detail, let's quickly go into villains' lair for an update  Yeah, yeah. Anyway, back to the Steel Castle. If we open the game menu...  ...we have one new command there: "Warp". If we select it...  ...we can move instantanenously to any province. But, if you look carefully at the menu above, you can see that it's listing even some provinces we've never been to (the last three: Kibi, Aki and Nagato)! So, as it turns out, there is a bit of a paradigm shift in the game at this point. So far things have been kind-of linear. Sure you had the freedom to explore a bit, but mostly the game has been sort of guiding you from one province to another as the plot required. However, now when we are close to the end, the game says: well, the entire rest of the world is open to you now, go out there and figure it out! It's time for the player to now go around and figure out what is the next step, instead of the game more or less telling you! I think it's a nice shift to make it a bit more interesting in the final parts of the game. So with that in mind, we'll be spending the rest of today's episode doing exactly that: exploring and gathering information! Before we get started on that, though, there's one little secret in previous areas of the game which we were not able to access before, but now thanks to having an airship, we can! If we head quickly back over to Oomi province...  ...it's been a while, but you will recall this weird pier with the building at the end.  On the map, there is that peninsula in the northwest, from where Kinu made the "demonic light bridge" that took us across to the west. However, as part of that we flew over that little island which you can see in the northwest corner. Wouldn't it be interesting to find out if there's anything there?  Here we are, I guess it looks empty. But if you examine one of the two big rocks...  ...we get an item! This item was actually for sale back in one of Ashimoto's shops, but it was sold out there and it was not possible to buy it. However, if you come to this island, you can find a hidden one like this. It's an infinite use item, and its purpose is to immediately summon a random battle. The monster formation will be one which is native to the area where you are standing. So this is a bit like the "siren" item from older Final Fantasy games and is useful for easier/faster grinding if you decide to do it. As for the island itself, other than this, there's nothing special on it, so it's not like those two weird islands in Final Fantasy VIII. Once you get the item, you can leave. So, with this in mind, let's summon back our Steel Castle...  ...and let's head over into the first unexplored location, the Kibi province (吉備).  When we materialise back, we are near a castle town, but we'll leave that for the moment.  So, unfortunately, you still get random encounters while flying in the castle, but the enemy formations are drawn from a more limited set of possibilities compared what you find on the ground and are more limited to flying type enemies. As for this one, the name is supposed to be a mangling of Tengu-san and it represents a more evil version of Tengu, kind of like the crow tengu depicted by this 19th century statue:  By WolfgangMichel - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29941764 As for the enemy itself, if you look at the HP, you can see that "we're not in Kansas any more". The random encounters in the rest of the game are a noticable step up in difficulty at our present level. Although in this case not so much, since as I mentioned our flying castle is in fact armed.  So in battle, we get now this additional command here: "thermal orb" (熱弾), which deals a cool 1000 HP damage (or thereabouts) to ALL enemies. So mostly these random encounters while flying will be a complete non-issue.   Another note about the castle. If you want to land with the castle, you need to find a sufficiently large CLEAR piece of land. So in places like here where you see some rocks on the ground, it's not possible to land and you have to move a bit further away from the village where it's clear. The game will very definitely use this in the future to prevent us from taking a shortcut to some destinations.  For now, we'll head a bit north and start with this border village here. Again it's a bit tight here so we have to land a bit south from it.  Like down here, and then we have to walk.  Welcome to Tashiro. Let's get some bearings! If we pass north through here, we arrive back in Izumo province.  Well, all right. That wasn't super interesting. Let's head south.  But oops. Well, as far as things go, this is not such a bad combination of enemies. The "old man" is a bit annoying due to high defence, but otherwise this is not the worst, especially since it has a good money/EXP yield. But you might be wondering about that "peony lion" name? Well, as it turns out, the juxtaposition of a peony flower together with a lion is a pretty common thing in Japanese art/culture. It's supposed to represent a balance of strength and beauty. Here it is depicted on this early 19th century painting by Utagawa Toyokuni:  And so the game decided to just mash both things into a single creature which is at the same time both a peony and also a lion! Nice.    Anyway, around the corner here is a little clearing we have a already seen plenty of.  Another ninja hideout. There's actually quite a lot of those everywhere, as you can see. Interesting. Also, you can definitely feel the gears of the plot starting to turn in order to get everything in the right place for the game's ending! In the house, you can sleep for free, but as usual the innkeeper doesn't have any special dialogue.  By the way, before we proceed, here is the map of this province. As you can see no particularly unusual geographical features here. To the east is Tanba province and to the west is Aki province.  We'll head west for now. I know I could be using the castle to move much faster, but this is more fun and we also get to pick up a couple of levels while exploring since everything here gives quite a lot of money and EXP.  And what do you know, in the mountains in the west there is a tengu's house!  Manjimaru obtained the "divine flame" scroll. The "divine flame" (神炎) is a strong fire attack against one enemy. So nothing too unusual here. Well, I was expecting to hear a bit more, but I guess this'll do for now.  Let's head back out.  Obviously enemies! Koban is a type of coin used in the old times in Japan, but we've already encountered that term. Also, I wanted to mention that so far playing through the game, we've encountered close to 200 uniquely named enemies (not counting the bosses). So I just want to express my admiration for person(s) who thought up all these names. Because honestly, I don't think I've ever seen monster names quite on this kind of level in any RPG that I've played. So, well done, game. Well done. This one is a particularly good combination between the Heaven's Shriek design which is just one of the best, and the "Inner Beast" name, you know, as in the little bit of beast we all have inside ourselves! It's quite funny, because Inner Beast has an ability to call up his inner beast, which boosts his strength! So I guess even an Inner Beast has their own inner beast, huh?     Going back east, we eventually reach a river. So let's head south.  Huh, we haven't seen one of these types of enemies for a while now. High defence makes them annoying, but their attack power is not especially high, so... the only real problem is that they have a "suicide bomber" attack where they self destruct, dealing some damage to everyone in the battle--and by this I mean also to the other monsters! Another clever touch in a game full of them!   All the way south, there is finally a bridge over the river.  Across the bridge to the east, there is a small village!  Welcome to Osafune! So this place is pretty famous in Japan even today, for one particular thing. We'll find out shortly what that is. Let's talk to people. Hm. Ok, we'll check that out later today.  Hiroshima is actually fairly southern and doesn't really see a whole lot of snow during the winter. It's kind of at the very southern tip of the biggest Japanese island of Honshu.  A very casual comment, but seems important. As far as we know, Kinu's mother is supposed to be dead, but who knows what really happened.  Huh, the Demon Clan, you say? Wonder if we can find any relatives of Kinu there, or anything related to her in general. Well, I doubt that, but nevertheless, Osafune in real life Japan is also a place famous for its swordsmiths. Although today it only exists as part of Setouchi town into which it was integrated.  Yes, this looks like a place where swords are made. Sounds simple enough, I guess. Let's talk to the swordsmith himself.  Well, let's see.  ["Bizen Osafune", "Famous Sword Otokoyama"] There are two swords here for sale, and I mean they're good, but... the prices! One of these is for Kabuki and the other for Manjimaru, and they are better than what they currently have, but although we're hardly poor, we really don't have the money for this right now. The other guy just sells normal items.  Let's see.  ["Enchanted Sword Muramasa"] Right. Ok. This is even less afordable. This one can be used by both Kabuki and Manjimaru and is in fact the strongest weapon that you can buy in the game. This is obviously very careful phrasing as there are in fact three still stronger weapons, but they cannot be obtained by buying them in a shop. Again, for now we don't really have the money for this, so either way it has to wait. Speaking of money, in these last three provinces there are again a couple of enemies which steal your money, so you might want to be careful about it again.  Well, all right. Let's head a bit north from here.  More enemies. The crow is especially annoying because of its large HP, more than like half this game's bosses! It can also cast a strong fire spell that hits one character for like 150+ HP. It's name can mean both "dawn crow" but also a kind of a sound that crows make at dawn.   Anyway, tucked in over here is another small border village. This is one is a bit unusual for a reason you can already see on the screenshot--it provides access to another Tengu's house!  This place is called Mikazuki and leads back into Tanba province. All right, let's keep going.  So it literally provides access just to that Tengu... ano nothing else! Note how due to the rocky ground, you can't actually land the castle here at all!  Manjimaru obtained the "doll" scroll. The doll (人形) scroll affects one group of enemies and confuses them so that they might attack both allies and our party.  After this, we can return back to Kibi province and continue our exploration.  We'll head back west again.  A short while later, we reach a bigger town with a castle.  This is Okayama! It has nice looking canals. Aya, or Ayako is certainly Kinu's mother; but Kinu's mother is supposed to be dead? We'll look into this further, certainly. I don't know, you tell me?   Well, yeah.  A bit random, but sure.   Yeah, interesting one, that.  We'll take the chance to rest at the inn and talk to the other guests. Hm, yeah, maybe later. The other two guests actually also repeat stuff we already know.  Ah. This is the dentures guy I guess.   Well, all right. Let's check out the castle too.    Let's head upstairs.  Those chests have a couple more of those stock certificates. I'll go to Kyoto and sell them after.  The chest also has 12,000 ryo, which I'm not going to refuse! Let's go upstairs to the top floor.  The lord here seems to have his own three advisors? Anyway, we'll talk to the woman first. And then we talk to the three older gentlemen... Well, we'll just have to find the key, won't we? And finally, we talk to the lord! Well, we were going to anyway, but not today though.  Well, that was everything in Okayama, so let's now make our way further west, to visit that Kurashiki place.  There is another, by now quite obvious, ninja hideout on the way.   A little bit to the southwest, we find a small town. Let's explore it.  Welcome to Kurashiki, the place full of storerooms! Incidentally the "kura" part from this name (倉) actually means "storehouse", so there you go!  Since the inn is right there, let's stop briefly and then we'll continue on. You are racist. Also, mermaids again. It's been a while, but we're going to be seeing them soon again! We certainly do want to find out what is in that storehouse! A flute, you say? Why, that can only be a key item that we'll need to use to progress at some point. But for now, though, we do not have the key to either that storehouse or to the other one belonging to a mermaid, so they will both have to wait.  This village is very long and only really has one street which runs east-west. Thank you for the pointers!  Before we move on, I just want to point this out. In the weapon shop here, you can buy this thing which I've highlighted, a "Safflower Kozuka", which is a dagger type weapon. But the four icons in the top right for our four characters are all greyed out, i.e. nobody is able to equip this. The game is getting a bit ahead of itself here, it seems.  Anyway, moving on, the rest of this village is just storehouses like you can see here. Indeed. We'll do that after we leave here. By the way, you probably won't be surprised when I tell you that indeed, in the past, especially during Tokugawa Shogunate period, the real-life Kurashiki was indeed well known as a city of warehouses! Many of them still stand today, and look very similar to the ones in the game:   In some of the storehouses, you can find also people. Huh. Is this really possible that Kinu's mother is alive?   More people outside here. You can also see one of the closed storehouses. As mentioned, we'll need their respective keys to open those! I guess this is probably true then.  Here is the other locked one.    And one last storage room here. And on that high note, we'll leave this place for now. Of course, we'll return as soon as we have obtained at least one of those keys. By the way, the chests you saw around the storerooms just contain HP/MP recovery consumables.
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Oct 31, 2023 23:33
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 All right, we're back outside.  Well, let's see about that tengu that was mentioned as being nearby. We have to go around these mountains...  ...and then down the coast on the other side.  We're just on the other side of that river from Kurashiki.  As usual, enemies interrupt us! These guys, despite an incredibly straightforward name, are absolutely not to be trifled with. They have very high agility, and also strong fire spells which hit everyone, plus they can call reinforcements! You very definitely want to use defence buffs here.   Anyway, at the very very tip of that peninsula (which we had to walk around the long way), we do find a tengu's hut. I guess you could have seen it from the opposite shore.  Manjimaru obtained the "Mt. Fuji" scroll! The "Mt. Fuji" (富士) scroll recovers full HP of one ally. But, he actually has more information about this scroll! So, Matsumushi is the seventh Fire Hero, whose sword we're just now trying to obtain (although we haven't even found the orchid yet, to be exact). But also this story about the Fubuki Gozen (a Root Clan henchwoman?) is interesting too. Is she the Root Clan female general we've already heard about before in relation to events that transpired on Mt. Ooe with the genocide of the demons, including there Kinu's parents? Well, let's keep our ears open for more on this story. In any case it seems that we are getting some idea what actually might be behind the "reappearance" of Kinu's mother. All right then. After this, we head further west...  ...and after crossing this bridge we find another border crossing. This one takes us to Aki province, where Hiroshima is located.  This place is called Fukuyama, which means lucky mountain(福山)! It's also a bit bigger than the typical border crossing, in particular we can definitely some kind of shrine or something like that potentially. But let's as usual first talk to the villagers. Well, I mean it was her choice, and who are we to tell her what to do? But, game, you're honestly not as subtle as you think you are, especially after seeing that weapon that apparently there's nobody who can equip it.  There are a couple of houses on the other side, too. So let's have a look.   We'll go to Kameyama in a bit, but for now...  Hm. Another place with good swords, huh?  Over here they have a couple of pretty nicely appointed temples. Of course. But first, we go and visit the temples here!   Elephant? Well, that's a new one. Yes, we know. It's where the mermaids are.  Yeah, well, we'll see about that. Anyway... we haven't learned too much new here, so let's move on into the Aki province.  Just by entering, things are already strange. And by this I'm referring to that weird part of the mountain there at the bottom middle. What in the world is up with that? I guess we'll have to find out! First let's check out the map.  Not actually a lot of "land", as it's mostly small islands. There's a big patch of ice in the west, so looks like that's probably where Hiroshima is located. Incidentally, but not surprisingly at this point, this map is somewhat realistic to the actual location in the real world:  As you can see, there's a whole bunch of small islands around the Hiroshima Bay. In the meantime, however, there is a village right in front of us, so let's head there to start.  This place is called Onomichi and it also seems to be built on a bunch of islands! Let's see what's up. A giant turtle, huh? Well, we don't need that, we have the airship now!  A person to talk to in the inn...  I should probably mention that the world "silver" (白銀) in Japanese can also be used metaphorically to mean something related to snow. So I guess you could also call it the Snow Castle.  Well, his info is wrong, because according to what we know, the flute is locked in one of the storehouses in Kurashiki. Still, either way, we have no way of getting to it at present.  By the way, "Kameyama" (亀山) means "turtle mountain" so it fits with out story about the samurai who rode on a turtle. It is however also a real-world location near Hiroshima.   Musashibo Benkei (武蔵坊弁慶) is a legendary 12th century Japanese warrior monk. Here is a 18th century drawing of him:  By Kikuchi Yosai (1788-1878) - Unknown, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=609828 All right, that's everything for here for now.  But you know what, let's check out that shrine, maybe we'll find out more about the turtle situation!  Welcome to Kamiyama Shrine! As you can see, there's a big stone turtle in that pond. I am very much not surprised. I guess we're talking tortoises here really rather than turtles. Still, even giant tortoises can only generally live up to around 150-200 years and not 10,000. Needless to say cranes (the birds) do not live 1,000 years, but only about 30 or so. If you want a long lived bird species, then you should look into parrots as they can generally live around 100 years or so. You know, I was thinking. The Steel Castle can't actually land on sea, so having a turtle to ride would be useful here potentially. Just a thought.  Other than the turtle pond, the only other thing here is the actual shrine building.  First we'll talk to the shrine maiden: Ugh, what. Let's talk to two monks too: Yeah, it's not actually with the demons, but it might be that the key to the storage room is. We'll have to see. So I guess if we find the flute, we can ride a giant turtle again? We don't know yet what that might be useful for, though. Hmm, interesting. The only two Fire Heroes who are women is Shizuka (the blind warrior) and the one we just learned about (Matsumushi) whom nobody mentioned being a mermaid. Maybe it's someone else?  All right, let's head west and investigate the situation at Hiroshima.  Well, yeah. That spear is definitely an icicle, so... Apart from a normal attack he has another "big swing" which can crit. But no ice spells or anything like that.   The arms may be slender, but the hands sure are huge! Unlike the last enemy, this one does have ice spells, and is also a bit tougher because of high defence.   Anyway, after a while of going west, we finally reach Hiroshima, which is at the northern end of a frozen area. If you step on the ice, it makes you skate around (like that ice dungeon we had at the start of the game). So it's not possible to just walk around normally--you always slide to the next wall or to the edge of it. This is important for reasons I'll explain shortly. In the meantime, let's enter the town and see how it looks in there.  Ok, yeah, the southern part if completely frozen. Not great. We can talk to a few people. Like that girl there.  In here at least you can walk normally, but it doesn't help much since the frozen over buildings cannot be entered anyway.   Luckily for us, the inn itself is not frozen! But there's nothing interesting to hear, so we move on back outside.  Here I take a moment to put most of my money into storage because, yeah, there are again money-stealing enemies around. And they will just casually take like 10,000 ryo from you in just one attack! So better safe than sorry, for sure.  And then we head into the castle!   We head upstairs.    Again, we continue upstairs.  But this staircase leads just to a small room. Indeed, they are preparing it, as we've heard. Well, we'll see about that, won't we?  Taking a different staircase up, leads to the area where the lord of Hiroshima sits. Let's talk first to all the other people standing around here. We'll have a look at the Silver Castle situation shortly, as it's just south of Hiroshima. But for now, let's talk to the princess. And finally we talk to the lord. Sure, sure. But for now, we leave here and let's have a closer look at the situation in the vicinity.  While sllllliiiiiding around on the ice, you can get a good look at the Silver Castle, but there's no way to slide around in such a way that you end up next to it! So we'll have to do it some other way.  I don't know what to say to this. Luckily none of these are particularly special so we dispatch them with ease. I guess Kinu there is in the red because she got KOd in a previous battle. In this game when you're KOd you lose both HP and MP and revived with only 1 point in each after a few steps. So Bone Sword also comes in handy to remedy that situation.    Anyway, turns out, near the southern edge of ice, there is a small village!  This place is called Iwakuni and it's very small! Iwakuni means "rock country" in Japanese, but is actually a real place name. However, we'll leave them be for now, since there really isn't anything new to be learned by talking to the villagers here  However, looking a bit more closely, reveals an interesting geographical situation. If we could get access to this island, then we could slide straight up towards the Silver Castle and access it that way! But the island is too small to be able to land our airship there, so I guess we'll have to find a different means of transport in order to accomplish this (I'm pretty sure it's all completely obvious by now). But, speaking of airship, let's call it up now and have a bit of a look if there's anything interesting among those little islands.  Let's see...  Huh. I think we found the mermaids. I expect we have to go through that cave to enter their village. The only problem is, neither of the two islands has a big enough clear surface for us to land. So this too will have to use the other way.  Wait, this looks suspicious. We've already seen that kind of four-rock formation and it usually leads to a hidden tengu! So, I'm not even sure if this is by design or by accident, especially since there is an alternate way to somehow get here via that ice path, but if you fiddle with it a bit, it's actually possible find the exact pixel perfect spot where you can land the airship here!  Like this, right here. But anyway, going in between the four rocks reveals...  ...that this is indeed a hidden tengu! But it's just one of those which allows you to reduce the MP cose of one spell by 1. So there is no lore dialogue to be found or anything like that. Oh well.  So, ok, after extricating ourselves from that island, we'll cross here via Nishiki into Nagato province.   Let's see if we can find the orchid.  We found some enemies, but despite high HP this one is pretty nondescript.   These guys are actually more dangerous as they hit pretty hard.   Anyway, we'll go south past some cave entrances...  ...and find another small place to visit. It sure feels like we've travelled half the country today, doesn't it?  Welcome to Ogo'ori! Due to the nature of this part of the game, inevitably there's going to be a fair amount of repetition in what the villagers are saying, so we'll listen to the more interesting ones and skip most of those who repeat things we already know. Yeah, so remember that huge cave system we had to traverse earlier on in the game? Well, there's an even bigger one in this province! But luckily, we don't need to do that yet, although we'll dip our toes in today at least to pick up some easily reachable items.  Some people in the inn. A guy in the sleeping area... And also the naked lady in the pool area over there. An upcoming boss fight, sure.  Well, I don't think we have too much to worry from the demons, honestly. Also, as always, "Chief Demon" refers to Shuten-doji.  They have a nice stone path here leading to the temple. Let's go inside.  Yes. I wonder that too.  Well, let's see what else is here then.  Well, for one, more enemies can definitely be found. They cast way strong fire spells, but are not resistant to physical damage, so Manjimaru's technique that hits all enemies can deal with them fairly easily. I also love this enemy design for some reason.   I assume probably by mistake, but this space here between the mountains and the river's edge is actually too tight for our characters to pass through. So you'll need to go back south, go east across a bridge, then go north again to this bridge you see here, where you can cross back to the western side. Since there's no gameplay/story reason for this way to be blocked, it has to be just a mistake by the developers.  Or you can continue north along the eastern side...  ...and reach a somewhat out of the way tengu's house!  Or maybe even before this war is over! Manjimaru obtained the "rainbow dragon" scroll. So the "rainbow dragon" (虹竜) scroll, when used in battle, will instead cast randomly one of the seven other spells. Six of them are various offensive/defensive/buff spells, but the last one is the spell which increases your encounter rate after the battle. Like all "dragon" spells, it can only be used by Kabuki, but as he said, I'm also not sure about the usefulness of it in the end. Incidentally, this is also the final spell you can get from Tengus. There are a couple more spells in the game, but they are obtained in other ways. The last couple of tengu that remain in the game are only the MP decreasing ones. If nothing else, this should be a good indicator that we truly are very close to the end of the game. For now though...  ...let's go back south and cross this bridge to the west.  More cave entrances. They're all part of that large cave system we've been told about. But what's that in lower left corner there?  Oh, hey. There it is. We've found the last orchid. It looks surrounded by mountains so we'll have to approach some other way. In fact, the way to get to the orchid is to find the right path through the caverns. Considering that we don't even have the holy sword yet, it's probably not worth bothering with that just yet. However, there are a couple easily reachable items in these caverns, so we'll pop in quickly to do that as they will be useful to us. There are some tough enemies in here, but it's really worth it.  First we'll go in here...  Since we'll have to traverse these caverns properly later, for now I'm not going to go into detail (including the new enemy types). But after a relatively short walk from the entrance, we can reach this location.  Two of the five chests are empty. One contains an item ("tide turning dust") which is a full HP/MP heal of the entire party, including revival of any KOd members with full HP/MP. The next chests has the... "Purple Dragon Carapace" which is an armour piece.  Equipping it on Manjimaru gives him a nice +17 is defence! The final chest has the "Enchanted Sword Muramasa"! You might have noticed that I wasn't getting too bothered about buying those half-million ryo swords in the sword-making village, well here's why. You can just find the most expensive of them (540,000 ryo!) for free literally lying around here! We'll give it to Manjimaru...  ...for a nice +16 in attack power.  That means that at least for now, Kabuki can take over Manjimaru's previous weapon. It's only +1 in attack compared to his previous equipment, but... it doesn't cost us anything, so why not. So that's all in this part of the cave for now.  Back outside, we'll head into this entrance here.  Again, close to the entrance is this location. One chest has a consumable, but the other has Asura's Helmet.  Equipping this on Manjimaru is a nice +7 in defence.  Kabuki can again take over Manjimaru's former helmet for an additional +1 in defence.  So, it didn't take very long to do, but in return we have some nice equipment upgrades which would have otherwise cost a lot of money to buy in shops! All right then. It was a VERY long day of exploring the new areas, but we'll stop for a bit of rest now. Next time, we have a small bit of exploration to finish (including another well hidden tengu!) but then it's going to be a very plot-focused episode with a long-awaited event finally taking place! So take care and I'll see you then!
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Oct 31, 2023 23:33
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Is the long awaited event Kinu removing her shackles and unleashing her true power like this is an episode of DBZ?
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Nov 2, 2023 15:59
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Duke Pepe's head is tossed in for reasons, and he says something along the lines of "Kinu! You have to let go! I love you!" before getting unceremoniously stomped and Kinu losing her poo poo.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:24
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Randalor posted:Is the long awaited event Kinu removing her shackles and unleashing her true power like this is an episode of DBZ? Oh yeah! And remember what Duke Pepe said about her attack power. Incidentally, I still remember the days in Final Fantasy X when I made Yuna hit for 99999 HP because it's much much easier to max out physical attack than magic in that game... Fun times.
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Nov 2, 2023 19:37
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So now that we have freedom of travel, are there any super-tough challenge optional dungeons or anything in the game?
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Nov 3, 2023 23:38
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PurpleXVI posted:So now that we have freedom of travel, are there any super-tough challenge optional dungeons or anything in the game? Unfortunately not. The only optional bosses are the four which guard the red chests, which we have already defeated all of them (and which are just 4 copies of the exact same boss anyway). Other than that, there are a few small hidden items and such (like that "infernal ball" and a couple more we'll see in the next update), but that's it as far as that goes. There is no extra optional dungeons or any other kind of "post-game" content in this game. But you do have to bear in mind that this game came out in early 1992 so that sort of stuff wasn't really a thing yet so much. This was one of the first JRPGs ever that came out on a CD. Apparently this game's predecessor, the first Tengai Makyou game, was actually the first, in 1989--that was about a year before Super Famicom even was released, just to put it into perspective! So we have probably by my calculation about 2-3 updates left and then we're done with this game. But I do have plans for something a little bit more in this thread, so we'll probably continue for a bit longer after we're done with Manjimaru.
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Nov 3, 2023 23:54
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It's a bit sad to know we're that close to the ending but I saw it coming considering we finally got a vehicle that isn't getting dropped.
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Nov 4, 2023 01:08
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