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Hello everyone and welcome to this LP of Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru! This introductory post will be a bit longer than what you might be used to, simply because there are a number of things we need to cover before we start the game! The Tengai Makyou series and about this game The Tengai Makyou series of JRPG games (known in the west as Far East of Eden) is quite popular and well known in Japan, but not so much outside of it, mostly owing to the fact that out of all the games in this series, only ONE was ever released in the west and even that was just a dumb beat'em-up spinoff that nobody cared much about! So none of the mainline games ever came out in the west. The series started its life with the first few games published on the PC Engine platform, starting in 1989 with Tengai Makyou: Ziria (Ziria is the name of the main character), which is reportedly the very first RPG game ever published on a CD-ROM. Although the graphics capabilities of the PC Engine platform were not much better than NES, the fact that unlike the Nintendo console, it had a CD-ROM drive, made a big difference! Suddenly you could have lavishly animated cutscenes and voiced dialogue! And yeah, the game was popular, as expected. It could even be said that at the height of its popularity in the 1990s, the Tengai Makyou series was quite literally the equivalent of Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy on the PC Engine platform. It was literally that popular. Somewhat in the style of these two other game series, although Tengai Makyou games are more or less set in the same universe, their plots are mostly unrelated and they can be played independently. Hence us playing the second game in the series here in this thread--so you don't need to worry about that. The said second game, Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru was first released in 1992, also on the PC Engine (with Manjimaru suffix again being the name of the game's main character), to immense popularity which it still has to this day. Both games were published by Hudson Soft and Red Entertainment (then known as Red Company), and the development was led by Hiroi Ouji, later best known as one of the main people behind the Sakura Wars series for Red Entertainment. There are other (semi-)familiar faces in the team, like Masuda Shoji, later known for cult classics such as Linda³, Oreshika and a few others. Although the PC Engine platform does have some technical limitations, they truly went all out with this one, so it includes things like fully voiced dialogue for main characters, CD Audio music tracks, many lavishly animated cutscenes and so on. After its initial release, the game was later released on other platforms too, such as Nintendo DS and PSP, both of which feature the exact same graphics as the original, and also on PlayStation 2 and Gamecube--this version features "upgraded" 3D graphics, but honestly, this was done with a very low budget and it does not look good at all (I will show some examples in the first update), so they are really not worth looking at. Better pick one of the versions with the original graphics--which while admittedly a bit on the simpler side, are incredibly charming and colourful and just generally pleasing to look at (unlike the PS2/GC version). The setting Like most other Tengai Makyou games, this one too is set in the far east country of Jipang, which is more or less a fictional (mis)representation of Japan as seen somewhat from the western perspective ("Jipang" is how Marco Polo originally recorded the name of Japan). It is all based on the books of a 19th century scholar from the Smithsonian Institute, P.H. Chada ("P.H." stands for Paul Hieronymus), and the game even features his picture and a brief comment he made about the game: In the style of Orson Welles, I should now tell you that for the last couple of minutes I've been completely lying to you. Of course, P. H. Chada does not exist and even that picture up there is actually of Karl Marx. The whole thing is just an invention of Hiroi Ouji, but even still you will find the references to good ole P. H. in the credits of all these games where he's credited as "based on the works by". In fact "P. H." just stands for "Prince Hiroi", a reference to Hiroi Ouji's name in western order, since Ouji (王子) means "prince" in Japanese! Anyway, this particular game is set in the western part of Jipang, called Yamato, and here is a map of it as it is in the game: The story Here is our "the story so far", as paraphrased from the manual! quote:The Creator of the universe gave birth to two gods. The names of the two gods are Mari and Yomi. Released from the Lord's hand, Mari and Yomi travelled through time and space, sometimes fooling about, sometimes quarrelling, and sometimes in deep meditation. Eventually, the two deities found a blue planet full of life. They spoke to each other: "That one looks good." "Let's go." Of course, we'll find more about this as we play the game, but for now this should be enough to get us started. About "that" symbol... Yes, I am talking, of course, about this guy here: It's known as "swastika" from its name in Sanskrit, although in Japanese it's called "manji". You can see it up there on the title image, but it appears literally everywhere constantly in this game. It's actually also a legitimate kanji in Japanese language, and thus it's even part of the main character's name "Manjimaru", written in Japanese as 卍丸. Importantly, NO, it's not the same as the Nazi symbol. Theirs, which I will NOT reproduce here, is oriented the opposite way and tilted by 45°. Although in fairness, I will say that both orientations of swastika were used interchangeably throughout the history. Swastika itself is an absolutely ancient symbol, dating from over 10,000 years BCE--yes, this is WAY before the actual development of proper writing systems, which only came into existence about 4-5,000 years BCE. In any case, the symbol is present in many, many cultures, mostly in Europe/Asia, but even some appearances in Africa and North America are known. In general, it's meant to be a symbol of spirtuality with additional meanings of good luck and such. It's a shame it's been tainted by its use by the Nazis, because until around the 1920s it was just a "normal" symbol. In fact, here is a photograph, taken in 1916, of Edmonton Swastikas, a women's hockey team from Canada: After 1920 or so, the symbol started to get misappropriated for more nefarious purposes and at least in the west, remains kind of tainted to this day due to its use in the time period before and during World War II. Anyway, I just thought I should clear this up a bit before we begin. About the LP Of course, as mentioned, the game was never released in the west, so it will be translated here by yours truly. It's not going to be perfect, but we should be able to follow the story well enough! Other than that, this will be mostly a screenshot playthrough with the cutscenes presented as videos with English subtitles for your perusal. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any fan translations for this game, not even any that are in progress/being worked on. A note on the names. For the names of places, generally I will leave them in their original Japanese form, but I will usually explain what the name actually means in English. Since this game has a deep Japanese (sorry, Jipangese) setting, the names of people will generally be used in Japanese order, i.e. family name first. Not an insignificant part of the world building in this game is delivered via the NPC dialogue, so there will be a lot of going around and talking to everybody in towns, because if you don't you simply miss on a lot of what this game has to offer. So this will be a relatively slower paced playthrough in the end, since the goal will be to see and experience as much of this game as possible (and the game world is pretty huge to begin with--this is not a small game). To know even better what to expect, I could say that this game is kind of one half road trip and one half "Bildungsroman", so... yeah. Anyway, either way you look at it, it's sprawling. As you may have noticed, I like to talk a lot, so I will stop now and let's get started on our adventure (after one final note)! A note on spoilers I wouldn't expect that too many people here have played this game, but nevertheless try to avoid posting spoilers about stuff which we haven't seen yet! Thanks. LIST OF UPDATES Part 01: Takayama Village Festival Part 01: Takayama Village Festival (cont.) Part 02: Manjimaru's Destiny Part 03: Badly Drawn Boat Part 04: The Holy Sword of Benimaru Part 05: The Pink Tornado Part 06: The Valley of Sorrow Part 07: A Pirate's Life Part 08: The Sleeping Giant (Robot) Part 09: The Capital City Part 10: The Capital City (cont.) Part 11: The Party Situation Part 12: The Thing with the Mermaids Part 13: The Thing with the Mermaids (cont.) Part 14: Attack of the Clones Part 15: Atelier Manjimaru: The Alchemist of Jipang Part 16: Manjimaru's Dream Part 17: Demon's Daughter Part 18: Demon's Daughter (cont.) Part 19: Castles in the Sand Part 20: Castles in the Sand (cont.) Part 21: Monkey Business Part 22: Monkey Business (cont.) Part 23: Pig Business Part 24: The Twin Dragons of Izumo Part 25: The Root Clan Village Part 26: Onwards to Kobe Part 27: Onwards to Kobe (cont.) Part 28: The Speedbird Part 29: The Speedbird (cont.) Part 30: The Grand Tour Part 31: The Grand Tour (cont.) Part 32: The Awakening(s) Part 33: The Awakening(s) (cont.) Part 34: What Kind of Day Has It Been? Part 35: What Kind of Day Has It Been? (cont.) ivantod fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Nov 23, 2023 |
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 So, hello everyone and welcome to this LP of Tengai Makyou: Fuun Kabuki Den (a.k.a. "A Tumultuous Story of Kabuki"). This is the third and final game of this series that came out on the PC Engine platform, and it was published as usual by Hudson and Red Entertainment in 1993, about one year after its predecessor, Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru. It's not a "numbered" game, but numbering in this series is anyway weird: the 3-numbered game came out years after the 4-numbered one and the next game after this one was numbered zero and moved on to Super Famicom/SNES platform (only to then jump over to Sega Saturn two years after that). What is this actually? As mentioned, this is not a "numbered" game, but chronologically it fits right after Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru because the story is officially set one year after the conclusion of the war against the Root Clan. It's a bit like a "side" story and a sequel to both previous Tengai Makyou games in one although you generally don't need to have played either of them as the game does explain the necessary parts. The main character this time is Kabuki, who works as, well, a kabuki actor in Kyoto, but is pulled back into action when the villains of the first game (Daimon Cult) return and try to mess with people of Jipang once again. There is much more to the plot than that, so I'll just let you discover it as we play rather than spoil it here. Wait, did you say plot? I did indeed. You will be forgiven for being a bit cautious here, since Tengai Makyou II: Manjimaru, for all its good qualities, didn't really have much of a cohesive plot beyond the "destroy all orchids" McGuffin. This game however, does have an actual plot that develops over the course of the playthrough! Although it's definitely a shorter game than its predecessor, there is pretty much more of everything in it: more plot; more actual character dialogues, including with the party members; more cutscenes and with much more detailed animation, and so on. So we're definitely in for a good time in this one! Mechanically (battle system, etc.), the game very similar to its predecessor with only small changes. As usual, the game purports to be based on the works of a XIX century scholar named P. H. Chada, but as I've already explained this is of course a total fabrication. The game does however, include as usual some brief quotations from said P. H. Chada, and this time they are even straight up in English:  Yes, that photograph is still of Karl Marx. Some final notes As usual, I don't expect anybody here has played this game already, but still please refrain from posting spoilers about stuff we haven't yet seen in the game. As a small warning, I will generally assume that you have read the LP of the previous game, so I may not explain things in my typical excruciating detail which were already extensively covered there, but I will give at least some pointers. Any references to the first Tengai Makyou game, I will explain in more detail since we skipped over that game here! And one last thing! There is one last thing you really need to know about this game: it secretly wants to be a Broadway musical. And I'm just going to leave it at that for now. And now, enjoy the game! LIST OF UPDATES Part 01: After the Performance Part 02: After the Performance (cont.) Part 03: The Creepiest Place on Earth Part 04: The Creepiest Place on Earth (cont.) Part 05: An Unexpected Journey Part 06: Just the Right Bullets Part 07: Just the Right Bullets (cont.) Part 08: The Daily Life in London Part 09: The Daily Life in London (cont.) Part 10: Save the Princess! Part 11: The Final Disciple(s) Part 12: The Crimson Fire and the Azure Wolf Part 13: The Tower(s) of London Part 14: One Last Thing... ivantod fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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All right, let's do this! I suppose not many here have seen the PC Engine boot screen, so here it is. As mentioned, one of the big advantages of this game over NES/SNES is the fact that it came on a CD-ROM, and as such it required the Super CD-ROM² hardware in addition to the actual console--this situation is visible on the boot screen. Anyway, let's press the Run button (which is the same as Start button on any other console)! The familiar Hudson logo, of course. I guess they're part of Konami these days, but at the time they were of course along with NEC for the hardware aspect, the company behind PC Engine itself. Despite the fact that Red Entertainment was involved with this game, no logo of theirs is shown. Anyway, after this we head straight into an opening cutscene. And, well, there we go. Before we really start, a couple of small notes, though. First, did you notice that Manjimaru even has swastika-shaped hair? Take a look at this screenshot from the cutscene we just watched: Yep. Like I said, we'll be seeing this symbol literally everywhere in this game. Second: there will be sometimes unfamiliar terms encoutered during this LP. So as not to burden the main body of the text in situations where it's not critical for immediate understanding, I will instead include a short glossary section at the end where you can refer for more information (when necessary, of course). So basically, just go with it, and read about it later if you want, is the deal more or less. As you saw, in the true tradition of 1990s JRPG, our mischievous hero starts his journey by having breakfast in his mother's house! But at least that's now done and we have full control! While the graphics are quite colourful, the character sprites are definitely a bit on the tinier side. So the blue haired guy in the middle is Manjimaru and the other person at the bottom near the entrance is his mother. You can certainly talk to her, and talking to NPCs in general is a big part of getting the story of this game, but she will simply tell you to go upstairs and escape the house. Before we continue, I was talking previously about the PS2/GameCube remake version. So here is what this same screen looks like in that version: As you can see, while the resolution is increased, the graphics truly look as bland as they can possibly be, especially compared to the charming and colourful original (I know we haven't seen much yet, but trust me). I believe this same graphics engine was later used also for the Xbox 360 remake of the first Tengai Makyou game, and it looks just as bland. Having this remake be on Xbox 360 only is also pretty random, but whatever. Clearly this remake didn't really have much of a budget. In any case, for the rest of this LP I am not going to mention the remake any more, except briefly later today when we come to the next cutscene. Next, we can shortly check out our character's base stats in the menu: We'll talk more about this stuff as we go, but for now we can see that he is level 3 (段), has 37 HP (体) and 2 MP, well I guess in this game they are called "skill" points (技) but really it's MP. As you can see, in keeping with the "Jipangese" setting, the game does not use the standard abbreviations like HP/MP etc, but I have noted here which Japanese character means what so that you can follow it on screenshots when needed. Oh, and we're also in possession of 18 ryo (両), which is the currency in this game (the name is based on a real world old Japanese currency). It's really not much at all. There are more stats than this, but we'll check that out shortly. One last thing: that chest of drawers in the corner is actually locked, so we should remember to come back here if we ever obtain a key. All right then, enough talking. Let's start our journey properly--by going upstairs, as we were told to do! Al right, let's see what his mum was talking about... Not much here, but let's check out the window. It might provide a way out. And then... And we end up... ...here. Not exactly inconspicuous, but what can you do? Those two kids seem to be blocking our way out, but nevertheless, we can talk to them briefly. The many, many, MANY NPCs of this game usually do not have specific portraits, so we'll use the empty portrait box for their dialogue. Usually I will indicate in some way who we are talking to in cases where it matters. But here it doesn't, so we'll just talk to the other kid. Note that the word for boss used here (親分) is one which can carry an implication of it being a mafia boss of sorts. Anyway, let's gon inside the temple. Because this is a temple, you can see our friend 卍 front and centre right there! Other than that, here are our for little minions: three impressionable boys and one dog. Let's talk to them quickly. They only have actually two different things to say! But I'm sure you didn't miss what definitely looks like a chest in the back there! So, let's check it out! Ah-ha! Our first found item! As it turns out, this is a piece of equipment, head gear in particular. So that means we can equip it! So, here's the equipment screen. In the top section, we can see the current stats of our character: attack power 30, defence power 25 and agility 23. Below we can see his current equipment, as follows: - tattered clothes (which gives us 8 in defence power - bamboo sword, givn us 9 in attack power - empty slot for shoes, so I guess Manjimaru is currenty barefoot - empty slot for head gear. Anyway, since we just got a cotton headscarf of sorts, let's equip it. Every little bit helps. Equipping it gives us +4 in defence... ...which brings our defence power up to 29. So this is pretty simple and I won't need to go into too much detail. Now we can collectively head out and let's talk again to these guy blocking our path. And finally, they let us through. This festival has bee built up so much, it better live up to it! Obviously, there's still a bunch of NPCs in this town, so we're not leaving just yet! Like these three ladies outside the temple. Well, maybe eventually. Anyway, the last one: Definitely. Even if they are not actually party members! Funny, we're literally dragging a train behind us--this game does employ a similar system like early Dragon Quest in that your entire party is visible walking in line (or the not-party like in this case). But anyway, hello sir, what do you have to say to us? Over here is the mulberry farmer in his garden! Heh, looks like most of the people in Manjimaru's home village consider him a bit of a nuisance. Incidentally this place is named Shirakawa (="white river"). Back at Manjimaru's house, a line seems to have formed! What is this all about? Let's talk to them, from the back to the front. Oharu (お春) is the name of Manjimaru's mother. But these seem to be the people from the beginning of the game who have come to complain about him, and also some of them seemingy to court his mother too! Well, let's leave them to their business, we have other stuff to do anyhow. Like, for example, checking out those two houses there. First the left one. Another one of Manjimaru's minions and their parent. Let's talk to the father first: And then the kid. This house has an upstairs, too! There are two more people here. I am using here the "literal" spelling of the word "taikun", simply to avoid associations which the anglicised version "tycoon" has. Here it should be understood simply in the sense of lord/ruler. In this game "Taikun" simply refers to the ruler of Yamato, the western part of Jipang, where the events of the game are set. The other person: "As you know, Manjimaru..." I mean this is a bit awkward since he should already know all of this, but I guess we have to be told somehow. In the other house next to it... ...there is just one person here. There is however, one more person upstairs, with a somewhat interesting comment. A bit to the side, there are two more houses together. Let's go into the left one first. This one is the village elderman's house. If you want more swastikas, here's another hidden one on that screen behind the older gentleman too. I'll stop pointing them out now, so you're on your own from now on. Let's just talk to him. Welcome to the save mechanic of this game. You can save only in towns if you go either to the inn, or to the elderman's house (if the town is too small for an inn, like the one we're in now). You can rest and/or save here. Resting recovers your HP/MP (yes, I will be calling it MP) but you have to pay for it, as expected. Saving is, however, free. So the other guy with the hat is a vendor. You can also sell things to him, of course. But for now, I do actually want to buy something. The world outside is dangerous and we are really not well equipped, to put it mildly. So he basically sells equipment: - Black shovel (weapon): 60 ryo - Farm clothes 20 ryo - Mountain straw sandals 8 ryo We're really pretty skint, but Manjimaru is currently barefoot as we've seen, so we'll just spend 8 ryo on straw sandals. Anyway, after going through all of that, I promptly forget to go into the other menu and equip the sandals. Oh well, I'll remember it a bit later on. The last person just gives us a bit of tutorial about saving/resting, which I've already explained. Finally, we head into the other house right next to it. Yeah, can't possibly imagine why. Well, okay, it looks like it's time to get on the road and make our way to Takayama village. Here we are on the overworld! The game informs us that we're in Hida province (火多), which is in the eastern part of our map. Manjimaru's village is in the northwest corner of the province. We still have a train behind us! But as we walk... ...the ground starts shaking! Anyway, Takayama is basically our neighbouring village, so to get to it we just cross this bridge to the east first... ...and then turn south and cross another bridge and we're already there! You can already see the vilage there at the bottom. As we walk towards it... ...of course a random battle gets triggered with a stray dog! But as its first move, the dog runs away immediately, so I guess nothing happens. This game employs the "standard" random battle system for a game of its time. Enemies are not visible on the overworld/in dungeons and simply every few steps a battle is triggered. The encounter rate is probably a bit on the slightly higher side, but it's actually not too bad. The game does however feature an absolutely seizure inducing battle transition and I genuinely don't get how that got left in the game like that. I am actually not going too post it here since I don't want to cause problems for those who may have issues with it, but click here to view it in a separate browser window if you want to see it!. Tell me that this is not ridiculous! Anyway, without further incidents we manage to make our way into Takayama (高山="tall mountain"). We have some time before the festival, so as usual, we'll make a tour around the place. We'll start with this guy standing rignt next to the entrance. Yes, I, too, am compeletely sure that the earthquake is just a coincidence. All right, let's see who else we can talk to. There is actually some repetitition between different NPCs, so for that reason I will sometimes skip those. Let's see about the twins here. Or, these guys here. Not quite true, but for all practical purposes, close enough. You can go inside the shops, but they just tell you that today they are closed on account of the festival. So nothing doing on that front for now. Anyway, more people to talk to over here. Lady, why are you standing all the way out here, all on your own? Hmmm. Let's see what's going on in some of the houses. Eventually, we want to make our way to the inn where a place has been "reserved" for us, but for now we have time to just wander around. There's a bunch of guys here but they all just shout random stuff like "Festival!", "Women!", "Booze!". The only one with something different to say is the woman (the one who has different clothes, I know the sprites are really tiny). Yeah, I'd say. Let's hope there's not another... oops! The next house over... Let's keep making house calls! Same situation there with the guys as previously, but the one different dressed person also has something different to say. Folks, I'm starting to get an idea that this Taikun is not a good dude. Houses often come in pairs, so we'll go into this one now. Same situation with the drunk guys, so of course we talk to that one person instead. Without incidents, you say? In this house there actually IS someone upstairs, but he's already pretty much passed out drunk and has not much to say, just the usual stuff about festival and booze! There's actually a whole other part of the village across these bridges to the north! Before we cross, though, a few more people on this side of the bridge. Let's continue with our house calls by going into the village shrine! And then back outside for all these people. Really seems like an awesome guy. And finally this person here. Let's see. First off, the man on the left has an advice. Upstairs, there is QUITE a bunch of people! Well, I guess it makes sense that an important dignitary has a big party with him. Let's begin with the guy standing by the staircase So we'll continue with the two people in the room on the right. Is it now. The other guy! He's totally drunk. Then we'll move to this lady in the middle room. The guy next to her is actually Taikun so we'll leave him for later. I can see why we're told not to talk to her. Let's try talking to the other woman in the room on the left then. Well, we were told to come here, so... Also this game has dialogue choices, but they don't matter too much for the most part and in general you even can trigger the conversation again to try the other choice. Generally, when it doesn't matter, I will be choosing the funnier choice. Well, these three guys look important, so let's see what's going on (spoiler alert: the three sages!). Uh, what do you mean. The middle one: And the last one: What is UP with these guys anyway? Well, let's just talk to Taikun instead. So, uh, things are getting a bit out of hand here, I think. But I guess we'll just head to our place at the inn. The OTHER inn in this town that is, which is on the opposite side! We can expect this place to be a bit more welcoming, or so I hope. This guy in the centre is the owner! And then the guy by the door. The kid over there in the back is one of Manjimaru's minions! The bigger kid next to him is the older brother. Well, ok, let's head upstairs then. Ah, nice, they even have a special cushion for Manjimaru to sit on, bearing his "initial" there in the middle! In case it's not clear, they're going to be watching the festival through the windows. Only a few people to talk here, and then we'll settle down for the festival. Let's start with the lady we're just standing next to. Nice, thank you. Then we'll start from the right most room. Then the middle room. And then the one on the left... And then, well, there's nothing left to do but to take our seat and watch the festival! The festival is, of course, described in a cutscene, which also includes the opening credits for the game. See if you can spot some familiar names there. I'm sure most of you will find at least one! So, uh, that escalated a bit there. Well, I hope nobody thought that the festival will proceed without a hitch. Before we continue, a small technical note about the cutscene presentation. As you might have noticed, they are mostly presented in a cinematic-style wide aspect ratio. However they sometimes include shorter parts in other inconsistent aspect ratios. Generally I will try to edit the videos to minimise the amount of black bars on all sides, of course, without losing/cropping any part of the actual image. So hopefully this will work out well, but if not, let me know. As far as the PS2/GC remake is concerned, the cutscenes were all redrawn into a square 4:3 aspect ratio, so they too lost quite a bit in the conversion, giving simply another reason to just play the original. And now, getting back to our story, it certainly seems that someone has it out for our hero, Manjimaru. Immediately after this... ...most people disappear in a puff of smoke. But luckily, our minions are still here. I guess we'll just have to go outside and try to figure out what is going on here. But, then this happens... So... looks like our minions are not up to coming with us at this point. Well, fine. How bad can it be, really? Let's just have a look outside. Ok, that's bad. It's also complimented by the voice of the skeleton assassin coming from somewhere!  Did you see that, Manjimaru? This is the true power of the Root Clan! I wouldn't mind to crush you right here and now, but let's save some fun for later, too! Your mother and the people from this town are in my custody now! If you want them back, come the to the Double-ended Cave! Double-ended Cave, remember?It looks like a nice trap is probably set for us there, that is obvious. The town itself certainly looks worse for wear, and the bridge is indeed out, as we saw in the cutscene. There's also the matter of this... thing. We can actually examine it. So, uh, a dark orchid you say? Well at least it doesn't sound ominous or anything. There isn't really anything to do here right now, so I guess let's head outside. The dark orchid is actually visible on the overworld map, so that's a nice touch I think. So then, what shall we do? Obviously we should head for the cave, but we might be just a touch unprepared for that. First of all, let's head back over to our hometown of Shirakawa and see what the reactions to all this are. Looks like many of the same people are still around. Let's start with the three ladies here. I guess, for now? Yeah, we know. Then we'll visit these two houses, starting from the right. Well, we know that it does. Going in the other house next to it. On the way home, I ran into a couple of random battles (don't worry, I'll show more about that in a minute), so thanks to the fact that like any normal JRPG, monsters carry cash with them which they drop when defeated, I now have a few more ryo so we can upgrade our clothes a bit. Essentially, our first goal before going to the cave is to equip ourselves a little bit better, so we'll start here... ...by finally buying these farm clothes for 20 ryo. They increase our defence stat by 10 which is not bad at all. Of course, our previous clothes were giving us +8, so the end result is only +2, but still. While Manjimaru is alone in our party, every little bit counts. We can of course sell the old equipment immediately (and we should, since the inventory space in this game is severely limited. I do also finally remember to equip those sandals, which give us +7 in agility. So finally here's how we end up: Don't worry, we're not done with preparations yet. But for now, we'll make a quick tour of the town here. Let's head upstairs. Upstairs, this old lady has something interesting to say now. Then we catch this guy here. I don't know. But we'll find out. Next, we'll go to these two houses. First we talk to the father. Well, yes, that's one way to phrase it, for sure. The kid: And the two people upstairs. Yeah, because they will be celebrating that he's gone. We also have a person in the house next to that one. In a nice touch, before there were only wild dogs, but now you get all sorts of monsters there. It's this game's variation on the Final Fantasy plot along the lines of "the crystal shattered and spawned monsters all over the world", I guess. Upstairs. Of course, we should also stop by Manjimaru's house. I guess these are the guys who were waiting in line previously. There are four of them here... The other two are upstairs. The Japanese text refers to demons as "youkai" (妖怪), as you might expect. Well, yeah, I mean the skeleton bro already told us that. Of course we stop by the guy who is tending his field. Sounds good. At least we have a pointer. Finally, let's talk to our two minions here in front of the temple. All right, it's time to head out and see what we can find in the world. ivantod fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 21:28
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As pretty much everyone has mentioned, we'll head eastwards for now. Considering that Shirakawa vilage is anyway in the northwestern corner of the country, it would be somewhat difficult to go westwards as there is a wall of mountains! We'll go past Takayama and continue further east from there. Of course, now that we're out in the world, we're exposed... ...to random encounters! This one however is your basic trash mob and won't pose a problem even when more than one appears at once. There are some other monsters around here for whom that is definitely not true! In any case, no strategy is required, because Manjimaru can dispatch them in one hit. So, we need to pick up a few things before we head to the cave. I would also like to accumulate at least 100 ryo, so we can buy a better weapon. As we wander around here, we'll probably get there naturally so lots of grinding won't be needed. In the meantime, after making a couple of steps forward... Like in Final Fantasy, here too imps are some of your basic trash mob. After this battle, Manjimaru gets to level 4. Nice thing about this game is that when you level up, it replenishes your full HP and MP. Manjimaru now has 3 MP, which is important, as we'll see shortly. Over here, there's a little directional sign! East: Ushikubi Village North: Maze Village Checkpoint We'll see about checkpoints a bit later. But for now let's keep going towards Ushikubi. Incidentally, there is a menu option which you can choose to show the map of the area you are in. It shows also towns/villages, but only those you've already discovered. Thus, the two "houses" on the map represent Shirakawa in the northwest and Takayama a bit east from it. But the next random battle... ...is very definitely problematic. Each one of these is not a problem, they die in two hits, but five of them, plus they all get to have their turns in between... at our level, we're lucky to be alive at the end of it! But eventually we get to Ushikubi (牛首="cow's neck") village. This is a very small place, but let's see what they can tell us. First we'll talk to that kid by the house, he is also one of our minions! Yeah, yeah, we know. There is a bit of repetition in NPC dialogues sometimes. Anyway, the old guy behind the house--he has something very interesting for us to hear: So, "mountain goblin", or "red nosed goblin" or, simply, tengu, (天狗) a creature from Japanese mythology. Actually there are several of them around the game, but our friend here is right. We should go and visit them because it will be helpful to us in battle. We'll do that shortly. Hello, sir. Do you have anything useful to tell me? We should also talk to that woman there standing on the left side by the cow. We'll also go into that house right next to her. I know it looks weird, but that's actually a bald-headed person facing away from us there. He has a tutorial for us. Yep, talk to everybody constantly, but especially after major events. For example, a monstrous flower appearing in the middle of the village. There's also a person upstairs. That's good to know, but we still have things to do before we head to the cave. With that in mind, let's leave for now. We'll be back in a bit. Let's head north and see about that goblin. There's a little hut there, but also what the heck are those things blocking the way? Well, ok then. Let's head into the hut instead. So, this is "Tengu's Cabin" and you can see him right there with a big red nose! Obtained the "Fresh Grass" scroll! So, in this game, magic spells come in the form of "scrolls" and there are a LOT of different ones. We'll talk more about it over the course of the game, but for now let's say that "Fresh Grass" is a basic healing spell. It costs 3 MP to use, which means that right now Manjimaru can use it exactly once before he runs out of MP entirely! Anyway, we can talk more with the goblin. Well, I don't really mind if I do. So we'll head there shortly. On the way... ...we find out that enemies sometimes appear in mixed groups too. A weird little island in the middle of the river like that. Also you can see the cave entrance just to the north there. You can find here some very slightly stronger enemies. Like these guys. I mean they are still pretty much trash mob even if slightly stronger. Or this very cool looking dude. But what about that name, "mashari"? In the game, it's written in katakana as マシャリ, so we don't have kanji to help us understand the meaning. However, based on what I was able to find, it's most likely supposed to be 魔舎利, which could roughly mean "demonic bones" (it seems to fit with the look of the enemy), and in particular 舎利 refers to bones left after cremation of a dead body, so I guess maybe it's an implication of an "undead" enemy of sorts? This guy is definitely on the stronger side as it can take about 4 hits. But as long as it's only one we can (mostly) handle it. I only just barely survive with 2 HP remaining, and that was with using the heal scroll in the middle of the battle too! Eventually we find another small place, just across this bridge. Ah, it's the charcoal making pit, where that lady's family work! Let's talk to the kid. I have indeed, and he gave me the heal scroll! Inside, there are two people. The other guy just lets you rest here (you can't save, though). So this is really just a rest stop and nothing else. Manjimaru can however walk into the coal pit. And when he comes back out... Hehe. It just a joke, has no effect on anything. But anyway, after fighting a few more battles around here, I have managed to accumulate more than 100 ryo, so let's go back to Ushikubi and put them to use. In this house... ...we find the vendor. Let's see. Here we go: the hunter's machette. It gives us +15 to our base attack! Let's equip it. So in the end it's overall +6 compared to what we had previously. Should make the life a little bit easier for now. One last thing we want to do is visit this little hut here... ...because it contains the second Tengu that we've been told about. Or, it would if we had any MP to use it with. But anyway. Obtained the "Lightning Flash" scroll! It's a lightning spell that hits all enemies. It helps with the situation when you get attacked by like five of those flowers, but unfortunately it costs 4 MP to cast, so we can also really just cast it once before we are out of MP. But that's ok, we'll of course gain MP as we level up. Also we can talk to the goblin some more. So they just point you to each other basically. But these are just first two of many, many, magic scrolls we'll be finding over the course of the game. Well, all right. I think we're about as ready as we're going to be, so let's make our way to the cave. On the way... ...some more new low level enemies. As you can see, there is definitely some slightly imaginative monster design going on here. Here. We. Go. Ugh. The three sages. What do they want now. And they depart, exiting stage right. What on earth was that supposed to be? Are they working for or against us? I mean they said they are from the Root Country, so I guess against, but... (I should probably mention that in Japanese "root country" (根の国) is an old-fashioned word that also means "underworld". So. Well, ok, anyway we don't have time to think about this for the moment. Let's take a few steps into the cave. But as we do, we come across some prisoners held in here! I guess those are some of the people from Takayama? Let's see what they are saying. The last one is another of Manjimaru's minions. A boss fight in announcement? Perhaps. Well, I guess we should head deeper into the cave. But not today, as we'll be stopping here for now. You can see now what I meant when I said this will be a slightly slower paced playthough, but I feel that it's worth it to get the full flavour of the interesting and entertaining world where this game is set. Well, I hope you enjoyed this so far and as the three sages said, take care until next time!
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Oct 1, 2022 21:29
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lets hang out posted:you're a madman jumping into this right away  TitanG posted:is this another flavor of Linda insanity or is it played mostly straight? Also, welcome to the thread, everyone! 
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Oct 2, 2022 18:30
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Blaze Dragon posted:Also, you have a few "tycoon" there instead of "Taikun" if you want to keep that consistent. I definitely want to be consistent, but when you've gotten used to the other spelling all this time, it's no wonder that I slipped up a couple of times. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out, I've fixed it now!
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Oct 3, 2022 19:44
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When we last left off, Manjimaru had just entered the Double-ended cave and talked to some prisoners.  This is not actually a big dungeon/cave, so let's proceed forward.  Eventually...  ...we reach a few more prisoners! Uhh, that's pretty bad. Let's talk to the other two also. Yeah, probably. Moving forward...  ...let's not forget that there are random encounters here. Here we encounter a new enemy, a Thousand Year Fairy. Not really anything super special, but the enemies are definitely getting stronger. There is one particulary bad enemy formation which we'll encounter soon. By the way, don't think for a second that this is an easy game, because it absolutely isn't. Unless you really want to spend time grinding, you will often be in a "borderline too weak" situation. This is even more true with the boss fights, so simply spaming the basic attack will often just not work and will end up with you easily killed. We'll see something like this later today.  Anyway, there's a couple more people over here. Well, we've already heard about Yomi, one of the two deities, alongside Mari. The other guy: No problem, we're ready. Maybe.  An ominous staircase, well, not like we have a choice.  Luckily, it only leads to more dungeon!  This can be a dangerous situation... you're likely to need to use up one of your heals. Which is not ideal.  Oh hey, a chest! Manjimaru found 56 ryo. Actually not bad.  There is another chest on the opposite side of the cave! Manjimaru found a nectar pill. So "nectar pill" (甘露丸) in this case is related to the concept of Amrita, found in Hindu and Buddhist religions and usually refers to a sort of a healing elixir. And so in the game, too, this is one of your healing potion items.  Finally we reach another staircase. This one leads to the boss fight, so what I would really recommend here is the following. If you've been playing the game normally, you should probably be close to level 7 at this point. So I would say, stay here a get that extra level. First of all it gives you a full heal and second it will improve your attack and defence. And we're definitely going to need that very shortly. Anyway, going up the staircase...  ...leads, of course, to the boss arena! For real. Also, looks like Manjimaru's mother is here captured and is supervillain-style suspended over the fire pit! There is no other choice here but to approach the boss!  By the way, aren't the enemy sprites in this game just awesome looking, despite the limited resolution and number of colours on screen? Anyway, as you can see by Manjimaru's stats being shown on top of the screen, the boss fight is already started. He has 120 HP and basically... ...just this one attack, which is to "swing his sword with all his might". It deals about 5 damage to Manjimaru. On the other hand, Manjimaru deals at level 7 about 30 damage to him. So this will not really last too long although you might want to top off your HP near the end of the fight (trust me on this one). Awesome.  Mm-hm. Yep. You know that feeling the the JRPG boss is trolling you. Anyway, second phase! His stats have increased slightly: this time he has 130 HP and Manjimaru can deal about 20 damage in one hit. On the other hand, he now deals about 8 damage per hit (his attack is still the same, just more powerful). The problem is that in addition to his own attack, he also counters every one of yours--the end result is that he basically attacks twice per turn most of the time. This is a problem, for one simple reason: the turn order. It can happen that he goes second in a turn, but that he then ends up going first in the next turn. So this means in general you need to be ready to take up to three of his attacks at any point during this fight otherwise you can be in for a very bad time if you get unlucky with the turn order. So, now you'll need to use those heals finally! Othewise, this is not too different from last time and is simply about trading blows. All right, let's try this again.   And he's gone and we can rescue our mother.  Back at home, mum has a story to tell us. And it's a bit of a long one, so get comfortable!         She steps over to the chest of drawers. Remember, this is the one which we found was locked at the start of the game! Heirloom sword obtained! Battle coat obtained! Manjimaru equips them automatically.  [SENGOKU MANJIMARU] Well, thanks mum. In any case, we're done here and can now go on our "real" adventure! But before that...  ...let's quickly check our equipment screen. We find that indeed the two new pieces of equipment have been put into their expected slots, brining our stats up by a fair bit. And so here is where we are. Attack 53, Defence 45, Agility 46. This should help a lot with random encounters. The old equipment you can of course sell at the earliest opportunity to free up the very limited inventory space. Anyway, let's head out.  It seems that half the village have gathered in front of our door! In addition to that, the game starts to play a rather heroic music theme, which you can listen to by clicking the below link. The music in this game is pretty good actually, so I will from time to time provide links to some of it. As you may have noticed in the credits cutscene, in charge of music for this game was the Studio Ghibli legend, Joe Hisaishi and he also composed some of the music tracks (in the first game of the Tengai Makyou series, the music director was none other than Ryuichi Sakamoto). Anyway, the music in this game is kind of interesting also because while a lot of it is just synthesized by the console, for the more "important" tracks, they are recorded as CD audio tracks and simply played in game. Back to the game, we'll continue by talking to ALL of these people (of which there is 9 plus the two kids, probably Manjimaru's minions)! Sure. I mean he will just have a magic scroll, like all other tengu, but still. And finally, our two minions.  Next, let's talk to people in these two houses. We'll start from the left.  And the kid:  The other house. Excuse me, what do you mean by "appeared"? Ah, I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually.  Over here is the shop. I remember to sell my not needed equipment, but if we go upstairs...  ...there is a person in bed here who is not feeling too well.  Down here we have two more houses.  Since the guy is only a save point, we'll talk to the woman instead.  And the three people upstairs. The last person gives us a bit of a tutorial which we can skip since we already know the stuff.  In the other house.  Finally, we'll go inside the temple. The two minions here are the same ones we already saw in front of our house, so no need to talk to them again.  No pressure, though.  All right, finally, we can set off.  Since there were some mentions about Taikun and his posse going towards the southern checkpoint, let's first head there to see what we can find.  We'll go past Takayama going south...  ...and then head west.  By the way, the lightning spell we got last time is excellent for this situation. It hits all enemies at once plus it one-shots these guys.  But anyway, here's the checkpoint. As you can see it's not possible to reach the southern side without going through it (the rest of the map has mountains which block the way). Let's head in and see what goes on there.  As usual we'll talk to the locals. The second person has a more useful comment. Ah. That sounds like our cup of tea. But first we have the house here to check out.  A couple of soldiers are stationed here. Sure, and indeed being able to recover HP and MP by walking would be super useful... were it not for the fact that there is a random encounter every few steps. In any case, "going back to an inn" will become sort of a solved problem soon(ish). Anyway that's all there is here, so we'll proceed on south. It might be useful to head first to Umase village.  Lots of bridges here!  Also some new (and stronger) enemies. This is "monster root" and I hate him. As you can see, his defence stat is really high, which means that Manjimaru does not do much damage and it takes multiple hits to get rid of him. On the other hand his attack is reasonably strong too. And the rewards are not great: 1 EXP, are you kidding me? When it's just one like this it's sort of manageable, but we'll see shortly a much more annoying enemy formation. Anyway, on the screenshot with all the bridges, you can already see the village we're going to, so we'll just head in.  Welcome to Umase village (馬瀬="horse rapids"). Let's talk to the person! Incidentally, many of the place names in this game are historical place names in Japan. Such is the case also with Owari province which used to be where the city of Nagoya is today. Also, the village headman's house is that one right there, so let's see.  The headman as always only acts as a save point, so we'll talk to the other guys. Shamisen and biwa (a kind of a lute) are both traditional Japanese instruments. Nice. Sounds very inviting. But ultimately we need to follow on the trail of Taikun and his people, so we'll have to keep going south.  There are also a couple of people upstairs! So, yeah, there's that sleeping guy there in the corner and we can talk to him. But... should we? In any case we will not do it just yet. This whole thing is actually a part of a sidequest, which is better left for a bit later on. So we'll be back to deal with that.  In the meantime, back outside, here we have two people. Or seven. He's talking about those roots blocking the road that we saw last time. But apparently there are other similar ones in different colour? Does it mean more dark orchids in the world? I mean probably yes, based on what Manjimaru's mother told us. Let's talk to the farmer. Yeah, you almost definitely don't want to be leaving your village right now.  Over here we have a few wheelhouses on the river. The one on the right is empty, but the other two have people inside. However, let's first talk to the guy near the bridge. Sorry, but... I don't think we have a choice here.  Then we check out the first wheelhouse. And what does she have to say. All right...  ...let's check the other wheelhouse.  Next, we have these two ladies in front of the shop. We're definitely staying away from the Atsuko sidequest for now, as mentioned. However, if this Kabuki claims to be of Fire Clan, then we should probably go and see him... which means we'll have to brave the cave. The other person: So. This Kabuki dude seems to be a bit of a heartbreaker. Let's go in the shop.  We can talk to the guy in the corner there. "Refreshing Tablets" (清涼丸) are actually a thing in traditionaly East Asian medicine. Their effect is basically like paracetamol, to relieve the symptoms of fever. In this game, they recover one party member from status effects. Yes, this is absolutely a hint that the next boss fight will involve also a status effect attack, but it's pretty minor so it won't play a decisive role. Therefore you don't necessarily need to worry about this just yet. Let's go upstairs.  This is about Atsuko again, I guess? Also, this Kabuki has been built up so much that we're bound to be disappointed when we actually meet him, I think.  We have two more houses to visit, next to the shop.  Well, that sounds like a holy sword to me. So, probably? Also the capital has no specific name in the game, it's referred to simply as... The Capital (京). The other house:  Yeah, well, that's what we're here to figure out!  Upstairs.  Before we go, let's not forget this kid here on the stone path. Soba dumplings is another HP recovery item. So I bought one of those in the shop before, just so we don't visit the Tengu empty-handed! It's time to head back out!  If we look to the west...  ...we do indeed find some roots blocking the way, and they are indeed different colour from the ones last time (sea-blue this time), exactly as we were told. Well, nothing doing here, so let's head the other way.  Some way to the east, squeezed between a mountain and a large lake, we find another Tengu's hut, also exactly as we were told. Let's pay him a visit.  Obtained the "Angel's Raiment" scroll. Now this one is interesting. It's actually gives you the limited ability to fast travel! It costs 6 MP to use, but it allows you to teleport to any town within the same province that you've already been to. So it's not possible to travel longer distances, but still, if you make sure to leave 6 MP unused, it gives you a quick exit to a town with an inn in case you get too beaten up at some point. Not bat at all. Tengu has a bit more to say. Yeah, I know, I know. I'm working on it. Well, all right. Let's leave here...  ...and try to find our way towards the Joumon cave.  Ugh, I hate these monster roots so much and now there's two of them plus a flower.  We found the cave, but here is also another blocked path. This time, the flowers are red. As we walk to the cave...  Oh god. Yeah, as you can imagine, this is for sure the strongest enemy so far and with most HP too. We can just about handle it and our Lightning Flash scroll certainly works on it decently well. But I should probably explain that name. "Night-sword gods" (夜刀の神) a.k.a. Yato-no-kami, are snake-like deities in Japanese folklore. Their first written appearance is around the 8th century and are generally considered to be malevolent. Their name in the game is shortened to just ヤト (Yato), but it's clear what they are meant to be.  Well, all right, I guess we should head in. But before that, a piece of advice. Don't head inside unless Manjimaru is at least level 9. There is a boss fight at the end, and you won't be surviving it on a lower level than 9--I will explain more in a moment.  The cave starts with a long(ish) hallway...  ...leading to a staircase going down.  Well, what is this now. This is also a short dungeon with just this one floor. Interestingly, there are no random encounters here, but instead you can see the enemies walking around. You really want to conserve your HP and heals, so in order to get to the boss, it's best to simply treat this as a stealth section. The enemies will not attack you unless you come near them, so just try to avoid them as you walk around. However, if you do get attacked...  ...here's what happens. "Warm Corpse" is such an absolutely endearing name. Really, just avoid them.  Anyway, the important part is that there are a bunch of chests around this place. Generally, they are empty (we've been told that the place has already been looted!), however... there are two which still have stuff in them.  Like this one here... but this one is a joke so just ignore it.  And also this one here, in the furthest top right corner. At first glance this one sounds terrible too--after all, it seems to be just a weapon, and weaker than the one we already have, too. However, the appearances can be deceiving. You definitely want to get this before going into the boss fight. All the rest of the chests here, most of them are empty, but some will also thrust you into a battle with a Warm Corpse. Either way, other than the two I mentioned, none of the rest are worth opening.  After picking up the halberd, we want to head down this way, making sure we're not seen by those guys.  And here we go, the boss is literally waiting for us. In the top corner there, you can just about see part of another chest. It takes a long way around to go there and back out and it's... just empty like most of them! Such a troll... although we HAVE been told about that situation. Anyway, let's approach.  So, I try not to do this too much, but I can't resist here. It's time for a "translator's note", sponsored today by the "Keikaku means Plan" corporation. Anyway, in that last bit "this will only hurt a little", the Japanese verb used is かわいがる, which officially means "to treat someone in an affectionate way", however it is very often used ironically to mean the exact opposite, i.e. to give a "rough" treatment to someone. So I tried to preserve here a bit the wordplay present in the original. Anyway, this battle is not "difficult" as such, however, it's kind of a damage race. He can damage you for a lot and you simply need to be able to keep up with your heals and to damage him also in the process. When you're level 8 or lower, this generally will not work, because he is doing too much damage. Upgrading to level 9 will increase your defence, plus get you enough MP for two more heals with the Fresh Grass scroll. Of course you can also go and buy healing items, but on level 8 and lower no matter how many of those you have you simply are not going to be able to keep up turn wise--did I forget to mention that he generally attacks twice per turn? Yeah, he does.  Mostly, this will be his opening move. Acid is sort of like a weak poison--at this point it deals 2 HP of damage per turn. You can use a Refreshing Tablet to heal it, but also you don't have to. It's only 2 HP per turn after all, and you will have to heal often either way, so it seems to me like a waste of a turn to bother getting this status off you. Other than that...  ...he will just use a normal physical attack like this. It deals about 15 damage per attack, so generally we can expect at least 30 or so per his turn in total (when he doesn't use acid). In the end, this is basically a damage race, but is there anything we can to do help ourselves a little bit here? As it turns out, there is. It's only a small help, but still. So, uh, remember that broken halberd? As I said, it's a (weak) weapon, so it's of no use that way, however... If you have played older Final Fantasy games, in particular Final Fantasy 4/5/6, then you might recall that in those games, weapons can often be also used as items during a battle. E.g. in FF IV, there is a weapon called the Ice Rod, normally meant for mage characters. However, you can also use it in battle as an item and in that case you get a free infinite number of casts of a weak Blizzard spell. You can already see where I'm going with this. This game also allows you to do the same with some of the weapons... and the broken halberd is certainly one of them. But, what kind of effect does it have? Well, let's use it and see...  And what does the heat haze actually do? Why, it reduces his hit accuracy! It's not really by much, he'll only miss about 25% of the time, but every little bit helps, really. Just be careful--it doesn't last forever. The game will tell you that the "heat haze has faded out", so this is your cue to reapply it. As I said, it's only a little help, but it's free so why not. Anyway, it continues on like this, with trading blows until he's defeated. Luckily here there is no second phase, so after he's defeated, we just get a few "choice" words. Ugh, why does there have to be a next time? I'm fine how things are now! Either way, that was the second Grim Reaper brother.  Now we can take the staircase up. As mentioned, that closed chest there is one of the empty ones.  And we just make our way out through the exit corridor. Unfortunately, status effects like acid do persist after the battle, but in this case, it will actually wear off by the time we exit the cave.  And... we managed to reach the Owari province. But who are those guys to the right. They look a bit weird. Let's have a look.  Ahahahahahahaha, what can one even say here. But more importantly, who are those three sages even working for actually? Well, there's time to figure that out. But in the meantime, two of Taikun's servants are also here in an advanced state of petrification, so let's talk to them while we still can! The second guy is already losing it, it seems... By the way, in case you are wondering about the way Taikun speaks. In original Japanese, he is using for himself the pronoun "maro" (麿) which is a very archaic first person pronoun that used to be used primarily by high ranking nobles/court. So the constant use of "we" in English is meant to mimic that to an extent. Well, that was all fun and games, but... at this point I realise I had forgotten to do something. So I head back to Umase village (you can walk back through the cave, all enemies are now gone there so it's completely safe!).  Over to the shop.  Let's just buy a straw hat to improve our defence a little bit! It's a typical old style Japanese straw hat (sandogasa): Equipping it gives us +2 in defence compared to our previous equipment:  All right, now back to where we were.  if we go a few steps to the south...  ...we find what looks like a slightly bigger town! Let's check in, if nothing else to get some rest after all of this. It probably doesn't come across so much through screenshots, but due to a somewhat realistic world layout and such (and the inability to save on the overworld) this game kind of really makes you feel like you're on a journey, and is a bit of a relief when you reach a place where you can rest safely for a bit. Anyway, into the town!  Welcome to Inuyama town! Inuyama (犬山) means "dog mountain". Hoever, immediately, things start happening!  A guy that is being carried on some sort of carrier is brought in! Let's see what this is all about! OH. MY. GOD. THIS GUY. In any case, he leaves the scene, just the same way he came. So this is the famed Kabuki Danjurou, the most eligible man of Jipang... Well, the first impression maybe not that great, but we'll see. Incidentally, he is voiced by Yamaguchi Kappei, known back in the day for his roles as male Ranma and Inuyasha.  All right then. Looks like the plot is fully in motion, but we'll stop here for now. Next time we'll explore the new town and continue on our journey! Take care and see you soon!
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Oct 8, 2022 22:22
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idonotlikepeas posted:Just for future reference, you could consider "I'll take GOOD care of you" which has a similar set of idiomatic meanings in English - that is, literally meaning to help someone but frequently used to mean the opposite, especially with emphasis on the word 'good'. Randalor posted:Whe he joins the party, does he bring his palanquin and the women who can apparently fuckihg book it while hauling him?
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Oct 9, 2022 17:27
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Cirina posted:I'm curious, when leaving the house one of the npcs mentioned that the people were returned to Takayama and you should visit them, is there any new or interesting dialogue there? Ugh, I accidentally skipped it it seems! It's only 3-4 people and they don't really say anything we haven't already heard from others in some form or another. However, I will incorporate it into the next update (alternately if I run over the character limit for a post then I will edit it into the previous update--but either way it will be posted somehow). Sorry about that!
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Oct 10, 2022 16:15
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When we last left off, Manjimaru finished defeating (with some difficulty) two of the three Grim Reaper Bros. Finally he entered Inuyama town where we had a somewhat unfortunate encounter with Kabuki Danjurou, apparently the most eligible man in Jipang.  However, last time we were also told to go and check in on the inhabitants of Inuyama, after we managed to free some of them from the prison in Double-ended cave. Since I forgot to do it then, let's do it now and see how they are doing.  The town is certainly still not in a great shape, but some of the life has returned to it, so let's see who we can find. First we can already talk to that gentleman there.  And a lady over here... Lovely. With that kind of name it must be an absolutely lovely place. Can't wait (not).  There's not many people around so they are quite spread apart...  Well, let's also check out a few houses. Like this one for example.  There are a couple of people upstairs. In another house...  ...upstairs, there are a couple more people in recovery.  And here is the inn where Manjimaru and his posse were going to stay.  The innkeeper is not doing so well... And his daughter.  And one last person upstairs.  Finally, the village headman's house.  There are three people here. That's pretty much everything going on in Takayama village at the moment (other than the fact that the shops have reopened). So let's head back to where we were, i.e. Inuyama town.  As always...  ...we'll make a tour of the town! So let's start here. Indeed, you can see shops all around us right here. There are even two weapon shops (the two bottom ones with the 武 symbol). They both sell completely different items from each other. There are also more weapon shops in this town that just these two.  Over here on the east side, even more shops and also this elderly gentleman. Benten (or more often, Benzaiten) is the Buddhist goddess of arts/wisdom/eloquence. Knowing this game, surely this is someone we can actually meet with. So let's make a note of this for later.  Hello, lady! A little dig at the player here, I guess. But also, when exactly was this attack on the castle?  People are a bit spread around in this town...  Well, there is certainly an old lady over here. Oh, good. More new places to visit. So Nagashino town is in the far eastern part of the province, noted. Also the other woman at the top there. Looks like it would not be so bad to have Kabuki in our party, huh? But convincing him is not going to be easy, I'm sure.  There are the two guards, but they don't have much to say!  Inside the castle walls (you can just about see the castle itself on the right. I'm pretty sure we'll be disregarding this warning very soon. But wor now, let's head into the house right there.  Well, I guess that would be Kabuki and a bunch of women. Let's talk to the ladies first. Ah, yeah, she is over there. And finally, Atsuko. However, had we taken that love letter, things would have gotten a lot more messy here. But, we'll see about that later. After all this, of coruse we can talk to Kabuki too. Oh, man. But either way, now we know what we need to do to get him to join. Also, this means we'll be alone for a while longer. Sigh. Either way, we can't do anything here right now.  Therefore, let's head into the other house next to this one.  All right, so let's head into the castle proper.  Nice.  Of course, there's more people here, so let's talk to both of them to start with.  And one more here.  Next we go upstairs...  ...where more people await. Interestingly, we were told last time about some musical instruments getting stolen from Joumon cave. In that case, they spoke of a shamisen and a biwa. So perhaps one of those two? We'll see. Also as you can see this is a very "old school" JRPG, although back in 1992 it probably wouldn't have been thought of as such. Well, it certainly looks like they are scraping the bottom of the barrel here as far as soldiers. Yeah, like I said.  One more person on the other side of the wall. We're learning of a lot of new places! Also, since you can already see that staircase to the left, let's go up it to the top floor of the castle!  Up there is what looks like (sort of) a throne room. So let's first talk to the person in the corner. So it seems that they've basically been recruiting farmers with no fighting experience. This can only end well... Anyway, let's talk to the lord. Sure, ok. But in any case, we're done with the castle. Back outside...  ...let's improve our equipment slightly here in the weapon shop.  Let's buy deerskin shoes.  They replace our previous straw sandals for a nice +5 increase in defence. As always, sell the old equipment to reduce "inventory capacity pressure"  One more thing, though. This guy here was talking about the "old lady who knows how to open the gates of Demon Bone Castle".  She lives in this house, in fact. Ah, so it's definitely one of those two that we've already heard about. My guess is on biwa, but let's see how this goes. By the way, biwa is simply a Japanese version of lute and they even look pretty much the same. Either way, the instrument is no longer in the cave, so we'll have to find it if we want to use it.  Also another guy who I forgot to talk to. All right. let's head out.  We have only one lead--that a hermit living beyond the eastern mountains has come into possession of a musical instrument. So let's try to find him.  We'll head south across the bridge.  On the way, we see on the other side of the mountains what looks possibly like another Tengu's hut. Let's come back there later.  More new enemies are encountered on the way, such as this graveyard janitor (rather imaginative monster names in this game)! There are A LOT of different monsters in this game! Not to mention A LOT of unique boss fights, too! The mentioned item gives you MP recovery.  Finally, we find ourselves by a cave with a sign in front of it. Let's read the sign first! Unparalleled in history! The best in the world! The home of the strongest and last great mage, the renowned Snake Hermit! (By the way, please announce yourself before coming in.) Heh. But no, we're in a hurry, let's just go in directly!  I see you have a chest behind you.  Is this guy for real. But we don't have a choice, so...  ...we go back outside and enter his cave again. Seriously.  I mean. That's all nice, but... you don't happen to have a musical instrument? Ah, well, guess not. Well, let's continue on our travels. We'll keep going east...  On the way, we notice this structure. I'm going to make a wild guess that that's the Demon Bone Castle. Well, nothing we can do about it now, so let's proceed without stopping. On the way...  Ah yes. The Right Hands Of Night. Of course. For large groups, we'll just use our lightning spell, to minimise the amount of turns they would get otherwise. I mean, many times tiny amount of damage still adds up. Even though they only have 6 HP, their defence is still quite high, making attacking them physically one by one a pain, as mentioned.  There's a definite "skeleton-y" theme to the monsters somewhat.  Also, notice the dead trees in the vicinity of Demon Bone Castle, just as we were told. More trouble on the way...  ...continuing the skeleton theme. Travelling on the overworld in this game is actually quite dangerous. Even the relatively lower level enemies hit hard and the random encounter rate is moderately high. Better have enough healing capabilities with you! However, despite a somewhat higher than you would expect difficulty, the game is genuinely fun to play.  Eventually, far in the east, we reach a rather nice looking town with a castle. There's also something there in the lake, but we'll see about that later. It's probably the pagoda of goddess Benten, as we were told. For now, let's head in.  Welcome to Nagashino town! Nagashino (長篠) means "tall bamboo grass". The town itself seems a bit like a Jipangese Venice or Amsterdam (or actually now that I think of it, Stockholm), with lots of canals running through it. Honestly, this game well and truly nails the road trip/exploration aspect. The world just has a good feel about it.  So let's talk with the first three people on this island. (I don't normally go into shops as shopkeepers don't have any dialogue other than offering you their wares. Generally any house you see with a sign on it, like these here, are shops or inns.) That's pretty sad. Indeed.  Let's cross over the bridge. By the way, notice the signs on each side of the bridge. The first one reads: The fish in the moat are the property of the castle. Stealing will be punished severely. And the second: Entrance to the castle forbidden for those who are not samurai! Now let's talk to the gentleman over there. (Notice also the cute Jizo statue to the right of that house. More on those shortly.)  There is also this lady on the other side. You can also see the castle entrance here.  Before heading into the castle, there is one more insland in the northeast, with two more people. Oh, so they are just eating them? Also, eels are NOT cute--not even close.  And one more guy, up here. I see, so it was a different hermit then, huh? Well, no problem, we'll find him somehow. Incidentally, Pure Land (浄土) is a buddhist term referring to the celestial realm of a buddha. Yes, this game never stood a chance of getting translated into English, that's pretty clear.  While we can't sleep in the hotel, there are still two people inside to talk to. Hmm. This is getting complicated, we are receiving conflicting info from different people. The other guy is a travelling salesman. But we don't need anything from him at the moment. We're done talking to everyone in the town, so as a bit of an extra, let me show you the map of the whole town: Pretty neat! So, we want to head into the castle, but there are some good items here which we won't have space for in our inventory to be found there. Therefore it's time for some inventory juggling.  First we'll head back to Inuyama (use of course our Angel's Raiment ability for instant travel). Luckily, to compensate a bit for the limited inventory slots, the game does provide a "storage box" service where you can leave items you're not currently using. It's right here in this house. We'll leave here most of our equipment for now.  Then it's back to Nagashino. Of course, using Angel's Raiment is a must, since we have basically no defence at the moment without any of our equipment.  But now we can head into the castle.   Let's do our usual tour! And then the guy in the other room. As mentioned, you can rest or save here in the castle. That chest there only contains a nectar tablet (heal). Let's take that barely visible staircase upstairs.  Hello there. Well, at least we have confirmed what that thing in the lake is.  Hello there.  But, let's head further upstairs...  ...and talk to that Rokusuke fellow. Where would we find miso dumplings? It seems everyone wants dumplings in this country! Oh, also the two chests there. Manjimaru found the Foot Soldier's Lance. And by "foot soldier", I mean "ashigaru" (足軽)--the samurai of the lowest rank.. Manjimaru found the Cedar Chestpiece. Like an armour made of wood.  Equipping the lance, we receive +5 in attack power.  The wooden armour gives us 18 defence which is actually +3 compared to what we had there before (you can't see it here because I had to leave it in Inuyama to make room!). We're also missing our headgear, but we'll swing by Inuyama and pick that back up later. We're almost done here...  Except, down on the first floor there is like an eel pond.  You can eat the fish to recover your strength. It has the same effect as resting at the inn.  All right, we're done here for now. Let's hop back to inuyama quickly to get our hat back--I will sell the equipment we replaced so we'll have space for them now. Manjimaru can hold a maximum of 6 pieces of equipment at one time (including the ones which are equipped) and there's usually no reason to keep the weaker equipment around.  After putting all our equipment back on, plus the new parts, here are our stats. Attack 64, Defence 56, Agility 64. Of course you can use these numbers to compare against the enemy stats that I've been posting.  While we're in Inuyama, we'll stop here by this shop.  Because they actually sell miso dumplings, which we were told we should bring as offering to the Jizo statue near Nagashino.  Therefore, next is to head back to Nagashino immediately (don't worry I've just been using the teleport spell for all of this!). Let's go and look for that Jizo statue.  But of course the teleport leaves us just outside of a town, so as I make those two steps to get inside, we get interrupted. One of these we can mostly handle, but more than one would definitely be a problem. They can also inflict the "acid" status on you which is not too awful, but it does persist after battle. Luckily I have a couple of those status healing items from last time, so I'll just use one. Manjimaru can also carry a maximum of 6 non-equipment items. You might be wondering, though, how is it even possible to do anything in the game with such small inventory limit. Well, two things. First, there is a place where you can temporarily store them. And second, and more importantly, this WILL get better once we have more party members--each party member actually gets their own separate inventory. So that means that the total number of "things" you can have on you is ultimately not too bad, other than the fact that you have to fiddle with the "give" command to move items back and forth depending on what you need to do. Oh, well.  Just a bit to the north and around the mountains, there is this cool place! Let's have a look.  We have found Mt. Akiba waterfall! Very nice. You can just about see the waterfall in the top left, but we'll check it out in a second! Incidentally Akiba (秋葉) means "autumn leaf".  As we were told, there is a Jizo statue right next to the waterfall, but first let's chat to that person there. Just in case you forgot, the game reminds you again. Well, all right, let's see. Jizo (地蔵) is basically a guardian deity of children and travellers. You will often find these child-like stone statues, pretty much looking just like the one you can see there on the screenshot. You might notice that the statue on the screenshot appears to be wearing a red bib. This is not accidental. Jizo being the protector of children, here the belief is that this garment will be provided to the children who have passed away. So you will often find these statues wearing red bibs and/or hats. Anyway, however, we are here to make an offering to Jizo at this time. There is not a specific command for that in the game, but...  ...you simply stand in front of the statue and select the "use" command for the item you wish to offer. In our case, of course, we'll offer miso dumplings. Majimaru puts miso dumplings in front of Jizo as an offering. It works out rather well: So now we have, presumably, a path through the mountains!  Let's head in!  Inside, there's mostly one way to go. This cave does not have a special name. It's simply called "Mt. Akiba Cave".  We need to go deeper! As far as I know, there are actually no random encounters here, so it's totally safe.  For some reason, there is a hot spring here. As you probably guessed, it recovers your health.  Continuing east, there is a staircase up and a chest. The chest contains miso dumplings, so the game gives you immediately back the one you just used! It's just a health recovery item (about 40 HP). After this we take the staircase up.  On the upper floor, the same situation--a chest and a staircase (which you can just barely see to the right). The chest contains a "Wind Amulet", which is a single use fast travel item. So I guess if you are short on MP and can spare an item spot... this is for you. Anyway, up we go.   We've reached the other side of the cave, it seems. There is clearly a village just around the mountains there. Let's go visit it!  Obviously there are interruptions on the way. But anyway...   ...welcome to Fukushima village. Fukushima (福島) means "lucky island" or "blessed island", something like that. This is another small(ish) place, so let's see what the residents have to tell us! We can start with those two. Well, good to know! I'm sure we'll find a way to use it.  Let's continue with this gentleman here.  On the east side is a Jizo statue and a woman.  Let's continue here. Or perhaps... somebody just wished for it on the Jizo statue? Anyway, next...  ...we go in this house.  Yeah, everything seems to point to Benten, but how would we go down the river? We don't exactly have a boat.  And here is the castle, on the east side, by the river. It does look a bit tacky. There seem to be two of those kids around. And then also the soldier-looking fellow. So looks like this is where the lord of Nagashino ended up. Did he just literally wish on a Jizo statue somehow to get a castle? I mean, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something off about the way it looks. But anyway let's go inside...  ...and talk to the lord. Well, allright, now I see it, it really does look drawn, especially on the inside. However, an idea is starting to form in my head now. So let's see if it works. Also why is he making everybody be a member of the council of elders? In any case, it's time to go, but before that...  ...I did foget one house. Well, all right, we'll check it out. After leaving the village and heading all the way to the west...  ...we find indeed what looks like a Tengu's hut! It seems to be the same one we've observed recently from the other side!  So from this guy, we get our basic fire spell. It's called "Demonic Fire" (鬼火) and deals a small amount of fire damage to one enemy. Manjimaru can hold up to 14 different scrolls at one time. The same mechanic applies with each character having their own inventory and the ability to pass them around... although, not everyone can use every spell, so something to keep in mind.  Let's head back towards Fukushima (east).  On the way there, there is this structure. So let's go inside.  I guess this is where the Umbrella Rock Hermit lives?  Ah, there he is, with the paintbrush in his hand! Don't worry about the chest, it's empty. Eventually...  There is some writing on this picture, here is what it means. Left side: 傘岩仙人 ("Umbrella Rock Hermit") Right side: 卍丸さん江 ("To Manjimaru-san") So, I'm going to have to launch into of my typically long explanations here, feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not interested in the intricacies of Japanese language. Specifically the point is about the usage of the 江 character there, which doesn't look like it belongs, and normally one would expect to see the particle へ instead in that spot in the meaning of "To...". However, as it turns out, our hermit friend simply wants to be more formal, and that means, of course, using more kanji, so he's using this kanji 江 like a more formal/archaic/ancient version of the particle (because the pronunication is the same). You will see this sometimes, although I guess it's not super common. If he TRULY wanted to be really formal, then he could have also used the "official" formal version of さん (-san) and written the whole thing like this: 卍丸賛江 instead! I must admit I also had not encountered this kind of usage before seeing it here in the game, which prompted me to look up what this is all about. Well, all right.  I don't think we're getting anything else from this guy. He clearly doesn't have the musical instrument, and this very crude drawing of a boat is all we're going to get. So let's head back to Fukushima, because I have an idea.  Here we go.  You know, I was thinking...  ...about this Jizo statue here.  What if we were to offer it our drawing of a boat?  Surely it can't...  ...possibly result...  ...in us now having an actual boat we can use to travel around? I mean, that would be insane, right?
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Oct 20, 2022 22:05
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DACK FAYDEN posted:...does the boat look like that on the overworld map too, because that's amazing Blaze Dragon posted:I don't love the inventory space stuff, that looks terrible.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:19
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 So, last time when we left Manjimaru...  ...he had just obtained a boat by simply wishing for it with a drawing on a Jizo statue. And so our boat looks just like the drawing, but it is, indeed, a fully functional boat! We need it to do a couple of things here, but in order to save time, we'll quickly go somewhere else to pick up an item that we didn't get last time.  We'll head back east to that first hermit's cave here.  As you might recall, there was a chest behind him that we didn't look at. He's blocking it now, but we do the usual thing by going outside and then back in again like we did last time, then he will move and provide access to it. So, finally...  Ah, well, that's got to have something to do with Kabuki, I'm sure. Anyway, now we can head back!  On the way back, we encounter still some new enemies we haven't met previously! But, truly, how many variations on skull, skeleton and bone can we have in the names of monsters? I mean it makes sense, but still!  All right, let's take the boat now.  Somebody asked about this, and yes indeed, the boat looks like this on the overworld too! In any case, our real destination is Benten's pagoda in the lake to the south, but we'll head north first. By the way, there are definitely random encounters while on a boat too. But there are no special water monsters or anything, just the same ones you find on the ground!  Gotta navigate around a bit here...  We'll continue by walking, but you can see our distantion already there nestled between the mountains. Yes, certainly...  ...it's another Tengu's hut! Manjimaru obtained the Winter Wind scroll. The Winter Wind scroll (風花) does a small amount wind damage to one enemy. As usual, we can talk to him some more. That's all we can do here, so...  ...now let's head south towards the lake!  Somehow, there are still more new enemies we encounter on the way! Nembutsu (念仏) is a kind of a Buddhist chant.  This is a very bad combination. Those rattles hit like literal trucks. There's a good chance you might not survive this even with one level less! As it is, though, the Lightning Flash can just about one-shot the rattles so in the end we don't even get damaged!  All right, enough fooling around, let's go inside!  We get a nice close-up...  ...as we slowly guide our boat to the dock! That is quite a choice of music, indeed!  And here we are, in the pagoda of goddess Benten! Let's see what this person has to say. I probably don't need to say this, but there is no actual time limit. We can take our time. After playing Linda³, it feels a bit odd to not have to actually constantly keep watching the time as we traverse the world in this game!  There's actually more people here!  And more!  And more! Well, that's a bit more useful information finally. Also, it seems we already have the key and it was given to Snake Hermit by the goddess. Or alternately he stole it from Kabuki? We'll see. The chests have two miso dumplings in them for healing.  We'll take the staircase on the other side.  Let's see...  Wow, ok. They are really not pulling any punches here, are they. Notice also a slightly different fight music when the game thinks it's going to a more difficult one!  Also, chests. One of them has a "return stone". As you can imagine this is an item that teleports you out of a dungeon. Especially usefull in some of them so you don't have to walk all the way back out. The other one has a rejuvenating tablet.  All right, let's go one more floor up.  Quite a bunch of chests there...  ...but also a Dude who does not look even remotely friendly! Heh heh.  Oh, hi boss! I was wondering when the last of these three will show up! And so here he is. Surprisingly, this one is actually pretty easy compared to the last one. His attack does look somewhat cool, he swings both of his swords at the same time: Later in the fight when his HP is lower, he will start also to use this other thing: "Fanged King's forehead glows ominously", But it only does a bit more damage than his normal attack, with no other effects. So it's another situation like with the first miniboss (Horned King): as long you're above a certain level, it's just a matter of trading blows and healing. But if you're below that level, you're unlikely to be able to keep up with the damage. Anyway...  Yeah, I was going to. Just need to get the musical instrument from the goddess here.  And he's gone. But now, uh, remember that Dark Souls moment? You fight a boss (in that case Ornstein and Smough) and then you go upstairs and there's a big door...  And then you open the door (although in our case here, with the help of a key disguised as earpick, as expected).  And then, there's Gwynevere sprawled on a big sofa-bed-thing, right? Well, in our case it's not Gwynevere but Benten... but still, this game did it first!  Sure thing! Well, ok, let's have a look.  Her wardrobe is where all those chests were that we saw earlier.  Ah, there is is. And it totally blocks an item slot in your inventory! So did the earpick and the boat drawing, for that matter. By the way, you can actually get rid of the earpick now if you want. The other chests contain just some recovery consumables so nothing of note.  Let's go back over to Benten again.  And she refreshes your HP/MP. Well, all right. We got what we came here for, so it's time to proceed with our journey.  On the way down, we can have again a bit of a chat with Benten's maids.  Or these three here...  So, we can take our boat and leave now.  For the time being, however, our journey will continue on foot, so we'll leave the boat here near Nagashino. In actuality, we really don't have much choice now except to head towards the Demon Bone Castle and deal with it.  It's just a bit to the west. It also looks pretty cool if you ask me.  [DEMON BONE CASTLE]  Immediately, we're faced with a door. Of course, we use our magical musical instrument on it. Manjimaru plucks at the Pure Land Biwa. The Pure Land Biwa Disintegrates! Well, we got the door open. Let's see what's inside, huh? And yes, that last bit means that the biwa is automatically removed from our inventory.  Oh, hey, somebody approaches us.  What even is the agenda of these three sage jerks? I don't know, but we must press on. Trap or not, we need that sword. Anyway, he goes away and we can proceed inside, finally.  Chests already, huh? They contain some healing consumables, which is certainly welcome.  And new enemies too! And our first pallete-swap in the form of Red Claw Marks! They are actually a fair bit stronger than their cousins, the Right Hands of Night! I guess it's a good idea to be at least level 12 before entering the castle. You can probably get up to 13 during traversal, which is plenty enough for anything you can encounter here, including the boss fight(s).  Down here, we find our first elevator, and it is indeed in the shape of a hand! You know what, that actually is pretty cool. Anyway, there are no stairs here. Just these freaky elevators.  On the next floor...  ...more new enemies! This guy seems to be able to frequently do crits on Manjimaru, which is bad. Crits more or less do double damage, similar to Final Fantasy games.  The game likes to troll you with empty chests, and so one of those is all you find here. The only way forward is back down the elevator and to find another route.  So let's try the left side.  Up we go!  So let's see here. That chest, by the way, is also empty.  Oh, hello. (The chest contains a sword which is the same as one we already have on us!)  So it's a rematch against the Horned King. But, his stats haven't changed and we're several levels stronger. Result: he dies in four hits. So I think the Grim Reaper bros might have miscalculated this one. All right, let's be on our way.  But not for long, because...  ...the next Grim Reaper brother (The Clawed King) is immediately on the next floor!  This battle, too, is same as before; due to us being a fair bit stronger, it goes by much easier. As there is no new dialogue or anything, I will not go into details.  Like I said, let's be on our way! We do find a couple of chests with healing items on the way, but I'm not going to bore you with that. However...  ...we do encounter one new enemy! Is this the best enemy design so far? Yes. Yes, it is. I just want to mention that "Bewitching Tiger" (or also "Demon Tiger") is not actually just a random thing--it's a concept really existing in folklore of East/Southeast Asian countries. Anyway, the in-game version is a total chump, but gives a whole 4 exp. I've said this before, but honestly, the enemy sprite design in this game is pretty fantastic all around. As for these guys, they appear on the upper levels of the castle and have the highest HP of all random encounters here. But this is negated by low attack and very low agility, so... they aren't really a threat. Anyway, going one floor up...  ...we run into the final brother, The Fanged King.  Again, nothing hew to see here, so we'll just move on.  We're nearing the top of the castle, so in this chest the game helpfully provides us with a return stone. It's certainly a bit of a trek, so we'll be using that to exit once we're done here!  Another one of those kinds of parts (the chests contain ordinary consumables)...  Let's proceed up.  Here, two chests. One is empty, and the other one contains, somewhat randomly, 240 ryo.  Finally, we're met by another one of the sages!   Uh-oh. This sounds bad. And then... Indeed... ...a new body is reconstituted from their individual parts!  So, this is actually our first "real" boss fight. All the ones before were classed as "mini-boss". Therefore, this is the first time we hear the actual boss fight theme music. Aaand it's pretty awesome, so definitely give it a listen. (Some bosses actually have a special music theme which are usually also pretty awesome so we'll check those out too when we get there).  As for the boss fight itself, like always with these three guys, since they don't have a huge amount of HP (don't worry there will be bosses with HP into tens of thousands), the matter is only about being able to keep up with the healing, while dealing damage otherwise. Manjimaru is currently level 13 and that seems to be a good spot where he can keep up, but also doesn't win in 2 hits either. Officially the name of this boss is "Grim Reaper Shogun" and it has 200 HP, which is about on a par with its "components". There are some funky attack animations here! The Grim Reaper Shogun opens its chest! Intense light pierces the air! The Grim Reaper Shogun's gigantic pincers aim for the prey! I love how attacks don't have names but like full on elaborate descriptions! But anyway, as long as you're on the level 12-13 and don't forget to heal every few turns, you're not likely to have a problem with this. As you can see, his attack is about the same as the last of the bros, however his defence is much higher, so Manjimaru won't be doing huge damage at this level. So this might take a couple of minutes. After defeat...   They all disappear. And in their place...  Well, don't know about you, but that looks like a holy sword to me! Let's pick it up! It certainly takes up space in your weapons inventory, so if you're full... well, you're going to have to ditch something! As mentioned, this will get easier soon when we have more than one party member as they can move things around between them.  And then a ghostly image fades into view!  It speaks to Manjimaru:   A victory pose for a good measure!  Manjimaru twirls the sword in the air, and you better believe that due to the optical illusion it definitely makes a swastika shape when he does that! Incidentally, in the PS2/GC remake, the number of swastikas in the game was reduced, and this is one that was removed--in the remake his sword looks simply like a straight line twirling around. Incidentally, other than cutting down orchids, the holy sword is also a regular weapon that you can equip, but it's not really that strong (and is in fact weaker than we already have), so I guess it's just going to be taking up an inventory slot for now. Obviously, once the orchid is gone then we don't need it any more. Oh, right, about that "Benimaru Slash". Turns out, other than magic spells, Manjimaru is also able to use "sword techniques" (kenpou/剣法) which are I guess kind of like special skills. This is the first one we learn. We'll talk about that more when we try it out next time. But for now let me say that you learn the technique permanently, i.e. you do not need to have the holy sword equipped to use it. In the meantime, as Benimaru said, it's time to leave. Having defeated the assassins, there are no more any random encounters here, so you can walk all the way back out easily. But it's kind of a trek, so you might as well use the return stone to teleport out instantly. Outside...  ...the Demon Bone Castle crumbles into dust, like it never existed! Well, all right. As Benimaru said, let's head back to Takayama then.  Let's go inside.  We go straight for the orchid! Manjimaru draws Benimaru's sword and closes his eyes! The holy sword is vibrating faintly! The beat of Manjimaru's heart slowly begins to resonate with the vibrations of the sword! ...... NOW!  Well then, I guess that's one. Six more to go. I'm sure it won't always be this simple. But for now, we can relax a bit and have a chat with the villagers to see what they all think of this!  Maybe let's start here with this person...  Well, maybe that's a destination we should check?  Hello lady!  There is a couple more peopel here...  ...in the village headman's house. Only two of them have something new to say. Well, okay. Let's head out. First we can make a quick trip beyond where the roots were. By the way, since we've "defeated" the Root Clan in this part of Jipang, the game does a nice thing and there are of course no more any random encounters in these two provinces! A cool way to avoid boring the player with low level fights if they ever come back here. Now if we could only have a few more inventory slots... No? Ok.  It was about here, if I remember correctly.  Crossing the river to the east, we find another Tengu's hut! In fact one of the NPCs mentioned that he is not able any more to play go with the Tengu since the road is blocked. Well, not any more I guess.  Manjimaru obtained the "Heat Haze" scroll! Well, we already know what this one does! The Heat Haze (陽炎) scroll lowers the hit accuracy of one enemy. As we've seen, the spell can also be cast for free simply by using the "Broken Halberd" weapon as an item in the battle. All right, now that that's done, let's head to Inuyama. After all, we have a Kabuki to speak to.   So let's start with these two. So, he skipped town, huh? We'll se about that in a moment, but first let's talk to the lady. Not if we have anything to say about it!  Another person over here. News travels a bit slow, I guess.  Accidentally, Manjimaru is getting a bit into the personal space of this lady here.  Let's check out also this house.  Really? We'll check that out. Next, let's visit another house.  This is the old lady who told us about using the musical instrument to open the doors to the castle.  Also this guy will reveal us the true nature of Kabuki's gesture...   We have more houses to visit.   Next is this person here. This house is of course Kabuki's house, except the sign is gone.  Let's see what the girls have to say now. And then the last one... I mean, of course we do.  And so, Manjimaru is taken on a ride around town, just like Kabuki used to be! We definitely need to be looking for Kabuki, but before that...  ...let's quickly visit the castle itself.   That's actually good advice. At least we have a path forward.  On the second floor of the castle... Yeah, we know!  And finally, the top floor where the lord is. First, we'll talk to the woman. And finally, the lord. Oh. Now it's clear. Of COURSE he didn't give away his own money! I WILL KILL THIS GUY WHEN WE FIND HIM! You know, he's almost certainly gone over towards Suzuka pass to make his way into Ise province before we get there. So let's follow in his tracks! Checking the map...  ...we can see that we can follow the road south from Inuyama (northwest corner) and then turn westwards at the junction there, leading to Ise (伊勢).  Here is that road junction leading west.  And here is the Suzuka pass, nestled in the mountains  Going through, things start to happen...  Oh, there's Kabuki. Let's see what has to say for himself!   Oh, just shut up. You know what, no I won't. You're far too annoying to have around.   Anyway, he finally comes down, and well, as they say, "moar party members!". So he finally joins the party and yes, you CAN give him orders in battle despite what he's claiming! He joins you no matter whether you say yes or no, but saying no gives a funnier dialogue. All right then, so next time we'll start exploring the Ise province to see what goes on here. I did say that this game is kind of a somewhat episodic "road trip" genre, so since the first "part" of our journey seems to be over, let's have a quick look at the map to get a better idea about the travels that we've done so far (I didn't include the backtracking): (Click on the map to embiggen.) It's too bad we had to leave our beautiful boat behind, but don't worry. This game has nothing if not quite some variety regarding the means of transport that the party ends up using to get around. So there's going to be lot more on that front. In general the game kind of starts slowly and pretty tame, but as you go through the game the insanity level just keeps rising and rising. You'll see. In the meantime take care, and see you soon! ivantod fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 30, 2022 20:29
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Tallgeese posted:I think you mean Benten cleans ears, not eyes. PurpleXVI posted:I feel like this game is kind of interesting in that the moving-around graphics are so comparatively simple and then you have these awesomely detailed character headshots and enemy sprites, and the cutscene with the Dark Orchid.
ivantod fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 07:52
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 Welcome back! Last time, we finished the first "segment" of Manjimaru's journey by defeating the first dark orchid. We crossed the border at Suzuka Pass and ran into Kabuki who promptly decided to join our party. So I guess let's get started with "segment" two.  Here we are. So let's start by talking to these four gentlemen in conical straw hats. Huh, well good to know. We DID hear about a village of ninjas somewhere around here, so I'm sure we'll run into it sooner or later. Well, maybe with our help they will. Well, looks like that's probably our ultimate destination, then? We'll see. I'm sure there will be plenty of hiccups along the way. There are a couple of houses here too. There's nothing interesting in the inn (the building on the right), but in the item shop (on the left) there are two people who have a interesting comment.  Pink tornados? Whatever could that be. Well, but ok, this is just a small settlement that serves as a border crossing, so that's all there is here. It seems to me we should go find that village of ninjas first! So let's leave the border crossing and head west! Meanwhile, back in the villains' lair...  Ah, the three stooges, I mean sages. And we already know from the opening intro that the blue ball is meant to be the evil god Yomi!  And then...  ...a pink swirl shows up and after stopping it reveals another person. However, the new person says nothing, and Deloren continues to talk for a bit longer. So it seems that pink tornados may just be real. We've just seen one, after all. Back to our heroes...  ...were just about to head west. For Kabuki, I'm using the word "hero" very loosely. Although, before we continue, it's worthwhile to check out Kabuki's status and what he comes equipped with:  So, stats-wise, he's about the same as Manjimaru although with a good amount more HP (which is less helpful than you might thing: if Manjimaru dies, the battle is over, regardless of if other characters are alive). He does also come fully equipped with a solitary sword as a weapon and a conincal hat and straw sandals we have already seen Manjimaru wear before. He is also wearing a travelling coat. As for items he has a healing tablet and also (another?) earpick of love! So I guess he must have gotten it from Benten. For magical spells (scrolls), he has: "glistening blade" (氷刃) which is an ice based attack on one enemy; and also "flower storm" (花嵐), which is a wind based attack on one enemy. He does also have a couple of special skills, although in his case it's not kenpou but simply "secret techniques". The first one is "foul language" (悪態), which allows him to draw the enemy attacks to himself. The other one is "dramatic pose" (大見得), which allows him to decrease the defence of enemy groups which are at level lower than his current level. So oeverall some pretty decent stuff here. And more importantly, it doubles the amount of our inventory slots! It's still not ideal, because the items are only available to the character physically holding them, but at least they can be transferred around when needed which is already miles better then what we've had so far.  All right, FINALLY, let's proceed west!  Of course, we're immediately accosted by monsters. This is another pallete swap, but actually there are not too many of them in the game.   As mentioned, we follow along the river, and soon we reach another village. This should be Iga, the ninja village, so let's head inside.  Upon entering, we're approached by three dudes...  ...but then a pink tornado show up again! Who is this guy, Kikugorou, was it? It's again cutscene time! Don't miss this one as it's pretty funny actually! This cannot possibly be who those three sages think is somehow going to be able to distract us from our goal. It cannot. He is ridiculous.  Anyway, let's put that aside for now, as we have a new village to explore, namely Iga (伊賀). So let's start with these guys here.  We have two more people here... Well, ok. Looks like we know roughly what we need to do. (You can't actually see the lantern on the screenshot, but we'll get to that in a moment.  In the meantime, we'll continue talking to ninjas and other villagers. Like for example this lady who is standing directly in front of a house with a large sign saying "KIKUGOROU" (菊五郎).  "Try jumping!" Also here you can see the lantern down to the left of that house  Hello, sir.  Hello, sir. I'm sure we'll find it soon enough. But now, let's go into that house with a big sign.   Next, we stop here by the inn.  Well, I'm sure we'll figure something out, like always.  One other house...  Now, about this lantern. It's actually super simple...  ...you push it, and it opens a staircase! Of course we want to go inside, but first... let's do some equipment shuffle. Like items, equipment too only "belongs" to the person who is holding it and must be "given over" if another party member needs it. So, it's like this.  We'll give Manjimaru Kabuki's sword, for an extra +4 in attack power. Kabuki can take Manjimaru's current weapon (which has overall +21, so Kabuki loses 4 attack. Now let's head down the stairs.  But, as we get down...  Kabuki goes away for a few seconds and then returns, without saying anything in particular. Wonder what this is all about.  Anyway, on the north side of this passage is a chest and a staircase. First the chest.  So we randomly get a magical scroll from this chest! Anyway, the "Fragrance of Treasure" (宝香) spell is a funky one. It allows you to know the number of chests in a dungeon or a cave. I guess then if you count them as you find them, you can know if you found them all or not. It only uses 1 MP, so you might as well check it at some point as you're going through. Up the stairs we go!  And it's a secret house with no front door which is only accessed through the secret passage (as we've been told in Suzuka). Look a few screenshots up, and you will see what it looks like from the outside! Manjimaru obtained Ishikawa's key! Ah, well that sounds useful! The other person: Well, let's go back and take the other staircase.  It leads, of course, to another house without a front door! A random bit of tutorial, sure. But the other person here does actually sell equipment  The prices are getting a bit expensive though!  So, we'll buy "black clothes" for Manjimaru. Here you can see on the top right, next to the number 24, the game shows "卍カ", indicating that both Manjimaru and Kabuki can use this piece of equipment. So that's pretty straightforward.  After equipping it, it gives us another +6 in defence. We'll give Manjimaru's previous clothes over to Kabuki (which gives him +2) and sell his old stuff in turn. All right, we're almost done here. Let's head back outside...  ...where we can now see that on this central house, the big "Kikugorou" sign has now changed to "Kabuki" (カブキ). Uh, is that what he was doing when he disappeared for a short while?  We can go back inside to talk again to that woman who was complaining about the "Kikugorou" sign! So just a bit of fun dialogue for a bit here.  Well, then, it was suggested to us to make our way to Matsuzaka town, so let's do that. We'll head south across this bridge first.  And then we follow this road to the east. But things are starting to get weird already. We can start to see some of the forst "overgrowth" that we've been told about. Also, what is that weird platform doing there. Hmm.  Just a few more steps and we can see the town, too. Well, let's go in.  Welcome to Matsuzaka (松坂) town! And there is already a person welcoming us.  And this lady here.   Over on this side of the town, things look pretty bad with the overgrowth...  That sounds rather inviting if you ask me.  There is a bunch of people here around the castle itself... And the kid... What is even going on here.  Two more people over here.  Let's also check out one of the houses. A stone airship, you say? Huh, that could be useful, if it actually can fly. Uh, but I would still like to have an airship...  In the hotel, we can always find other people who are staying in town... We'll definitely also disturb the guy there who is trying to sleep... It does look like this will have to be our next destination.  The next house.  And one more.  All right, let's go into the castle.  Looks pretty cool!  There are two chests here also, but one has a recovery item and the other... 2 ryo. Gee, thanks game. So we'll just head up the stairs.  That chest there only has a head scarf, like the one Manjimaru used at the beginning of the game, so nothing to get excited about.  Two more people here.  Going to the top floor, as usual allows us to talk to the lord of this castle. All right, we're done talking, but before we leave, let's just upgrade our equipment a bit more.  We'll buy these Hemp Sandals for Manjimaru, it gives him an increase in speed of +7 which is nothing to sneeze at. I'll rearrange the rest and sell the extra stuff to clear up space.  Anyway, let's continue with our journey. A suggestion was made to go south to Shima vilage, to see what we can do about the stone airship. Of course, we get interrupted.  I guess they live on hills now?   As we've been told, we'll follow this road south.  Ah, there's the orchid. Just at the side of the Grand Shrine. Let's go in.  We're not going to worry about the orchid just now (but you can just about see it to the right. We just want to proceed south. Also, notice those stones just under the entrance. Steping on them causes weird teleportation effects here, so you may have to go a bit back and forth until you make it to the other side. Be careful too, because even though we're in a "town", there are still random encounters here. For example:  But for now, nothing we can't deal with.  There is actually a person inside the shrine!   There we go. Let's keep going south. The biome is also starting to look more coastal like.  Here is Shima village! But also there's another one of those stone pedestal things. I think you may be getting an idea already.  This is a pretty small place, so let's explore it quickly first. Starting with the two people you see on the screen. We should also visit some of the houses too.  Hmm, ok, w'll take a look.   Outside more people on this side.  And a few more down on the beach.  Let's go into the fancy house on the beach!  Hm, well, it's pretty clear we need to find this airship.  Over here are some rafts/pontoons on the beach. But in order to access them, we have to go through that locked door there. Luckily, we have the universal key, so we can get into that little house. If you don't have it, you can't proceed here until you get it in one of the "secret" houses in the ninja village. The game does not use the key automatically if you do have it--you must select the use command with the right item yourself.  Inside the house, there is nothing of note.  It just lets us get over to this side. It may be hard to see, but those are fishing nets hanging off the rafts. Manjimaru can examine them, but usually this will happen. Manjimaru pulled up the net... however, he found nothing. But on one of them...  I guess I'm just surprised how nobody discovered it so far? I mean they are still fishing for pearls, right? I don't know.  After finding the flute, we can go again and talk to this older gentleman here. Yeah, sounds reasonable. We'll try that out in a second, but first...  ...some more shopping over here.  We're going to splurge a bit on this Tidal Harpoon weapon for Manjimaru (as you can see on the right, Kabuki is not able to use this weapon anyway). We'll equip that on Manjimaru (it gives further +6 in attack power), which allows us to return Kabuki's old sword back to him and sell the not needed ones. This does of course involve fiddling back and forth with the two characters' inventories, as always. I'm also going to mostly stop mentioning the inventory management from now on. To be honest, it's the one thing which I would change in this game, but other than being annoying from time to time, it doesn't really significantly detract from the game overall. All right, now...  ...let's stand right here and use the flute. And then...   Awesome...  ...we got ourselves an airship, even if it is just one big rock. However, it's not quite so simple, as we can't actually control it directly. It simply goes from one of these "landing pads" to another in pre-determined order. So, riding the airship now, takes us first...  ...takes us here, quite far northwest.  The airship then goes away, leaving us here. We can of course summon it again, but it won't simply go back where we came from, rather it will take the next "leg" of it's pre-determined route. But for now, let's see what's here.  Ah, nice, there's a town here. But you probably want to be a little careful while walking towards it.  Namely, there are some quite strong enemies here which we with our current setup may not be able to handle very well. For example this guy. Mostly he will destroy you--our party can barely do any damage to the enemy, that is if we can even hit it. Spells work here better, but they have a bad hit rate against this guy.  So basically, save before setting off and then just hope you can walk into town without getting attacked. We have been warned about this by one of the NPCs earlier today, though. They are a few levels above us, but most importantly have high defence, which means we don't do a lot of damage. Anyway, this town here is Nara (奈良), so let's take a look and see what's up.  It has a nice stone path dividing it into two halves. So let's do our usual tour and information gathering.  We'll start on the left side with these four people here. We'll be sure to check that out! Yeah, I guess we still have some figuring out to do about how to get there.  Next, let's check out these two houses.  I should mention that we're talking here very specifically about karakuri mechanical dolls (からくり), which were an actual thing in Japan mostly from the 1600s until the 1800s, althogh there are references to them existing as early as the 650s. Also, pay no mind to this, I'm sure it will never come up again. Let's see what the kid has to say. Like I said, pay no attention to this at all.   Let's see what's in here!  Hmm, nobody here. Just some stuff including a big mirror. Well, nothing to do but to continue exploring I guess.  We'll head into this house here.  There's a guy here not feeling so great.  Let's check the other side of the town. Cursed equipment, you say? Sure, let's be on a lookout for those too.  Let's also talk to this older gentleman here. Interesting.  There are a few more houses on this side, so let's visit them. As for the bells, we're talking specifically about doutaku (銅鐸):  Not sure why, but I'm having a feeling we'll need to find them and bring them back at some point. Just a feeling.   Then we have these tree here in a row, although you can barely see the ones on left and right side!  Yeah, I have some news on that topic.   That's about it for here for the moment. Let's make our way back to the airship "landing pad" and see where it takes us next.   Obviously, it doesn't go quite so easily!  I don't even know what to say about this name, but it's quite unambiguous in Japanese. Their attack is described literally as "rushing at you with their horns", so... In any case they definitely fall under "tough" category, and we can't do much to them at our level.  There are also these guys.  Tough also, but when only one, kind of doable with fire magic. As you can see, the enemies have abandoned the "skeleton" theme and are now more "nature" themed.  Really game? But actually this is not as bad as it looks as Twinheads will anyway die all in first turn from a multi target spell, so.  Anyway, our next trip on the stone airship takes us back east...  ...to this place, which we've already seen. But we don't need to stop here, so we'll call the airship again.  Now we are going southwest, past the place where the Jungle castle is, unreachable as yet.  All right, let's see what is here.  Well, first of all some enemies!  This is almost like Dark Souls boss name!  Well, first of all, there is a place here.  It's called Owase village. Let's again have a chat with the people. The ninja guy standing on the left, has a bit more to say. Hmm. Are you hinting?  We have two more people down here. The other guy just reminds you about using the flute.  Hello there. That does not sound safe at all. Let's check out a few houses here also, since the people here seem to have interesting stuff to say, apparently.  Tree people!  Were they also good at building mechanical dolls?   Or sages? Perhaps. We'll see.   Going into the temple, unfortunately, he just repeats the hint about using the map, so...  Our information gathering finished, we can now leave this place. First we have a quick detour to do here to the west.  But of course.  These guys are not so bad, though. Only take two hits.  However, tucked in between the mountains over here is another Tengu's cabin!  Manjimaru obtained the "Moonlight Sleep" scroll. The Moonlight Sleep (月寝) scroll has a chance to put one smaller animal type enemy to sleep. Pretty unsurprising, considering the name! It does use a whole 8 MP, so I guess that counts as a "lot".  Let's head a bit north.  We pass by another one of the landing pads and there is also another place here, although it looks a bit worse for wear with that forest.  Turns out this is the Akame village that everybody was talking about not knowing what happened to it. The place is basically gone except that one house. And those two slightly weird looking trees. Let's approach one of them...  Aaaaa! It's a tree person! Well, that's bad. Let's have a look at the other tree.  That's definitely bad. Let's see if we can find some way to save them both! Not now, however! Next time we'll continue our exploration of this part of the world, and let's see what we can do to solve its (multiple) problems.
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Nov 12, 2022 21:17
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Raitzeno posted:So glad to see this game is perfectly normal as well. I can definitely assure you that as we progress through the game it will only become more and more normal!
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Nov 13, 2022 19:17
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Hi everyone! Just wanted to mention that this coming update will be a few days delayed--I managed to catch a virus of some kind (not COVID) and was out of action last week. Luckily, everything is good again now, so I should be able to proceed as normal. Sorry about that!
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Nov 21, 2022 21:06
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EchoBaz posted:Hope you recover soon, as I'm loving this let's play. Eager to see more! Thanks, yeah I'm fine now, it was just a pretty nasty flu (definitely not COVID according to the doctor!). We're back on track and the next update is coming tomorrow! Sorry about the delay!
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Nov 30, 2022 20:31
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 Hello! Last time we started the second part of our adventure, in order to obtain the second holy sword and defeat the second dark orchid etc. Anyway, we found out that in the Ise province there are some problems. Like, the head of the ninja village is missing; or, there seems to be a forest overrunning everything, even turning some people into trees!  So this is kind of where we stopped last time after talking to the two tree-people. However, we should also check out that little house, since there is one still accessible that hasn't been consumed by the forest!  Ah, a chest. Manjimaru found a Wild Dog Helmet! However silly it sounds...  ...it still gives us +6 in defence. And we know that in this area where we are now we can use all defence we can get! In any case, there's nothing else to do here for now, so we can leave.  Let's just summon the airship again and see where it will take us this time!  Well, that's convenient. This must be the Negoro burial mound, where the ninja chieftain is being held. It is surrounded by a moat, but that poses no problem for our airship made of stone!  Let's head inside!  I guess we'll be heading downstairs. But before that...  ...we get interrupted! Things are definitely getting somewhat bizarre with enemies in this are, that's for sure.  Although these enemies are not too hard, the goldfishman has an ability "Winter Wither" (冬枯) which takes down your defence by a few points! Still, this is not too bad, compared to some of the guys we encountered last time! Anyway, downstairs it is.  Downstairs, we have ourselves a bit of a maze. (And a chest too. It's empty) But, more importantly, doesn't that look like a katakana letter イ (I) there on the floor? I mean, it's a bit hard to see due to the choice of colours, and also it's upside down, yes, but still!  Yep, the floors definitely have katakana letters on them, this one is ハ (HA). Well, let's pay attention to that as we proceed around this floor.  This chest contains 180 ryo, and also the letter 二 (NI) on the floor.  Not going to show every single one of them (we'll see it all zoomed out later), but here are also ラ (RA) and エ (E). Definitely still no idea what this could mean.  More chests. One of them has another broken halberd, and the other has an item called "the storm talisman". We've seen before an item called "the wind talisman", which allowed us fast travel within the current province. So "the storm talisman" is the same, but you can travel anywhere in the world. Like the first one, this one too has a corresponding spell that we can learn, but we haven't found it yet.  As you might have gathered by now, this game doesn't mind trolling you with chests which are either empty or kind of useless. Such is this one, too, as it only contains 12 ryo. Also, katakana ト (TO).  Eventually at the very top of the dungeon, we come to this situation. There is a passage which is blocked by some kind of electrical barrier. But there is a keypad to the right of it, so let's see what happens if we try to use it.  Ah, well, I was wondering when we'll come to this. But what is the password? I mean, we can assume that it probably has to do something with the katakana letters on the floor (since this screen also allows us to enter a bunch of katakana letters as password. Surprisingly, this is a bit harder than you might expect. First of all, let's have a look at the map of the whole floor:  The letters are all upside down, but don't worry about that for now. In the top left corner, we can definitely see a cluster of letters which can spell the name Kikugorou (キクゴロウ), him being the narcissist that he is, of course the password must have something to do directly with him. But typing just his name like this as password, doesn't work. What else, then? The only other hint we have is that he told us how we would be saying words of praise for him before we meet again. So then, we might look if it's possible to spell some kind of phrase like that which includes also his name? It turns out that this is possible to do, but there's also an extra bit which might help during the solving. The correct solution also represents the shortest path between the bottom right and top left corners. No, there are absolutely no hints on this topic in the game, you're supposed to work it out yourself. Anyway, if we make the shortest path, it looks like this:  Now all we need to do is read the letters in order: キクゴロウエライ, or as written properly with kanji: 菊五郎偉い, or finally in English: "Kikugorou the great". So in order to pass through the doors, we are forced to type the words of praise for Kikugorou, as he already promised us. How annoying. Either way, as you can see, this was not super easy, but in the end, typing the katakana version in the the prompt, the barrier is removed and we can proceed.   Now the layout gets more complicated, because we're no longer limited to one floor, so we may have to go up and down  We can head down for a second...  ...but the only thing there is a barrier which, this time, does not have a keypad to enter the password on. So we have to go back up. There, after a short walk...  ...we find another passworded barrier!  We are definitely being trolled here. However, there's no choice but to type in the password again. And yes, you do actually have to type it in manually again.  Continuing on, this gives us access to the staircase here which leads further down.  Let's see what's on this floor.  This chest here has a return stone. The game is always nice to give us one so we can quickly exit the dungeon. Although in this case you may want to hold off a bit at the end before using it. We'll come to that part in a bit.  Over here, we can find a rejuvenating tablet in the chest. As you might recall, it recovers our MP and will be useful to have in this dungeon as we'll soon see.  Then we head back up!  Shortly after, we find the next barrier!  Seriously.  It leads us to a hallway...  ...which simply leads to the next one.  Yep, gotta say it again. Anyway, as we walk through...  ...we actually encounter a new enemy!  This dungeon seems to be mostly populated by two kinds of goldfish otherwise. In the Japanese text the "teacher" is explicitly female, but well, this is difficult to convey into English since it doesn't really have a word that means "female teacher". Her attack is to "crack the whip" at you, but otherwise mostly unremarkable. Here Kabuki levels up and learns a new "secret technique" of "flying kick" (tobi-geri, 飛び蹴り). It deals double normal damage, but at the cost of reduced hit rate. Let's continue.  We simply continue to the next barrier. But take note of those chests there. They are beind a barrier which doesn't have a keypad. This one here, however, does! Let the trolling continue!  And then...  ...another barrier. But this one at least lets us proceed deeper.  These password prompts are getting more and more sinister. Nevertheless, the password doesn't change.  Downstairs, we finally find an imprisoned person, the ninja village chieftain! We can of course talk to him.  Don't worry, we're not far now, this dungeon is almost over. By the way, in case I haven't made it clear... there are absolutely NO save points in dungeons or anywhere else in the overworld. The ONLY place to save is at an inn inside a town! So when you are playing this without the benefit of save states on an emulator, it can get quite dicey sometimes.  Anyway, we need to walk just a bit more, until...  Huh. Cool.  But over to the left, are Kikugorou and... a flower person? I guess? Let's see.   Incidentally, "hanafubuki" (花吹雪) means "falling cherry blossoms". However, we have no time for that, as we transition directly into our next mini-boss fight.  Indeed, it's literally an evil flower person! Like some other enemies around these parts, defence is pretty high, so physical attacks won't work so well. It's better to use magic/skills. Kabuki's ice blade deals pretty good damage, but it's hit rate is abysmal, so probably not worth it. But, both his flower storm and Manjimaru's demonic fire deal about 20-25 damage each time, so considering that the HP is only 250, we should be relatively ok. Damage dealt to us is also about 20-25 HP or so, so you might want to keep an eye on your HP and heal as needed. The only issue you might encounter here is running out of MP, so make sure to bring a couple of recovery items for that. At low HP, he may use a healing ability, but curiously, it didn't happen to me.  Anyway, after defeating him, they both go away, but also...  ...all the barriers are now unlocked, including those without keypads. Also, the ninja chief comes to talk to us once more.  And he goes away. So we are done with this dungeon, and we could use the return stone... but now with barriers being open there are a few more items to be found. Like for example in that chest you can barely see in the alcove. It only contains a healing consumable item though.  Or this location here, which we walked past earlier. One of the chests is empty, but the second one contains the "Ninja Sword of Iga", a weapon.  We can give it to Kabuki for a +2 in attack power. Not much, but hey. In an ultimate troll from the game, the third chest is also empty. So with this, now we can really use the return stone and leave this place.  And from here, we can simply use the Angel's Raiment spell to teleport back to Iga.  Over in Iga, we can see that Kikugorou has again changed the sign back to his name, but this time it's more colourful than previously!  As always, we can talk to the lady inside!  Since we need to go to chiefs house, we'll just activate the staircase like before. But, downstairs...  And like before, he returns quickly. We'll obvously see later what he did with the sign again! In the meantime let's proceed to the chief's house.  Let's see what he has to say.  We've already heard about this last time. Apparently there is a somewhat unsafe gondola which allows you to cross the valley. Manjimaru obtained the Ring of Sorrow! Kabuki obtained the Seal of Transformation! Huh, you're not going to tell us what this one is for, are you? Well, all I know is that it takes up an inventory slot. Well. That village of Ihika certainly sounds like an interesting place to visit, so we'll be heading there shortly. But first, let's visit the other house without a door.  Over here, we have a shop.  We'll buy an Iron Hachigane for 360 ryo. What is a "hachigane"? It's a kind of a helmet, like this one:   We'll equip this on Kabuki for a +3 in defence compared to the straw hat. Coming back outside...  ...we can see that Kabuki has put up another even flashier sign with his name again. This one is flashing and changing colours!  Obviously, the lady inside the house has a comment to this. And that, thankfully, is the end of that little side-joke and we can focus back on our task! But before that, a few people in this village have a bit to say after us having saved the chief.  Like this person here. Or that other ninja there in the corner. We've already picked up the spell from the Ise Tengu last time, and as for the others, in due course. Also, it's been mentioned now a few times, but despite its slightly unusual name, Kii (紀伊) was a historical province in Japan, located around where modern-day Wakayama is.  And then this one here, tending the garden. Um, yeah, kinda.  And then, finally, this person here. As mentioned, Wakayama in real life is located where Kii province used to be, so this fits. All right, it's time to head south. For this, we'll use the border crossing at Owase village.  Simply walk through...  ...and here we are in Kii.  Checking the map, we can see that indeed it mostly consists of mountains apart from a small coastal strip of land on the south. Our first destination, however, is the Valley of Sorrow, which is that big area slightly to the south of the province centre.  Luckily, there is a road we can easily follow to there.  Walking around leads, of course, to random encounters! As you can see, the enemy theme is still "nature".  Or even more!  The enemy designs are kind of getting a bit out there... Also, why does everything hit so hard here?   After a short while longer, we find what looks like a gondola going across a big hole. That's not a lake, just an unfortunate choice of colour. Let's read that road sign, though. Valley of Sorrow A series of falling accidents--danger of death! Do not cross the valley! Unfortunately, we're going to have to do exactly that. But as we make a step towards the gondola...  Leafy! A bit tougher than those petals earlier, but still unlikely to kill you.  And then a couple more steps after that...   Somehow RNG is really not on our side for these few steps. It's not normally this bad, but right now...  Despite the name, this new enemy is pretty strong and might give trouble at our current level. Kabuki's ice blade does wonders though... if it can hit!  Aynway, as I was saying...  ...let's get on the gondola!  And it ends up exactly like you think it will. I mean, we've been warned.  But no matter. Because this is pretty much where we wanted to go--the Valley of Sorrow! We can already see a few interesting things here. There is a (not Jizo) statue and also some kind of mechanical contraption to the left of it.  Examining the statue... It's a grotesque stone statue. It's holding one of its fingers out. It's holding a finger out? Well, compared to the Kikugorou riddle, this one is super easy. We already have the Ring of Sorrow. So let's just put it on the statue's finger. I mean, what can possibly happen? Well, thre is a flash of light, and then...  ...a structure materialises that we can enter into it seems. So, uh, let's?  Ahh. Looks like this is what we were looking for! Welcome to Ihika village, everyone! Well all right, let's talk to these two people here and see what's up--they are pretty clearly not human, exactly as we were told. (For a certain definition of human, of course.) Well, that's dark. But for now, we'll take that elevator there and descend into the maim part of the "village".  Let's continue to explore. Well, thank you, Mr. Exposition. But it at least clears up a few things (while raising still more questions in turn).  Going forward, we encounter two chests and another person (who looks important). There is also what looks like a computer console just barely visible up top. Well, let's start with the chests.  We're talking about a very specific kind of celestial being, "tenjin" (天人), one of whose abilities to be able to fly though the sky by using a special necklace. As you can imagine, this scroll allows us to teleport anywhere we've been before in the entire world (not just in the current province) and is the equivalent of the item we found earlier today. So that's pretty cool. And then the other chest...  I'm sorry, what? No, I have no idea what that's for. But let's talk to this guy.  Things are really getting complicated. We already have a few things going on.  All right, let's make a tour, as usual.  As you can see, there is also a side room to the right, so let's check that out.  Some backstory for the sages, finally.  Back in the main room, on the left side...  There is of course another room on the left. Surprisingly here we get a direct tutorial. Good to know. But for now, we'll take the lift here further down.  This is a pretty cool thing which exists in this game. But obviously we'll discuss more about it when we do find a red treasure chest. The other two guys here are not interesting. One of them repeats the prophecy story and the other is the save/rest point to recover your HP. So let's go back up...  ...and see what is up with this computer console slash altar here.  A "hologram" is projected. It speaks to us.  I have no idea what half of this means. I'm sure we'll figure it out somehow, though. In the meantime, though...  ...there is one other room on the north side. Well of course. Why not? Well, ok, let's try one of those pads.   Oh, so we just... got teleported somewhere? Let's look at the map.  Hmm, looks like we're all the way on the western coast now. For reference the Ihika valley is that big clear spot in the middle. Well, I mean, since we're here, let's check out this place and see what's up.  So, uh, welcome to Wakayama (和歌山). I've already mentioned that Wakayama was historically in the Kii province, so I guess this fits. I suppose we might as well have a chat with a few people here and see what's going on in this part of the world! Mt. Kouya, indeed, is in present day Wakayama prefecture and is an extremely popular tourist destination.  Interesting, they have here also those Jizo statues... But for now let's just talk to this person. Huh, so we have to find ourselves a boat again. Too bad we had to leave our badly drawn one behind. But we'll figure something out. But at least we know that the castle is definitively not accessible at the moment.   I guess it all feeds into Yomi's life-force or something like that.  As always, we can visit a few houses, too. First we'll talk to the guy standing in the corner. The guy sleeping on the floor is the lord then, I guess? Well that's ok, we're also searching for the bells.    Ok, looks like not much we can do here right now, so let's move on. Let's try to make our way to the southern coast.  Of course, we get accosted on the way! Thse guys like to use ice based spells.  Also, enemy names are just getting better and better! After this battle, kabuki learns a new skill, "double suicide" (心中), which does not actually kill him fortunately. What it does do is inflict large damage to one enemy but at a cost of being damaged himself. So I guess it could work as a finisher, or if you know you'll be able to heal.  Along the way, we can see a few of these water caverns (there were a couple also in the Valley of Sorrow), so we're definitely going to need a boat to access those. We can also check out that road sign there. There is a quiet village upstream where you can rest from the travelling. Please drop by. Well, we're good for now, so we can proceed. Also that sounds vaguely suspicious.  Well, let's check out this place then.  It's called Shinguu village (新宮). Incidentally shinguu is an actual word in Japanese which means "newly built shrine". Let's quickly talk to that guy down there behind the fence. I guess he must be talking about the status like the one in the Valley of Sorrow. So it seems we should be on the lookout for more of them!  Looking in a bit further, it seems like there is some sort of flooding here?  Let's talk to more people to find out.  Hello!  In real life there are actually three different Kumano shrines, located around the Wakayama prefecture. Here is a picture of one of them, Kumano-Hayatama shrine, located on the coast of Kii peninsula in the town of Shinguu in Wakayama prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshuu.  By 663highland - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11193644  Across that bridge there, there is this person. Yeah, I'd say, the entrance to it seems flooded, as we could see on an earlier screenshot! The building you see on this screenshot is not accessible from this side due to those trees, so we'll have to see about that later. In the meantime, let's check a couple of houses here too.  Like this kid here.  Please tell me we will be able to obtain this ship!  Before we leave, let's just stop by the shop.  We'll buy these "barley ear shoes" for 1000 ryo (man that's expensive).  First we'll replace Manjimaru's old shoes with these for a +4 in speed and then...  ...we give those to Kabuki for a nice +12 in speed. Of course this all requires way too many button presses back and forth through the menus. But either way, after this, we of course sell the old stuff to make room.  And now we'll be on our way, since there is not really anything else we can do here right now.  As it turns out, just a short walk down the coast we find the Kushimoto village that we've been told about. I suppose those things in the sea must be the coral reefs. Let's go inside.  But, as soon as we enter the village...  ...things start to happen! Check out the cutscene video for what happens next!  The term "tayuu" 太夫 that was heard in the cutscene is a bit difficult to explain in English. It means a few different things, like the kabuki actor which plays the female role, or a head of an acting troupe or even a high-ranking courtesan. So take your pick.  And then, just as quickly as they showed up, they're gone. Well, we'll meet up with them again later on, I'm sure. In the meantime, let's take a bit of a break here for now. I hope everyone is enjoying Manjimaru's "road trip" so far--I'm pretty sure you can see that the sheer scale of this game's world is quite a bit larger than what you would normally expect from an early 1990s JRPG. But that's what you get when you have a whole CD's worth of space for your game data, as opposed to a relatively limited cartridges on the Nintendo side. Still, the PC Engine/Turbografx platform never seems to have obtained much of a foothold in the west and so most of the JRPGs that were released on it, including this one, never left Japan (notable exception to this are the first three Ys games and a couple of others). Not that this game would have been an easy localisation task to begin with (as seen just a couple of paragraphs above), but still. Anyway, take care and see you next time!
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Dec 1, 2022 23:31
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, no kidding about the scale of the world, this is huge! Well, basically the game world is this map which we've already seen:  Here I have circled the part of the world we have visited so far. So as you can see, there is still plenty more to go, the game is indeed absolutely huge. I guess probably mostly people here have already figured out that this game is of a more episodic nature--the overarching plot is less of a focus, but the focus is more on individual little bits that happen to Manjimaru and the party as they travel around Jipang and various events that happen and people that they meet along the way.
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Dec 2, 2022 16:59
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bewilderment posted:A minor question but it's stuck in my head: Door number 3! I'm mildly red/green colour blind. I have problems with certain shades, and certainly purple comes into play there because of its red component. Funnily enough, it seems I make a blue/purple mistake in pretty much every LP thread that I have done so far! At this point I should probably just use an image editing program to check first lol. Luckily my red/green issue is overall pretty mild and doesn't really cause me problems in real life (e.g. driving) so it's all good.
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Dec 4, 2022 14:25
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 Last time, on their tour of Jipang, Manjimaru and Kabuki rescued the ninja chief and also met up with his three granddaughters. Also it seems we need to obtain the four bronze bells in order to proceed towards the Jungle Castle. However, it does also appear that we may need a boat to access some parts of this region and there have been mentions of a pirate warship of some sort. In today's episode, we also stumble across an infinite money exploit in this game!  After talking to the three lady ninjas, we're still in Kushimoto village. So let's see what's going on around here. We'll do our usual tour talking to everyone. It's a small place so there's only a few people here.  Well, that's not great. But don't worry, we'll deal with it soon!  Ah yeah, we saw those on the overworld just before we arrived. In fact, Hashigui-iwa (橋杭岩), or in English, "bridge pillar rocks", is a rock formation that exists in real life. It is of course found off the coast of Kushimoto town, in Wakayama prefecture. Here is an actual photograph of it:  Let's move on. We have a couple of houses to visit here too.   First let's talk to the kid! The dad is a bit worse for wear: "Fox udon" (キツネうどん) is actually udon with deep fried tofu. It contains no foxes. Finally the last person... We'll check that situation in a moment. But for now...  And this one guest in the inn... Well, ok, let's investigate this. First of all...  ...here is the shrine, at the northern end of the village.  There is a path we can follow through the forest here. (We're not actually exiting to the overworld, this is just part of the village).  Ah, well, that's interesting. Let's go in.  This is really our only lead at the moment, so let's see where it leads.  There are some chests down here. They are mostly empty. But one has a wild dog helmet. This game really likes to troll with empty chests.  This we give to Kabuki for +3 in defence compared to his current equipment. Also...  ...there are random encounters down here and we even find a new enemy!  I don't neccesarily want to speculate what's going on here on a genetic level. This enemy formation is actually a bit dangerous as they take multiple turns to kill at our level and can inflict some serious damage in the meantime. Multi enemy spells are probably the best bet, as anything else will be too slow and you will get killed before you're done with them.  Let's head back up.  And outside.  Huh, what now. Well, there is one of those disfigured statues there. So, uh, maybe if we try using that mirror on it? Manjimaru uses the Mirror of the Four Waters! And then...  ...things happen! We create an actual bridge across those rock formations!  There is a small water basin/well here. If we check it out...   Nice. That was not too hard. Three more to go. Before you ask, yes of course, even though it's a special "quest" item, it sure as heck takes up an inventory spot. With all the special items we're carrying around at the moment, we hardly have any space left for regular items! Also, yes, I will stop complaining about this issue at some point. Just not today. In any case we're done here and can now go back through that underground cave. On the way back...  ...the game decides to not give us any break! These guys take 3 turns to kill, so even with using multi-target spells, it definitely gets dicey. At least it gets us around 40 EXP which is not bad at all at this point in the game. But we do make it back to the village, where is sell some old equipment as usual. After a quick rest at the inn...  ...we're ready to continue our search for the second bell! For this we'll head towards the east.  Across the bridge here...  ...and then we visit this place at the north end of this big inlet.  Welcome to Kumano village! It's kind of divided on both sides of the inlet with a bridge in between (you can't see the bridge yet, we'll see it in a moment). First we'll stop in the shop.  We'll pick up this "stage costume" outfit for Kabuki (only he can use it).  As you can see, this is a pretty good defence upgrade at +8 compared to his previous outfit, and very much worth getting at this point! And now of course, let's find out the local news.  After resting at the inn, we'll talk to this kid here. Haha, cool, but still we should probably check out that hot springs. Luckily, there are currently no women in our party, so we're not in danger of encountering a questionable fan-service scene there! But before we go, let's see what's up here in Kumano. So again, let's talk to the residents.  Well, we have some experience with houses that don't have front doors, so we may be able to help here. Also here you can see the bridge which connects two sides of the village.  In that house next door... It's about time to visit another Tengu. This one is a bit hard to access though, so we'll have to do a couple of other things first.  Then this gentleman here is hiding in the trees! Crow as a deity of a shrine? Absolutely. And not just any crow, actually it's a three-legged crow! Check this out:  Notice the banners showing a three-legged crow (which is a thing in East Asian mythology/folklore) displayed everywhere. In fact this photograph is of one of the shrines in Wakayama prefecture!  Here is the shrine. It does seem to have something which looks like a door, but either way it shut tight and it seems the only access is from water. Let's keep investigating.  Knowing this game, legends generally turn out to be true, so looks like we'll be captaining a pirate ship soon!  In the house next door...  Here are the Jizo statues, and yeah, some of them lack heads. However, there seems to be also one of those big statues that we can use our mirror on. Let's have a look at that for a moment.  Over here, next to the big statue, there is also another building... but it doesn't have stairs leading to the entrance! Obviously, we can't climb that enormous height. However...  ...simply using the mirror in front of the statue causes a staircase to appear. Well, that was easy. Let's head on inside.  Well, look at that. It's a completely empty room containing only five levers. Hmm, five Jizo statues and also five up/down levers. Do you think that the statues might be describing the formation that the levers should be put into? Don't answer that because it's obvious. Indeed, if we put the levers to match the up/down pattern of the Jizo statues...  ...a staircase appears on the left side of the room. But wait a second! What if... and just go with me here... what if, what if we put the levers in the OPPOSITE positions from the statue pattern?  Hey! Then we get a staircase on the right side! Well, let's check it out.  So it's just a small optional room with two chests in it.  It also contains this guy in it--we return temporarily to the "skeleton" theme for the enemies. In fact, there are several of them in this building and they are all "set" encounters which are triggered when you step over particular tiles. They're also all one-time encounters and do not reappear once defeated. Which is a good thing too, because they're pretty nasty. The good news is... there is an inn right outside, so you can just run out and rest after defeating each one!  "Outfitted" in the sense of not just being a bare skeleton but one wearing armour/equipment. I'm also starting to wish we had more than two party members. Alas, not yet. So is it worth it coming down here for the two chests? Not really. One of them has a restorative item, and the other a piece of equipment which is not as good as what we already have. Meh. Let's change the levers and head to the left side of the house.  Down here there is not much, so we just need to follow the only possible path, while being mindful of those bone soldiers popping up every so often. Notice how from here you can actually see the hidden room on the right, so that gives you a prompt to look into how to access it.  Let's see...   Hey, look at that! It's a pirate ship! Cool! Let's board!  But uh, how do we get out of here? Well. Recall that it was mentioned about this ship actually being armed. If we open our in-game menu...  ...we can see that apart from usual commands here like to use item or spell or equip party members, now that we're on this ship, there is an extra option: "bombardment" (砲撃). Sure, let's see what happens.  That's one way of doing it, for sure!  But, now that we have a ship, let's see where we can go! Before we proceed with our actual tasks, let's first check out a couple of slightly out of the way locations. As usual...  ...there are enemy encounters while on water, too. However, the "bombardment" command is available here too and you can use it if you want--the ship doesn't get a turn of its own though; you have to sacrifice one of your party members' turns to use it.  These guys are not super tough, but they do have the ability to inflict the "forgetful" status effect. It's the same as "silence" in Final Fantasy, preventing the usage of spells. Status effects in this game, at least, always wear off after a while. In battle that means after a few turns, and if any of them persist after the battle, they will also wear off after a short while. Incidentally, party members getting knocked out in the battle are also considered to be afflicted by a status effect. This one is called "almost dead", and will also wear off after a short while after the battle ends and the character will be revived with 1 HP. This doesn't apply to Manjimaru; if he is knocked out, you get transported back to the nearest inn. So you can never get a game over by losing a battle. Anyway, I said we'll go explore on our boat for a bit, but before that...  If we float down the inlet, we arrive again to Shinguu village. If you recall, there were a couple of inaccessible places there. For example this shrine on an island!   The treasure hall is this other house here, which is completely surrounded by trees and not accessible from land. But now we can finally get to it! Let's see what's inside.  Three chests. The one on the left is empty, the one on the right has 780 ryo. The one in the middle is somewhat interesting.  So, despite the name, this is not actually a piece of equipment. This item has the following function: it will stop the enemy attacks for 3 turns, but you will also not be able to act during those turns (meaning in both cases the whole party). So this somehow seems useless at first glance, but there is a way to use it. However, a more interesting thing about this item that it forms a part of an easy (but tedious) infinite money exploit. First of all, this item is somehwat valuable--you can buy it for 2400 ryo. All items when you sell them back to the merchant are paid at 50% rate so you can sell this back for 1200 ryo. Across the river there is a shop where you can do that and earn the 1200. However, and I'm honestly not sure if this is a bug or if it is intended like that (but I really doubt it), but once you sell the item in the shop, it reappears in the chest in the treasure hall. So you can just get on the ship and go across the river and get it again, and then return to the shop and sell it, etc. Repeat this until you get bored and you can have as much money as you want. The need to constantly cross the river in the ship is what makes this super tedious, though. There are a few other items like this in the game, so perhaps this was just some technical issue they were not able to work around. However, I will utilise this to bring our finances up to about 9000 ryo, because we REALLY desperately need some substantially better weapons at this point. And I know where to get them, but it costs money! As for how would you use this item. Well, first of all, in theory, depending on the order of turns, you still might be able to get in an attack or two before the enemies "wake up" later in the same turn. But as it turns out, even the implementation of this item's function is also inconsistent/buggy, so the party always wakes up on Manjimaru's turn, regardless of who actually used the item three turns previously. In this way, having the slowest character use the item will ultimately yield the most amount of "free attacks" after the party wakes up but before the enemies can do so, and then if you just use the item again by the last party member, you can keep the enemies shut down permanently during the battle if you want! As everything with this item, this too is quite tedious to do, and not to mention the cost of having to buy many of these. But, well, it's there if you want to try it. Anyway, I'll be back in a few minutes when I have enough money as mentioned above!  All right, I'm done. If you're wondering where we are, we have teleported to just outside Wakayama, because there is a shop here which has what we need.  Yes, this thing here. Mysterious Sword "Winter Wind". What a name. We are actually getting two, one for each of our characters.  Check this out: +13 in damage compared to Manjimaru's current equipment!  And for Kabuki it's a whole +17! So I would say, it was worth spending a few minutes on this! Ok, now that this is done, we'll fast travel back to where we were...  ...which is about here, in Shingu village. As you can see, we have a bit of a problem as to how to exit the village.  The problem is solved in the exact same way as before, of course.  After exiting from the inlet, we make our way back up north along the other side of the land. By the way, we can only navigate around the ligther coloured part of the water. The dark part (on the right side) is not navigable for us.  A bit to the north is another tight passage.  But it leads to a tiny island with a Tengu's hut!  Let's see what we get here! Well, that was unexpected for sure. As for the scroll, it simply inflicts the "forgetful" status on enemies and makes it not possible for them to use spells. All right, now with that done...  ...let's head a bit to the west.  These guys will literally be the bane of your existence while at sea. They appear literally ALL THE TIME and while not strong, still take forever to take down with spells. At least they give 7 EXP each which is not bad as they mostly appear in groups of five.  Anyway, for now we'll stop at this place over here.  This is another small place, called Shirahama willage. Shirahama (白浜) means "white sandy beach"! The actual beach in real-life Shirahama is, of course, well known for its white sand. But I see already a few people here!  This gentleman is a bit interesting... Not sure why he wants that... but let's indulge him.  First we get back out on the sea in our boat, and then...  ...just like that. Getting back to this gentleman...  We shall certainly do so shortly, but we have a couple of things to do first. Incidentally "ryuujin" (龍神) means "dragon god". For now, though, let's continue our tour of the village.  Over here is the local shrine.  Yes, I know there is a staircase there in the top right corner. Don't worry, we'll check that out shortly. For now, though...  Hello! Yes, and we will be looking for some of them in just a bit, namely that guy's equipment.  Let's visit also a few houses here. Uh, I mean, yeah, but they are not ordinary bells... He's not doing so well, though.  In this house there is just a kid.  Well, maybe, if I could understand it... But now that we've done that, let's head over to the inn.  Hm, we already found an island with a Tengu hut, but it wasn't exactly in the sea... or do you mean there is another somewhere here? Anyway, that's about everybody we can talk to. So let's get back to that staircase in the shrine.  This one here.  It leads to an "unfinished basement", as you can see. What you can probably also see is that there is one of the bells chilling out on the other side of that wall. But... how do we get there? Hint: check back again the screenshot from the spa room. Anyway, if we check that basin of water... Hot water is bubbling up! Obviously, we use the mirror on the statue, as always (well, not quite as always, on the first statue we used a ring).  It causes water to cool down! Let's see how the spa patrons feel about it.  Welcome to tonight's slam poetry competition, folks! In the end, what this means for us is...  ...that we can now head through here!  It leads, of course, to the other side of that basement, which means...  ...that we can now pick up the second bell! There is nothing else down here, so we can now leave this place.  We want to head west anyway, to find that Ryuujin cave, but first...  ...if we head all the way southwest, we find another island with a Tengu hut on it! Amazing!  Uh, thanks, I guess? In any case, we have a mini-boss fight coming up quite soon, and I'm not exaggerating if I say, that without this scroll, it's going to be practically impossible to beat it with characters being on a natural level that they should be when you don't do excessive grinding. So what does it do, you might ask? The Mud Worm (泥虫) scroll simply lowers the agility of one enemy for a few turns. This is quite critical for the upcoming battle, but I will explain the details when we get there. First, we head to the pirate treasure cave, though.  Obviously, on the way, we get some new enemies! Nothing really too out of the ordinary here.   In order to get into the cave, we follow this waterway here. So you definitely need a boat to get in here.  Not only that, but in fact the whole cave is flooded and can only be navigated by boat!  In the cave, there are a few places like this, where you can dock your boat next to some stairs. They lead to...  ...rooms like this, containing treasure chests! In this one... Manjimaru found the pirate longsword! Nice, but it's literally one point of strength weaker than our current weapons! So it will get sold at the first opportunity. Let's hope other stuff we find here is better. Continuing to explore...  ...we encounter more new enemies! Attack of the killer... oranges, I guess? In any case, its worth fighting them as they appear in groups of 4 or 5 and give 11 EXP each, so you're looking at 40-50 EXP for a pretty easy battle!   Here is our second docking point.  This is like Dark Souls when you explore a dungeon and find all matching pieces of an equipment set one by one.  This one is definitely worth equipping, though. Kabuki has been lagging behind in defence compared to Manjimaru, so he gets this one for a nice +16 in defence! Let's go looking for more stuff!  Tucked in over here is our next stop.  Cool, let's see.  This one gives Manjimaru +1 in defence compared to his current helmet, but again, there is no downside, so... This was actually also the last thing to find--theoretically this dungeon is entirely optional, and its only purpose is to get some better equipment if you want. Exiting from the cave on the other end...  ...leads over here. There seems to be another village, so let's have a look.$  Welcome to Kiyohime! The name of the village comes from Kiyohime (清姫) who is a character from a Japanese 11th century tale, "Anchin and Kiyohime" (it's probably older of course, but the first written record about it appears around year 1040. The story is basically about how Kiyohime falls in love with a Buddhist monk named Anchin, but gets rejected. This causes her in a rage to transform into a serpent and kill him, after finding him hiding in a bronze bell in a temple. Unlike other towns/villages we were visiting recently, Kiyohime is not actually a place in modern-day Wakayama, but is named that in game for other reasons! Anyway, let's see what's going on here, starting with the two people visible on this screenshot (yeah, I know, one is cut off a bit!). I guess we'll have to meet her later!  Yes, I've literally left our boat parked there illegaly like that. Let's talk to the guy.  Let's not forget this lady here.  Of course, let's check out the houses too.  Hmm, I see. So I guess probably won't be friendly to us then. We'll check that out in a second.  Ah, here is the weird statue. But, it's not accessible from here, so I guess we may have to find the other entrance to that cavern behind it. Also, what is up with the geysers blocking access to the shrine?  Over here inn, we can talk to this kid. You can probably already tell where all this is going. Also the mother. Perhaps try this with jam instead. But at least it explains the existence of geysers. All right, let's see about accessing that statue. For that, first...  ...we take our boat to cross to the other side. So in the end, turns out that dungeon is not really optional, as you more less need the boat for this.  And then, the cave entrance is literally just here.  We have a brief cavern to go through.  Over here is tucked a chest with 640 ryo. Don't mind if I do. But apart from that, there's nothing here of note, so we can simply...  ...go out the other side, which expectedly brings us right next to the statue. Of course, we use the mirror on it.  It causes geysers to disappear! Which means...  ...we can now use the boat to dock at the shrine. Of course the boat was on the other side, so we had to go back through the cave to get it.  Inside, we find again, to our dismay, that jerk Kikugorou. Looks like he's again brought a friend with him. I guess that's the girl everybody was talking about. Now it all makes sense. And they are clearly blocking our access to the third bronze bell, too!   Look at her elegant tresses swaying in the wind! Please look forward to meeting Princess Serpent!Can we not?  No, I guess we have to. It's a mini boss again, and oh my god look at her hair. It's literally snakes! Anyway, as for this boss fight, alhthough we've been breezing through the last couple, this one can very definitely be a problem. Her physical attack doesn't do huge damage, so that's very much manageable. The only other attack she has is this:  This one is mildly annoying as it has a chance to inflict the "sleep" status on its target. It renders you unable to act for a few turns, but still, that's manageable. What is NOT manageable however, is her extremely high agility (check the stats below). As in some other games (at least some installments of Final Fantasy for sure), the agility stat also drives how evasive she is. What I'm trying to say is that basically the main problem with this fight is that, well, you're not going to be able to land a hit on her at all. And in this game even spells are subject to evasion, so... yeah. So, then, what to do? Well, first of all, I would really recommend being at least level 19 for this fight. You should already be close to it when you get here (around 17-18 for sure if you play the game normally). So take a few minutes to get yourself up to 19. This should help to bring up a bit your own agility. However, this will not be enough by any stretch. So you will need to also make sure that she's at all points she has the "mud worm" spell applied on her. This lowers her agility by about 45 points which is not bad. You will still miss a fair few times, but at least you'll be able to hit like 40-50% of the time. Unfortunately, that's not the end of our problems here. Note that she also has a high defence. This means your physical attacks won't do a huge amount of damage, so you'll have to use magic. But the problem with this is that your MP is not exactly abundant so you run the risk of running out. However, note also that Kabuki has quite a bit more MP (66) compared to Manjimaru's 46. Therefore, finally, our strategy looks like this. Give to Kabuki the offensive spell you will be using to damage her (Demonic Fire works quite well), and give the "Mud Worm" spell to Manjimaru. Then, Manjimaru can apply the Mud Worm every few turns while Kabuki spams Demonic Fire. In his "off" turns, Manjimaru can also attack or heal whoever needs it. As mentioned, you'll still miss half the time, but this way you at least stand a chance. There is actually still one more minor annoyance in this fight. When her HP drops below 100, this will start to happen:  It's a massively annoying 20 HP heal! Demonic fire does about that much damage to her, so it basically negates your last hit. Unfortunately he'll keep doing this every 3-4 turns, so here it becomes really critical to have the Mud Worm applied so you don't lose MP for no reason. And yes, in the orginal Japanese version he absolutely calls her "Princess Serpent-chan". I will not comment further on this. Anyway, with all this in mind, unless you get super unluckly with her evasion, you should be able to do this on the first try. Finally, the reason for the reference to Kiyohime becomes now clear.  But anyway, eventually, that is done...  ...and we can pick up the third bell! So, that's it for today. Next time we'll see how the villagers react to the Princess Serpent situation and of course continue on our quest to find the final bronze bell!
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Dec 11, 2022 22:33
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Blaze Dragon posted:How powerful is "bombardment" when used in battle? Does it have any advantages over just attacking normally? To be honest, it's mostly on a similar order of magnitude like your normal attacks so it's not something like 5x or 10x stronger. PurpleXVI posted:Some of those attack sprites really look cool. Yeah the enemy sprites, especially the (mini)bosses are all kinds of awesome in this game. Also the game has nothing if not a big variety of vehicles that the party gets to use over the course of their journey, much more so that most games of similar genre/vintage.
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Dec 13, 2022 20:20
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Zereth posted:Does it at least hit more than one enemy? Nope, it only hits one enemy. So it honestly isn't very useful in normal battles when you get 5 or 6 enemies together. But that's ok, this is certainly not the last means of transport Manjimaru and the party will be using which has its own special attack. There will be others!
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Dec 14, 2022 17:29
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Hey, so, uh some bad news... I suffered a hard drive failure on my main PC (stupid Apple fusion drive, that should never have been a thing!). Normally this would only mean a delay, however unfortunately one thing that most likely is not backed up is the emulator save state file. So what this means is that as much as I hate to do that, this LP most likely is not going to be able to continue at this point in time. I really don't have the energy to play the game from the beginning right now--later in the future probably yes, but right now starting over is just not something I can deal with, sorry.  I only played the game ONCE in my life from the beginning like that, and it was when Apollo Justice lost my save file when I accidentally dropped my Nintendo DS. Console was fine, but somehow the cartridge save data was lost. I've heard that this is not so uncommon to happen. I know this is disappointing, believe me it's disappointing to me too, but right now this is the situation as it is. But it doesn't mean that I will stop doing LPs of interesting/obscure Japanese games! I will definitely get on with something else as soon as I get organised with my new PC (which is at least going to be fully SSD, so at least no mechanical failures are possible). I know that it's a bit annoying that I will play a new game instead of restarting this one, but honestly I just can't go back from the beginning, and play it all again right now. So I will do a different game for now and then we'll see. I actually had something in mind already that I wanted to do, so I will just go ahead with that. So, how about a PS1game which is kind of a bit like Japanese version of "The Last Express", except it's fullly FMV with real actors, one of whom is Hideo Kojima? I think that should ease the pain somewhat as soon as I get myself organised again! It's also a much shorter game than what I usually play, so that will be a nice change of pace too, I think. Feel free to guess which game, I don't mind if it's "revealed" in this thread! All right, well, that's it for now, I'll see you in a few days when I receive my new PC (of course this had to happen just as the holiday is coming on too, ugh.).
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Dec 22, 2022 21:37
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Randalor posted:The LP curse strikes again! Nah, in this case I think the Apple fusion drives are just not great--my best friends PC failed in the same way. But we'll see--it seems that it's possible to recover at least the files from the SSD part. So if the save file happens to be there, then I may be able to continue in a few days. If not... then it's going to be like in previous post.
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Dec 22, 2022 21:52
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tap tap is this thing on Ahem. Sorry for the prolonged silence, but here is a bit of an update. First of all the silence was because I didn't really have a working PC for a few days and as bad luck would have it this all happened just before a long holiday weekend. So, apologies for that once again. The good news is that I am up and running again and have taken this opportunity to upgrade to a new PC--I was using a 2017 iMac with the dreaded fusion drive (where the HD part failed, and the SSD part is still operational), so fixing that would have probably not been straightforward. Therefore I just decided to upgrade to a Mac Studio which I was going to do anyway in the near future, so this just brough the whole process a bit forward. So the new machine is now operational, there are a few things I still need to set up but it should not be a problem. The bad news is that it does seem that the save file will not be recoverable. There is still some minimal hope, but it's very small. However. The idea of abandoning this LP really started to bother me eventually. My original post was written shortly after the "incident" and I was kind of in a "everything is poo poo" mood at that point. The thought of having to play from the beginning was just something I couldn't deal with. But when the things calmed down and the new PC was on the way I started thinking more clearly. Yes, having to play from the beginning will still be a massive pain in the rear end. But if instead of pressuring myself, I do it in a more leisurely way then I believe this will work. Especially since I just need to play the game via the shortest path--meaning, no need to talk to all NPCs and such since this is only needed if I am preparing an update which I will not be doing here, of course. The only thing I will ensure is that the characters are about at the same level at the end which should be easy. So, here is what we are going to do. I will take a few weeks (I expect about a month should be enough) to get myself back up to where we were and once that is done we will continue from there. But that's not all! While I'm doing that, I will ALSO play the other game that I hinted at in my previous post. It's a fairly short game with no "lore" or anything like that, and it will also be presented in video format, so overall it will require much less effort than a long-rear end JRPGs you typically find in my LPs. This way you will be able to follow that (if you want) while you wait for updates on Tengai Makyou to resume. I will put that in its own thread, but will announce it here. I will also be posting updates here with how I'm progressing with the re-play just to keep myself on track because otherwise I am prone to procrastination lol. So, about the other game. Here it is:  It's a 1998 game published by Enix and the title is, as you can see, "Murder on the Eurasian Express". It's basically a bit like "The Last Express", where the player character investigates a murder on a train. The other passengers are part of a school trip (i.e. teachers and students). And there is also a hard time limit since you need to solve it before the train reaches the next stop! More importantly, the whole game is done in a FMV format with real actors (one of whom, as I mentioned already, is none other than Hideo Kojima somehow). The FMV format means that the game also comes on as much as 4 full discs even though the amount of gameplay wouldn't otheriwise warrant it. So that's the plan and if everything goes well we should be able to resume Tengai Makyou by early February or so. Hope it sounds good to everyone, and I will announce here in a few days when I'm ready to start with all of this. Thanks again for your patience! 
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Dec 30, 2022 18:46
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Blaze Dragon posted:Oh man, we get two games? You're too kind. Well, you know, it just seemed rude to keep people waiting for a few weeks without anything else going on! And this is a short and sweet game, perfect to fill the spot until I'm ready to continue with Tengai Makyou!
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Dec 30, 2022 22:19
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Commander Keene posted:Looks like it's going to get a new thread, but will be announced in this one. Yes, that is more or less the plan!
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Dec 30, 2022 23:18
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Randalor posted:About how long do you estimate it would take you to get caught up to where you were, roughly? I'm just curious what the rough playtime is for what you showed off is. I guess we were about a quarter into the game. I actually already recorded a further update that I was not able to post due to the HD failure so i will also have to redo that one. Overall, I guess playtime so far is probably around 12-15 hours or so. It's definitely not a short game overall. So it could have been worse and it's definitely still doable to start over, but I have to do it in smaller chunks in order to keep my sanity lol. So I think that early February should be relatively easy to achieve for the continuation of this LP. I really should have been better with backing stuff up, but it is what it is now and we'll just have to deal with it.
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Dec 31, 2022 18:41
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Hey, so I started working on stuff as promised, and therefore... I made a new thread! Click on the picture to visit it, if you want to find out what it looks like when a game like "The Last Express" is made in full FMV with real actors and all passengers on the train are Japanese high school students and their teachers!  "Murder on the Eurasia Express"
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Jan 4, 2023 23:42
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Hey, me again! Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the situation: the game re-play is progressing well, and I am currently about halfway to where I was when I lost the save file. So if it goes on like that we should be able to continue this LP at the beginning of February more or less as planned! In the meantime, thank you for your patience! P.S. Yes, I am making sure that I back up the save file properly this time.
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Jan 15, 2023 20:11
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 Right then, where were we? Oh, yes, we were using (among other things) the mirror of the four waters to collect the four bronze bells. We kind of need those in order to be able to reach the Jungle Castle which has been spreading a "leafy" infestation across the local provinces. In addition to that, we're being... stalked, I guess, by this Kikugorou person, but so far he's been content to just let his "friends" fight us, the latest of whom was one "Princess Serpent". She seems to have bewitched a few of the inhabitants of Kiyohime village, so now that her true nature was revealed, we'll take a look around and see what people say about it! Quite a number of boss fights (and not so easy ones too) in this episode since, well, I guess Kikugorou just doesn't know when to give up! So, let's get started as we have quite a lot to cover!  And so, here we are just outside of that house where we defeated Princess Serpent. Let's see what's going on around the village!  Let's start with this person here. Yes, Mt. Kouya is a place we've already been told about and certainly need to visit soon. Apparely it's pretty cold in its caverns.  There are three people to talk with out here.  Over in the hotel, we can also talk to the kid... Uh, sure thing kid. I guess we should also rest and recover here, it was a somewhat tougher fight. I really wish the game would let us have a full party of all four characters. But it's going to be a while yet before we get there, unfortunately. Anyway, at this point we can leave from here. But, where to next? We won't actually go there right now, but I can tell you that if we try going to Mt. Kouya which has just been mentioned, there is an impassable gate there, so that's not going to work. The Jungle Castle is also not accessible. So, then where? Well, it's been a while, truly, but you might recall that back in Wakayama there was a part which was not accessible, namely the part with the castle. And we know that Kikugorou has occupied said castle. So I say, let's pay him a visit!  So, let's just sail away sail away sail away.  Of course, we have to go back through that cave where we got all the pirate equipment!  We'll head north to Wakayama, as mentioned. It may not be entirely obvious based on the layout of the map here, but...  ...you can actually enter here with your ship! And in fact you need to, because...  ...we need to knock on a certain door! We're not heading into the castle just yet. First...  ...we head over this way.  There's a staircase! Unfortunately...  ...after a bit of a walk...  ...it just leads to a dead end. But one that reveals us other parts to this underground bit. So we'll be on the lookout for more stairs going down!  If we go a bit further in and dock our ship here, just outside of the wall where the first staircase was...  ...we can find another one!  It least to two chests! The first one contains just a healing potion which we really do not have space in our inventory at all, being as it is that we're carrying a whole bunch of plot related items which are taking up our limited number of slots. The other on though has the shrimp shell armour, which we'll equip on Manjimaru this time. With that done...  let's park up and head into the castle finally!  I'm actually posting some of the music again since I found a better version. I mean it's still going to be mostly "midi" type music (except for the few "important" tracks), but this is now from the remake so it sounds a bit better. So even if the song name sounds familiar I recommend to check it out as it will be a slightly better sounding version this time!  Let's see. First thing is, we can check out the statues (of Kikugorou, of course!). It's a bronze statue of Kikugorou... of course, its legs are longer than those of the actual person.  Over here in the northeast corner, we find a bunch of clothes drawers. Let's look inside.  This is, of course, a piece of equipment, but in can only be worn by one person. You don't have to guess that we're talking about Kabuki here.  This item is, OF COURSE, a headpiece and in fact it does give to Kabuki +1 in defence compared to his previous helmet! So why not? There is actually another item here, in one of the other drawers. Manjimaru found Clothes in Bad Taste. Certainly this is also an item of clothes that you can put on, but it's probably better that you don't. As it turns out, this is our first encounter with a cursed piece of equipment. So this means the following: first, once you put it on, you cannot take it off until you rest at the inn. And second, in addition to it's normal defensive power, it also has some kind of a negative effect. For example, one of the effect that can appear is to double the MP cost of all spells. So in the end, they are more annoying than dangerous, so you just want to have a think whether then negative effect is worth it for the increase in defence/attack. For me generally the answer is no, so I won't be using these for the most part. Anyway, let's continue. Unfortunately, there are random encounters here.  Continuing with the theme of monsters having various fruit for heads, here now is the watermelon. This creature is called simply "the summer giant" though. It's not super strong, so we deal with it easily.  Continuing on...  ...on the other side of the floor are two staircases. Heading down...  ...takes us to the third and final of these underground bits. This one is also a dead end like the first.  We do encounter some new enemies. What would a game be without some Chtulhu-style tentacle things.  Backing out of here, now we'll take the staricase going up.   There's something written on the wall there... Let's have a look.   But the trapdoor just puts us back to the lower floor where we came from, so it's not like it actually does anything really!  But at least we can check out that painting on the wall there. A portrait of Kikugorou... with a smirk and a mocking smile.  Anyway, we'll return upstairs to another set of clothes drawers. But it's just another set of two items we found previously. So I guess we'll just sell them or something when we get out of the castle.  Heading across this bridge...  ...there seems to be a prisoner of some kind here. Let's see what he says. I don't even want to ask what happens at night. But, anyway, to continue, we'll take the staircase up.  It leads to more prisoners (and two chests also)! What in the world is this guy even doing to people? But no matter, we'll sort him out soon. In the meantime, let's continue back again to the other side over the bridge on the left. But before that, the two chests. One contains, for some reason, yet another pair of floral underpants. The other chest contains a blonde wig. This last one is actually a piece of equipment you can wear, but it's probably better not because it's another cursed piece! Unfortunately, its effect is to completely block the character who is wearing it from being able to use spells. So, uh, no, we won't be equipping this (even though it's better than what Manjimaru is currently wearing). But, for example, we will later have a character in our party who is very slow to gain any MP. So for such a character a piece of equipment like this would be fine, as he can't use spells anyway. For us right now, spells are absolutely critical and our main way of dealing with bosses, so we'll have to pass. In any case, crossing back over the bridge...  ...we find Kikugorou plonking on the piano keys.  But, soon he runs off to that plate on the floor.  Looks like it's a teleporter! But before following him, let's check what is written on the wall there. MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN 3 6 2 8 4,7 9 Well, I think we know what kind, so... let's just follow him and step on the teleporter.  On the way there, we can check the bookshelves, but... Some rather difficult books... but it doesn't look like they've ever been opened? Anyway, stepping on the teleporter...  ...we're suddenly on the roof! What is even going on! What is going on is another lengthy (and hilarious) confrontation between Kabuki and Kikugorou! So, let's watch!  Well, ok then. And so after the battle...  Nice. Also, we found the use for that Seal of Transformation item we got from the ninjas. It's a good thing that it shatters, since that way the game ensures you will definitely have the space in the inventory for the new item, i.e. the key. In any case, we can now make our way back out of the castle. Along the way, we'll talk to a few people.  Like this guy, looking at the schedule.  And some of the freed prisoners... Yeah, because it was the guy who was alone in the prison on the floor below.  Yeah, this guy here.  Not quite sure where this person came from, but...  Thanks, but we've found it already by ourselves! That item is pretty good, so it's definitely worth getting it.  And one last person on the way out... Now we should head over to Mt. Kouya, in hopes that we can find the final bronze bell there. But before that, let's stop by the weapon shop here since we have a decent chunk of money on us.  We'll pick up two turtle-shell armours for both our characters! It's 4,200 ryo each, but as you can see we have 9211 ryo, just enough money for two!  For Manjimaru, this will be +7 in defence compared to his previous equipment for a total of 45  And for Kabuki it's only +3, but I have come to conclusion that there is some kind of "exponential" factor in damage vs. defence formula in this game, because sometimes just a couple of extra points will reduce the damage a lot from certain enemies. So it's always worth it, honestly. Anyway, I'll go and rest at the inn, and then we'll be on our way.  We're sailing along the coast, northwards from Wakayama.  We'll, park here, because...  ...there's another Tengu's hut!  Manjimaru obtained the "winter wilt" scroll. The winter wilt (冬枯) spell has an effect which is sort of predictable from its name: it reduces enemy defence stat by a certain amount. With this done...  ...we'll park our boat at Wakayama and head east.  Across a small bridge, and here we are at the entrance of the icy mountain cave.  Welcome to Mt. Kouya. It's not a very nice place to be, unfortunately. It's icy and cold and enemies here hit pretty hard. It also has a slightly annoying gimick that we'll have to deal with. First of all, though, our way is blocked by the gate. For this, of course, we simply use the key we got from Kikugorou and then we can pass.  Literally after making one step through the gate, we're assaulted by a new enemy!  Compared to some enemies here, they're not too bad really. But, let's see what we have here in the cave.  So, you might notice already ice on the ground in some parts. This is not just visual; stepping on ice will cause you to slide forward until the next obstacle (e.g. a wall). As we'll see shortly, this makes it a bit annoying to reach some staircases etc. Of course while sliding you're still subject to random encounters, so yay! Luckily this cave is not very big, so we'll be in and out pretty quickly.  The ice situation is pretty bad in some areas...  But anyway, we're heading up this staircase.  These two chests over there can be pretty painful to get to because of sliding on ice problem... You can probably not bother about them as they contain a piece of equipment a fair bit worse than what we already have and a consumable which removes status effects. Anyway, our goal is...  ...this staircase, leading up to the next floor. It, too, is a bit hard to reach. But after climbing up...  ...we find that Kikugorou has brought a friend, again! So, let's see.   Ok, so his next fiend is a bull? Sure. Anyway, this is the first of several boss fights today, and we are at a point where these enemies have kind of strong physical defence, therefore our regular physical attacks are not super-viable to be used. So, we'll have to get a bit "tricksy" here (and for the next couple too). Note also the the boss HP is definitely starting to go up noticeably. As for the tricks, well it's a bit interesting I guess. We are going to be relying quite a bit on using regular weapons and (non-consumable) items in battle, in fact. So our first trick is... did you know that you can use that "Mirror of the Four Waters" in battle as item and that it's like insanely useful? When used in battle, it will cause that half of the damage you take will be reflected back to the enemy. So if you take for example 30 HP damage, the enemy will also get damaged for 15 HP. To be clear, you still take full damage, but enemy gets damaged also for half of it. This lasts a few turns, so you will have to re-apply it every once in a while, but at least it seems to have a 100% hit rate! The one problem with this is that the effect is valid only for the party member who uses the item; however this we can also solve--Kabuki has a "technique" called "Swear Words", which angers the enemy and directs all attacks to him for a few turns. So with these two combined, we already have a good start--unfortunately Manjimaru will have to be again a bit on support duty, so he can heal and try to apply an additional debuff if possible. Otherwise, he can attack with a spell or whatever. The "trick" part unfortunately has to be done all by Kabuki alone. As for the attacks from the boss, nothing of too much note. He just has a regular phyiscal attack and also another variation where he trades blows with a party member for a couple of times. When trading blows, each hit is separately subject to reflect, so that's not too bad either. The boss hits us for about 20 damage a hit, so that's within the manageable territory still.  Anyway, after defeating the boss, the way forward is free once again!  Our next goal is this staircase here, if I can figure out how to maneuver to it!  Ah, there we go.  And finally we reach another one of those weird statues, and there is also what seems like the final bell encased in ice right here! Using the mirror on the statue...  ...causes a laser beam, which melts the ice!  So we can pick up the fourth and final bell! By the way, that staircase to the left leads to small extra area.  It has two chests. One contains a piece of equipment: "Tantric Helm", which has an interesting property that wearing it reduces spell cost by 1/3. But it has a super low defence, so it's not a fantastic trade-off. Especially when there are ways of casting at least some spells without using any MP at all (by using various weapons as items in battle). So I'm going to just sell this so it doesn't take up space. The other chest, comically, has a MP recovery item. So, uh, choice, I guess? Anyway, now we can use a return stone to leave this place!  All right then, so what now? Again, it's been a long time, but we should remember where it was that we were first told about the four bronze bells. In fact, that was in Nara, back north in Ise province! So let's head that way!  After passing through Owase border village, let's head straight to Nara!  Here we are! So this time, we'll head to the building on the east side of the town.   Upon entering, there seems to be a mechanism, surrounded by four numbered stands 1-4.  A bit further up, there is a large hatch which seems like it would be possible to open... So I think it's pretty clear what to do. We have four bronze bells, so we'll just position them on four numbered stands. Funnily, it's the bells are also four distinct items, numbered from 1 to 4, so each bell needs to go on the correct stand. This is "complicated" slightly by the game using the "fancy" kanji for numbers (壱, 弐, 参) instead of the "common" ones (一, 二, 三) for numbers 1, 2 and 3. But nothing we can't deal with, really.  Here we go, and most importantly our item inventory space can finally breathe a bit of a sigh of relief! Oh, you want to know what happens when we position the bells correctly? Here you go, watch the cutscene:   Awesome. Or new mode of transportation is a giant robot--finally we get to see it for real after hearing about it previously.  Of course it has a separate map music! But anyway, this allows us to traverse the map much more easily as it can step over anything except the mountains. You also don't have random battles while you're inside; actually the battles get triggered, but then end immediately with a note that the giant stepped on the enemies. You do not, however, get the exp, unfortunately. So, there's only one destination left, which is the Jungle Castle itself, so let's head that way.  We could not pass these areas on foot because of the overgrowth, but now, maneuvering a giant robot, of course we can! By the way, here is a full map of the Ise province, so you can get an idea of what's going on here:  The castle is located on that huge island in the middle.  And here we are, the Jungle Castle. Looks just like a tree.   [JUNGLE CASTLE]  But of course, there is a welcoming committee... we shouldn't be surprised at this point.  Ugh, does he have another friend? Sure, bring it on. Also, that whole story about the castle being alive just means that there are holes that pulsate in a breathing rhytm. So you have to be careful not to fall into one. Certainly, this is an easier gimmick that sliding around on ice! Since most of this dungeon looks a bit samey I'm going to skip the boring bits. Either way, the tree stooges leave so we're free to proceed.  I guess we'll start by going to the north side!  As expected, there are some new enemies here and they are fairly tough, so you should try to conserve the resources a bit if you can.  As you can see, they can silence our magic, which is not super fantastic.  It's all very organic looking...  There are still more new enemies here, at least this one is relatively weak.  No, I don't have an explanation for the name.  Up we go!  And here we can see an example of a hole, it rhytmically opens and closes within its radius. So really pretty easy to avoid (or walk across when it's closed).  Even more up! Like most dungeons in this game, it forces you to go up and down to navigate around closed off sections until you finally get to the goal.  Going upwards, the enemies seem to get even harder, like this one. Love the name!  It's definitely on the tougher side and can even do about 20 HP of damage to us per hit easily on our current level! Manjimaru's total HP is like 120 or thereabouts!  Obviously, what goes up must come down, so now we go back down into a different part of the maze.  Careful here navigating around the hole, though.  Sure, why not. There are three of them, but luckily this is one of the weakest enemies here.   Up down up down, so now we go back up! I also passed by a chest containing another useless "clothes in bad taste" item.  After coming up...  Of course, more new enemies! Pretty nasty, this one: high defence and also will repeatedly cast a spell to lower your speed (mud worm, the same one we have!). They do however give 20 EXP each, which is a decent chunk at this point in the game.   Three chests, but in a typical fashion for this game, only one has an item. It is, however, the MP recovery item, which we'll definitely make use of immediately!  After another up and down journey, we reach this chest. It contains the standard return stone item which every dungeon seems to give us. It's nice, I like it.  This one is not so nice, though, especially as a duo because of their high agility stat. One of these can reach even 30 HP damage per hit to us, so when you get two like this, you can only be thankful that you're playing this on an emulator and save states are a thing. That's all I can say about this.  Oh, yeah about that name. Honestly I have not been able to figure out what it means--as you can see it's simply written phonetically in katakana so there are no kanji to help with the meaning. If somebody has an idea, let me know please. A bit later...  Oh, hey, it's Kikugorou again. And he's brought a friend... again. How long can this actually keep going like this?  It's interesting that all Kikugorou boss friends just have actual names (well other than the serpent lady) and not some kind of typical boss name.  They are getting stronger and stronger, but this is the last one at least. He does about 20-23 HP damage per hit normally and doesn't really have particular special attacks, just a phyiscal hit under two different names, but the damage is similar.  Of course, we'll use the mirror/swearwords trick for some "passive" damage dealing. But that's going to be about 10-12 HP reflected damage per turn which is not really that great considering that he has 300 HP to start with. Our regular hits deal only a few HP, so that's not good either. So, what to do, then? Well, it's time for our second trick for today. Luckily in one of the previous episodes I bought two mysterious swords called "Winter Wind" for our characters to use. You might recall I even had to do a money trick to even be able to afford them at the time since they cost 4400 ryo a piece! And while right now we are unable to deal much physical damage, as it turns out, this sword when used as an item in battle can cast quite a powerful wind elemental spell, "autumn typhoon" (野分). We don't even have that spell yet as a spell (although we'll probably get it next time), but nevertheless we can cast it with this sword. It deals 35-40 HP damage in one hit. So that's pretty nice and will allow us to finish this battle more easily. Not "easy" but at least a bit more "easily". Of course, as with all his "friends", here too you have to contend with Kikugorou coming to heal them in the final part of the battle, but... whatever.   As before, the way forward is now free! So let's head upstairs again. We're almost at the end of this dungeon, don't worry!  And once more. That chest there contains just enemies to fight, by the way.  Finally we reach some kind of a destination, but what is going on here? Looks like there is a some kind of a show about to start? Let's ask one of the members of the audience! Oh. I see. But before we can do anything else, the show starts!  Well that was... I have no idea what that was. Although I will say this... the voice acting for Kikugorou is just so good. The actor is Chiba Shigeru, whom you may know perhaps as Sasuke in Ranma ½ and many many MANY other shows. Either way, we have a boss fight in front of us (quite a few of those today, huh?). This one even has its own special and very awesome music! So please give it a listen.   It seems every next boss has about 100 HP more than the last lately... But don't worry, boss HP will soon be going into thousands, like in any "normal" JRPG. The good news is that this battle is about on the same level of difficulty as the last. Which means we'll be using about the same strategy with damage reflection and also our "mysterious" sword to cast the wind spell, as that's pretty much the strongest attack we have and still deals damage in mid-30s HP. Applying "mud worm" is nice if possible, but don't waste too many turns on it if it won't hit.  As for his attacks, well, the damage output is definitely going up as you can see above, so that's definitely something to be careful about. Luckily thanks to our sword, we can dedicate our entire MP to healing. But we only have one healing spell, so probably best to give it to the party member with bigger MP (in our case that would be Kabuki) since since we don't really need MP for anything else here. Also check out his little helper!  Of course, the more damage, also the more reflected damage, which is certainly one way to turn this around to your advantage.  And yeah, there's also poison here, but as we already know, poison is such a minor thing in this game that it's not really even worth talking about. Just tank it. And that's about it. It's just going take a couple of minutes, but there should really not be too much trouble with this.   And with that...  ...he runs off through a secret door. Well, you didn't think it was going to be this easy, did you? Well, let's get ourselves healed up and such and then we'll follow behind him.   There you are. Now hold still...  This doesn't look good...  The "door" closes behind us... Uh-oh.  And then it seems, somehow Kikugorou just fuses with the whole tree thing?  Oh, I guess the worm is us, huh?  He's gone totally mad (well, more than before anyway). This time we get the standard big boss music! Our strategy however remains mostly the same. The things which are different is that we definitely deal less damage (and he's become much harder to hit). Also, his damage to us has gotten up to low-40s HP per hit which is pretty nasty, so keeping on top of healing will be important. Coincidentally, the attack is called "bad breath" (well, he has no arms any more, right?). The other thing he can do is, emit sticky tree sap which has the same effect as "mud worm" spell, i.e. lowers your speed. And finally he can "lick his wound with his black tongue", which is still the same heal ability that was present in all fights with this guy and/or his friends. Unfortunately, there is no special animation for it. So in the end this is more of a battle of attrition than anything else. And finally...   Finally. That really took some doing. (Yes, Kabuki got knocked out there at the end, but I managed to finish it anyway.)  The next holy sword is ours for the taking! Make sure to free up space in your weapons inventory for it! As Manjimaru takes it, he hears the message of another ghost of the former Fire Braves from one thousand years ago!  You might recall that Manjimaru gains a new sword technique each time he finds a new holy sword. Such is the case this time, too. As already explained by Crow, this technique (Black Feather) allows you to deal 2-2.5 x normal damage in one hit, but you will after be incapacitated for 1-2 turns. So it's a thing where if you get lucky it's great, but not so much if you don't.  And finally, as always, Manjimaru does his sword swirl! There isn't anything more to be found in the castle, so we're free to use the return stone for a quick exit.  Outside, the Jugle Castle fades into nothingness...  ...and this part of the world is restored to its normal condition! Well then, let's stop here for now. Next time we'll deal with the orchid and see how a few of the people feel about it. And then, our next destination is Kyoto, the capital of Jipang! (Don't worry we WILL check on that mother and son who were turned into trees!) Also... uh, welcome back everyone! Hopefully the delay was not too annoying, but now we're back and hopefully no more unexpected incidents to the end! Take care and see you next time!
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Feb 17, 2023 00:03
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Tallgeese posted:I thought maybe it was the piano, which was played so badly it killed two women. And it's just played up to sound way worse than it is. Well the game doesn't really say it directly, only that he somehow makes the prisoners suffer--so you can choose how dark you want to go with it. And the schedule is just which prisoner he does it with on which day, so I don't think there's really a particular joke there.
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Feb 17, 2023 10:04
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 All right, so. Last time Manjimaru and Kabuki have braved an icy mountain and a tree castle, but in the end prevailed and obtained the second holy sword! It's time to go and deal with the second orchid, then! We have quite a LOT to cover today, so I suggest to get comfortable as it will take us a while !  Although the whole forest situation has withdrawn, we are still on an island without a boat (I guess we left it in Wakayama!), so we're going to have to use our giant robot to get over to the mainland.  But we don't need to go far, as the island is right next to the temple where the orchid is.  Let's not forget about the annoying teleportation plates on the ground. Ugh, I hate these. And there are of course still radom encounters here to make things more fun! Nevertheless, since this is a shrine, there are a few monks here to talk to before we deal with the orchid.   If you plan on going through here, let me tell you something. In this Ise head shrine, several barriers are set up to protect it from unscrupulous fellows. If you step on a barrier, you'll jump to another barrier, so just be careful about that.Well, I guess we figured it out on our own already.  Somehow, there is still here one enemy which we didn't previously encounter!  Just don't ask me to explain the name. But either way they pose no threat at this point--although they do have the ability to seal our magic, they'll be dead before they even get to cast it! Anyway, as I was saying, there are two more monks around here, but since their buildings are all identical, I'll just post here their comments.  Eventually, with some difficulty, we make our way to the orchid! This one with, officially, cyan coloured petals! And then...  ...Manjimaru deals with it, as expected.  And like before, it's finally gone. This means there is still five of them remaining all around Jipang. Did I mention that this game is huge?  Anyway, we can go and talk to the three monks again, now that the orchid is gone! So, nothing really too dramatic here. But I know what everyone wants me to do! We need to go and check on that mother and son who were turned into trees!  They are located here, in Akame village. Well, at least from the outside, it looks pretty good, so let's go in.  Yeah, things are looking back to normal here, and even our two friends are right there waiting for us! And the son: Well, all right, looks like they're going to be fine. This almost concludes our business related to the second orchid, but there's just one little thing... If we head back down south to Kii province...  ...and head a bit north from Kushimoto vilage on the coast...  ...after following a narrow valley between the mountains, we reach another Tengu's cabin! This one was not reachable before, because of the roots.  Let's see... Manjimaru obtained the "backwash" scroll! As it turns out, this "backwash" (引波) scroll has simply the same effect as the return stone item, i.e. it lets you teleport out of a dungeon. So the only point of it is really to save the inventory slot that the item would otherwise take--the spells inventory space is much more generously sized than the item inventory space! Anyway, this is about it for the second orchid situation--there is a bit additional dialogue to be found from some of the people after getting rid of the orchit, but it's mostly then thanking you and/or hinting where to go next. But truly, as far as a world traversal goes on a high level scale in this game, there's really only one place we CAN go to in the first place. So, as our "road trip" adventure continues, here is the map of our travels so far:  (Click on the map to embiggen.) As is visible from the map, our next major destination is none other than the capital of Jipang, Kyoto! In order to do that...  ...we'll go to the location of Iga, the village of ninjas, and head north from there!  Soon we reach one of those typical "border crossing" villages!  This one is called Yamashiro (山城), or in English, "Mountain Castle". Since we're now in a "gathering information" phase for the third orchid, we'll make a short stop here to see what everyone has to say! For example, there is a bunch of people visible here, so let's start! It's true, as the country's capital, Kyoto is a far bigger and a more varied place than what we've been used to for now, so much so that it's divided into different districts on the map! But we'll check that out in a moment, for now let's talk to the other people visible on this screenshot, such as the elderly lady standing by the house. Yeah, this is not true. We'll find monsters in Kyoto already today. I should also mention that many people here speak with a slight Kansai dialect in their word choices and phrasing, but being in and around Kyoto, that's only to be expected!  Let's move on and talk to this kid sitting by the pond! So, uh, we're going to have a bit of translation nightmare with this character (the foreigner, I mean). We'll be meeting him a bit later today with a proper cutscene so it will be more obvious what the problem is, but for now just take note of the fact that the text written in a different font (like above) indicates a character speaking in English!  Let's also head into this house and talk to a brother and sister: I'm sorry, you HOPE the spring comes soon? Doesn't it always come around the same time of the year? But, yes, this is indeed a game mechanic, although it mostly applies to Kyoto and not so much to the rest of the world. We'll see ove time how it works--for now, most of the goods in Kyoto will prove outside of our price range anyway! Let's talk to the brother now:  If we go to the shop next door, we can talk to another one of those travelling salesmen people: Yeah, if you're shopping in Kyoto, this is a good idea. In shops there, the prices can vary for up to double of the base price. For example, while recording the video of this part, I saw a weapon we paid around 4000 ryo for (our trusty spell sword) selling for around 8000 ryo! So you do need to be careful here, or at least consult a guide!  Another house with a bunch of people! Well, we'll see about that, but it does seems that there is something a bit different here.  And one last bit with this elderly person here...  And finally, this house here where there is a whole bunch of people! Yeah the situation here is clearly a bit precarious, but we'll see how it develops. For now though, we'll leave this place and head straight to Kyoto! As we leave the village, the game gives us again a glimpse of what's happening with the three sages!  To clarify: before we talked about biwa in the sense of a musical instrument, but there is also an actual lake in Japan with that name, located north of Kyoto. Also there is an interesting situation here... if there's no dark orchids in Kyoto, but also all roads out of it are blocked (except the one which we came through), then, uh, how will we leave this part of the world? Anyway, back to our travels...  ...as mentioned, we'll start by heading west. Of course...  ...there are more new enemies to be found here. These are still not too bad and die in two regular hits basically.   Cool bit here on the way, where you can see a cave that is not accessible because of Orchid roots! I guess we'll have to come back there later.  Anyway, more new enemies here! I mean it's certainly a party--it even has party hats and everything, so... This one is a little harder, though, and probably would be a bit of a problem if two or three appeared at the same time. Any by this I mean we would have to use our spell sword!   From this point, we'll head in the north direction.  And after a short while, we finally reach Kyoto. That place looks rather big actually, but let's head inside.  Now we can get a better look. It's actually divided into five "disticts": commercial (bottom left), residential (bottom right), temple (upper left), slums (upper right), and the imperial palace (top). Originally there was supposed to be also a red light/entertainment district (Gion), but that was cut from the game in early stages. So let's start with the commercial district.  That looks kinda nicer than the towns we've been seeing so far! Well, let's talk to this lady here.  If we approach this gentlement here... But just as he says that...  ...five guys spill out of that house! Let's see what happens!   And with that, they leave. However, a word of explanation... As it turns out, these are returning characters from the first game, where they were giving some trouble to Ziria, the main character of that game (who was mentioned in the cutscene)! Here is a screenshot from the first game, showing one of the brothers in that version:  All right, anyway, as mentioned, we'll probably meet up with them again somewhere down the line. So let's talk to the other gentleman there, standing by the bridge. Anyway...  ...we have more people to talk to around here, like these two here. (We're actually standing outside of a weapon/armour shop (武). And we'll check this out later, but I think we're too poor to afford anything really.  For now, we'll just talk to this guy here. This, actually, is not just talk. You can indeed trade in items like rice and wheat and to profit from changing prices. We'll check that out a bit later on, but for now, let me mention this. Based on inclusion of these kinds of interesting "real world"-like mechanics in a JRPG, you can probably tell that the person who later designed the game Linda³ had a big part in designing this one, too (Masuda Shoji). He just expanded on this kind of idea in the latter game.  Let's head across the bridge to the other side, then.  First, let's talk to these girls here... Actually they both have the same dialogue, so it doesn't matter which one you talk to. Manjimaru received the lottery ticket with number 33! Kabuki received the lottery ticket with number 34! Ok, sure, we'll have to make sure we come back for new year's day here to see what happens. I should explain the thing with their names. In Japanese, there are two numbering systems, the native Japanese system and the other system which is imported from Chinese. For all practical purposes in most cases the Japanese system only goes up to 10 and is used mostly for counting the number of things in some cases, where the Chinese system is used for pretty much everything else. So here the point is that in the Japanese system, the words for counting 3 and 4 "things" begin respectively with "mi" and "yo" (e.g. "mittsu" for "three things" and "yottsu" for "four things"). Based on this, you get 33 = mimi and 34=miyo. In the meantime, let's continue exploring! Let's just head into that house they're standing in front.  There are a few people here... And finally the last person, who is acually the merchant here. Hm, well, ok, let's have a look, why not?  Well, certainly most of it seems to be out of our price range, too. We do seem to have stumbled upon a sidequest of some kind, so let's get ourselves at least informed about what they are selling. So, here goes. 1. "Passionate Flower Bouquet" for 2000 ryo: not much to be said here, it's just a flower bouquet. 2. "Open Heart Necklace" for 7500 ryo: a joke on the Tiffany open heart necklace. 3. "Perfume No. 18" for 15,000 ryo: a joke on the Chanel No. 18 perfume. 4. The "Harness" scarf 30,000 ryo: of course, a joke on the Hermčs brand. It's even funnier in Japanese as it uses just the normal Japanese word for "harness" (馬具) which is not pronounced similar to "Hermčs", so you have to get it back to English to figure out the joke! 5. The "へく Brand Purse" for 60,000 ryo: The hiragana へく is "he-ku", but actually they're meant to be a parody of LV (Louis Vuitton) logo if you rotate them around. 6. A "Three-stranded Ring" for 120,000 ryo: This is a reference to Cartier "trinity rings". So I was talking a bit earlier about some similarities in writing style/game mechanics with the writer's other game, Linda³, but now it's even more obvious as this kind of stuff could easily have been in that game too without feeling out of place. Anyway, we'll deal with this sidequest in due time, but for now I will just mention that the whole thing is a bit more evil than it seems, since there is also a secret seventh item that you can't get here in the shop and... things get a bit complicated there. All right, that was a bit of a longer detour, so let's get back to exploring for now.  We'll head into this shrine next.  What on earth is he talking about? We'll find out in just a few moments for ourselves!  But first, a few more people standing in the streets, starting with this person directly in front of us! And then the two girls standing together there at the bottom in front of the shops! Hmmm, the skewer talk continues... Also the "seven lucky gems" is an actual item in the game. It's a consumable that can have one of seven random effects when you use it in battle. E.g. increase attack for 25% or increase defence, things like that. Of course there are a couple of negative effects that can happen, too. All right, let's go into the weapon shop there at the bottom right.  Other than the saleslady, there's another person here... Hm, yeah, I can definitely see that. I don't think gold is nearly hard enough to be useful for sword-making. But, talking to the saleslady:  Oh, wow, the prices! I mean, there are some good items here, but... oh, wow, the prices. Interestingly our spell sword is selling for double what we paid (8800 vs. 4400). Also, the golden sword is a cool 30,000 ryo, but actually it's quite a bit weaker from what we have right now (and we paid far less for it too)! So it truly is useless, despite the price! Anyway, we may come back here later since right now, we don't have the money!  Let's visit some more shops! Actually here people on the lower floor don't have anything interesting to say, but...  ...on the upper floor: Yes, we noticed the prices actually. And when they say "more expensive", they mean like double! So we'll follow this advice and hold off for now.  Now, this place here is interesting. First we'll talk to the guy by the door. Ah, maybe we've come to the right place to figure out the "mystery of the skewers"! Well, let's see what the shopkeeper has to say about it. We can ask him to explain! Let's see what you sell...  Ah. That's a whole lot of dumplings on a skewer you have there, boss. Anyway, it works exactly as he said. You buy some of these, and eat them. Randomly you will be left with a skewer of some colour, which you can then go and talk to the other person to exchange for a prize. So it's kind of like pachinko style that you have to go somewhere else to exchange your winnings for an actual prize, since gambling is, you know, not actually legal in Japan! From what I know the randomness here is not quite so random, so apparently if you put the skewer in Manjimaru's first item slot and eat it immediately after reloading the game then there is a good chance to get the top prize. To be honest, we're ok on the money so I haven't really bothered too much with it. Yeah, I know we can exploit this to buy some of those strong weapons they have here for a lot of money, but really I'm not going to do that because it trivialises a large portion of the game until the enemies catch up. It's more fun to just play it normally, and this game is indeed a lot of fun to play, despite some need for a bit QOL improvement in the user interface. So let's talk to the prize girl and see what goes on there. So here's how it goes with different colours: - Gold: you get an item which revives all fallen allies in battle with 50-100% health. Normally this item sells for 30,000 (although we haven't even come across one yet). - Silver: exchanges for the seven lucky gems item which I already talked about. - Red, Navy, Green, Black: exchanges for various healing consumables. - White: exchanges for another skewer with dumplings which you can eat and see what colour it is. - Bamboo: exchanges for the "shopkeeper's smile" ("niko-niko") So, it's something you can play around with if you want, but for now, we'll just continue exploring, since this is already taking quite a long time! I did try a few, but I didn't get anything more than a consumable.  As usual we'll stop by the inn and see what people are saying. Oh, that's interesting. I wonder how we will overcome our "transportation issues" in this part of the game. Ah. Probably this is the foreigner we've been hearing about. We'll get there soon.  And one more shop here before we head on. Ah, right, another thing. So there's several different kinds of elixirs that you can find in the game (again, we haven't come across them yet), but basically their effect are randomised in a particular playthrough, so you have to try them out to see what each one does. They typically have effects (positive or negative) on your stats, and such. All right, that's enough for the commercial district for now, so...  ...let's head into the slums, which are over on this side!  Well, that certainly looks a lot worse than the "shiny" part we've just been in. So, let's see what these two guys have to say.  And now, let's check in with the three people around the bonfire! Sure thing.  One more person over here.  And finally, two more people here. Let's check out a few houses here too...  Love the straw mats there... It's a bit hard to tell on the screenshot, but he's actually naked. Please don't eat your clothes.  I assume this must have happened before he got turned into stone? But this is actually the first hint we're getting about what we may have to do to get the third holy sword.   Thanks for the tutorial, game! But on another note... I've already mentioned, but for some reason, in this part of the game especially to me similarities in writting style (and in general) between this game and Linda³ are really obvious. I mean, this whole slum district is literally just an earlier version of Paraside from that game!  Well, let's check these two last people before we go under the bridge. Ok, let's head in then.  So there are three elders here, so let's first talk to them. So the first one: The second: Indeed, the people from Kyoto would know who "Julie from Kawaramachi" was. It's a nickname given to a homeless person frequently seen wandering around the Kawaramachi neighbourhood of Kyoto around the 1970s/1980s, and known for her unusual appearance. Her real name and date of birth are not known and she was found dead of hypothermia on the streets of Kyoto in February 1984. Also they are probably searching for the third holy sword, if I were to guess. Anyway, let's talk to the last elder: And finally, what we came here for, we get some pointers about where we might go next. All right, now, let's steel ourselves to meet the missionary guy (a.k.a. "the foreigner"). Here too we get a short cutscene, but I guess I should explain a bit before you watch it. To be brief, this person does not speak Japanese very well--so it's an unholy mixture of English and desperately mangled Japanese. It's all very funny, I guess more so if you know at least a little Japanese. Also, you'll have to accept my apology for not even attempting to localise this mess into anything and only giving you a plain English translation. When you watch the video you will completely understand why I gave up on that.  Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I think you can get now why I am not even making an attempt here. But here is one funny example from that word salad--we're going into another of those "linguistics notes", so feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not interested. Japanese doesn't generally distinguish gramatical singular/plural in speech, but it's possible in some cases to use a noun-suffix to indicate plural. It's not exactly a plural, but kind of looks like that sometimes. One of those suffixes is "-tachi" and Hoteimaru here has found a creative way to make a plural "you" by simply saying "you-tachi". Actually, you know what, just thinking about this, I was reminded of this funny screenshot from an actual fansub of Magiranger:  Other than being funny, this has nothing to do with anything, so, uh, let me focus for a moment and we'll continue on. Actually, before that, since I've been mentioning Linda³, I should tell you that these games share not only some of the staff, but also voice actors, so this guy is voiced by Dr. Emory's actor and the five brothers from the previous cutscene are voiced by Ken's actor. Also, one of the three ninja ladies we've seen before was voiced by Linda's actress! Finally, Hoteimaru is, perhaps unexpectedly, also a returning character from the first Tengai Makyou game. So, here he is from back then:  Anyway, let's keep moving. Our next stop is...  ...the residential district, over here. But this episode is very very long, so it had to be split into two parts! So please continue reading in the next part.
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Mar 5, 2023 00:58
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 Let's continue where we left off, in the residential district!  Let's see what these people have to say!  And then, this older gentleman here. Another sidequest? No, actually, this one is an important part of the main plot (even if it does not seem so at the moment). But... we'll find out more about this in due course (and not in a too distant future either). Also, I should mention that here the name Ayako is spelled in an unusual way as 綾姫 using the character meaning "princess" (姫) instead of the more usual 子 in the second position.  Our next victims are the two people here. This is definitely a sidequest. After almost nothing for a long while, there is suddenly quite a lot going on on that front for some reason here in Kyoto. Well, let's check out a few houses, why not?   And also his children...  And now, let's go into this nice house!  What's going on here? Let's talk first to the two people who are standing... And finally let's talk to the guy lying on the floor, presumably the lord and Ayako's father. So, it's the continuation of that Ayako storyline. We'll see where that goes, but for now let me say that Mt. Ooe is a mountain in Kyoto region and is known in folklore for the Shuten-doji demons who supposedly live on it. Here is an illustration of such a demon. -p000-frontispiece-oeyama.jpg) By Creator: Settai Komura 1887-1940; Settai Komura (illustr.) (1927) "Momotarō" in Iwaya, Sazanami, ed. (in Japanese) Nihon otogibanashishū, ARS, pp. 315, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89408083 (It's the thing whose head is poking from the top.) Also the Japanese text at the bottom says Mt. Ooe, but since this illustration is from 1927, i.e. pre-writing reform, the characters have to be read from right to left instead of left to right.  Over here is another nice house, and another guy to talk to. Hm, ok, let's go inside.  Well, this is an interesting situation here. First we have three people to talk to. Ah, this thing. As mentioned, we are kind of skint now for the prices of those items that you can give to her. She's over there behind the screen in that room with the three chests. We can try talking to her...  And we're prompted to choose an item from our inventory. As mentioned, we don't have anything suitable, so this sidequest will have to wait a bit. If we cancel out of the inventory choice, she simply tells us to "come back again". So let's move on for now to one last house for now.  Hahaha, this one is good! There is actually a bit more to do here in the residential district (another sidequest), but fow now...  ...let's visit the shrine district, the last of the four!  Well, let's start with the people we can see here on the screen. Incidentally, "Eiheiji" (永平寺) means "temple of eternal peace".  Let's talk also to this gentleman here. Hmm, ok. Maybe let's visit that temple behind him.  First, let's talk to the two monks. And then there is a kid and his mother.  Let's now go into this one.  I'm sure we'll find out soon. But in the meantime, here is a photograph of the Eiheiji temple in Fukui. It dates from the 13th century.  Looks quite nice. Incidentally, Eiheiji (永平寺) means "temple of eternal peace".  The buildings here look really nice!  New Year's Calligraphy, "kakizome" (書き初め) is certainly a long existing tradition in Japan and usually it's done on the 2nd of January.  Let's have a look at these too. First there is a person here in front (a bit hard to see, I'll give you that). Well, I don't know about that, but we'll see.    All right, two more people and two more buildings! Or, buy a single sword. By the way, that sign board there between the buildings is an announcement for the lottery: From a singe lottery ticket, a dream spreads! 10,000 ryo can be yours! (The number of tickets is limited, so if you want to win, please come and buy the tickets at our shrine as soon as possible! The winner will be announced on New Year's day!)   That's ok, we did manage to get two lottery tickets, so...  And the last few people standing over here... The old lady: And then the two guys: Oh my god.  I love this. All right, that about covers all the Kyoto districts for now. We should definitely go into the palace and see what's going on there, but how about we make first a short excursion into the countryside? I think it would be good to leave the town for a bit? We'll be heading to Mt. Hiei, a popular spot northeast of Kyoto.  So let's head east.  It's actually only a few steps away.    There's not much here, but let's first have a look at these two houses.  The first one is an inn. Hmm.  Hmm, this clearly has something to do with the Ayako story, then.  Well, let's have a look at the temple itself.  Interestingly, a very blatant hint by the game here. Oh well, I guess nothing to do here at present. In that case...  Let's check out the palace as the last unexplored part of Kyoto for now.   There is a specific thing we actually want to do here, in fact. Also, because of the Root Clan situation with the Taikun, there are definitely random encounters here, and some pretty tough ones too for some reason!  Actually, we'll head over to the left first.  And, oops. Nicely, one of these is able to lower our defence so that's pretty cool. With that, they can quite casually hit us for like 50 HP damage, as opposed to normal 35-40. Needless to say, our trusty spell sword remains still the only real way past this and even so it takes two hits for each enemy. Although this palace is not big, due to strong enemies and a high encounter rate, there is a necessity to heal pretty much after every battle, therefore overall progress will be relatively slow.   That chest there only has a fast travel consumable, so not worth worrying about too much.  I honestly don't even know with the design and enemy names in this game any more... Luckily this enemy is pretty weak and dies in two regular hits, usually before it can even land an attack in the first place.   Over here are two people who appear to be locked up behind bars for some reason. Well, all right. Let's go looking for her then.  Over here is a chest containing a golden sword. You know the one that costs a lot of money in town. We'll definitely be selling it as soon as we get out this place because it's way too weak for us at this point!  Let's go upstairs. There is only two floors anyway.  Oh, hey, there's a woman here. The princess, perhaps? Let's see what she has to say. All right, let's go and find the bedroom.  So we go back down again and past this chest from last time...  Only to reach the second staircase back up.  All right this looks to me like a "flower bed next to the bedroom".  As we head back...  This is a pretty nasty combination right here! Lots of "drums" here, but what's important is that all three of these hit like trucks, so, uh, hope you survive.    We missed this chest previously when we walked past here.  Huh, that's a weird item. But it has to do with the mercantile exchange, which we'll check out next time.  Anyway, the store room is here next to the bedroom, but you have to go down and back up a different staircase to reach it.  There are two chests here. In the first... Manjimaru found a certificate of ownership of ten bags of soya beans! You know what this is for. And in the other... Manjimaru found Mountain Area Entry Permit! ...is the thing we actually came here for.  And with that, let's stop for today! There was certainly a lot happening, with the game seemingly starting to "open up" a bit. The storytelling here is nothing if not leisurely, that's for sure. I was talking a lot about Linda³ today, but in this part of the game you can even see also a proto-season change mechanic--although it only really impacts Kyoto and is not some kind of global thing, but still. To me, this is kind of the first part of Tengai Makyou II where it becomes sort of really obvious that the same person was heavily involved in designing both games, that's for sure. Anyway, take care and see you soon!
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Mar 5, 2023 00:59
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SITB posted:I'd wager a new party member will join Manjimaru's group this chapter, or by the end of it. Commander Keene posted:Come to think of it, we haven't seen those ninja girls in a while, I figured they were going to join the party. Or at least one of them was. Oh, hey, new page!
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Mar 6, 2023 15:02
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 Welcome back! Last time Manjimaru and Kabuki finished off the business with the second orchid. After that we spent a lot of time exploring Jipang's capital city, Kyoto where a few main and sidequests made themselves known. After that we obtained the permit to enter Mt. Haku, where apparently the Root Clan has been looking for something. On a completely unrelated note, it's time for us to obtain our next means of transportation--this game sure has a lot of those!  Here we are in Kyoto, in front of the inn (宿), where we've just had a bit of a rest after fighting those relatively tough enemies in the palace. Spoiler alert, the tough enemies will not stop today either, and anyway it's manageable, you just can't win by mindlessly mashing the attack option from the menu. Today, we'll go and explore a bit outside the city walls. But before that...  ...we'll make a quick visit to this consumables shop here.  We have a small fetch quest coming up shortly, so to save us some time, I'll already buy the item we need for it: the hundred year old ginseng. Luckily, we have enough money already as it costs a whole 10,000 ryo as you can see.  We'll head east through this narrow valley between the mountains.  And as we walk, we get also our next new enemy, "Hell Dance". As you will see below, the dance is more precisely "kagura", a traditional Shinto music/dance style.  Their strength is about typical for this part of the world, so we'll still keep using our spell sword. To be clear, the strength of the spell that the sword casts is not really dependent on our own stats, so we'll certainly outgrow it soon(ish). But for this point in the game, it works well enough for a little while--it's kind of like when you find the Drake Sword in Dark Souls: it's much better than anything else you have at that point, but it doesn't scale with anything, so after a short while of using it, it simply can't keep up any more. Of course the game then chooses to give you the lightning spear soon after the drake sword stops being viable which is again a lot better than anything else you have at that point. Well, I mean you have to go a bit out of your way and fight a mimic in a small room to get the spear, but still. Sorry, which game were we talking about again? Oh, right, Tengai Makyou II. Sorry, got distracted there for a moment.  Anyway, while I was talking, Manjimaru and Kabuki have headed north along this river.  There's a small village here, called Shigaraki.  Here is the other side of the "100 year old ginseng" subquest. Well, it's barely even a subquest, more like a small fetch quest really. But first, let's as usual have a chat with everyone. First let's start with the five people you can see on this screen. Ah, so that's what those are. Now let's also check out a couple of houses here.   A few people here in the hotel also... Fujiwara pass is just another route to get over to this part of Jipang Interesting. We'll go and check out that situation shortly.  Here is the mayor's house and true enough, someone is blocking the way in.  So, uh, there is a person (?) in bed over there, so let's first check with the other two! Well, that explains the comment we got a short while ago about our hair. You know, I was wondering... what would it be like if had an actual dog in our party? Just wondering, apropos of nothing, because obviously this will never happen. All right, let's talk to the mayor in his tanuki form! That's true, if you go back the previous episode you can see them in the screenshots everywhere on the streets! Manjimaru received 10,000 ryo! So as you can see, this fetch quest is even easier than it seemed since you don't even have to spend your own money! Of course, since ginseng costs exactly 10,000 ryo, there isn't going to actually be any change we can kep, but oh well. You actually have a pretty long time frame in which you have to do this, so it's even possible to use this as a "short term loan" if you really need an extra 10,000 ryo right now for some reason! Anyway, we already have the ginseng, so we'll just talk to him again immediately and his form changes immediately... to that of a young woman:  This time he changes into his natural form of an old man:  Manjimaru obtained the "lingering fire" scroll! So, all this was finally to get another spell! The "lingering fire" (残火) spell. This spell is interesting, because it creates like a "carpet of fire" which deals fire damage to all enemies for a few turns. So, since I've been talking a lot about Linda³, you might remember that this exact spell was present there too and it was even called "fire carpet" there. Anyway, we'll try it out at some point, but for now were finally done here. As we exit, the guard at the door has one last thing to say.  Exiting from the village, we'll continue on our way north.  We get to another border crossing location, this one is Ousaka pass (逢坂).  There's only a couple of people here.  One person in the shop here we can talk to... Bijodaira (美女平) is, like pretty much everything in this game, a real place in Japan and I guess the joke here comes from the fact that "bijodaira" in Japanese means "beautiful woman plateau". Also they've really been throwing quite a lot of place names at us lately, many of them still to be visited in the future. Don't worry about remembering any of that, I will remind you when needed.  With this, let's continue our journey.  As always, enemies lurk. Of course with this many enemies at once, fighting them one by one is not viable due to the amount of damage you will take. So, spell sword it is, once again. At least these are not too bad, even though they can cast a fire spell on us.  Continuing on...  ...over to the east, we can see the Lake Biwa, not looking too great. For now, let's pop into that village there.  It's the village of Ootsu which has been mentioned a couple of times recently. This seems like a good place to gather some information about the Lake Biwa situation, so let's get to it. As usual we'll start with the people visible on the screen.  Blood Pond Hell, or Chinoike Jigoku (血の池地獄) is, somehow, somehow, an actual place in Japan. It's a hot spring which due to minerals present in the area is red in colour. Check it out:  Pretty crazy.  And the kid... Let's also check out a few houses here.  We'll be checking that out as soon as we obtain a boat!  A couple of people in the inn...  "Saikyo" written as 西京 could be interpreted to mean "west of capital". Also, as another weird similarity with Linda³, you might recall that one whole part of the game world there was called "The West Area" even though it was actually in the north geographically. So perhaps this is just a running joke that the writer of both of these games likes to include? Before leaving...  ...let's also stop by the weapons shop.  We'll take the opportunity to buy "Messenger's Straw Sandals" for Manjimaru.  They increase his speed by 5 points, so not too bad. With this, we can head out and continue on our journey.  We'll start by heading east...  ...and then take a left turn towards the north.  Of course, as always, there are enemies on the road. Compared to some monsters we can encounter in these parts, this one is not too bad.  But let's continue into that cave you could see on the previous screenshot, because that's none other than Mt. Haku.  As expected, there are two losers blocking the entrance. They're extremely dumb. But no matter, in we go!  At first, we snake around across these bridges, over what certainly looks like it could be a canal of sorts if the bridges were to open--which they look like they are able to do.  Sure game, do your thing. Apart from these, which are not particularly threatening, there are again some pretty tough enemies here.  Eventually we get to a staircase leading up.  But getting up takes some effort! The new enemy, Ghost Light (Shiranui) is kind of middle ground, still not overly hard.   Anyway, upstairs there's a whole bunch of chests. Some are empty (as expected), some, like this one, just contain enemies and the rest have some actual items. So let's see what we can find.  But before that, one more new enemy... Flame Warrior. And this one is a real pain--high defence coupled with significantly higher HP than other enemies in this area equals trouble. Our spell sword takes a whole four casts to get rid of him, which is not ideal. So this particular formation of enemies can definitely be a slight problem. Incidentally, in the PS2/GameCube remake version, the game difficulty was nerfed somewhat by having enemies do less damage while at the same time give more EXP so you level up faster.  Also, that thing on his forehead is the kanji for "fire": 火. Then we can get to the next chest.  So I've already talked a bit about these. There is a few different kinds of these "elixirs", but which one has which of the possible effects is assigned randomly when you start the game (I mean by this, when you first pick a save slot to use). So for the duration of one playthrough the effects will not be the same as in another playthrough and the only way to know is to try it out. Luckily, this is not a From Software game so you CAN simply save the game and try and then reload withou any penalty.  Still more stuff. But some good stuff here. Manjimaru found "Magoroku of Seki"  As it turns out this is a weapon, which will give Manjimaru plus 4 in attack power. We'll still keep the spell sword for now for casting though. As for the name, it's a reference to a famous school of sword craftsmen that operated in Seki, Gifu prefecture around 12-13th century. Today it's mostly a brand of kitchen knives. The other chest is, of course, empty.  After passing a few more chests with just consumables (or empty), we are back to the staircase we used to get here.  Back downstairs, there is another staircase leading to the other half of upstairs.  Chest-wise, the situation is similar on this side too. Both of these are empty, however.  One is empty, one contains enemies and one contains a return stone. Decidedly not a great deal if you ask me.  This chest is tucked away a bit, huh?  Haori is an overcoat worn on top of a kimono:  In our case, though...  ...it means +3 defence for Manjimaru compared to the turtle-shell armor he had previously. In addition to that, it has the effect of halving all the lightning element damage. But in all honesty there haven't really been any enemies with lightning attacks recently. However, we'll remember it for the future if it becomes necessary.  Interesting. Wonder what these are.  But at the end is another staircase up.  And finally a way to get down into that canal.  Let's see...  But of course. Let's hitch a ride!  Nice.  The canal is now filled with water so our ship can float out of its resting place.  Be aware though that all the bridges are now permanently up. So, uh, if you missed to pick up any items here... well, you missed them forever, since without the bridges you can no longer traverse this place to reach the chests. However, if you recall, the cave entrance was on land, so, I wonder how we'll be able to get to the lake with the ship?  All right, well, I guess that works. So now we can traverse the lake without issues. Maybe. (?)  Certainly there are enemies on the lake. This one is pretty manageable and anyway, we'll go and stop at the village to rest at the inn just after we finish the fight.  Anyway, sailing north...  ...we reach indeed, as we have been told, a strange structure, accessible via a pier. Let's investigate.  We can walk on the pier to get to it.  What could this possibly be?  Very odd. Can't help but notice the flame things in the back of the pool though. The strange light speaks to us.  So, it's an end game thing, looks like. Well, as she said, let's try and remember to come back here when the time is right. For now, though...  ...let's head over to that beach right in front of us.  A few steps to the west is another small cave.  This is the "West of Capital" cave, that we've heard about. Obviously it's pretty clearly actually north of it.  This guy has a bit of agility so the attacks miss a bit more than usual, but is not otherwise problematic.   On the west side is a chest. It is empty.  Over here is a bit of a weird staircase down.  I guess I accidentally went into a dead end, but I can see some chests on the other side. Let's try and get to them.  To be honest I'm not even sure exactly what's going on with the enemy designs at this point, but I like it, whatever it is. The new enemy here actually is not super bad--it has strong defence but doesn't hit so hard. On the other hand, it has an attack which ignores your defence stat, so be a little careful with them anyway.  And so we finally reach that area with the chests...  This is an interesting situation. First, the chests. One of them contains "The Elixir of Blood", the second type of elixir. A second chest contains a scroll with a new spell. This time it's the "kongo" spell (金剛). Kongo, or "vajra" is a legendary weapon combining the properties of diamond (as in being indestructible) and thunderbolt, and the weapon of king Indra. It's both a Hinduist and a Buddhist symbol, but despite this "grand" description, all this spell does in our case is increase one ally's defence for a few turns. To be fair, the increase is acually by a whole 50%. So that's actually pretty useful, especially when it only costs 5 MP to use! But this got me thinking again. Like if you were doing the localisation of this game, what in the world would you do about the spell names? In Japanese, they are all exactly two kanji so the meaning is half-compressed/half-implied (many of them depend on pre-existing "cultural" knowledge of a potential Japanese player of this game), but I'm not sure how well that sort of thing would work in English. If you were localising this game back at the time of release, i.e. you had to fit whatever names you came up with into a space for a VERY limited number of letters, what would you do? I have no idea, honestly. In a completely unsurprising twist, the remaining four chests are all empty. It is however, possible to check out the three gravestones. They belong to Crow and Benimaru, two Fire Braves from one thousand years ago, and the third one is of a person named Torii Dousaburou, presumably another one of the braves from a millennium ago. If so, then we'll probably meet his ghost (the name Dousaburou is unambiguously male) when we obtain one of the remaining holy swords. Also, what about the other four braves? Well, perhaps we'll find their resting place at some other point during our journey. For the moment, let's head back upstairs.  In the northeastern corner of the cave, we find this situation. The normal chest contains just an healing consumable, but we also have here a red chest. A couple of episodes ago (it was back in Ihika village), we have been warned to not under any circumstances open a red chest. So, for the time being, we are actually going to follow that advice. In any case we are at present not equipped to deal with what's inside, so it would be kind of useless to even try opening it. But, let's make a note of it a come back here later. I will, however, make a note that there is a total of four of these red chests in the game. That's all there is to be found in this cave (I did say it was small), so we can now head back out.  Let's head back to our boat.  This time, we'll go northeast, towards that river mouth.  Our boat is a bit too big to fit under these bridges, so we'll have to park here for now and walk the rest of the way.  Luckily, we don't have to go far, because right here is the city of Kanazawa which we were (sort of) looking to reach. But as we enter the city, we get another glimpse at what's going on in the villains' lair with the three sages and the evil ball of light called Yomi!   And she does. No pink swirls this time, though. I guess that was only Kikugorou's thing. Also, by "clam", I mean literally the kind that lives in the sea. After this...  ...we return to our regularly scheduled programme, just as Kabuki and Manjimaru enter the city of Kanazawa. Yeah, probably not.  Let's see, there are "about" five people "or so" on this screen. And also the kid. As usual, "uncle", "aunt" is simply a polite way for kids to refer to adults to whom they are not necessarily related. So let's check out the houses also. First the house which was just mentioned.   Somehow, I'm not sure this is right. There's probably more to it. Especially since we know that all seven orchids were defeated 1000 years ago.   Let's not forget about this gentleman here. Yes, one of the sages did say something about the illusions...  One person over in the inn... Of course there are mermaids in this game. Because why not? It certainly seems to contain most everything else already. Obviously, we'll be going to check out the show, but not just yet. That's mostly all the people in town that have anything to say, so...  ...now let's try enter the castle and see what is going on in there. First of all, there's this guy blocking the entrance. Right, so before you can enter the castle you have to leave all items, spells, weapons and equipment at the "left luggage" facility. The game is actually being somewhat clever here about something that's about to happen, but either way, I have already gone and dropped off all our items, so we can proceed in.  And with this, he moves aside and we can go in!  By the way, did you notice that most characters actually have two different sprites, a smaller one for the map and towns (like on the previous screenshots) and a larger one for dungeons and castles (like on this one)? Anyway, let's talk to this guy and try to find out what is going on here. I know you can see that chest there in the corner. It contains another certificate of ownership of a lump of salt.  In the meantime, the only way to go here is up.   Let's head across to the other side of the castle.  Interesting room, but there's nothing here. As you can see there, we can go up or down. So let's head down first.  Down here is a person and a chest. No new information here. I guess they do this in case you miss some people that you can still get the info. As for the chest, it only has a healing consumable. So let's head back...  ...and then upstairs.  I guess that's the lord. And then...  ...an arrow carrying a letter flies in through the window and hits him literally in the hair!  (He also gains a portrait now.) Well, not like we have a choice. However, before we can be on our way, Kabuki decides to say something...   And he takes off...  ...only to return immediately!  Your answer doesn't make a difference here.  And he takes off again... Kabuki Danjurou has left the party. Sigh. I was hoping we'd finally gain another party member, but no. We actually lose even the one we have due to his own vanity. Ugh. Also this is why the game forces you to leave all items in storage before coming in here. It prevents the situation like in older Final Fantasy game where a character leaving the party also takes all their equipment with them, except here it would have been much worse as also all items and spells are divided among characters, in addition to just equipment! So in this way you're prevented from losing access to any of that when Kabuki leaves. But he is gone, at least for a while, so we'll have to continue this journey alone for now. We can talk again to the lord...  Well, ok I guess, if that's the case... but still. Either way, nothing to do here but head back out. On the way out, however...  ...our three ninja ladies appear again!   And just as they have arrived, they leave.  And so, there we are. We lost a party member, but our journey must proceed on our own for the foreseable future, but hopefully not too long. Maybe Kabuki will see the error of his ways (yeah this is not happening), or maybe we'll meet someone entirely new. Either way we'll continue next time. Take care and stay safe.  Although I don't have quite such a treasure trove like with Linda³, there are still a few fun illustrations/sketches related to this game. Most of them are still in a spoilery stage since they show characters we haven't yet met, but here and there I will post a couple. Such as this "artist's vision" of the apocaliptic rooftop fight between Kabuki and Kikugorou!  KABUKI VS. KIKUGOROU: THE DECISIVE BATTLE AT THE WAKAYAMA CASTLE TOWER "I'll show you right now that I am the most handsome man in Jipang": The most ridiculous battle in the world has begun--who has the best morphing skills, Kabuki or Kikugorou?
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Mar 18, 2023 22:21
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LJN92 posted:Is this game going to be a revolving door of temp companions? Or will we get a proper party at some point? There are actually no temp companions at all as such in this game--Kabuki is a proper party member who just leaves the party now for a while but will be back. As for the the other question, yes, as a matter of fact pretty much as of this chapter, we're actively working on finally gathering our whole party together. I know the game has been taking its sweet bloody time with it, but in the end it's just a REALLY long game and I guess it has time to spare. But as I said, we're finally truly on the way to completing our party (of four people in total) during this chapter and the next.(There are no actual chapters in game or anything like that, but it's convenient to consider each orchid part as one chapter I guess). Hope this clarifies things a bit.
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Mar 18, 2023 23:23
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Randalor posted:Do we at least get a time where all the vehicles we've used Voltron together into a Super Sentai robot? Including the scribbleboat? Blaze Dragon posted:It seems more like a revolving door of transport vehicles to me.
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Mar 20, 2023 23:06
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Raitzeno posted:..... Alright. Okay. That sure is an idea. I'm DMing a game on Thursdays and I think you just gave me the dungeon I needed for the Enhancement sphere of magic (which is where Animate Object-type spells are in this system). It's gonna be a graveyard of obsoleted vehicles from various RPGs, all animated by their loneliness and grudges into, effectively, massive golems. Like if Transformers were powered by outrage instead of energon, and if you lose you get strapped into the pilot seat forever like a ghost pirate captain. That sounds absolutely amazing! Please tell us how it went after the game!
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Mar 23, 2023 09:32
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