Lepant: You've revealed to me something I always assumed through my extensive playthroughs. I don't know who I am now that I know Lepant isn't ridiculously muscle clad.
Bath: Revealed to me Gremio and Luc's appropriate genders after much 13 year old speculation on my first playthrough.
Suikoden revelations make for a good day.
Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one who thought that at first. And yes, Gremio and Luc are fairly androgynous, but I'm pretty sure the game uses male pronouns for them from time to time.
Glad to see another installment come along! I finally started playing through this myself and I've been loving it so far. You learn to appreciate healing magic once later enemies come along and start pummeling everyone at once.
I didn't realize at first, but this is one of those few games you can play one-handed (L2 = accept, L1 = cancel, Select = menu). Nice touch.
Yeah, too few PS and PS2 RPGs used that even though it would be really easy to implement for most games. I know there were other but I can't think of any of them specifically. Heh, I remember some company released this RPG controller for the PS1 that was designed for use with one hand. I thought about getting it but never really had any specific need. That was before the dual shock though so it was obsolete pretty quick.
Oh man, I'm playing through Suikoden 3 and shit just got interesting (at the beginning of chapter 4). I got work at 6:30 in the morning. :S
...fuck sleep? I might.
Yeah, fuck sleep! If I remembered the specific convenience type store where you worked I'd say you could do your job there whether asleep or awake anyway! But at least you have a job...
But yeah, go unite the elements and defeat the Fire Lord! Wait...no, that's Avatar. Go do fire things, you know what I mean.
At his point I went back to the castle in order to switch around my party so I could grind with Kai. However, since I had all these new characters I thought I’d show off some of the new Unite attacks I could pull off.
In Lepant and Eileen’s Couple attack, Eileen lights her husband on fire, whereupon he charges at a single enemy and slashes at them. While on fire. Hardcore. This does 2x combined damage.
In Varkas and Sydonia’s Bandit attack, Varkas rushes up and throws one enemy into the air, backwards, where Sydonia jumps up and smacks them down. I think this does about 2x combined damage.
In Juppo and Meg’s Trick attack, they summon a bunch of…bob-ombs, which run into all enemies and deal about 1.5 damage.
In Valeria, Cleo, and Eileen’s Beauty attack, they all jump up and then send a bunch of pink hearts at the enemies, which damage all enemies for what is supposed to be 3x damage but it did crap damage when I tried it. I dunno.
And in case you were wondering why I wanted Kai for grinding, he and Tir have the Master pupil attack, where they each teleport and hit hit one enemy each, then teleport again until they’ve hit all enemies for 2x damage. Since Tir is one of the participants, this makes any random battles much easier if Kai is in your party and you use this. Not very good for boss battles though. Kai is decent enough in his own right but nothing special.
Not that that’s taken care of, we can finally head back to the Dwarf village.
But first, I did a little gambling. I played a games until I lost, but I go up to 45,000 bits before I did. Not bad.
Firstly I sharpened a few weapons with the money I made. Note how much a weapon’s attack power increases when it gains a new name, in this case, when Gremio’s axe levels up into a Copper Axe. Which makes me wonder what his axe was made of before, because copper is a really soft metal.
Actually, grinding anywhere but the next area is a waste, so I’ll just go ahead and move the plot along to get there.
Valeria asks if the dwarf chief knows about the Burning Mirror, and he says of course he does, it’s one of their treasures. She explains that Kwanda has stolen the plans and is going to use it to burn up all the elves.
Right on.
But, he doesn’t believe that any human could have stolen the blueprints from their vault, because humans are so sluggish. You know, as compared to dwarves which so renown for being fast and stealthy. So he dares us to go into the vault and steal the Running Water Root, which is just a macguffin, really. So we go there.
We couldn’t get in before because that dwarf wouldn’t let us in.
Let me say right now that I was planning on just grinding here, but I went a little too far in and the first actual room prevented me from going back out. So I just finished the stupid thing.
In this room we have a puzzle where you need to press the switches to lower the orbs so you can pass. Depending on the order you press them in you can get the chest in here and be able to get to the exit. We just press them in order from left to right and we’re able to get the chest, which contained a Sunbeam crystal which regenerates 15 hp a turn. Sort of useful for somebody maybe. Or for selling.
There are also robots here. Not very hard in any case, but using Tir’s Unite attack they’re a piece of cake. And they give good exp.
The next floor has a maze, but…it’s really small and easy to navigate. Chests in here include a Medicine, Magic robe, and Blue ribbon.
This is one of those rooms that has platforms that take you to somewhere with more platforms to choose from, then take another moving platform and so on. However, here there are only like 8 moving platforms overall, so it’s no trouble to get the chest with the Thunder rune piece and then leave.
After that, it’s more robots, another maze not worth showing with a Skill rune piece, Pointer hat, and Medicine.
Doin’ what now?
I don’t know why there’s gibberish, but you need to hit those two switches in this order: left, right, right, left, left, left, right, right.
Further on are chests with a Mega Medicine, 5000 bits, and an Escape talisman.
One last chest contains a Defense rune piece. Then the…other last chest contains the Running Water Root.
After grinding a little more for some spare cash, we head back to see what the Dwarf has to say now about us slovenly humans!
It would be more impressive if it wasn’t so ridiculously easy. Oh yeah, and we slaughtered your mutant and killed a bunch of other dwarves who I guess lived in there or were guards? Either way, they’re dead.
So through this act of thievery, the Dwarf chief offers to build the Firewind Cannon which can blow up the Burning Mirror. Hopefully with that we can return to the Elf village and convince the chief to not throw us into jail again.
Oh yeah, and the armor shop has Half helmets and Half armor, which nobody in the party can equip right now. Before leaving we make sure to pick up a couple Half helmets and sharpen everyone’s weapons to level 9.
Doop-dee-doopty—doo, just walking back down the Dwarf Trail to get to the Elf Village. Dum-dee-pumpery-bee. Oh hey, that’s a pretty orange glowing sunset.
The Elf Village, but what does that have to do with…ohhhhhhhhhh, I get it now.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA those assholes all got burned to death.
I guess so! Well, now all we can do is head back to castle and get more army peoples I guess.
So Kirkis is now understandable distraught over his entire people being genocided.
The little shining thing he’s holding in his hand is the engagement ring he was going to give to Pennsylvania. He tosses it to the ground because now there’s no use for it because there’s nothing left. But Gremio picks up the ring and mumbles something vague about hope and gives it back to Kirkis. Now the only thing to do is to defeat Kwanda Rosman’s army so we can steal all his men and land and such. I mean, avenge the elves. Yeah, that’s why we’re going to attack his castle…
But let’s go back once more so we can look at the burnt husk of the formers elves’ home.
She, now she has her priorities straight.
She is a mapmaker who gives you the Suiko Map, a map of the overworld.
The map shows up in the lower right corner and shows the general terrain and shows town and such as flashing dots. Pretty useful.
But now we have to walk through the Kobold Village to get back to the castle.
Would you like to go out for a drink? Oh I see, you don’t date…ugly people. No, I…I understand.
The soldiers surround the party but Valeria offers to turn herself in if the soldiers leave the rest of the group alone. The head soldier I guess swears to go he won’t hurt them. Of course, traitors are put to death so Valeria will be, well, put to death. She turns herself over, but it turns out the head soldiers is a jerk and says to kill us anyway.
He took a vacation a few years back and we haven’t heard from him since.
This leads to a fight where Kuromimi joins your party and is automatically rendered useless because the game puts him in the back row and he only has a short range attack. You know what? Let’s not even bother with this fight.
Since we’re at a high enough level we can just use the auto run command and just end the battle. Interestingly enough the following dialogue is more appropriate if this happens because the characters talk about how they’re losing and if this is it.
Fortunately, crisis is averted when some Liberation Army fellows show up and we all have tea and crumpets.
Mathiu arrives with a few army members who look suspiciously like bandits, plus Humphrey in tow. He is asked how he knew to come, and he says he warned about the Burning Mirror by somebody.
Miraculously, Pennsylvania was saved from the burning death by Stallion, who can run really fast. Don’t worry, every other elf is still dead who was in the village.
Nah, we got plenty of other crazy drugs back at the castle.
Gremio mentions the ring to Kirkis, but Kirkis doesn’t exactly elaborate on it for Pennsylvania.
Sudden ending!
Next Episode: Battles, battles everywhere.
I haven't actually played this game in like a week.
And by that of course I mean i got him last week. But not until after beating Kwanda, I'm pretty sure you can't recruit him until then. It's not like you could use him in Pannu Yakuta anyway.
On a related note, has anyone read the Housemate Horror stories about the girl that fully believed she was the reincarnation of a Suikoden character? And how she started to try taking over the house - after passing their fairly thorough screening - with others that shared her soulbonding delusion? I could post a link if people want to read 'em, and more are being transcribed in the meantime.
KlykaDO you have anySPARE BATTERIES?Registered Userregular
edited August 2008
That is unbelievable and I can't wait for more stories.
It's especially funny because I really LOVE the Suikoden series,they are my favorite rpgs, but these people are so completely out there, I actually feel dirty for liking the game they worship!
Oh and if I was a soulbonder I would be this guy right here:
oh man,reading/writing this....I need to get "lost in my world" again hahahaha
Well, I think that it's more a case of 'people that think they're computergame/anime characters in soul' than 'people that think they're Suikoden characters in soul', but yeah.
Also, it's more about her batshit insane behavior and inability to function in normal society (without medication) that amuses me. Seriously, if someone can keep a house tidy, hold down a steady job, be pleasant and interesting company on occasion, and take care of their personal hygiene? I don't much care what they do in their spare time or what they believe.
No, no, it's fine, and wonderfully fucked up. I haven't actually read anything in it yet, but from what it sounds like I think it should make for some fun reading.
No, no, it's fine, and wonderfully fucked up. I haven't actually read anything in it yet, but from what it sounds like I think it should make for some fun reading.
I was secretly hoping that you'd come back and post 'Guys, guys, this is all about me it isn't funny stop laughing ' or something. >_>
Last time we saw the destruction of the elven people, except that only 99% of them were actually killed, there were a few convenient survivors.
Mathiu lets us know that we now have Enough troops to take on Kwanda Rosman’s army. So let’s go do that.
This is the first major in Suikoden. These work in a kind of rock-paper-scissors format. There are three attack options to choose from; Charge, which is a full frontal attack, Bow, which is a volley of arrows from your archers, and Magic, which is magic. Charge beats Bow, Bow beats Magic, and Magic beats Charge, although sometimes it gets a bit…muddled. The attacks are divided into sets of up to 3 characters, each set of which has a different attack power. There is also a fourth option, Other, which lets you use Specialist characters, such as Thieves who can either let you know what attack is coming next, or get you gold, or just fail, and Strategists who can raise your attack power.
After the battle Kwanda rushes into his castle and prepares to blast out army with the Burning Mirror. So wait, the Burning Mirror was an actual giant mirror? That what, reflected the sun and burned stuff? Well, I guess that’s ok since magic. Mathiu orders the troops to disperse so as the keep the horribly charred corpses to a minimum. Yup, all 76 troops that were left after the battle. Note that the number of soldiers left after a battle doesn’t actually affect anything.
Fortunately the dwarves show up with the Windfire Cannon and blow the Burning Mirror to smithereens.
At this point there is no choice in what party storms the castle. We have to use Tir, Viktor, Gremio, Valeria, Kirkis, and Kuromimi. Not to worry though, it’s a good enough party to get through it. Kuromimi needs more equipment and sharpened weapons, but a quick trip back to the Dwarf Village takes care of that.
Back in Pannu Yakuta, we find a maid willing to let us rest and heal up all our hurts.
These recolor Devil Armors patrol the castle, but aren’t anything terribly difficult.
The little doodads will rarely drop Chaos shields (+27), which are a significant improvement to Steel shields. I fought until I got one.
The only other enemies in here are these Veteran Solider swaps.
The courtyard contains a couple of chests with a Steel shield and a Thunder rune piece.
The first floor has a few side rooms with chests containing a Gauntlet and a Half Armor.
The second floor has chest containing a Medicine, a Gale Crystal, and the Old Book vol. 1.
Duel battles work similarly to major battle, at least in the rock-paper-scissors aspect. The options are attack, defend and desperate attack. Attack beats defend, defend beats desperate attack and desperate attack beats attack. However, the character we control’s attack power, defense, and hp is still based on their actual stats, so it helps to get them the best armor and sharpen their weapon enough to make them better in battle. In duels, the enemy will often telegraph their next move with what they say before each turn. Things like, “Now it’s my turn.â€, for attack, “Come at me.â€, for defend, and anything with lots of exclamation points for desperate attack.
Tir vs. Kwanda Rosman
Buy, Tir sure did surmount him good. Wait…that doesn’t sound right…
It seems that Kwanda has somehow used the black rune to make all the kobolds mad. Kuromimi was unaffected because of plot.
Kwanda’s arm that holds the black rune starts flashing and he definitely seems to be in great pain.
His arm stops flashing and he drops to the ground. Kuromimi and Kirkis prepare to finish hi because of what he did. Finish him…with death! But Kwanda now seems oddly complacent and remorseful now.
We could get vengeance here and kill him, but it’s definitely worth seeing what the deal is with him.
After asking him why he’s changed, Kwanda explains that Windy gave him the black rune, which gave him power over monsters. But it also took over his mind and made him do those bad things or some excuse like that. He doesn’t think Windy can be trusted anymore. He wants to die like a soldier for what he’s done, but…
But we want all 108 stars, so he’s coming with us.
At first Kwanda laughs in Tir’s face, but after about 2 seconds consideration he decides that the Emperor has changed since they fought in the war 7 years ago. So we have our first recruit from the ranks of the Scarlet Moon Empire’s Generals. He’s ok, his defining trait is that he’s the first character you can recruit who wears heavy armor.
Back outside the castle, Kuromimi’s mother and brother arrive for some reason, which means all the kobolds are now normal and are back at their village.
So now like everybody frigging joins permanently, including Kirkis, Pennsylvania, Kuromimi, Valeria, and even Stallion. They're all party members and units in major battles.
We could warp back to the castle right now, but let’s not be too hasty.
Back in the kobold village, we find Rubi the elf, but he’s a typical jerk elf and won’t join us at the moment.
Fu Su Lu here however will join us, as long as we pay his 10,000 bit tab. This tger-masked brute is a great fighter, so he is well worth it.
Since the item shop is now manned (dogged?) you can buy Hazy and Wind crystals there if you want.
Kuromimi’s little brother Gon joins as long as you have Kuromimi in your party. I think he’s a terrier.
Now that Tir is level 30, Lorelai joins. I guess now she likes his “power†enough to “join†with him.
That’s it for now. All there is to do is head back to the castle and…
…do nothing for three months I guess.
Flik has finally arrived, back from doing whatever it was he was doing before. He says he was gathering Liberation forces, but I bet he was really just out making sandwiches for some out of the way village. He’s demanding to see Odessa, so we have to go through the rigmarole of lying that she’s off to market for something, and…
Oh, so I guess we’re done with that now.
Flik, Humphrey and Sanchez and all pretty shocked, but Mathiu thinks that it’s ok to tell everyone now, because the reason she wanted us to lie was to keep the Liberation army from falling apart. But now it seems to be doing quite well, we can finally tell the truth.
Flik is pretty pissed at this news, and that he was lied to, and especially that Tir is now the commander. His anger is pretty legitimate, considering the last time he saw Tir was when they still barely trusted him at all seeing as he is an Imperial General’s son.
At this point Humphrey actually talks, until now he could have easily been a mute, as all his lines have been of the standard “…………..†variety.
Flik refuses to cooperate with us scum and heads off the Kaku to, I dunno, make his own army, with hookers and blackjack.
Following Flik back to Kaku, we find him in this house. Given the massive amount of time he’s been given to reconsider, he offers to join force with Tir even though he can’t accept him as leader yet. Also something about Odessa not believing in him as leader in order to gloss over the fact that it would have made a lot more sense for him to be the Liberation leader.
Back at the castle…
k.
Milich…Milich? You don’t mean…?
Oh no, not him…hoo boy.
Flik proposes that we attack the Fortress of Garan now that we have the combined forces of our army and Flik’s remnants. Mathiu agrees, so off we go to Garan and then *shudder* Milich’s domain. Last time had plenty enough videos, so we’ll save this for next time.
Ok, now is another time when you, the viewer, can choose the last half of the party.
At the moment we have three slots filled with Tir, Viktor and Cleo. Your task, if you choose to accept it, is the fill in the remaining three spots. Note that there are a shitton more than last time, this party will be used in episode 16, if you were wondering. Your choices are:
Pahn
Camille
Tai ho
Kuromimi
Kirkis
Valeria
Eileen
Lorelai
Stallion
Yam Koo
Lepant
Krin
Juppo
Kimberly
Humphrey
Mose
Sheena
Kai
Sydonia
Sylvina
Gen
Meg
Luc
Liukan
Ronnie Bell
Kage
Fu Su Lu
Mina
Blackman
Sarah
Antonio
Lester
Flik
Anji
Alen
Varkas
Kamandol
Gon
Grenseal
Hellion
Kasumi
Kessler
Kanak
Kwanda
Leonardo
Lotte
Maas
Milich
Meese
Sansuke
Sergei
I think I will let the episodes I post catch up to where I am in making them now, so when I have you pick a party you can actually know who half the damn people are.
Might be best if you split the names up into groups - Fighters, Casters, Hybrids, and Useless, for example. Oh, and note any Unite attacks that are nifty? Because Kai+Tir = AwesomeSauce, and I think the Kobolds get one with Fu Su Lu?
Since you already have lots of melee power, I'm going with Kai for the unite attack, Luc and Hellion for magic (unless Hellion doesn't have a good rune, I don't remember).
Might be best if you split the names up into groups - Fighters, Casters, Hybrids, and Useless, for example. Oh, and note any Unite attacks that are nifty? Because Kai+Tir = AwesomeSauce, and I think the Kobolds get one with Fu Su Lu?
Hmm, that's not a bad idea. I'll only have to do that once at any rate. But I'd rather not list unite attacks until I show them in the updates. 16 will start with a unite attack demo, plus I think some spells. And yeah, kobolds + Fu Su Lu have a unite attack.
Going by their stat growth if I'm not entirely sure what they fall into. Additionally, any other good stats or runes they have.
Fighters:
Anji
Fu Su Lu (+ defense)
Gen
Humphrey (+defense
Kai
Kwanda (+defense)
Leonardo
Pahn (+defense)
Ronnie Bell (+defense)
Tai Ho (+skill)
Valeria (+defense)
Varkas
Since you already have lots of melee power, I'm going with Kai for the unite attack, Luc and Hellion for magic (unless Hellion doesn't have a good rune, I don't remember).
That would work out fine, and Hellion does indeed have a good rune.
Ok, the first part went great, but the second part…not so much.
Poisonous roses? Yeah I dunno, doesn’t really make any sense…but we must find a way to counter them!
Sanchez suggests sending a reconnaissance team into Milich’s domain. Viktor and Flik automatically join the party. Gremio also insists coming along, but…
Be a good boy now or you won’t get any treats.
Viktor explains that since Tir is now the leader of the Liberation Army, he’s no longer a child and doesn’t need Gremio’s protection all the time. Viktor has a hunch that Gremio shouldn’t come along, but Gremio overrides him and insists on joining anyway. That leaves two open spots, which I filled with Fu Su Lu and Sydonia, as per requests that I sort of couldn’t fill until now.
This guy will only join once we get 80 total recruits. He also conveniently tells us how many more we need to get before he’ll join. At this point we had 41 total Stars.
Traveling northwest a bit brings us to Teien. Teien has an item shop with very useful Killer crystals, and a blacksmith that can sharpen weapons up to level 12. Very nice. As well as…
A new recruit, Hellion, and her incredibly useful item the Blink Mirror. When you use the Blinking Mirror from your inventory you are instantly transported back to the castle in front of Viki. This makes traveling between various locations in the game a breeze and is thus incredibly useful.
Hellion herself is no slouch either, coming with the first upgraded elemental rune you can find, the Mother Earth rune. The upgraded elemental runes have the regular elemental runes’ 2, 3, and 4 level spells as their 1, 2, and 3 level spells, plus a new, super powerful level 4 spell. We’ll want to be getting as many of these as we can as the game goes on.
Over at the docks, we happen upon this jolly fellow, who won’t join us until Tir is at a certain level. That level is 40, because he tells us how many we need to get in order to recruit him.
Sharpening weapon is getting even more pricey now, as it takes a cool 80,000 bits to sharpen a weapon from level 9 to level 12. I sharpened Fu Su Lu’s weapon to level 9 for now, we’ll come back here later.
*Cut nearly ten minutes of inventory management*
Let’s make some money!
Something very odd happened at this point. Gaspar kept hitting STORMs and 123s and giving us all his money, and through some very mysterious methods we barely ever lost!
Over 15 minutes and totally no resets later, I swear, we have almost 260,000 bits. Which still won’t actually sharpen everyone’s weapon to 12, but it’s a good start.
But before that, let’s do a bit more recruiting.
Back in Seika, Antonio will only join after we recruit Marie and after Marie mentions she need a cook. Which I don’t actually remember her saying, but hey what the hell. Antonio stands next to Marie and can be used as a battle character.
The Queen of the Jungle here refuses to listen to us unless Lepant is in the party. Good thing he is, then!
13-18
Ah, good old fashioned child abuse.
Sheena is a guy if you couldn’t tell. He’s actually a pretty decent character, having good magic and a solid attack. His weapon is short ranged though, and there are better characters for the front row.
Back in Mathiu’s orphanage, Apple here bitches at us for dragging Mathiu back into a war.
Choose at least the first and third options and she joins. I don’t know about the second option but I know the other ones work. Apple joins as kind of a sub-strategist under Mathiu.
Now let’s spend our hard earned winnings on some weapon sharpening. Tir’s weapon becomes an Heaven Fang Staff at level 12. Because we need to do some grinding now to get something, I put Kai in the party for ease of battle. At level 12 his weapon becomes an Exorcist’s Staff. We have just a enough for a couple more levels and to sharpen Viktor’s weapon to a level 12 Koten Sword.
Down south a little ways from Teien lies Rikon. Therein lies an item shop and appraiser, plus a boat we can ride down the river. We’ll do that in a bit.
Anything? Oh, baby!
Mr. the Hutt here won’t join yet but still acts as an appraiser for the time being. Now we need to go fight monsters in the near overworld to find a certain…something.
New monsters include these easily defeated planty dudes…
…as well as the angry vines of Mad Ivy. This part of the overworld has a bit of a plant theme going on, if you hadn’t noticed.
But what we need to look for are these Holly Fairy swaps as they will eventually drop the item we need to recruit Jabba.
We can ask Jabba to join us or give us money, but unfortunately the option to ask for sexual favors is lacking.
On the second floor of the inn, we find this lovely lady longing for her lost kitty. We must find it for her post haste! But wherever could it be?
Why there it is, hiding behind a house in Kaku.
Whoopee. Lotte is a pretty decent magician with a long range weapon, so she’s in the category of pretty darn useful but not quite top tier.
With that done, let’s steal this boat and see where the currents take us!
I guess that’s why they call them rapids and not slowpids! Because a whirlpool is rapids and acts like a barrier, preventing us from getting to that house that certainly isn’t somewhere we need to be, no sir.
Guess what time it is kids? That’s right! It’s show off magic and Unite attacks time! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~!
Here is Kirkis and Pennsylvania’s Wild Arrow attack, where they let loose and pelt all enemies with a flurry of arrows, dealing normal damage to all but leaving them both unbalanced for the next round. Not exactly the best Unite attack there guys.
This is Krin and Humphrey’s…Bumpy attack, where Krin slashes at an enemy and then Humphrey nails Krin into the enemy. I…yeah, I don’t know. It does 2x damage to the enemy.
Meanwhile, Kuromimi and Gon’s unimaginatively named Kobold attack has them both leaping up and slashing one enemy for 2x damage.
That’s it for Unite attacks for now. But wait, there’s more! Technically levels 1-4 earth magic, the level 4 magic being provided by a level 3 Mother Earth rune.
Spectacular. Clay Guardian increases one character’s defense a bit, Voice of Earth does around 300 damage to all enemies as long as they’re on the ground, Copper Flesh increases one character’s defense as well, but more so, and Earthquake does about 700 damage to all enemies and is pretty rad.
Coming back to the main story, surely there must be someone we can find who can help us get past those rapids? Someone who lives on a dock and has an interest in boa- oh yeah wait I forgot to talk to him before now.
Anyway, it’s this dude in Teien. We ask him to help us beat the rapids, and he says he can help, but he can’t do it alone. He joins the party and says to go next door.
Ah, good old fashioned threatening old men fun.
After Kamandol insults everybody, Gen asks if he has a way we might be able to get past the rapids. And he does.
So wait, he just invented an oil engine before anybody had even invented a steam engine or anything else? Or wait, the dwarves were using steam power, weren’t they. Come to think of it, what does our elevator run on anyway?
What he said!
It’s Premier L’Amour, actually.First Love? Anyway, it so happens that Milich went around renaming towns in his domain to French names for some reason, and that’s what he calls Rikon. So Gen is just saying let’s go to Rikon. Kamandol also joins the party.
On the way…
In Gen and Kamandol’s Fatal Attack, Gen jumps up and starts stabbing one enemy repeatedly, then Kamandol jumps in and gives them a good wallop with his cane, dealing 2x damage.
Finally arriving in Rikon after having to carry the stupid engine all the way on their backs, the party settles in for a good night’s sleep except for Gen and Kamandol, who are forced to work all night on attaching to engine to the boat. I don’t know what the owner of the boat thinks of this.
Nice soliloquy there, Gremio. Awfully Shakespearean of you. He goes to consider that maybe Tir doesn’t need him any more after all…
Welp, let’s get on that boat and go to that mysterious house down by the river.
Oh, so it’s not just a house, it’s a hermitage. How fancy.
Hi, you must be Liukan.
Could you hold for a second while I loot your house?
Wait, how would he know that? We were kind of just randomly roaming around, looking for a solution to the poison rose problem. I suppose some anti-poison vaccine might work…
Oh god the mist is talking to us! That’s terrifying!
Crap on a cracker, itt’s even more terrifying than talking mist, Milich on a dragon!
Milich proclaims that he is the greatest of the Five (now four) Imperial Generals, and can’t let us get the antidote to his poison mushrooms, I mean, roses.
So instead of killing the doctor or something sensible like that, he just takes him to a prison that I’m sure we’ll never be able to break into, not in a million years of trying. Right.
Next Episode: We really easily get into that prison
Yeah, I'm going to catch up to me now. You know, with posts. Party suggestions are still open.
You should put Pahn in your party for a little while. Just to keep him strong. Just in case he encounters some trouble soon. Just in case.
I've never seen a battle get as close as your Kwanda Rosman. Nice pull. 8 )
Did you get the pirates yet? That's a good fight at a low level.
Fu Su Lu's hit points? Delicious.
Quincy = Male = ?
Pahn gets time in this update. The pirates are in the next update. I'm pretty sure Quincy is male. Of course there is one surefire way to check, at least for recruits who fight....
Episode 14 – Jailhouse Rock
Back to the castle to see if Mathiu can once again get us out of a jam.
There’s a name that should be familiar to someone. See also the renaming of a town to something French. Blanche is white I think? Dunno what Bier means.
So Mathiu sends us off to find a counterfeiter and a scrivener names Tesla…hmm, what exactly does he have in mind?
Welcome to Antei/Bier Blanche. Quite a large, high class town. Antei has an item shop, rune shop and armor shop with better and even more expensive armor.
Hmm, can’t do anything to recruit this person yet.
We can recruit her though. Tir needs to have Toe shoes equipped before she’ll let you dance with her.
She has a fun dancing animation, though Tir just kind of…hops around. She’s a party member and will dance if we talk to her in the castle.
Aha, Jeane. Just ask her to and she’ll join. She mans the rune shop in the castle and is a powerful mage in her own right. Although not in this game. She and Viki are the only recruitable characters to appear in all five main games.
Arriving at the armor shop, we find yet another recruit, Chapman, of the armoring Chapmans. He’s the castle’s armorer. Fascinating.
Afterward we can still buy armor, but boy is it pricey. Fortunately Magic robes sell for a decent but so we can buy a few ninja suits for our front line and Tir.
We can go see Kimberly now.
Yes it is, now hurry up and read it. Or don’t you know how to read?
14-14
…oh. Kimberly considers and tells us she’ll join, but on one condition.
Flik must go on a date with her. Well, dinner in her home, but same thing. Flik is a bit hesitant, as he had a thinly veiled thing for Odessa. I mean come on, his weapon is named after her.
Once again, Viktor is the voice of reason, and the date is begun!
I like that they made a bunch of special animations for scene even though it lasts less than a minute. And they say they’re drinking tea, but I bet it was really sake. Then they fucked like bunnies.
After some morning after conversation, Kimberly joins and heads back to the castle, letting us know that Tesla is in town, but is using the pseudonym Albert. How will we ever uncover his subterfuge?
My name is Guy Incognito.
We know he’s really Tesla, so Viktor grills him about the names of his relatives in order to try to get him to admit who he really is.
Tesla is a stupid.
But he agrees to come along, and regrets that fate has dealt him such an unlucky hand.
It seems Mathiu’s plan was successful. He has forged us some Imperial documents in order to get into Soniere Prison, complete with Milich’s signature and Imperial Seal.
Here we are. But surely it won’t be so easy as to have the guards be fooled with just mere papers? What with our ragtag band of misfits, one who looks suspiciously like the son of a general. Surely we’ll have to end up fighting a cadre of guards in order to get in?
Well that’s fine too then.
Inside however we many guards who aren’t so easily fooled.
And by guards I mean sentient playing cards and piles of red goo.
As well as Vipermen and little pots with snakes in them called Delfs. What an…odd choice for prison guards.
At this point I went back an added Pahn in the party in place of Fu Su Lu. The reason for this will be explained…next episode I think.
Over in the prison, uh, guardhouse I guess, complete with bedroom, kitchen and dining room, there’s a save point and a chest with a Silver necklace. Only certain female characters can equip necklaces, not even all females can. Nobody in the party right now can, that’s for sure.
At least they made some precautions preventing prisoners escaping. This switch opens that big door, and it’s the only way the door will open, so nobody in the actual prison could even steal a key or whatever and get out that way. But it’s not like this room is important to the story or anything. *cough* That chest contained an Old Book vol. 6.
After heading down a few flights of stairs and opening a chest with an Antidote inside, we come to a few somewhat competent guards, who actually think to ask who we are and then attack us. They’re pushovers though, so no worries.
I’m an old man and I don’t like anything! Except Matlock…whatever that is.
Further on, there are more soldiers guarding cells with chests in them containing a Half helmet and Sound Setting 0. In the last cell we find Liukan. After explaining who we are he agrees to escape with us.
Before we leave we must make sure we fight enough Nightmares to get an Opal (ring). Although isn’t necessary to get it right now, it’s still good to make sure we have it.
You know, if you would have done that before we walked through the door you could have just trapped us there and I have no idea how we would have gotten out. But hey you know, maybe you want us to kick your ass.
Milich tells us how he just came by because of word that someone had snuck in, and is a bit surprised that it was us. Viktor want to settle it now, but Milich thinks swords are just a tad too barbarous for his tastes. So he shows us a shiny bottle.
Pssh, what could possibly be in a little bottle that you could threaten us with?
…Agony you say?
Ok well that’s actually a pretty good threat right there. Are you sure you won’t reconsider your no swords right now policy? That would at least be a more pleasant way to die.
But at least you’re not stupid enough to release that nasty stuff while we’re all trapped in…
…this…little...room...goddamnit.
He runs the fuck out the bottom door and locks it somehow while everyone else just stands there, dumbly staring straight ahead. They all die, the end.
Ha ha ha, oh I’m such a kidder.
With a sudden surge of quick thinking, Gremio uses the switch to open the top dor and everyone else except Tir rushes out. Gremio then pushes Tir out the door and uses the switch again to close the door with him still trapped inside with the spores…
Viktor tries to argue with him to open the door, but Gremio refuses. If he opens the door the spores will get to everyone else as there is no other place that can seal them.
No matter what Tir says, Gremio can’t obey his order to open the door. He laments that he won’t be able to protect the Young Master any longer. His vision failing, Gremio makes Tir promise that he’ll always follow his heart…that is his final wish.
Some time later Mathiu shows up, saying that they were gone so long that he decided to bring the troops to see if the party was in trouble. The spores have dissipated by now, but not before killing every living thing in the front part of the prison.
The only things left of Gremio are his cloak and axe.
Back at the castle, Cleo, Pahn and the rest try to console Tir over Gremio’s death.
Now cannot be the time to grieve though, as it is time to wage our assault on that flower-toting bastard, Milich. Dr. Liukan has devised an antidote that will enable the troops to stave off the effects of the damnable roses.
That could have gone better. And it did, because I had to replay it due to, well, stupidity. But let’s not get into that.
Let’s git that sucka!
For the infiltration of Scarleticia, Viktor and Flik are mandatory characters while the other 3 slots are our choice. I took Pahn for further experience, Kai for ease and Sydonia because why not.
Inside Scarleticia it’s all pink and gold and pretty and lalalala. It also contains the same damn monsters as the prison. I guess Milich was too cheap to spring for the super deluxe monster package.
A couple of chests in rooms off the foyer contain a Magic Robe and Red paint.
Ivanov the painter wants his freedom but you can’t give it to him because hell if I know. We’ll get back to him later.
I mean hey, the guy just killed my best friend but I know that talking good about people in front of their portraits always causes a tap door to open leading to a secret room.
See?
Chests in the secret room of secretness contain a Window setting 1 and a Magic rune piece.
Oh say, guess what we can do now?
Yup, the Soul Eater mysteriously and for reason now has it’s second spell, an attack that does about 350 to all enemies. Ok, it’s not really for no reason, it turns out the Soul Eater eats the soul of the dead or somesuch and that’s how it grows. So Gremio’s sacrifice got us even more goodies than just surviving.
Get it! We can’t recruit her yet either.
One last chest on the second floor has a Spark crystal, then we’re out on the balcony to roast the rose.
Man come on, stop screeching like a little girl. It is not pleasant to listen to.
Mere seconds later, Milich arm begins to burn, and it turns out he also had a black rune from Windy that melts off for no discernible reason. Nevertheless, Viktor, Pahn, and Cleo all tell Milich to say his prayers, because now they’re gonna get some sweet, sweet vengeance for poor ol’ Gremio.
But Mathiu Is more hesitant. He asks if Milich also got a Black rune from Windy. Perhaps what happened to Kwanda happened to Milich as well?
That’s some fine poetry there, Viktor, but we’re not in the mood!
Well hell, screw vengeance, we want another star of destiny!
Viktor et al still want to kill him, but Flik steps in and tells them to obey their leader, showing that he has now accepted Tir as his leader or some junk.
So Milich asks to join because now he knows that Windy is evil and the Emperor is enraptured with her resemblance to his late wife, with is kind of creepy.
But suddenly!
Coming to ANTHRAX castle? Well I hope they have a shitload of boats because otherwise I don’t think that’s going to work. Of course our army is in the castle so we must have a ton of boats…or maybe our army camps out on the edge of the lake on the mainland? I dunno. Anyway, back to the castle.
It seems Kasumi here escaped from the ninja village of Rokkaku with the help of their boss, Hanzo, after General Teo’s army attacked. She joins, and now the impending threat of Teo’s army is looming before us. Can Tir defeat his own father? Tune in next time and find out!
In every game, there's generally a character that is unavoidably killed. The game factors that character into the 108 count regardless. The tricky part in a first playthrough is to determine which character that is, and discerning whether or not that death was unavoidable. Perfect example is coming in the next installment. You'll see.
In every game, there's generally a character that is unavoidably killed. The game factors that character into the 108 count regardless. The tricky part in a first playthrough is to determine which character that is, and discerning whether or not that death was unavoidable. Perfect example is coming in the next installment. You'll see.
Considering all of the foreshadowing/obvious references, I'm assuming that you're alluding to Pahn?
Now, for those who haven’t played this before, you might not know that it is really easy to lose that duel with Pahn. If he’s not leveled enough or his weapon isn’t strong enough, or if he doesn’t have the best armor Teo will hit like a son of a bitch and even if you know what he is going to do there’s a good chance Pahn will fall. And if he does, then he is dead. Gone, kaput. He’s not coming back and you won’t be able to get all 108 stars. So it is essential that he is trained up to snuff. Knowing what attacks Teo uses is pretty essential too.
Back at the meeting room, the major players are in shock over how easily Teo’s cavalry ran roughshod over our soldiers. Nothing we can do now but go cry in our beds…
Or not. Come on, lady, I’m frigging tired here from fighting wars and shit.
Well hey but I guess if you want to talk to me about your family’s petty squabbles then that’s fine.
She goes on the explain how the Soul Eater rune is one of the 27 true runes, and that Windy has another true rune, the Gate rune, and that she wants the Soul Eater so she can combine their power and take over the world and blah blah blah she’s an evil bitch so we need to kill her.
Back in the meeting room in the morning, it seems these guys have been standing here all night, possibly sleeping standing up like horses. But Flik has the utterly brilliant idea of actually using something that the Liberation army had planned to use in the first place, the fire spears. The secret factory that was supposed to make them is in the north, so I guess that’s where we’ll be going to next. But the only way to get there right now is by boat, because all the borders are closed off. But how will get past the rapids that are blocking our path? HOOOOOOWWWWWWW????
Oh right, we got these goofballs to make us another faster than normal boat.
Because we need a professional boat rider guy, we need to have Tai Ho in our party for the next part of this grand adventure. So hey, let’s get Yam Koo too. Doobie doo. So we set off…only to go right back to the castle.
Huzzah! Our castle is…slightly less like a giant rock now, I guess.
But what’s this? It seems before we can progress there are a few colorful characters we can recruit!
Here is the lovely Esmerelda, who um…uh…stands there in the castle, I believe. Boy, that trouble getting the Opal sure was worth it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?!?
Outside, we can now recruit Qlon who…also…stands around the castle and doesn’t actually do anything. We’ll get useful characters again soon, I swear.
Now that we’ve “defeated†Milich, Ivanov will now come along with us. He eventually paints a mural that is the second pic in the op if we get all the different color paints to him.
As long as Milich is in our active party, Kasios will come with us. If we talk to him in the cast—wait, what? Him? Suikosource I really do not think Kasios is a him. I mean come on. Gremio and Luc may be one thing, but Kasios is quite another. So he’s a she until further notice. Anyway, talking to her in the castle lets us listen to any of the games songs we’ve unlocked so far.
And what a great north it is! Kirov has all sorts of amenities, such as a new armor shop and an item store, and a semi annoying fetch quest!
Oh boy, Dragon Armor. We can buy a few of these at least. Since we got that Chaos shield before we don’t really need another one right now. Then a few Head Gears (+14) as well.
Defense! *haugh-hauaghl* Defense!
Soap? That should be easy. I’ll uh, get back to you on that.
But first, let’s go to the inn to see if we can’t play a silly mini game.
Vagrant you mean! Georges offer to join if you beat them at a card game.
Basically what we need to do is clear out all the cards. Select two and if they match, they also flip over any cards adjacent to them. So just get two near the middle, like so…
…and nearly the entire board is cleared without even having to do much. It’s a simple matter to clear the rest in the allotted time limit. Of course, this works the best with 5 different cards, there exists the option to go with more, but that just makes it more difficult.
Wheeeeeeee. Now we can play the card game back at the castle any time we want. We won’t be doing that.
In the item shop, we find the very useful Fortune crystal. We won’t be buying this yet though, although we will eventually for ease of leveling up underleveled characters. We will however be buying this conspicuous Sugar, as it is needed to get soap in a convoluted fashion.
What we need to do is talk to this guy, who needs Soy sauce. So what we have to do is go around and ask people what they have and what they need. It’s not worth showing, but we give the sugar to someone to get a yardstick, then give the yardstick for some salt, give the salt to get the soy sauce, give the soy sauce to get the soap, and give the soap to Sarah to get…
…well, Sarah. She does the castle’s laundry. All of it. Even Viktor’s underwear. Oh boy. She also fights in the party with a laser knife.
In Kirov we also meet Melodye, who can wield a special rune. We’ll need to find that rune before we can recruit her. Her? God, I don’t even know anymore.
That’s it for Kirov for now, but we’ll be back in a bit.
Off to the north, we must pass through this town, Kalekka. Hey wait…where have we heard that name before? Ah yeah, it was the Battle of Kalekka where Mathiu became at the same time a hero and disgusted with war. Obviously that battle did nothing for Kalekka’s tourist trade.
Why hello, Mr. Silverberg, You have a very auspicious name, you know that? Not that Tir or the party actually know his name. All he tells is to recruit as many people as possible, which we were doing anyway. We will get back to him eventually though.
As a war torn hamlet, of course Kalekka would have monster wandering about. Combinations of Hawk Men and Shadows here are the most common monsters. They aren’t very tough, especially with Tir+Kai, and give some nice experience and thousands of bits per battle, which make Kalekka and excellent training ground for the nonce.
The only other enemy here are these two-headed dogs that are on fire. They also do not pose much of a threat.
Breaking into abandoned houses and looting their remains nets us an Earth rune piece, the Old Book vol. 8, and an Antique.
I guess the other two here don’t count? Though I guess it’s not like they’re going to be here for that much longer anyway. Well, enjoy your lonely existence there, fella.
Death and destruction? I mean, seeds and plants and naturey stuff. Yeah…that’s it. Now join me please because I didn’t step on your precious plants.
There we go. Note that Blackman will not join you if you walk over his plants before talking to him. He’s an ok fighter that has good defense. He also plants a garden in the castle eventually, I think.
Only one more item of note in Kalekka.
Hmm, now who might we know that wants a special rune who also has a name related to music? Bugger If I know. Oh well.
It’s a secret to everyone.
Hey wait, those backsides seem familiar.
Man, those guys are such dicks.
So let’s join in the fun!
After that sudden bout of silliness, we explain that we’re from the Liberation Army, and since we know Odessa, Ronnie tells us to come inside. Also.
Oh boy, now we can drink poisoned tea all day long!
Inside, Ronnie tells us to talk to Mose, but before that…
Kage will only join if you give him 20,000 bits. That’s not so bad, and of course we’re recruiting everybody, so in he goes!
So anyway, we talk to Hitler and let him know that Odessa is dead, and that we need a bunch of Fire Spears. I know “haha, that guy looks like Hitler!†jokes are old, but come on, seriously, that is fucking Hitler right there. Anyway, he tells us we’ll need boats, and Tai ho tells us he know of someone in Kirov that has boats. So back there we go!
Yeah, it turns out I knew exactly what musically themed named character to give this rune to! We can talk to Melodye in the castle to change the menu sounds. The sound sets we change to are…odd, as will be evidenced when we change to the only other set we have at the moment once we get back to the castle.
We’re the Goddamn Batman! Er, I mean Liberation Army. Tai Ho explains that we need boats and we get boats. Then he joins. He sits at the castle and does nothing.
After making the woman do all the work, Ronnie Bell and Mose both join. Ronnie Bell is a hard hitting front liner and Mose sucks in battle but can sharpen weapons to level 12 at the castle.
Only one more thing to do in Kirov.
Break into peoples’ houses and eat their food. This however, leads to an unintended consequence.
Another recruit! Who knew being a criminal could be so rewarding?
Back at the castle, we can change the menu sounds to the voice sound set, which we will hear in a little bit of a tad.
It’s time. Time to defend our beliefs, time to take on our father. To battle, and to victory!
Your Viktor hits like a fucking howitzer. Killer rune + more than 2 Lightning rune pieces?
Hellion cleaned that fight up for you. I remember that being so much more difficult. Was that really the earliest you could have done it? Good show.
Do you have Kasumi yet? I challenge you to use both Kage and Kasumi and make them as useful as your mainstays. I always wished that I could figure out how. Kage looks so cool, but hits like a cripple.
Your Viktor hits like a fucking howitzer. Killer rune + more than 2 Lightning rune pieces?
Hellion cleaned that fight up for you. I remember that being so much more difficult. Was that really the earliest you could have done it? Good show.
Do you have Kasumi yet? I challenge you to use both Kage and Kasumi and make them as useful as your mainstays. I always wished that I could figure out how. Kage looks so cool, but hits like a cripple.
That's pretty much it for Viktor, that and keeping his weapon sharpened.
No, you can fight them a lot earlier, right after you get to Milich's domain I think. I just waited until then because Tai Ho already has to be in your party at that point anyway.
Yeah, Kasumi is there. The ninjas in this game are ok, but nothing spectacular. They can't hit hard as the hard hitters and have crap magic but they're fast and Kage can at least attack from the back row. Plus, Kasumi has the Shrike rune which you can use with her in the back row as well. I'll use them for a bit in the next video, perhaps.
This is an awesome Let's Play, thanks for doing it. This was/is a great game.
Thanks!
Episode 16 – Interlude
Having defeated his father in battle and acquiring the remnants of his army, Tir’s forces are now strong enough to start worrying the Scarlet Moon Empire, as they have started pulling some of their troops out of the rural regions in order to supplement their stronger forces.
The region of course being the Lorimar region. Creative fortress names are not the Empire’s forte.
Well hell, let’s go cause some hell! …with hell!
Kasumi, use your magical ninja powers and let us in!
Good girl.
Yeah, no kidding. I mean, all the graves that are conspicuously there have been dug up. I’m thinking that’s not normal, even for a deserted fortress type place.
At this point Viktor and Cleo have to be in the party for a time, but the remaining three spots are open. For the nonce I took Flik, Kai and Fu Su Lu, but that’ll change in a bit. Let’s leave, but before we head back to the castle, let’s return to Lorimar for a moment.
Lopping off heads is out army’s number one export. You’ll fit right in. Kirke the headsman joins and is a battle party member. He has middling stats in all categories and isn’t particularly useful.
Now that we have a bit of time to relax, let’s take another tour of the castle to see some more places that have now opened up.
Taking the western door out of the first floor, we find ourselves on a lovely outcropping overlooking the lake, with bridges to the north and west. Upon this rocks rests Kasios, who will sing such as has never been sung before.
In that we can listen to all the games tracks by talking to…it. This game does have some pretty nice music, so this is a good feature. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound that great coming through the Gamebridge.
To the north are some more of our friends lounging about, and dwelling in a cave are some pirates and bandits, or bandrates.
Across the bridge to the west, Valeria stands ready, while inside Kwanda…also stands, ready. Up the stairs however, lies Milich’s beautiful rose garden where he and his companions drink tea and smell flowers and think about unicorns or whatever.
Ohgodnoooooo!
This is also where Melodye is if we want to change our sound. Which we do because fuck the Voices sound set it is really annoying.
Through the east door out of the first floor, there is a tower with a bunch of dudes loitering around in it. Nothing special, but I guess they have to be somewhere.
Finally, out of the southeast door of the second floor is this cozy little outside area where the elves and kobolds hang around to simulate being in a forest or whatever it is they're doing out here.
But wait, remember all those paints that we kept getting and were in all those item shops? Now we can collect those and take them to Ivanov on the third floor to see how much of the mural he can complete.
Suffice it to say we have a few more pails of paint to collect.
Now that the tour is finished, what say we go and try out some new magic and Unite attacks now that we’ve recruited so many additional skilled warriors?
The third level Soul Eater spell, Hell, can instantly eliminate all enemies onscreen if they’re not immune to it. I made a mistake before when I said that Black shadow was the spell that Ted used on the Queen Ant, it was really this spell.
Alen & Grenseal are both very good battle characters, as they each possess good magic and fighting ability, and can fight competently in the front lines. In addition, each possess one of the higher power elemental runes, Alen having the Rage rune (Fire) and Grenseal having the Thunder rune (Lightning). Therefore even when they don’t have any 4th level spell points they can still show off level 4 spells of their respective beginning runes. Ball of Lightning hits one enemy for around 1000 damage, and Explosion hits all enemies for around 700 damage. It only gets better though folks, but not quite yet.
Next, Luc and Hellion demonstrate the level 4 wind spell, Storm, the level 4 water spell, Water of Kindness, and the level 5 earth spell, Guardian of Earth. Storm hits all enemies for a lot of damage, Water of Kindness heals all allies hp to full, and Guardian of Earth increases everybody's defense.
Now, onto the Unite attacks.
Gen & Sansuke’s Carpenter attack. They both jump up to one enemy and do their repeated stabby motion for a bit. It hits for 2x damage.
Anji, Kanak, & Leonardo’s Pirate attack. They jump up to an enemy and hit it. Fairly disappointing. It hits one enemy for 2,5x damage.
Fu Su Lu, Kuromimi, & Gon’s Kobold + 1 attack. They rush up to the front of an enemy, then Kuromimi and Gon both attack at the same time, then they back up and Fu Su Lu takes a flying leap over them and slashes the enemy. This hits one enemy for 3x damage.
Flik, Alen, & Grenseal’s Pretty Boy attack. They all jump up and flash a gang sign, then Flik, Alen, and Grenseal respectively dash like lightning and slash one enemy, hitting for 2x damage.
Lepant, Sheena, & Eileen’s Family attack. Sheena jumps up first and attacks an enemy, knocking it back a bit, then Lepant jumps in and attacks, knocking it back more, then Eileen fires a javelin or something at it. It hits one enemy for 2.5 damage.
Pahn & Ronnie Bell’s Beat ‘em Up attack. Pahn jumps in and starts pummeling an enemy, then ducks as Ronnie lets fly a massive fireball which toasts the enemy. It hits one enemy for a bunch of damage.
Whooo. After fighting for a bit in Kalekka to get some levels and money, Tir is now level 40, which means…
…we’re now strong enough to recruit Eikei. He has um…good hp, but not much else above average.
Well, here’s where we’re going to stop for now. I apologize for the lack of actual content, but if I continued then it would just get way too long.
Next Episode: We actually go to the Warrior’s Village, I swear.
This is great, I love it. Seeing it up when you first posted inspired me to play through this game again and I couldn't help but keep going through Suikoden II, which I finished yesterday.
I had forgotten how overpowered McDohl is in II, he's better than the Hero himself
This is great, I love it. Seeing it up when you first posted inspired me to play through this game again and I couldn't help but keep going through Suikoden II, which I finished yesterday.
I had forgotten how overpowered McDohl is in II, he's better than the Hero himself
Yeah, he really is. Having him and Riou nearly makes you unstoppable no matter who else you use almost.
Episode 17 - Cavern
Let’s Play actually continuing the damn story now!
Welcome to pristine Warrior’s Village! In this village you’ll find plenty of armor, items, and perhaps even a warrior or two!
Why look, here are some now!
Here we have a Hix & Tengaar, couple whose hijinks will be the focus of the next portion of the game. It seems Tengaar is set on going someplace, but Hix doesn’t want her to go because she might be eaten!
While that might sound like some king of euphemism for maturity, it is in fact to be taken quite literally.
I like Tengaar, she’s no nonsense. “Hey the castle might have a vampire in it but at it’s a damn castle and non some piece of crap pig farming village. Be nice to live in style for a change!â€
But of course Space Ghost’s nemesis wouldn’t want Tengaar to be eaten by someone else, he’d want to eat her himself!
So now we have a name for our resident vampire, and it seems that the name rings a particularly harsh bell for Viktor.
Viktor starts demanding that they tell him more about Neclord, but Zorak wants to know who we are. Hix recognizes us as the Liberation army from when we were attacking Scarleticia. I guess he was in the bleachers for that battle, as he also recognizes Viktor as the “bear-like†man.
Seeing Zorak’s actual portrait, that is really a nasty scar he has there.
Zorak drags Tengaar back into the house by her arm, and we follow. Inside, he tells us that Neclord came to the village as an Imperial general three months ago.
Well hey, that must be the explanation for all the empty graves in Lorimar. What a pleasant state of affairs!
His demands were a woman from each village, and he chose Tengaar from this one. I guess he likes em young because Tengaar is only…13. Maaaaaaan.
That’s actually supposed to be Klift I believe. Anyway, at this point Hix and Tengaar start groaning because Zorak is going to relate just about the entire history of the Warrior’s Village to the party. Much, much later, after the sun has set according to Cleo, Zorak finishes and informs us he has a room prepared for us to stay in. How thoughtful of him.
Hmm? A smattering of jealousy perhaps? At any rate, let’s see what Hix and Cleo are talking about.
Ah, so that’s why the guys we’ve met so far seem a little overprotective of Tengaar. Even though she’s probably capable of taking care of herself (and she is) the men in the Warrior’s Village don’t believe women should fight. Cleo responds to Hix by telling him that she fights to protect people. Hix wants to protect Tengaar, but feels he is too weak.
That is some pretty good advice.
Cleo tells Hix that he’ll never become strong as long as he considers himself weak. Hix thanks her and they run off to bed. Not with each other, silly.
According to Viktor, Neclord misused a rune and turned into a vampire, and consequently destroyed Viktor’s birth village.
Ok, ew. Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to be obsessed with an individual, if they did something like that to your family. So Viktor pretty much wants to kill the fuck out of Neclord, which seems reasonable.
That night, everyone has a restless sleep, only to find in the morning…
I vant to suck your blood! Neclord’s portrait is not…well let’s just say he looks kind of like Count Floyd, or about as menacing at least.
Neclord ha come for Tengaar, who is also Zorak’s daughter don’tcha know. He can be out in sunlight and that’s just dandy because he’s a special runic vampire. Zorak and his men try to fight Neclord but…
Pretty much fall flat on their faces.
Viktor runs up and challenges Neclord as well, which prompts a full on party battle with him! I’m sure we can kick his face in, right?
Or maybe not. Every time any party member tries to hit him with any attack, he just turns into bats and avoids it. This battle is unwinnable, so there’s no use even trying.
After the battle, Tengaar goes off with Neclord willingly to avoid any more bloodshed. They leave and it’s up to the party to go rescue her. But to fight a runic vampire we’ll need a special weapon. What special weapon right now we have no idea, but I’m sure there’s one nearby. You always find them lying around in the most convenient places. Talking to Zorak yields the information that the nearby Temple of Qlon (no relation) is supposed to house some sort of secret. So hey let’s go there, sounds like fun.
But first let’s take a look around the village. The item shop sells this Champion’s crystal, which prevents us from encountering weak enemies, which is kind of nice to have at times, but we definitely don’t need to buy one at that price.
Window, who looks like he’s set to perform an illusion any minute now, needs a certain something before he’ll join us.
The armor shop has some Full armor, which only heavy armor users can equip. They’re aren’t that many of those characters in the game, and none in the party, so we don’t need to buy any as of yet. We’ll take some Capes of Darkness (+13) though.
Hey, it’s Marco again. We can’t cheat our way to a load of cash this time though, as soon as we win 5,000 she joins and heads back to the castle, where the cheaty pattern doesn’t work anymore. Oh well.
Moose will join as long as we have Maas, Meese, and Mose in our party, which because I went back and put them in, we do. He can sharpen weapon to level 15, which means all our money will be shortly gone but we’ll be able to kick that much more ass.
Yeah, sharpening a weapon from level 12 to 15 costs a total of 155,000 bits, so we can’t even two weapons that much yet. Also, before heading out of the castle w make sure to buy some yellow, blue and red seeds. Because we feel like doing some gardening today, that’s why.
Traveling to the west of the Warrior’s Village, we find the Temple of Qlon nestled in the mountains.
Wasn’t that a bad movie made in the 80s?
So the priest Fukien knows that Tir is the leader of the current crop of 108 Stars of Destiny, and tells Viktor that he was born under the Star of Heavenly Loneliness and Cleo that she was born under the Star of Heavenly Fulfillment. All the 108 Stars are destined to gather under Tir’s Star of Heavenly Guidance. He tells us he knows why we’re here and says he can lead the way to the tool of Neclord’s destruction.
He opens the caves of Qlon and joins the army. He is a battle party member who fights and has the fairly useful Resurrection rune.
But let’s not be so hasty. Leaving and re-entering the area brings us to this fellow.
Zen will join only after delivering to him the red, yellow and blue flower seeds. He stands around in Milich's garden.
Morgan is blind but you can recruit him anyway, even though he’s blind. He’s a decent fighter but he’s blind. Did I mention the rampant blindness?
And say, guess what all those recruits brings our total up to and over?
That’s right, now we have enough stars to recruit Quincy and finally figure out what sex it is. Except I forgot to do that so maybe next time!
One more recruit for now.We need to put Kirkis in the party and get his level to 40.
Kirkis is now experienced enough that Rubi listens to and joins the Liberation in order to help. Rubi is a pretty good magic user in the same vain as Cleo, with *I think* a long range attack. Not bad at all to have in the party.
Now off the caves of Qlon. I used Kai, Kasumi and Kage for this section because…well, as long as I had Kai it didn’t actually matter so what the hell.
This is what the entire dungeon looks like, so there’s really no use in showing multiple screens of it. It is populated by a few monsters, however.
Clay Dolls have a decent amount of HP, at least in that they won’t be taken out with just one Master-Pupil attack, otherwise there’s nothing special about them.
The other two enemies in the cave have even less HP and pretty much anyone can kill them in one hit. They probably have attacks but I didn’t get to see any.
This is Kasumi’s unique rune, the Shrike rune. With this attack she jumps up and grabs an enemy then piledrives it into the ground, dealing 2x damage. Pretty useful.
Going forward through the cave, we find some treasure, including a Crimson cape (+21), Medicine, and a Flowing crystal, the incredibly useful powered up Water rune.
Window crystal, eh? Is there anyone we know that has a name that has something to do with windows? Well yeah ok Window. Not exactly difficult to figure out what to do with this.
More treasure follows, Head gear, Old Book vol. 2, an Escape Talisman, 5,000 bits, more Medicine, a Silverlet, a Skill rune piece, a Mega Medicine, and even the War Scroll which we can give to Hugo….oh hell I forgot to show Hugo. Er, he’s in the temple of Qlon and he says he needs the War Scroll. So there.
Near the end of the caves we find Crowley here through a hidden twisting tunnel. But he won’t join yet until our castle is a little bigger. Soon enough though.
Oh, a floating sword. HEY GEE I WONDER IF THAT’S THE VAMPIRE KILLIN’ WEAPON! Well all we need to do is take it and-
…er, that ain’t good.
The sword does some kind of crazy magic warping thing, and the party disappears…
Only to wind up in some village somewhere. Where exactly? Find out next time!
Next Episode: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? I mean, Tir?
So now that we have a few more recruits, feel free to suggest a party to use in the next dungeon. I swear I'll try to beat the next boss with whatever party might be suggested.
And I suppose this is a bit of a late update, but this came in the mail today and I was busy messing with it for a lot of the day.
Last we knew, Tir and the gang had been transported somewhere…somewhere...rural.
Strewth.
Trying to get in the those houses right now yields naught but locked doors. However, moving north…
A child! Perhaps he will know where we are!
But then he turns around and runs up those stairs, then instantly appears behind the well. Blasted teleporters.
Come back here you little so-and-so! Ass!
But we finally corner him, and learn the horrible truth.
Jesus Christ kid those are some freakishly large eyes you have there.
We dunno about any treasure, but then the village chief summons this so-called “Ted†back to the top hut. Cleo remarks that he bears a striking resemblance to our Ted back home that gave Tir the Soul Eater. You know, the one who has been alive for over 300 years?
Who's peekin' out from under a stairway
Calling a name that's lighter than air
Who's bending down to give me a rainbow
Everyone knows it's Windy
After Ted leaves some people appear and all the doors are unlocked, however, there’s no reason to go into the bottom two houses…yet.
…going to be looted by us in a bit, yes I know.
Woman? Gee I dunno who could it be. The Chief recommends we skedaddle if we have no business here, but if we did then what sort of heroes would we be? Besides, treasure.
So we follow them into the house and they keep talking about “that woman†but won’t call her by name.
Who's tripping down the streets of the city
Smilin' at everybody she sees
Who's reachin' out to capture a moment
Everyone knows it's Windy
Well hell. Everyone rushes outside and oh hey will you look who it is.
Why would fuck would Cleo know?
But you know who does know?
And Windy has stor-my eyes
That flash at the sound of lies
And Windy has wings to fly
Above the clouds (above the clouds)
And guess what? She’s after the Soul Eater rune that is apparently here in the Village of the Hidden Rune. Now we know where we are, but now we’re not so sure when we are.
Suddenly, everything fucking burns. Oh that Yuber, he’s such a card.
Windy once again demands for the Soul Eater’s power. The Chief’s all like, “Oh, you want the power, do you. Well I don’t think you can handle the power. But if you want it, here’s all the fuckin power you could ever want!â€
Bweeee-eeeeooooorrrrrrr
But really it’s just like a ninja smoke bomb and the good guys scurry back into the house.
Wherein the Village Chief just pretty much forces a little kid to take a powerful soul stealing rune.
After, he tells the rest of us to hightail it on out of there through the back entrance.
Charred-tastic. Also, I’m pretty sure everyone else in the village is dead. Oh well.
I’m pretty sure you did? I mean, you burned all the houses and the people, I think that constitutes the village, don’t you think?
Also, oh fuck it’s Yuber, we’re so going to die.
Phew, maybe not. Yeah, so Yuber isn’t human. He has a true rune but nobody knows much else about him or where he comes from or anything, for now he’s just there bein’ all evil and stuff.
So after they leave the party winds up in the middle of the village, noting that the fire is dying down, but I guess not noticing the charred corpses of the villagers because they say they don’t know where they are.
Yeah, 300 years to be exact. From this point on Ted wanders around for that amount of time before he meets Tir.
There’s also now a shining light from that…thing where we entered this place. We’ll go there soon enough, but first…
…looting! We get another rune like the one Pahn has which lets fighters that attack with fists use the same attack. We also get a free Champion’s rune, which is nice because now we don’t have to pay 200,000 bits for it.
Well, now it’s time to go back to the present. But wait, we can’t take Ted along because, you know, I hear he kind of smells.
But hey, good luck with all the evading the evil witch and her demonic cohorts for hundreds of year while also having a soul sucking rune on your hand. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Zoooooooooooooooooooooooop
The other three members of the party are like, “Yeah, so stuff just kinda happened. We weren’t paying really paying and attention and we didn’t say anything. I think a lot of people burned and we left a little kid on his own, but hey you know, shit happens.â€
Spooky talking sword!
Finally, the Star Dragon Sword is ours, and with it we shall dispatch that loathsome vampire once and for all! *cough* The sword tells Viktor to take him up, and now Viktor’s sword is replaced with the Star Dragon Sword for the rest of the game.
Oh, you’ll see, Viktor, you’ll all see! Mwa ha ha.
Oh yeah, here’s Hugo, see? He sets up a library in the castle where we can bring the Old Book volumes to him and we can read them.
Window joins as well, once we give him the Window rune. When we talk to him at the castle in Milich’s garden we can change the menu window’s border and color. So let’s go do that.
I went with the rose border and blue, just because. Feel free to suggest a combination.
Talk to Hugo on the third floor and we can read the Old Books. So far we have #1, 2, 3, 6 & 8
Book #1 contains the legend of the true runes which I already mentioned way back when. Book#2 tells us about the rune combinations and how to invoke the combination spells for elemental runes, which we’ll get o see in a bit. Book #3 gives us some tips for major battles. Book #6 tells us a bit about some optional recruitable characters. Book #8 expounds on the Kalekka Tragedy, where the City-State *cough* overran the northern part of the Empire to Kalekka, but when the Imperial troops marched to Kalekka, all they found was a burnt out shell. The destruction spurred them to driving the City-State out of the Empire.
Since the next section can’t be contained by the limited space available in this update, we’ll just go ahead and check out a couple more Unite attacks, plus some combination magic!
Kai, Liukan, and Fukien’s Flash attack features a light show and big flash, followed by them all striking one enemy for a lot of damage, but leaving them all unbalanced next turn. Pretty crappy when the unbalancing is taken into account.
Pahn, Eikei, and Morgan have the Martial Arts attack. In this, they all jump up and then proceed to beat the shit out of every enemy on the screen. This does damage and stuff.
Now, combination or Unite ,magic. Unite magic occurs when two magic users use the 4th levels spells of two complementary elemental runes in the same round. The complementary runes are: Earth/Fire, Fire/Lightning, Lightning/Water, Water/Wind, and Wind/Earth. Let’s check a couple of them.
This is the Wind/Earth Unite magic, Storm Fang. This does over 1000 damage to all enemies, and as always is compounded by magic power.
This is the Earth/Fire Unite magic, Scorched Earth. This does over 1300 damage to all enemies, plus more power.
This is the Fire/Lightning Unite magic Blazing Camp, which pretty much fucking murders everything. It does 1500 base damage to all, but mine here did over 3000. Good for multi-part bosses. *COUGH*
This is the Lightning/Water Unite magic, Thor. It hits one enemy for 2000 base damage and also heals everyone in the party to full and also revives them if they’re unconscious. This can save your ass in a tough boss fight. Although it’s your magic users who are most likely to be dead.
Finally, this is the Water/Wind Unite magic, Water Dragon. It hits all enemies for 800 base damage as well healing the party to full and reviving them. This is also nice but not quite as useful in boss battles.
Well, that’s about it for now. Oh, except for one last thing.
So Quincy is indeed male. Whoda thunkit.
Next Episode: The assault on Neclord’s castle.
The assault only has two party members open, so feel free to make suggestions of anybody you want to see. If there aren't any suggestions I'll probably just go with Kai and Luc.
This is bringing back good memories! I played through this game like... nine years ago or something. I should try and find it again (ha ha good luck ha ha).
Milich is a decent magic used but that's about it. I'd just plunk him in the back row even though he has a short range attack. Kwanda is a decent tank so he could soak up damage and deal it out.
Kasumi and Eileen wouldn't be too bad either, Eileen's a magic user and could even attack, though I probably wouldn't bother sharpening her weapon, and Kasumi is pretty good with the Shrike rune.
If those end up being the only suggestions I'll flip a coin and choose, if not then we'll figure something else out!
Wait, what? Yeah I know this has nothing to do with anything and it doesn't even have commentary but I needed to test it before I sent it out with Goozex and the PS2 is already hooked up to the Gamebridge so hey why not.
Posts
...fuck sleep? I might.
Huh, looking at that part I don't see anyone particularly interesting or anyth- ...oh. Yeah, I'll get him, don't worry.
Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one who thought that at first. And yes, Gremio and Luc are fairly androgynous, but I'm pretty sure the game uses male pronouns for them from time to time.
Yeah, too few PS and PS2 RPGs used that even though it would be really easy to implement for most games. I know there were other but I can't think of any of them specifically. Heh, I remember some company released this RPG controller for the PS1 that was designed for use with one hand. I thought about getting it but never really had any specific need. That was before the dual shock though so it was obsolete pretty quick.
Yeah, fuck sleep! If I remembered the specific convenience type store where you worked I'd say you could do your job there whether asleep or awake anyway! But at least you have a job...
But yeah, go unite the elements and defeat the Fire Lord! Wait...no, that's Avatar. Go do fire things, you know what I mean.
Replying!
In Lepant and Eileen’s Couple attack, Eileen lights her husband on fire, whereupon he charges at a single enemy and slashes at them. While on fire. Hardcore. This does 2x combined damage.
In Varkas and Sydonia’s Bandit attack, Varkas rushes up and throws one enemy into the air, backwards, where Sydonia jumps up and smacks them down. I think this does about 2x combined damage.
In Juppo and Meg’s Trick attack, they summon a bunch of…bob-ombs, which run into all enemies and deal about 1.5 damage.
In Valeria, Cleo, and Eileen’s Beauty attack, they all jump up and then send a bunch of pink hearts at the enemies, which damage all enemies for what is supposed to be 3x damage but it did crap damage when I tried it. I dunno.
And in case you were wondering why I wanted Kai for grinding, he and Tir have the Master pupil attack, where they each teleport and hit hit one enemy each, then teleport again until they’ve hit all enemies for 2x damage. Since Tir is one of the participants, this makes any random battles much easier if Kai is in your party and you use this. Not very good for boss battles though. Kai is decent enough in his own right but nothing special.
Not that that’s taken care of, we can finally head back to the Dwarf village.
But first, I did a little gambling. I played a games until I lost, but I go up to 45,000 bits before I did. Not bad.
Firstly I sharpened a few weapons with the money I made. Note how much a weapon’s attack power increases when it gains a new name, in this case, when Gremio’s axe levels up into a Copper Axe. Which makes me wonder what his axe was made of before, because copper is a really soft metal.
Actually, grinding anywhere but the next area is a waste, so I’ll just go ahead and move the plot along to get there.
Valeria asks if the dwarf chief knows about the Burning Mirror, and he says of course he does, it’s one of their treasures. She explains that Kwanda has stolen the plans and is going to use it to burn up all the elves.
Right on.
But, he doesn’t believe that any human could have stolen the blueprints from their vault, because humans are so sluggish. You know, as compared to dwarves which so renown for being fast and stealthy. So he dares us to go into the vault and steal the Running Water Root, which is just a macguffin, really. So we go there.
We couldn’t get in before because that dwarf wouldn’t let us in.
Let me say right now that I was planning on just grinding here, but I went a little too far in and the first actual room prevented me from going back out. So I just finished the stupid thing.
In this room we have a puzzle where you need to press the switches to lower the orbs so you can pass. Depending on the order you press them in you can get the chest in here and be able to get to the exit. We just press them in order from left to right and we’re able to get the chest, which contained a Sunbeam crystal which regenerates 15 hp a turn. Sort of useful for somebody maybe. Or for selling.
There are also robots here. Not very hard in any case, but using Tir’s Unite attack they’re a piece of cake. And they give good exp.
The next floor has a maze, but…it’s really small and easy to navigate. Chests in here include a Medicine, Magic robe, and Blue ribbon.
This is one of those rooms that has platforms that take you to somewhere with more platforms to choose from, then take another moving platform and so on. However, here there are only like 8 moving platforms overall, so it’s no trouble to get the chest with the Thunder rune piece and then leave.
After that, it’s more robots, another maze not worth showing with a Skill rune piece, Pointer hat, and Medicine.
Doin’ what now?
I don’t know why there’s gibberish, but you need to hit those two switches in this order: left, right, right, left, left, left, right, right.
Further on are chests with a Mega Medicine, 5000 bits, and an Escape talisman.
What we have here is a boss battle. Vimeo
Pretty easy, even without any offensive magic.
One last chest contains a Defense rune piece. Then the…other last chest contains the Running Water Root.
After grinding a little more for some spare cash, we head back to see what the Dwarf has to say now about us slovenly humans!
It would be more impressive if it wasn’t so ridiculously easy. Oh yeah, and we slaughtered your mutant and killed a bunch of other dwarves who I guess lived in there or were guards? Either way, they’re dead.
So through this act of thievery, the Dwarf chief offers to build the Firewind Cannon which can blow up the Burning Mirror. Hopefully with that we can return to the Elf village and convince the chief to not throw us into jail again.
Oh yeah, and the armor shop has Half helmets and Half armor, which nobody in the party can equip right now. Before leaving we make sure to pick up a couple Half helmets and sharpen everyone’s weapons to level 9.
Doop-dee-doopty—doo, just walking back down the Dwarf Trail to get to the Elf Village. Dum-dee-pumpery-bee. Oh hey, that’s a pretty orange glowing sunset.
The Elf Village, but what does that have to do with…ohhhhhhhhhh, I get it now.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA those assholes all got burned to death.
I guess so! Well, now all we can do is head back to castle and get more army peoples I guess.
So Kirkis is now understandable distraught over his entire people being genocided.
The little shining thing he’s holding in his hand is the engagement ring he was going to give to Pennsylvania. He tosses it to the ground because now there’s no use for it because there’s nothing left. But Gremio picks up the ring and mumbles something vague about hope and gives it back to Kirkis. Now the only thing to do is to defeat Kwanda Rosman’s army so we can steal all his men and land and such. I mean, avenge the elves. Yeah, that’s why we’re going to attack his castle…
But let’s go back once more so we can look at the burnt husk of the formers elves’ home.
She, now she has her priorities straight.
She is a mapmaker who gives you the Suiko Map, a map of the overworld.
The map shows up in the lower right corner and shows the general terrain and shows town and such as flashing dots. Pretty useful.
But now we have to walk through the Kobold Village to get back to the castle.
Would you like to go out for a drink? Oh I see, you don’t date…ugly people. No, I…I understand.
The soldiers surround the party but Valeria offers to turn herself in if the soldiers leave the rest of the group alone. The head soldier I guess swears to go he won’t hurt them. Of course, traitors are put to death so Valeria will be, well, put to death. She turns herself over, but it turns out the head soldiers is a jerk and says to kill us anyway.
He took a vacation a few years back and we haven’t heard from him since.
This leads to a fight where Kuromimi joins your party and is automatically rendered useless because the game puts him in the back row and he only has a short range attack. You know what? Let’s not even bother with this fight.
Since we’re at a high enough level we can just use the auto run command and just end the battle. Interestingly enough the following dialogue is more appropriate if this happens because the characters talk about how they’re losing and if this is it.
Fortunately, crisis is averted when some Liberation Army fellows show up and we all have tea and crumpets.
Mathiu arrives with a few army members who look suspiciously like bandits, plus Humphrey in tow. He is asked how he knew to come, and he says he warned about the Burning Mirror by somebody.
Miraculously, Pennsylvania was saved from the burning death by Stallion, who can run really fast. Don’t worry, every other elf is still dead who was in the village.
Nah, we got plenty of other crazy drugs back at the castle.
Gremio mentions the ring to Kirkis, but Kirkis doesn’t exactly elaborate on it for Pennsylvania.
Sudden ending!
Next Episode: Battles, battles everywhere.
I haven't actually played this game in like a week.
I did it 35 minutes ago.
I haven't laughed this hard in a good long while.
It's especially funny because I really LOVE the Suikoden series,they are my favorite rpgs, but these people are so completely out there, I actually feel dirty for liking the game they worship!
Oh and if I was a soulbonder I would be this guy right here:
oh man,reading/writing this....I need to get "lost in my world" again hahahaha
Dude...
Also, it's more about her batshit insane behavior and inability to function in normal society (without medication) that amuses me. Seriously, if someone can keep a house tidy, hold down a steady job, be pleasant and interesting company on occasion, and take care of their personal hygiene? I don't much care what they do in their spare time or what they believe.
But this is insane and possibly off topic.
No, no, it's fine, and wonderfully fucked up. I haven't actually read anything in it yet, but from what it sounds like I think it should make for some fun reading.
I was secretly hoping that you'd come back and post 'Guys, guys, this is all about me it isn't funny stop laughing
Mathiu lets us know that we now have Enough troops to take on Kwanda Rosman’s army. So let’s go do that.
This is the first major in Suikoden. These work in a kind of rock-paper-scissors format. There are three attack options to choose from; Charge, which is a full frontal attack, Bow, which is a volley of arrows from your archers, and Magic, which is magic. Charge beats Bow, Bow beats Magic, and Magic beats Charge, although sometimes it gets a bit…muddled. The attacks are divided into sets of up to 3 characters, each set of which has a different attack power. There is also a fourth option, Other, which lets you use Specialist characters, such as Thieves who can either let you know what attack is coming next, or get you gold, or just fail, and Strategists who can raise your attack power.
Now that the explanation is out of the way, let’s see it in action. See the power of the science! Viddler
…I have no idea how I won that.
After the battle Kwanda rushes into his castle and prepares to blast out army with the Burning Mirror. So wait, the Burning Mirror was an actual giant mirror? That what, reflected the sun and burned stuff? Well, I guess that’s ok since magic. Mathiu orders the troops to disperse so as the keep the horribly charred corpses to a minimum. Yup, all 76 troops that were left after the battle. Note that the number of soldiers left after a battle doesn’t actually affect anything.
Fortunately the dwarves show up with the Windfire Cannon and blow the Burning Mirror to smithereens.
At this point there is no choice in what party storms the castle. We have to use Tir, Viktor, Gremio, Valeria, Kirkis, and Kuromimi. Not to worry though, it’s a good enough party to get through it. Kuromimi needs more equipment and sharpened weapons, but a quick trip back to the Dwarf Village takes care of that.
Back in Pannu Yakuta, we find a maid willing to let us rest and heal up all our hurts.
These recolor Devil Armors patrol the castle, but aren’t anything terribly difficult.
The little doodads will rarely drop Chaos shields (+27), which are a significant improvement to Steel shields. I fought until I got one.
The only other enemies in here are these Veteran Solider swaps.
The courtyard contains a couple of chests with a Steel shield and a Thunder rune piece.
The first floor has a few side rooms with chests containing a Gauntlet and a Half Armor.
The second floor has chest containing a Medicine, a Gale Crystal, and the Old Book vol. 1.
Finally, the third floor has a dragon for no reason. Viddler
I think perhaps I am a bit overleveled for this fight, but there’s a reason to get to that high of level for after the battle.
On the roof we meet Kwanda Rosman himself.
That’s a very awkward sounding title or whatever those are called.
He says something about a black rune that Windy gave him, and it’s off to the first Duel battle of the game. Viddler
Duel battles work similarly to major battle, at least in the rock-paper-scissors aspect. The options are attack, defend and desperate attack. Attack beats defend, defend beats desperate attack and desperate attack beats attack. However, the character we control’s attack power, defense, and hp is still based on their actual stats, so it helps to get them the best armor and sharpen their weapon enough to make them better in battle. In duels, the enemy will often telegraph their next move with what they say before each turn. Things like, “Now it’s my turn.â€, for attack, “Come at me.â€, for defend, and anything with lots of exclamation points for desperate attack.
Tir vs. Kwanda Rosman
Buy, Tir sure did surmount him good. Wait…that doesn’t sound right…
It seems that Kwanda has somehow used the black rune to make all the kobolds mad. Kuromimi was unaffected because of plot.
Kwanda’s arm that holds the black rune starts flashing and he definitely seems to be in great pain.
His arm stops flashing and he drops to the ground. Kuromimi and Kirkis prepare to finish hi because of what he did. Finish him…with death! But Kwanda now seems oddly complacent and remorseful now.
We could get vengeance here and kill him, but it’s definitely worth seeing what the deal is with him.
After asking him why he’s changed, Kwanda explains that Windy gave him the black rune, which gave him power over monsters. But it also took over his mind and made him do those bad things or some excuse like that. He doesn’t think Windy can be trusted anymore. He wants to die like a soldier for what he’s done, but…
But we want all 108 stars, so he’s coming with us.
At first Kwanda laughs in Tir’s face, but after about 2 seconds consideration he decides that the Emperor has changed since they fought in the war 7 years ago. So we have our first recruit from the ranks of the Scarlet Moon Empire’s Generals. He’s ok, his defining trait is that he’s the first character you can recruit who wears heavy armor.
Back outside the castle, Kuromimi’s mother and brother arrive for some reason, which means all the kobolds are now normal and are back at their village.
So now like everybody frigging joins permanently, including Kirkis, Pennsylvania, Kuromimi, Valeria, and even Stallion. They're all party members and units in major battles.
We could warp back to the castle right now, but let’s not be too hasty.
Back in the kobold village, we find Rubi the elf, but he’s a typical jerk elf and won’t join us at the moment.
Fu Su Lu here however will join us, as long as we pay his 10,000 bit tab. This tger-masked brute is a great fighter, so he is well worth it.
Since the item shop is now manned (dogged?) you can buy Hazy and Wind crystals there if you want.
Kuromimi’s little brother Gon joins as long as you have Kuromimi in your party. I think he’s a terrier.
Now that Tir is level 30, Lorelai joins. I guess now she likes his “power†enough to “join†with him.
That’s it for now. All there is to do is head back to the castle and…
…do nothing for three months I guess.
Flik has finally arrived, back from doing whatever it was he was doing before. He says he was gathering Liberation forces, but I bet he was really just out making sandwiches for some out of the way village. He’s demanding to see Odessa, so we have to go through the rigmarole of lying that she’s off to market for something, and…
Oh, so I guess we’re done with that now.
Flik, Humphrey and Sanchez and all pretty shocked, but Mathiu thinks that it’s ok to tell everyone now, because the reason she wanted us to lie was to keep the Liberation army from falling apart. But now it seems to be doing quite well, we can finally tell the truth.
Flik is pretty pissed at this news, and that he was lied to, and especially that Tir is now the commander. His anger is pretty legitimate, considering the last time he saw Tir was when they still barely trusted him at all seeing as he is an Imperial General’s son.
At this point Humphrey actually talks, until now he could have easily been a mute, as all his lines have been of the standard “…………..†variety.
Flik refuses to cooperate with us scum and heads off the Kaku to, I dunno, make his own army, with hookers and blackjack.
Following Flik back to Kaku, we find him in this house. Given the massive amount of time he’s been given to reconsider, he offers to join force with Tir even though he can’t accept him as leader yet. Also something about Odessa not believing in him as leader in order to gloss over the fact that it would have made a lot more sense for him to be the Liberation leader.
Back at the castle…
k.
Milich…Milich? You don’t mean…?
Oh no, not him…hoo boy.
Flik proposes that we attack the Fortress of Garan now that we have the combined forces of our army and Flik’s remnants. Mathiu agrees, so off we go to Garan and then *shudder* Milich’s domain. Last time had plenty enough videos, so we’ll save this for next time.
Next Episode: Major battle, then recruiting
Pahn
Camille
Tai ho
Kuromimi
Kirkis
Valeria
Eileen
Lorelai
Stallion
Yam Koo
Lepant
Krin
Juppo
Kimberly
Humphrey
Mose
Sheena
Kai
Sydonia
Sylvina
Gen
Meg
Luc
Liukan
Ronnie Bell
Kage
Fu Su Lu
Mina
Blackman
Sarah
Antonio
Lester
Flik
Anji
Alen
Varkas
Kamandol
Gon
Grenseal
Hellion
Kasumi
Kessler
Kanak
Kwanda
Leonardo
Lotte
Maas
Milich
Meese
Sansuke
Sergei
I think I will let the episodes I post catch up to where I am in making them now, so when I have you pick a party you can actually know who half the damn people are.
Hmm, that's not a bad idea. I'll only have to do that once at any rate. But I'd rather not list unite attacks until I show them in the updates. 16 will start with a unite attack demo, plus I think some spells. And yeah, kobolds + Fu Su Lu have a unite attack.
Fighters:
Anji
Fu Su Lu (+ defense)
Gen
Humphrey (+defense
Kai
Kwanda (+defense)
Leonardo
Pahn (+defense)
Ronnie Bell (+defense)
Tai Ho (+skill)
Valeria (+defense)
Varkas
Casters:
Eileen (+speed)
Hellion (Mother Earth rune)
Lotte
Luc
Milich
Hybrid:
Alan (Rage rune)
Flik (+skill & speed)
Grenseal (Thunder rune)
Sheena (+speed & luck)
Mediocre in either category:
Antonio
Blackman (+defense)
Camille (+skill)
Gon (+luck)
Juppo (skill)
Kage (+speed)
Kamandol (+skill)
Kanak (+speed)
Kasumi (+skill & speed)
Kessler
Kimberly (+skill)
Kirke
Kirkis (+skill & speed)
Krin (+skill & speed)
Kuromimi
Lepant
Lester
Liukan (+skill)
Lorelai (+skill)
Maas
Meese
Meg (+luck)
Mose
Sansuke
Sarah
Sergei (+skill)
Stallion (skill & speed)
Sydonia (+skill & speed)
Sylvina (+speed & luck)
Yam Koo (+skill & speed)
Mother Earth, Rage, and Thunder are upgraded Earth, Fire and Lightning runes.
That would work out fine, and Hellion does indeed have a good rune.
Well, let’s do it! Viddler
Ok, the first part went great, but the second part…not so much.
Poisonous roses? Yeah I dunno, doesn’t really make any sense…but we must find a way to counter them!
Sanchez suggests sending a reconnaissance team into Milich’s domain. Viktor and Flik automatically join the party. Gremio also insists coming along, but…
Be a good boy now or you won’t get any treats.
Viktor explains that since Tir is now the leader of the Liberation Army, he’s no longer a child and doesn’t need Gremio’s protection all the time. Viktor has a hunch that Gremio shouldn’t come along, but Gremio overrides him and insists on joining anyway. That leaves two open spots, which I filled with Fu Su Lu and Sydonia, as per requests that I sort of couldn’t fill until now.
This guy will only join once we get 80 total recruits. He also conveniently tells us how many more we need to get before he’ll join. At this point we had 41 total Stars.
Traveling northwest a bit brings us to Teien. Teien has an item shop with very useful Killer crystals, and a blacksmith that can sharpen weapons up to level 12. Very nice. As well as…
A new recruit, Hellion, and her incredibly useful item the Blink Mirror. When you use the Blinking Mirror from your inventory you are instantly transported back to the castle in front of Viki. This makes traveling between various locations in the game a breeze and is thus incredibly useful.
Hellion herself is no slouch either, coming with the first upgraded elemental rune you can find, the Mother Earth rune. The upgraded elemental runes have the regular elemental runes’ 2, 3, and 4 level spells as their 1, 2, and 3 level spells, plus a new, super powerful level 4 spell. We’ll want to be getting as many of these as we can as the game goes on.
Over at the docks, we happen upon this jolly fellow, who won’t join us until Tir is at a certain level. That level is 40, because he tells us how many we need to get in order to recruit him.
Sharpening weapon is getting even more pricey now, as it takes a cool 80,000 bits to sharpen a weapon from level 9 to level 12. I sharpened Fu Su Lu’s weapon to level 9 for now, we’ll come back here later.
*Cut nearly ten minutes of inventory management*
Let’s make some money!
Something very odd happened at this point. Gaspar kept hitting STORMs and 123s and giving us all his money, and through some very mysterious methods we barely ever lost!
Over 15 minutes and totally no resets later, I swear, we have almost 260,000 bits. Which still won’t actually sharpen everyone’s weapon to 12, but it’s a good start.
But before that, let’s do a bit more recruiting.
Back in Seika, Antonio will only join after we recruit Marie and after Marie mentions she need a cook. Which I don’t actually remember her saying, but hey what the hell. Antonio stands next to Marie and can be used as a battle character.
The Queen of the Jungle here refuses to listen to us unless Lepant is in the party. Good thing he is, then!
13-18
Ah, good old fashioned child abuse.
Sheena is a guy if you couldn’t tell. He’s actually a pretty decent character, having good magic and a solid attack. His weapon is short ranged though, and there are better characters for the front row.
Back in Mathiu’s orphanage, Apple here bitches at us for dragging Mathiu back into a war.
Choose at least the first and third options and she joins. I don’t know about the second option but I know the other ones work. Apple joins as kind of a sub-strategist under Mathiu.
Now let’s spend our hard earned winnings on some weapon sharpening. Tir’s weapon becomes an Heaven Fang Staff at level 12. Because we need to do some grinding now to get something, I put Kai in the party for ease of battle. At level 12 his weapon becomes an Exorcist’s Staff. We have just a enough for a couple more levels and to sharpen Viktor’s weapon to a level 12 Koten Sword.
Down south a little ways from Teien lies Rikon. Therein lies an item shop and appraiser, plus a boat we can ride down the river. We’ll do that in a bit.
Anything? Oh, baby!
Mr. the Hutt here won’t join yet but still acts as an appraiser for the time being. Now we need to go fight monsters in the near overworld to find a certain…something.
New monsters include these easily defeated planty dudes…
…as well as the angry vines of Mad Ivy. This part of the overworld has a bit of a plant theme going on, if you hadn’t noticed.
But what we need to look for are these Holly Fairy swaps as they will eventually drop the item we need to recruit Jabba.
We can ask Jabba to join us or give us money, but unfortunately the option to ask for sexual favors is lacking.
On the second floor of the inn, we find this lovely lady longing for her lost kitty. We must find it for her post haste! But wherever could it be?
Why there it is, hiding behind a house in Kaku.
Whoopee. Lotte is a pretty decent magician with a long range weapon, so she’s in the category of pretty darn useful but not quite top tier.
With that done, let’s steal this boat and see where the currents take us!
I guess that’s why they call them rapids and not slowpids! Because a whirlpool is rapids and acts like a barrier, preventing us from getting to that house that certainly isn’t somewhere we need to be, no sir.
Guess what time it is kids? That’s right! It’s show off magic and Unite attacks time! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~!
Here is Kirkis and Pennsylvania’s Wild Arrow attack, where they let loose and pelt all enemies with a flurry of arrows, dealing normal damage to all but leaving them both unbalanced for the next round. Not exactly the best Unite attack there guys.
This is Krin and Humphrey’s…Bumpy attack, where Krin slashes at an enemy and then Humphrey nails Krin into the enemy. I…yeah, I don’t know. It does 2x damage to the enemy.
Meanwhile, Kuromimi and Gon’s unimaginatively named Kobold attack has them both leaping up and slashing one enemy for 2x damage.
That’s it for Unite attacks for now. But wait, there’s more! Technically levels 1-4 earth magic, the level 4 magic being provided by a level 3 Mother Earth rune.
Spectacular. Clay Guardian increases one character’s defense a bit, Voice of Earth does around 300 damage to all enemies as long as they’re on the ground, Copper Flesh increases one character’s defense as well, but more so, and Earthquake does about 700 damage to all enemies and is pretty rad.
Coming back to the main story, surely there must be someone we can find who can help us get past those rapids? Someone who lives on a dock and has an interest in boa- oh yeah wait I forgot to talk to him before now.
Anyway, it’s this dude in Teien. We ask him to help us beat the rapids, and he says he can help, but he can’t do it alone. He joins the party and says to go next door.
Ah, good old fashioned threatening old men fun.
After Kamandol insults everybody, Gen asks if he has a way we might be able to get past the rapids. And he does.
So wait, he just invented an oil engine before anybody had even invented a steam engine or anything else? Or wait, the dwarves were using steam power, weren’t they. Come to think of it, what does our elevator run on anyway?
What he said!
It’s Premier L’Amour, actually.First Love? Anyway, it so happens that Milich went around renaming towns in his domain to French names for some reason, and that’s what he calls Rikon. So Gen is just saying let’s go to Rikon. Kamandol also joins the party.
On the way…
In Gen and Kamandol’s Fatal Attack, Gen jumps up and starts stabbing one enemy repeatedly, then Kamandol jumps in and gives them a good wallop with his cane, dealing 2x damage.
Finally arriving in Rikon after having to carry the stupid engine all the way on their backs, the party settles in for a good night’s sleep except for Gen and Kamandol, who are forced to work all night on attaching to engine to the boat. I don’t know what the owner of the boat thinks of this.
Nice soliloquy there, Gremio. Awfully Shakespearean of you. He goes to consider that maybe Tir doesn’t need him any more after all…
Welp, let’s get on that boat and go to that mysterious house down by the river.
Oh, so it’s not just a house, it’s a hermitage. How fancy.
Hi, you must be Liukan.
Could you hold for a second while I loot your house?
Wait, how would he know that? We were kind of just randomly roaming around, looking for a solution to the poison rose problem. I suppose some anti-poison vaccine might work…
Oh god the mist is talking to us! That’s terrifying!
Crap on a cracker, itt’s even more terrifying than talking mist, Milich on a dragon!
Milich proclaims that he is the greatest of the Five (now four) Imperial Generals, and can’t let us get the antidote to his poison mushrooms, I mean, roses.
So instead of killing the doctor or something sensible like that, he just takes him to a prison that I’m sure we’ll never be able to break into, not in a million years of trying. Right.
Next Episode: We really easily get into that prison
Yeah, I'm going to catch up to me now. You know, with posts. Party suggestions are still open.
I've never seen a battle get as close as your Kwanda Rosman. Nice pull. 8 )
Did you get the pirates yet? That's a good fight at a low level.
Fu Su Lu's hit points? Delicious.
Quincy = Male = ?
Pahn gets time in this update. The pirates are in the next update. I'm pretty sure Quincy is male. Of course there is one surefire way to check, at least for recruits who fight....
Episode 14 – Jailhouse Rock
There’s a name that should be familiar to someone. See also the renaming of a town to something French. Blanche is white I think? Dunno what Bier means.
So Mathiu sends us off to find a counterfeiter and a scrivener names Tesla…hmm, what exactly does he have in mind?
Welcome to Antei/Bier Blanche. Quite a large, high class town. Antei has an item shop, rune shop and armor shop with better and even more expensive armor.
Hmm, can’t do anything to recruit this person yet.
We can recruit her though. Tir needs to have Toe shoes equipped before she’ll let you dance with her.
She has a fun dancing animation, though Tir just kind of…hops around. She’s a party member and will dance if we talk to her in the castle.
Aha, Jeane. Just ask her to and she’ll join. She mans the rune shop in the castle and is a powerful mage in her own right. Although not in this game. She and Viki are the only recruitable characters to appear in all five main games.
Arriving at the armor shop, we find yet another recruit, Chapman, of the armoring Chapmans. He’s the castle’s armorer. Fascinating.
Afterward we can still buy armor, but boy is it pricey. Fortunately Magic robes sell for a decent but so we can buy a few ninja suits for our front line and Tir.
We can go see Kimberly now.
Yes it is, now hurry up and read it. Or don’t you know how to read?
14-14
…oh. Kimberly considers and tells us she’ll join, but on one condition.
Flik must go on a date with her. Well, dinner in her home, but same thing. Flik is a bit hesitant, as he had a thinly veiled thing for Odessa. I mean come on, his weapon is named after her.
Once again, Viktor is the voice of reason, and the date is begun!
I like that they made a bunch of special animations for scene even though it lasts less than a minute. And they say they’re drinking tea, but I bet it was really sake. Then they fucked like bunnies.
After some morning after conversation, Kimberly joins and heads back to the castle, letting us know that Tesla is in town, but is using the pseudonym Albert. How will we ever uncover his subterfuge?
My name is Guy Incognito.
We know he’s really Tesla, so Viktor grills him about the names of his relatives in order to try to get him to admit who he really is.
Tesla is a stupid.
But he agrees to come along, and regrets that fate has dealt him such an unlucky hand.
It seems Mathiu’s plan was successful. He has forged us some Imperial documents in order to get into Soniere Prison, complete with Milich’s signature and Imperial Seal.
Here we are. But surely it won’t be so easy as to have the guards be fooled with just mere papers? What with our ragtag band of misfits, one who looks suspiciously like the son of a general. Surely we’ll have to end up fighting a cadre of guards in order to get in?
Well that’s fine too then.
Inside however we many guards who aren’t so easily fooled.
And by guards I mean sentient playing cards and piles of red goo.
As well as Vipermen and little pots with snakes in them called Delfs. What an…odd choice for prison guards.
At this point I went back an added Pahn in the party in place of Fu Su Lu. The reason for this will be explained…next episode I think.
Over in the prison, uh, guardhouse I guess, complete with bedroom, kitchen and dining room, there’s a save point and a chest with a Silver necklace. Only certain female characters can equip necklaces, not even all females can. Nobody in the party right now can, that’s for sure.
At least they made some precautions preventing prisoners escaping. This switch opens that big door, and it’s the only way the door will open, so nobody in the actual prison could even steal a key or whatever and get out that way. But it’s not like this room is important to the story or anything. *cough* That chest contained an Old Book vol. 6.
After heading down a few flights of stairs and opening a chest with an Antidote inside, we come to a few somewhat competent guards, who actually think to ask who we are and then attack us. They’re pushovers though, so no worries.
I’m an old man and I don’t like anything! Except Matlock…whatever that is.
Further on, there are more soldiers guarding cells with chests in them containing a Half helmet and Sound Setting 0. In the last cell we find Liukan. After explaining who we are he agrees to escape with us.
Before we leave we must make sure we fight enough Nightmares to get an Opal (ring). Although isn’t necessary to get it right now, it’s still good to make sure we have it.
You know, if you would have done that before we walked through the door you could have just trapped us there and I have no idea how we would have gotten out. But hey you know, maybe you want us to kick your ass.
Milich tells us how he just came by because of word that someone had snuck in, and is a bit surprised that it was us. Viktor want to settle it now, but Milich thinks swords are just a tad too barbarous for his tastes. So he shows us a shiny bottle.
Pssh, what could possibly be in a little bottle that you could threaten us with?
…Agony you say?
Ok well that’s actually a pretty good threat right there. Are you sure you won’t reconsider your no swords right now policy? That would at least be a more pleasant way to die.
But at least you’re not stupid enough to release that nasty stuff while we’re all trapped in…
…this…little...room...goddamnit.
He runs the fuck out the bottom door and locks it somehow while everyone else just stands there, dumbly staring straight ahead. They all die, the end.
Ha ha ha, oh I’m such a kidder.
With a sudden surge of quick thinking, Gremio uses the switch to open the top dor and everyone else except Tir rushes out. Gremio then pushes Tir out the door and uses the switch again to close the door with him still trapped inside with the spores…
Viktor tries to argue with him to open the door, but Gremio refuses. If he opens the door the spores will get to everyone else as there is no other place that can seal them.
No matter what Tir says, Gremio can’t obey his order to open the door. He laments that he won’t be able to protect the Young Master any longer. His vision failing, Gremio makes Tir promise that he’ll always follow his heart…that is his final wish.
Some time later Mathiu shows up, saying that they were gone so long that he decided to bring the troops to see if the party was in trouble. The spores have dissipated by now, but not before killing every living thing in the front part of the prison.
The only things left of Gremio are his cloak and axe.
Back at the castle, Cleo, Pahn and the rest try to console Tir over Gremio’s death.
Now cannot be the time to grieve though, as it is time to wage our assault on that flower-toting bastard, Milich. Dr. Liukan has devised an antidote that will enable the troops to stave off the effects of the damnable roses.
The Battle at Scarleticia Castle. Viddler
That could have gone better. And it did, because I had to replay it due to, well, stupidity. But let’s not get into that.
Let’s git that sucka!
For the infiltration of Scarleticia, Viktor and Flik are mandatory characters while the other 3 slots are our choice. I took Pahn for further experience, Kai for ease and Sydonia because why not.
Inside Scarleticia it’s all pink and gold and pretty and lalalala. It also contains the same damn monsters as the prison. I guess Milich was too cheap to spring for the super deluxe monster package.
A couple of chests in rooms off the foyer contain a Magic Robe and Red paint.
Ivanov the painter wants his freedom but you can’t give it to him because hell if I know. We’ll get back to him later.
I mean hey, the guy just killed my best friend but I know that talking good about people in front of their portraits always causes a tap door to open leading to a secret room.
See?
Chests in the secret room of secretness contain a Window setting 1 and a Magic rune piece.
Oh say, guess what we can do now?
Yup, the Soul Eater mysteriously and for reason now has it’s second spell, an attack that does about 350 to all enemies. Ok, it’s not really for no reason, it turns out the Soul Eater eats the soul of the dead or somesuch and that’s how it grows. So Gremio’s sacrifice got us even more goodies than just surviving.
Get it! We can’t recruit her yet either.
One last chest on the second floor has a Spark crystal, then we’re out on the balcony to roast the rose.
Man come on, stop screeching like a little girl. It is not pleasant to listen to.
Mere seconds later, Milich arm begins to burn, and it turns out he also had a black rune from Windy that melts off for no discernible reason. Nevertheless, Viktor, Pahn, and Cleo all tell Milich to say his prayers, because now they’re gonna get some sweet, sweet vengeance for poor ol’ Gremio.
But Mathiu Is more hesitant. He asks if Milich also got a Black rune from Windy. Perhaps what happened to Kwanda happened to Milich as well?
That’s some fine poetry there, Viktor, but we’re not in the mood!
Well hell, screw vengeance, we want another star of destiny!
Viktor et al still want to kill him, but Flik steps in and tells them to obey their leader, showing that he has now accepted Tir as his leader or some junk.
So Milich asks to join because now he knows that Windy is evil and the Emperor is enraptured with her resemblance to his late wife, with is kind of creepy.
But suddenly!
Coming to ANTHRAX castle? Well I hope they have a shitload of boats because otherwise I don’t think that’s going to work. Of course our army is in the castle so we must have a ton of boats…or maybe our army camps out on the edge of the lake on the mainland? I dunno. Anyway, back to the castle.
It seems Kasumi here escaped from the ninja village of Rokkaku with the help of their boss, Hanzo, after General Teo’s army attacked. She joins, and now the impending threat of Teo’s army is looming before us. Can Tir defeat his own father? Tune in next time and find out!
Next Episode: Shit goes down
The quest rolls inexorably on...
Keep 'em coming.
How exactly will you acquire all 108 stars if Gremio dies?
Considering all of the foreshadowing/obvious references, I'm assuming that you're alluding to Pahn?
I liked Gremio, though.
NOTE: As of this posting only the Viddler versions of the videos are working. I got tired of waiting for the Gamerstube ones to finish encoding.
Episode 15 – Deserted Cities of the Heart
Immediate fight begin now attack! Additionally, a duel battle. Viddler
We done got our asses handed to us, that we did.
Now, for those who haven’t played this before, you might not know that it is really easy to lose that duel with Pahn. If he’s not leveled enough or his weapon isn’t strong enough, or if he doesn’t have the best armor Teo will hit like a son of a bitch and even if you know what he is going to do there’s a good chance Pahn will fall. And if he does, then he is dead. Gone, kaput. He’s not coming back and you won’t be able to get all 108 stars. So it is essential that he is trained up to snuff. Knowing what attacks Teo uses is pretty essential too.
Back at the meeting room, the major players are in shock over how easily Teo’s cavalry ran roughshod over our soldiers. Nothing we can do now but go cry in our beds…
Or not. Come on, lady, I’m frigging tired here from fighting wars and shit.
Well hey but I guess if you want to talk to me about your family’s petty squabbles then that’s fine.
She goes on the explain how the Soul Eater rune is one of the 27 true runes, and that Windy has another true rune, the Gate rune, and that she wants the Soul Eater so she can combine their power and take over the world and blah blah blah she’s an evil bitch so we need to kill her.
Back in the meeting room in the morning, it seems these guys have been standing here all night, possibly sleeping standing up like horses. But Flik has the utterly brilliant idea of actually using something that the Liberation army had planned to use in the first place, the fire spears. The secret factory that was supposed to make them is in the north, so I guess that’s where we’ll be going to next. But the only way to get there right now is by boat, because all the borders are closed off. But how will get past the rapids that are blocking our path? HOOOOOOWWWWWWW????
Oh right, we got these goofballs to make us another faster than normal boat.
Because we need a professional boat rider guy, we need to have Tai Ho in our party for the next part of this grand adventure. So hey, let’s get Yam Koo too. Doobie doo. So we set off…only to go right back to the castle.
Huzzah! Our castle is…slightly less like a giant rock now, I guess.
But what’s this? It seems before we can progress there are a few colorful characters we can recruit!
Here is the lovely Esmerelda, who um…uh…stands there in the castle, I believe. Boy, that trouble getting the Opal sure was worth it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?!?
Outside, we can now recruit Qlon who…also…stands around the castle and doesn’t actually do anything. We’ll get useful characters again soon, I swear.
Now that we’ve “defeated†Milich, Ivanov will now come along with us. He eventually paints a mural that is the second pic in the op if we get all the different color paints to him.
As long as Milich is in our active party, Kasios will come with us. If we talk to him in the cast—wait, what? Him? Suikosource I really do not think Kasios is a him. I mean come on. Gremio and Luc may be one thing, but Kasios is quite another. So he’s a she until further notice. Anyway, talking to her in the castle lets us listen to any of the games songs we’ve unlocked so far.
Now it’s time to head north to lands unknown!
I lied, we’re going here to fight some pirates!
Flamboyantly dressed pirates, of course. Viddler
Ok, now we can go to the north.
And what a great north it is! Kirov has all sorts of amenities, such as a new armor shop and an item store, and a semi annoying fetch quest!
Oh boy, Dragon Armor. We can buy a few of these at least. Since we got that Chaos shield before we don’t really need another one right now. Then a few Head Gears (+14) as well.
Defense! *haugh-hauaghl* Defense!
Soap? That should be easy. I’ll uh, get back to you on that.
But first, let’s go to the inn to see if we can’t play a silly mini game.
Vagrant you mean! Georges offer to join if you beat them at a card game.
Basically what we need to do is clear out all the cards. Select two and if they match, they also flip over any cards adjacent to them. So just get two near the middle, like so…
…and nearly the entire board is cleared without even having to do much. It’s a simple matter to clear the rest in the allotted time limit. Of course, this works the best with 5 different cards, there exists the option to go with more, but that just makes it more difficult.
Wheeeeeeee. Now we can play the card game back at the castle any time we want. We won’t be doing that.
In the item shop, we find the very useful Fortune crystal. We won’t be buying this yet though, although we will eventually for ease of leveling up underleveled characters. We will however be buying this conspicuous Sugar, as it is needed to get soap in a convoluted fashion.
What we need to do is talk to this guy, who needs Soy sauce. So what we have to do is go around and ask people what they have and what they need. It’s not worth showing, but we give the sugar to someone to get a yardstick, then give the yardstick for some salt, give the salt to get the soy sauce, give the soy sauce to get the soap, and give the soap to Sarah to get…
…well, Sarah. She does the castle’s laundry. All of it. Even Viktor’s underwear. Oh boy. She also fights in the party with a laser knife.
In Kirov we also meet Melodye, who can wield a special rune. We’ll need to find that rune before we can recruit her. Her? God, I don’t even know anymore.
That’s it for Kirov for now, but we’ll be back in a bit.
Off to the north, we must pass through this town, Kalekka. Hey wait…where have we heard that name before? Ah yeah, it was the Battle of Kalekka where Mathiu became at the same time a hero and disgusted with war. Obviously that battle did nothing for Kalekka’s tourist trade.
Why hello, Mr. Silverberg, You have a very auspicious name, you know that? Not that Tir or the party actually know his name. All he tells is to recruit as many people as possible, which we were doing anyway. We will get back to him eventually though.
As a war torn hamlet, of course Kalekka would have monster wandering about. Combinations of Hawk Men and Shadows here are the most common monsters. They aren’t very tough, especially with Tir+Kai, and give some nice experience and thousands of bits per battle, which make Kalekka and excellent training ground for the nonce.
The only other enemy here are these two-headed dogs that are on fire. They also do not pose much of a threat.
Breaking into abandoned houses and looting their remains nets us an Earth rune piece, the Old Book vol. 8, and an Antique.
I guess the other two here don’t count? Though I guess it’s not like they’re going to be here for that much longer anyway. Well, enjoy your lonely existence there, fella.
Death and destruction? I mean, seeds and plants and naturey stuff. Yeah…that’s it. Now join me please because I didn’t step on your precious plants.
There we go. Note that Blackman will not join you if you walk over his plants before talking to him. He’s an ok fighter that has good defense. He also plants a garden in the castle eventually, I think.
Only one more item of note in Kalekka.
Hmm, now who might we know that wants a special rune who also has a name related to music? Bugger If I know. Oh well.
It’s a secret to everyone.
Hey wait, those backsides seem familiar.
Man, those guys are such dicks.
So let’s join in the fun!
After that sudden bout of silliness, we explain that we’re from the Liberation Army, and since we know Odessa, Ronnie tells us to come inside. Also.
Oh boy, now we can drink poisoned tea all day long!
Inside, Ronnie tells us to talk to Mose, but before that…
Kage will only join if you give him 20,000 bits. That’s not so bad, and of course we’re recruiting everybody, so in he goes!
So anyway, we talk to Hitler and let him know that Odessa is dead, and that we need a bunch of Fire Spears. I know “haha, that guy looks like Hitler!†jokes are old, but come on, seriously, that is fucking Hitler right there. Anyway, he tells us we’ll need boats, and Tai ho tells us he know of someone in Kirov that has boats. So back there we go!
Yeah, it turns out I knew exactly what musically themed named character to give this rune to! We can talk to Melodye in the castle to change the menu sounds. The sound sets we change to are…odd, as will be evidenced when we change to the only other set we have at the moment once we get back to the castle.
We’re the Goddamn Batman! Er, I mean Liberation Army. Tai Ho explains that we need boats and we get boats. Then he joins. He sits at the castle and does nothing.
After making the woman do all the work, Ronnie Bell and Mose both join. Ronnie Bell is a hard hitting front liner and Mose sucks in battle but can sharpen weapons to level 12 at the castle.
Only one more thing to do in Kirov.
Break into peoples’ houses and eat their food. This however, leads to an unintended consequence.
Another recruit! Who knew being a criminal could be so rewarding?
Back at the castle, we can change the menu sounds to the voice sound set, which we will hear in a little bit of a tad.
It’s time. Time to defend our beliefs, time to take on our father. To battle, and to victory!
The battle, and the aftermath. Viddler
Well, that was a rather long update, but I didn’t feel like there were any good enough areas to break it up.
Next episode: The Village…of the Warriors!
And now we're all caught up to...me. Thus resumes updates every other day.
Your Viktor hits like a fucking howitzer. Killer rune + more than 2 Lightning rune pieces?
Hellion cleaned that fight up for you. I remember that being so much more difficult. Was that really the earliest you could have done it? Good show.
Do you have Kasumi yet? I challenge you to use both Kage and Kasumi and make them as useful as your mainstays. I always wished that I could figure out how. Kage looks so cool, but hits like a cripple.
That's pretty much it for Viktor, that and keeping his weapon sharpened.
No, you can fight them a lot earlier, right after you get to Milich's domain I think. I just waited until then because Tai Ho already has to be in your party at that point anyway.
Yeah, Kasumi is there. The ninjas in this game are ok, but nothing spectacular. They can't hit hard as the hard hitters and have crap magic but they're fast and Kage can at least attack from the back row. Plus, Kasumi has the Shrike rune which you can use with her in the back row as well. I'll use them for a bit in the next video, perhaps.
Thanks!
Episode 16 – Interlude
The region of course being the Lorimar region. Creative fortress names are not the Empire’s forte.
Well hell, let’s go cause some hell! …with hell!
CHEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
…or not.
Kasumi, use your magical ninja powers and let us in!
Good girl.
Yeah, no kidding. I mean, all the graves that are conspicuously there have been dug up. I’m thinking that’s not normal, even for a deserted fortress type place.
At this point Viktor and Cleo have to be in the party for a time, but the remaining three spots are open. For the nonce I took Flik, Kai and Fu Su Lu, but that’ll change in a bit. Let’s leave, but before we head back to the castle, let’s return to Lorimar for a moment.
Lopping off heads is out army’s number one export. You’ll fit right in. Kirke the headsman joins and is a battle party member. He has middling stats in all categories and isn’t particularly useful.
Now that we have a bit of time to relax, let’s take another tour of the castle to see some more places that have now opened up.
Taking the western door out of the first floor, we find ourselves on a lovely outcropping overlooking the lake, with bridges to the north and west. Upon this rocks rests Kasios, who will sing such as has never been sung before.
In that we can listen to all the games tracks by talking to…it. This game does have some pretty nice music, so this is a good feature. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound that great coming through the Gamebridge.
To the north are some more of our friends lounging about, and dwelling in a cave are some pirates and bandits, or bandrates.
Across the bridge to the west, Valeria stands ready, while inside Kwanda…also stands, ready. Up the stairs however, lies Milich’s beautiful rose garden where he and his companions drink tea and smell flowers and think about unicorns or whatever.
Ohgodnoooooo!
This is also where Melodye is if we want to change our sound. Which we do because fuck the Voices sound set it is really annoying.
Through the east door out of the first floor, there is a tower with a bunch of dudes loitering around in it. Nothing special, but I guess they have to be somewhere.
Finally, out of the southeast door of the second floor is this cozy little outside area where the elves and kobolds hang around to simulate being in a forest or whatever it is they're doing out here.
But wait, remember all those paints that we kept getting and were in all those item shops? Now we can collect those and take them to Ivanov on the third floor to see how much of the mural he can complete.
Suffice it to say we have a few more pails of paint to collect.
Now that the tour is finished, what say we go and try out some new magic and Unite attacks now that we’ve recruited so many additional skilled warriors?
The third level Soul Eater spell, Hell, can instantly eliminate all enemies onscreen if they’re not immune to it. I made a mistake before when I said that Black shadow was the spell that Ted used on the Queen Ant, it was really this spell.
Alen & Grenseal are both very good battle characters, as they each possess good magic and fighting ability, and can fight competently in the front lines. In addition, each possess one of the higher power elemental runes, Alen having the Rage rune (Fire) and Grenseal having the Thunder rune (Lightning). Therefore even when they don’t have any 4th level spell points they can still show off level 4 spells of their respective beginning runes. Ball of Lightning hits one enemy for around 1000 damage, and Explosion hits all enemies for around 700 damage. It only gets better though folks, but not quite yet.
Next, Luc and Hellion demonstrate the level 4 wind spell, Storm, the level 4 water spell, Water of Kindness, and the level 5 earth spell, Guardian of Earth. Storm hits all enemies for a lot of damage, Water of Kindness heals all allies hp to full, and Guardian of Earth increases everybody's defense.
Now, onto the Unite attacks.
Gen & Sansuke’s Carpenter attack. They both jump up to one enemy and do their repeated stabby motion for a bit. It hits for 2x damage.
Anji, Kanak, & Leonardo’s Pirate attack. They jump up to an enemy and hit it. Fairly disappointing. It hits one enemy for 2,5x damage.
Fu Su Lu, Kuromimi, & Gon’s Kobold + 1 attack. They rush up to the front of an enemy, then Kuromimi and Gon both attack at the same time, then they back up and Fu Su Lu takes a flying leap over them and slashes the enemy. This hits one enemy for 3x damage.
Flik, Alen, & Grenseal’s Pretty Boy attack. They all jump up and flash a gang sign, then Flik, Alen, and Grenseal respectively dash like lightning and slash one enemy, hitting for 2x damage.
Lepant, Sheena, & Eileen’s Family attack. Sheena jumps up first and attacks an enemy, knocking it back a bit, then Lepant jumps in and attacks, knocking it back more, then Eileen fires a javelin or something at it. It hits one enemy for 2.5 damage.
Pahn & Ronnie Bell’s Beat ‘em Up attack. Pahn jumps in and starts pummeling an enemy, then ducks as Ronnie lets fly a massive fireball which toasts the enemy. It hits one enemy for a bunch of damage.
Whooo. After fighting for a bit in Kalekka to get some levels and money, Tir is now level 40, which means…
…we’re now strong enough to recruit Eikei. He has um…good hp, but not much else above average.
Well, here’s where we’re going to stop for now. I apologize for the lack of actual content, but if I continued then it would just get way too long.
Next Episode: We actually go to the Warrior’s Village, I swear.
Episode 17 - Cavern
Welcome to pristine Warrior’s Village! In this village you’ll find plenty of armor, items, and perhaps even a warrior or two!
Why look, here are some now!
Here we have a Hix & Tengaar, couple whose hijinks will be the focus of the next portion of the game. It seems Tengaar is set on going someplace, but Hix doesn’t want her to go because she might be eaten!
While that might sound like some king of euphemism for maturity, it is in fact to be taken quite literally.
I like Tengaar, she’s no nonsense. “Hey the castle might have a vampire in it but at it’s a damn castle and non some piece of crap pig farming village. Be nice to live in style for a change!â€
But of course Space Ghost’s nemesis wouldn’t want Tengaar to be eaten by someone else, he’d want to eat her himself!
So now we have a name for our resident vampire, and it seems that the name rings a particularly harsh bell for Viktor.
Viktor starts demanding that they tell him more about Neclord, but Zorak wants to know who we are. Hix recognizes us as the Liberation army from when we were attacking Scarleticia. I guess he was in the bleachers for that battle, as he also recognizes Viktor as the “bear-like†man.
Seeing Zorak’s actual portrait, that is really a nasty scar he has there.
Zorak drags Tengaar back into the house by her arm, and we follow. Inside, he tells us that Neclord came to the village as an Imperial general three months ago.
Well hey, that must be the explanation for all the empty graves in Lorimar. What a pleasant state of affairs!
His demands were a woman from each village, and he chose Tengaar from this one. I guess he likes em young because Tengaar is only…13. Maaaaaaan.
That’s actually supposed to be Klift I believe. Anyway, at this point Hix and Tengaar start groaning because Zorak is going to relate just about the entire history of the Warrior’s Village to the party. Much, much later, after the sun has set according to Cleo, Zorak finishes and informs us he has a room prepared for us to stay in. How thoughtful of him.
Hmm? A smattering of jealousy perhaps? At any rate, let’s see what Hix and Cleo are talking about.
Ah, so that’s why the guys we’ve met so far seem a little overprotective of Tengaar. Even though she’s probably capable of taking care of herself (and she is) the men in the Warrior’s Village don’t believe women should fight. Cleo responds to Hix by telling him that she fights to protect people. Hix wants to protect Tengaar, but feels he is too weak.
That is some pretty good advice.
Cleo tells Hix that he’ll never become strong as long as he considers himself weak. Hix thanks her and they run off to bed. Not with each other, silly.
According to Viktor, Neclord misused a rune and turned into a vampire, and consequently destroyed Viktor’s birth village.
Ok, ew. Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to be obsessed with an individual, if they did something like that to your family. So Viktor pretty much wants to kill the fuck out of Neclord, which seems reasonable.
That night, everyone has a restless sleep, only to find in the morning…
I vant to suck your blood! Neclord’s portrait is not…well let’s just say he looks kind of like Count Floyd, or about as menacing at least.
Neclord ha come for Tengaar, who is also Zorak’s daughter don’tcha know. He can be out in sunlight and that’s just dandy because he’s a special runic vampire. Zorak and his men try to fight Neclord but…
Pretty much fall flat on their faces.
Viktor runs up and challenges Neclord as well, which prompts a full on party battle with him! I’m sure we can kick his face in, right?
Or maybe not. Every time any party member tries to hit him with any attack, he just turns into bats and avoids it. This battle is unwinnable, so there’s no use even trying.
After the battle, Tengaar goes off with Neclord willingly to avoid any more bloodshed. They leave and it’s up to the party to go rescue her. But to fight a runic vampire we’ll need a special weapon. What special weapon right now we have no idea, but I’m sure there’s one nearby. You always find them lying around in the most convenient places. Talking to Zorak yields the information that the nearby Temple of Qlon (no relation) is supposed to house some sort of secret. So hey let’s go there, sounds like fun.
But first let’s take a look around the village. The item shop sells this Champion’s crystal, which prevents us from encountering weak enemies, which is kind of nice to have at times, but we definitely don’t need to buy one at that price.
Window, who looks like he’s set to perform an illusion any minute now, needs a certain something before he’ll join us.
The armor shop has some Full armor, which only heavy armor users can equip. They’re aren’t that many of those characters in the game, and none in the party, so we don’t need to buy any as of yet. We’ll take some Capes of Darkness (+13) though.
Hey, it’s Marco again. We can’t cheat our way to a load of cash this time though, as soon as we win 5,000 she joins and heads back to the castle, where the cheaty pattern doesn’t work anymore. Oh well.
Moose will join as long as we have Maas, Meese, and Mose in our party, which because I went back and put them in, we do. He can sharpen weapon to level 15, which means all our money will be shortly gone but we’ll be able to kick that much more ass.
Yeah, sharpening a weapon from level 12 to 15 costs a total of 155,000 bits, so we can’t even two weapons that much yet. Also, before heading out of the castle w make sure to buy some yellow, blue and red seeds. Because we feel like doing some gardening today, that’s why.
Traveling to the west of the Warrior’s Village, we find the Temple of Qlon nestled in the mountains.
Wasn’t that a bad movie made in the 80s?
So the priest Fukien knows that Tir is the leader of the current crop of 108 Stars of Destiny, and tells Viktor that he was born under the Star of Heavenly Loneliness and Cleo that she was born under the Star of Heavenly Fulfillment. All the 108 Stars are destined to gather under Tir’s Star of Heavenly Guidance. He tells us he knows why we’re here and says he can lead the way to the tool of Neclord’s destruction.
He opens the caves of Qlon and joins the army. He is a battle party member who fights and has the fairly useful Resurrection rune.
But let’s not be so hasty. Leaving and re-entering the area brings us to this fellow.
Zen will join only after delivering to him the red, yellow and blue flower seeds. He stands around in Milich's garden.
Morgan is blind but you can recruit him anyway, even though he’s blind. He’s a decent fighter but he’s blind. Did I mention the rampant blindness?
And say, guess what all those recruits brings our total up to and over?
That’s right, now we have enough stars to recruit Quincy and finally figure out what sex it is. Except I forgot to do that so maybe next time!
One more recruit for now.We need to put Kirkis in the party and get his level to 40.
Kirkis is now experienced enough that Rubi listens to and joins the Liberation in order to help. Rubi is a pretty good magic user in the same vain as Cleo, with *I think* a long range attack. Not bad at all to have in the party.
Now off the caves of Qlon. I used Kai, Kasumi and Kage for this section because…well, as long as I had Kai it didn’t actually matter so what the hell.
This is what the entire dungeon looks like, so there’s really no use in showing multiple screens of it. It is populated by a few monsters, however.
Clay Dolls have a decent amount of HP, at least in that they won’t be taken out with just one Master-Pupil attack, otherwise there’s nothing special about them.
The other two enemies in the cave have even less HP and pretty much anyone can kill them in one hit. They probably have attacks but I didn’t get to see any.
This is Kasumi’s unique rune, the Shrike rune. With this attack she jumps up and grabs an enemy then piledrives it into the ground, dealing 2x damage. Pretty useful.
Going forward through the cave, we find some treasure, including a Crimson cape (+21), Medicine, and a Flowing crystal, the incredibly useful powered up Water rune.
Window crystal, eh? Is there anyone we know that has a name that has something to do with windows? Well yeah ok Window. Not exactly difficult to figure out what to do with this.
More treasure follows, Head gear, Old Book vol. 2, an Escape Talisman, 5,000 bits, more Medicine, a Silverlet, a Skill rune piece, a Mega Medicine, and even the War Scroll which we can give to Hugo….oh hell I forgot to show Hugo. Er, he’s in the temple of Qlon and he says he needs the War Scroll. So there.
Near the end of the caves we find Crowley here through a hidden twisting tunnel. But he won’t join yet until our castle is a little bigger. Soon enough though.
Oh, a floating sword. HEY GEE I WONDER IF THAT’S THE VAMPIRE KILLIN’ WEAPON! Well all we need to do is take it and-
…er, that ain’t good.
The sword does some kind of crazy magic warping thing, and the party disappears…
Only to wind up in some village somewhere. Where exactly? Find out next time!
Next Episode: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? I mean, Tir?
So now that we have a few more recruits, feel free to suggest a party to use in the next dungeon. I swear I'll try to beat the next boss with whatever party might be suggested.
And I suppose this is a bit of a late update, but this came in the mail today and I was busy messing with it for a lot of the day.
Strewth.
Trying to get in the those houses right now yields naught but locked doors. However, moving north…
A child! Perhaps he will know where we are!
But then he turns around and runs up those stairs, then instantly appears behind the well. Blasted teleporters.
Come back here you little so-and-so! Ass!
But we finally corner him, and learn the horrible truth.
Jesus Christ kid those are some freakishly large eyes you have there.
We dunno about any treasure, but then the village chief summons this so-called “Ted†back to the top hut. Cleo remarks that he bears a striking resemblance to our Ted back home that gave Tir the Soul Eater. You know, the one who has been alive for over 300 years?
Who's peekin' out from under a stairway
Calling a name that's lighter than air
Who's bending down to give me a rainbow
Everyone knows it's Windy
After Ted leaves some people appear and all the doors are unlocked, however, there’s no reason to go into the bottom two houses…yet.
…going to be looted by us in a bit, yes I know.
Woman? Gee I dunno who could it be. The Chief recommends we skedaddle if we have no business here, but if we did then what sort of heroes would we be? Besides, treasure.
So we follow them into the house and they keep talking about “that woman†but won’t call her by name.
Who's tripping down the streets of the city
Smilin' at everybody she sees
Who's reachin' out to capture a moment
Everyone knows it's Windy
Well hell. Everyone rushes outside and oh hey will you look who it is.
Why would fuck would Cleo know?
But you know who does know?
And Windy has stor-my eyes
That flash at the sound of lies
And Windy has wings to fly
Above the clouds (above the clouds)
And guess what? She’s after the Soul Eater rune that is apparently here in the Village of the Hidden Rune. Now we know where we are, but now we’re not so sure when we are.
Suddenly, everything fucking burns. Oh that Yuber, he’s such a card.
Windy once again demands for the Soul Eater’s power. The Chief’s all like, “Oh, you want the power, do you. Well I don’t think you can handle the power. But if you want it, here’s all the fuckin power you could ever want!â€
Bweeee-eeeeooooorrrrrrr
But really it’s just like a ninja smoke bomb and the good guys scurry back into the house.
Wherein the Village Chief just pretty much forces a little kid to take a powerful soul stealing rune.
After, he tells the rest of us to hightail it on out of there through the back entrance.
Charred-tastic. Also, I’m pretty sure everyone else in the village is dead. Oh well.
I’m pretty sure you did? I mean, you burned all the houses and the people, I think that constitutes the village, don’t you think?
Also, oh fuck it’s Yuber, we’re so going to die.
Phew, maybe not. Yeah, so Yuber isn’t human. He has a true rune but nobody knows much else about him or where he comes from or anything, for now he’s just there bein’ all evil and stuff.
So after they leave the party winds up in the middle of the village, noting that the fire is dying down, but I guess not noticing the charred corpses of the villagers because they say they don’t know where they are.
Yeah, 300 years to be exact. From this point on Ted wanders around for that amount of time before he meets Tir.
There’s also now a shining light from that…thing where we entered this place. We’ll go there soon enough, but first…
…looting! We get another rune like the one Pahn has which lets fighters that attack with fists use the same attack. We also get a free Champion’s rune, which is nice because now we don’t have to pay 200,000 bits for it.
Well, now it’s time to go back to the present. But wait, we can’t take Ted along because, you know, I hear he kind of smells.
But hey, good luck with all the evading the evil witch and her demonic cohorts for hundreds of year while also having a soul sucking rune on your hand. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Zoooooooooooooooooooooooop
The other three members of the party are like, “Yeah, so stuff just kinda happened. We weren’t paying really paying and attention and we didn’t say anything. I think a lot of people burned and we left a little kid on his own, but hey you know, shit happens.â€
Spooky talking sword!
Finally, the Star Dragon Sword is ours, and with it we shall dispatch that loathsome vampire once and for all! *cough* The sword tells Viktor to take him up, and now Viktor’s sword is replaced with the Star Dragon Sword for the rest of the game.
Oh, you’ll see, Viktor, you’ll all see! Mwa ha ha.
Oh yeah, here’s Hugo, see? He sets up a library in the castle where we can bring the Old Book volumes to him and we can read them.
Window joins as well, once we give him the Window rune. When we talk to him at the castle in Milich’s garden we can change the menu window’s border and color. So let’s go do that.
I went with the rose border and blue, just because. Feel free to suggest a combination.
Talk to Hugo on the third floor and we can read the Old Books. So far we have #1, 2, 3, 6 & 8
Book #1 contains the legend of the true runes which I already mentioned way back when. Book#2 tells us about the rune combinations and how to invoke the combination spells for elemental runes, which we’ll get o see in a bit. Book #3 gives us some tips for major battles. Book #6 tells us a bit about some optional recruitable characters. Book #8 expounds on the Kalekka Tragedy, where the City-State *cough* overran the northern part of the Empire to Kalekka, but when the Imperial troops marched to Kalekka, all they found was a burnt out shell. The destruction spurred them to driving the City-State out of the Empire.
Since the next section can’t be contained by the limited space available in this update, we’ll just go ahead and check out a couple more Unite attacks, plus some combination magic!
Kai, Liukan, and Fukien’s Flash attack features a light show and big flash, followed by them all striking one enemy for a lot of damage, but leaving them all unbalanced next turn. Pretty crappy when the unbalancing is taken into account.
Pahn, Eikei, and Morgan have the Martial Arts attack. In this, they all jump up and then proceed to beat the shit out of every enemy on the screen. This does damage and stuff.
Now, combination or Unite ,magic. Unite magic occurs when two magic users use the 4th levels spells of two complementary elemental runes in the same round. The complementary runes are: Earth/Fire, Fire/Lightning, Lightning/Water, Water/Wind, and Wind/Earth. Let’s check a couple of them.
This is the Wind/Earth Unite magic, Storm Fang. This does over 1000 damage to all enemies, and as always is compounded by magic power.
This is the Earth/Fire Unite magic, Scorched Earth. This does over 1300 damage to all enemies, plus more power.
This is the Fire/Lightning Unite magic Blazing Camp, which pretty much fucking murders everything. It does 1500 base damage to all, but mine here did over 3000. Good for multi-part bosses. *COUGH*
This is the Lightning/Water Unite magic, Thor. It hits one enemy for 2000 base damage and also heals everyone in the party to full and also revives them if they’re unconscious. This can save your ass in a tough boss fight. Although it’s your magic users who are most likely to be dead.
Finally, this is the Water/Wind Unite magic, Water Dragon. It hits all enemies for 800 base damage as well healing the party to full and reviving them. This is also nice but not quite as useful in boss battles.
Well, that’s about it for now. Oh, except for one last thing.
So Quincy is indeed male. Whoda thunkit.
Next Episode: The assault on Neclord’s castle.
The assault only has two party members open, so feel free to make suggestions of anybody you want to see. If there aren't any suggestions I'll probably just go with Kai and Luc.
Kasumi and Eileen wouldn't be too bad either, Eileen's a magic user and could even attack, though I probably wouldn't bother sharpening her weapon, and Kasumi is pretty good with the Shrike rune.
If those end up being the only suggestions I'll flip a coin and choose, if not then we'll figure something else out!
Anyway! Extra special super bonus content of Twisted Metal Black!
Wait, what? Yeah I know this has nothing to do with anything and it doesn't even have commentary but I needed to test it before I sent it out with Goozex and the PS2 is already hooked up to the Gamebridge so hey why not.