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[Let's Play] Suikoden: Episode 24 - The End
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Sergei is the inventor who is also a party member for some reason, I'm pretty sure I've never actually used him before.
Squirrels are in 2, kobolds are in 1. Although 2 also has kobolds.
Don't know about Camille and Sergei, so I'll just toss in my vote for Tai Ho and Yam Koo. Luc may be a hell of a magician but he's a snobby little pissant, so screw him.
Also, I recall that the MC has a really, really bad weapon power progression compared to other characters, but he sorta made up for that with his agility, accuracy, and tendency to crit. Been a long time, though.
1 = Kobolds, 2 = Squirrels, 3 = Dogs. I think that's right, for the Super Seiyan Comedy Teams.
There's only a handful that you can permamently miss...
Are you just missing the same couple of characters every time, or what?
---
Totally Camille and Tai Ho.
Fu Su Lu
Luc/Crowley
Pretty boring, I guess. Fu Su Lu is such a fucking monster with the killer rune and a bunch of Fire Rune pieces in his axe.
But of course for this the last party will be decided by you, the fans!
You KNOW we're gonna make you pick the most ridiculously underleveled pussy you've never used.
Ah, but this Suikoden, underleveled doesn't actually mean much because it won't take too long to work them up to a respectable level!
Of course you can still stick me with crappy characters, but...well ok, that would suck, but I'm sure I can make it work!
I think you can fully expect to have to use Sergei for the final boss... :P
No using him before then though!
I'm gonna demand you use Magus, Lucca, and Frog for Lavos!
Keep your revenge for if and when I end up doing Chrono Cross.
It deserves mentioning that clicking that link will utterly and completely spoil every (playable) star of destiny that's in the game, some of which are significant, so if you don't wanna know, don't click.
Still, that's the worst combination I could think of. They're not really BAD, but you could do a hell of a lot better. Plus, no Robo for you!
Oh man, if I remember right Chrono Cross does have some sucky characters so that would work a lot better...excellent idea.
Also, Suikosource is a pretty great site for Suikoden info, I go there whenever I play just to look at stuff. They also have a nicely comprehensive listing that has the stars and who is which star for each game and what connections they might have.
Serge, Poshul and Sprigg... *shudders*
Good thing you don't actually have to KILL the final boss in that game.
which is kind of hard to explain to the army sometimes.
How is it hard to explain? It makes you functionally immortal and gives you ultimate control over the Lightning element for as long as you wear it. You'd think that'd be relevant to the army.
When you go to stay at the inn, it seems that Viktor has informed the innkeeper of our eminent arrival. I bet the best rooms have like hot tubs, and free tv, and hookers…
Or…a conspicuous looking…clock…thing. Gremio and Cleo discuss the fact that Viktor isn’t here. They decide to wait a bit for him, and if he doesn’t show they’ll head on up to try to get help from General Teo. The discussion is cut short, however.
Gremio runs around in a panic and Cleo doesn’t think we have a chance to escape. The only thing left to do is fight.
I was not kidding, if we’re going to get captured, let’s go out with style! But we can’t, and the soldiers start to look around.
Sudden person out of nowhere!
The clock concealed some stairs that lead down into the sewers. Obviously the “best†room is the one that has the secret entrance. The mysterious person is a woman named Odessa. Let’s follow her and see what all the hubbub is about.
Who who. Who who.
Sorry, I had to.
Not just new friends, super best friends! She tells us to follow her because “everyone’s†waiting.
This is everyone. The entire Liberation Army, people! Ok, not really. I view this as more as a representative force, where the other, unimportant members just aren’t shown. Besides the fact that there are more members outside this secret hideout.
Viktor welcomes you and the introductions start. Odessa’s name is revealed to the party and they realize this is the rebel army. Yeah, we kinda figured that out already. Well, by me saying they were repeatedly, but it’s pretty obvious anyway. Odessa’s full name is Odessa Silverberg, the leader of the Liberation Army, their preferred name for their ragtag band of rebels. Viktor introduces Tir as the son of General Teo, stating that he’ll be a great new recruit. But Gremio is quite incredulous at the notion of Tir joining the rebels.
Roh roh, fight the powah!
Yes, yes there must. >.>
After that Odessa talks about how Viktor always drags everybody he likes down here to become members. They aren’t sure whether you’d be god members or not, but Odessa lets everyone stay for the time because of all the Imperial Soldiers that are hunting them at the moment. Afterward you’re free to move around and can talk to everyone.
Flik is also pretty awesome. We’ll get into why later. He goes on to tell you that the man in the lower left is Humphrey and the guy on the upper left is Sanchez. You can talk to Humphrey and Sanchez, but Humphrey doesn’t say anything and all Sanchez says is, “My name is Sanchez. How do you do?â€
We can go lower in the room, but nothing is there. Let’s go back up and peek into the inn to see if those soldiers are gone yet.
That’s a bandit from Mt. Seifu, since you can’t see him clearly in this screen shot. He asks to speak to Lady Odessa. The gang carries him over to the left a bit and the rest of the Liberebels gather around to hear what he has to say.
It seems that he’s a member of the bandits that Tir and crew beat up the other day, and now the bandit leaders, Varkas and Sydonia, are being strung up in Rockland to starve to death, which, being execution without trial, is illegal even by Imperial Law. That wasn’t part of the deal, Grady!
Tir fesses up about their involvement in all this, and volunteers the party to go rescue them. Viktor offers to come along as well, and it’s off to Rockland to save some dudes!
Stopping on the way, we see that Viktor’s sword levels up to become the Shiko Sword by level 5. After that it’s straight to Rockland.
There’s a guard at the door and we can’t get in, so Viktor…improvises.
He lights the mansion the fuck on fire. The guards run off because they don’t want to burn alive. So let’s go inside the burning house!
Ok, so only this one little corner is burning. Still, fire hurt!
Further inside we find some awkwardly named Empire Soldiers. They’re easy. In a chest we find some medicine. There aren’t random battles in the mansion, just sets of soldiers.
A little further is a series of room, which hide a few groups of soldiers and chests with a Brass armor, and Antique, and 1700 bits.
Guarding the door to the backyard is this group of soldiers and a captain. We could fight them normally but I believe I have a spell I haven’t shown off yet.
Insta-death to all. Nice spell, but only one use per day right now. Let’s head outside and rescue us some bandits.
The group explains that had they known Grady was such a douche, they wouldn’t have helped him, so now they’re here to free them. Cleo unties Varkas.
Sydonia could have escaped at any time, but he didn’t want to leave behind Varkas. Sure, he could have easily escaped and gone to help, but hey…he’s wearing a skunk on his head, so what does he know. Everyone heads back into the house to prepare to leave, but are stopped.
Gr…Grady’s in a pickle!
Grady runs away to his mama, Kraze, and leaves us to get back to Lenankamp and the rebel sewer base. But before we leave Rockland, Varkas and Sydonia depart, saying that if Odessa ever needs them, they’ll be there in a flash.
We’re back! What problems? How will we solve them? Tune in next time to find out!
Next Episode: Mountains, poison, death!
Once again it's time to choose the rest of my party for a time. The choices are now three of the following:
Cleo
Camille
Tai Ho
Eileen
Yam Koo
Lepant
Krin
Juppo
Sydonia
Luc
Varkas
Sergei
Viktor
Please don't make me regret letting you guys choose half of my party.
Anyway, gonna have to go with... Viktor (rule of thumb: never leave home without Viktor), Luc, and... Lepant. *snicker* Lepant.
It's actually...5 updates ahead. My schedule of updating once every other day is starting to trail behind my wanting to play the game more. Although I did want a buffer since I'm going to go on vacation for a few days next week. I think. That keeps changing.
But choosing party members is about the only interactivity I can think of for now, so you get to choose party that you'll be seeing like a week from now. But I think I might keep the buffer at 4 or 5 updates, so I think I'll post another update tomorrow instead of waiting.
But yeah, fine enough choices. Now I can play more!
that name is just too awesome.
Fire spear?
Ok, but…that doesn’t exactly explain what a fire spear is. Is it a spear this is also on fire? Is it something that shoots spears of fire? Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be just super.
Odessa wants the party to deliver the blueprints to their secret factory because they can’t leave the hideout unattended for whatever reason. Gremio freaks out and starts to drag Tir away because as Imperial Soldiers he says they can’t take part in this. Odessa stops him and makes an impassioned plea.
Little boy? My god, she’s not coming onto me! She’s the first woman that I can remember who hasn’t. This calls for some manly posturing!
Gremio tries to talk Tir out of it, but Cleo says she’ll follow him wherever he goes, on Teo’s orders. Sanchez informs us that the blueprints need to go over Mt. Tigerwolf in the northwest to the village of Sarady. Flik however is concerned that Odessa wants to send someone who could very well be a spy on such an important mission. She reassures Flik, even as…
Now all there is to do is leave town and head to Mt. Tigerwolf.
The first screen hold a chest with a circlet inside, and one on the second screen holds a medicine. The next screen gives us our first battle.
Nothing difficult here, free will does the trick. Over a bit is a chest with some gloves. Eventually we run into…
Another easy kill. Another encounter, *yawn*…wait, holy crap!
Killer bunnies!
With axes and skull hats! Neat.
Another chest gives us a wind rune piece. We continue to the mountain’s summit.
Is it late? I can’t tell, this game doesn’t exactly have a day/night cycle or anything.
Bandits? We’re tight with the bandits. Yo.
Other members want to stop and stay the night in this guy’s little hovel, but he creeps me screw that.
But nooooooo, everybody goes jolly well good and heads right on over.
Screw you guys I’m going on alone! Or not I guess the game will just force me inside then.
The other people have some and it’s bitter so I don’t want it. Plus your smile is creeping me out.
6-25
No, godamnit.
I just told you I don’t want any!
Fuck off asshole Jesus I said I don’t want any!
Now you’re just repeating yourself. Fine, if it gets you to shut up I’ll have a taste. Man.
Oh for fuck’s sake…
Naaaamm ffgghhhrrr indeed. We were just forced to drink poison tea. Thanks.
No, we’re asleep, we’re DYING. This tea is killing us, you moron. He’s robs everybody and this guy walks in.
Yeah really, asshole. Kessler bitches out Ledon about poisoning the rebel leader and demands he go prepare the antidote. Fortunately everybody is revived because who knows what would happen is Odessa was killed. Who knows indeed.
Kessler is apologetic and offers to cut off Ledon’s head as punishment. I’d say go for it, but Odessa doesn’t let him. They let us stay the night.
Hey guys I think Odessa is dying or something. Oh wait, she’s just sleeping. What the hell?
Eventually we get to go on our merry way and head down the other side of the mountain. We get an Antique, Medicine and Clone crystal on the way. Back on the world map…
It’s kind of a dump, but has one good thing.
Woo, healing magic to the rescue.
To continue, we go to the inn and get a room to wait for the messenger. In the middle of the night, Tir decides to go out and see if his massive manliness has managed to sway Odessa over to the side of lovin’ yet.
Baby, you can tell me anything.
She talks to Tir about how Cleo and Gremio don’t just protect Tir because they’re following orders, but that they’re following him and protecting him because they love him.
…thanks?
Well that’s a start I suppose…
Oh yeah, come to papa. Just come a little closer…that’s it…
NINJA OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE.
Odessa tests him to make sure he’s for real and then gives him the blueprints. After he leaves…
Hey, let me in. Oh yeah.
After that great night, we have to head all the way back to Lenankamp. Before we head off to the hideout, I have something I want to do.
I gave Cleo the water rune and Gremio the fire rune, while in retrospect I should have had Cleo keep the fire rune for the next battles but whatever. I also put the wind rune piece I had on Tir’s weapon. Into the inn!
I…ate…too many…Funyons!
He gasps out a warning about the Imperials and Odessa rushes ahead to the hideout. The rest follow.
These soldiers are actually a lot tougher than the previous soldiers, especially since I forgot to heal completely before I entered the first fight.
Whoops. Nothing a little healing couldn’t clear up. Next battle I demo the two spells I can cast with the water crystal so far. Also, I just realized I could have demoed a wind rune spell but I forgot. I’ll get to it eventually.
Drops of Kindness heals one ally for about 100~hp at the moment.
Fog of Deception is supposed to confuse enemies but it doesn’t work on these soldiers. It’s pretty useless overall.
After those two battles are over we can head over the bottom left.
Well she better be, we just got something going and it would suck if she died like the day frigging after.
Eh?
Holy crap where the hell did you come from? I was just there last night and it’s nowhere near that big!
She shoos away the little scamp.
We should take her to a doctor.
The screen lends credence to my earlier joke about her vagina.
I guess they’re throat wounds. Definitely need a doctor down here. Why isn’t anyone going for one?
Sure thing, babe. Now about that DOCTOR.
Er…come again?
Hey why not. I guess we can cancel getting that doctor that we weren’t bothering to do anyway.
But won’t your bloated corpse turning up downstream kind of defeat the purpose? I’m just saying, it would probably be a better idea to burn your body or something so no one can identify you. Wait, I know! We can just keep your corpse and walk it around while it wears sunglasses. No one will be any the wiser…
And she’s dead.
They presumably send her body down the river. The party decides to honor her first request and go to Seika. But to go through Seika we’ll have to pass through the Fortress of Kwaba…
Next Episode: Fuck the dice game, seriously
That should be the last update that takes that long for not a lot of game time. Also, less coverage of cutscenes now that the game opens up a bit.
No party selection this time folks.
Arriving at the fortress of Kwaba, Cleo notes that Ain Gide would certainly know Tir’s face. Hoping to be lucky and not run into him, they decide to assume fake names because using their real names would be be incredibly stupid. Gremio calls himself Roi, Cleo calls herself Maria, despite the fact that Viktor doesn’t think she looks like a Maria, And Viktor decides to call himself…
Damn fine name that is. I like it so much in fact…
IT’S THE BEST NAME EVER DON’T YOU TWO SAY ANYTHING GODDAMNIT!
A what vendor?
Oh boy, the fact that they decided to not disguise his features in any way sure worked out well!
Unfortunately for the party, a one Ain Gide shows up and is informed that they may have found the fugitive, Tir.
With nothing left to lose, Gremio goes insane.
k.
Hey, I’m dressed in the same clothes as when I was just shilling at home in Gregminster! Although I suppose wearing them without washing them for weeks has made them look a bit shabby…but hey, let’s get while the gettin’s good!
Hmm…
Outside the gate, Gremio offers to let Tir cut off his head for Gremio’s insubordination. Obviously Tir understands and forgives Gremio. There’s also this dude hanging around.
Remember, remember…this guy.
Seika has an item store, inn, and rune shop. I decide to pop into the rune shop and attach that other crystal I have.
At the time I forgot what it did, but later in battle I tested it and it basically makes an attack that does twice normal damage, but then unbalances the character for the next turn. Also I think it’s unavoidable. I give it to Viktor because he can make the most use out of it, and he has an empty slot anyway.
Yeah…missing…>.>
Hello Mr. Conspicuously-Out-Of-Place Chef!
Well hello. How are you this fine day? I’ll get back to you later.
…asshole.
No shit. Filthy orphans!
He admits to being himself. Gremio presents him with the ring, and Mathiu shows consternation at Odessa’s choice of living. Viktor doesn’t like the way he says that, but that just prompts Mathiu to call Odessa a fool, refuse the earring and ask you to leave. Following him into the house he just keeps telling you to leave.
Back outside, a bunch of soldiers rush by and head into Mathiu’s house. I’d say screw it and leave it be, but that’s not really an option.
Silverberg, eh? Wasn’t that Odessa’s name? Why yes, it was.
The soldiers demand Mathiu return to the Imperial Army. It turns out he was a doctor who was a hero a of the Battle of Kalekka. Mathiu refuses, but the soldier threatens him by the order of Kasim Hazil.
I mean he could fall and skin his knee, or maybe get stung by a bee! Mwahahaha!
Tir and company can nor hold back their honor, so they go help even though Mathiu’s a dick. Which of course takes us into a fight with some Empire Records.
I noticed that the first Soul Eater spell was now available. It wasn’t before, and this is the first time I noticed so there you go. It’s an instant kill spell against one enemy. It doesn’t work against anything that it would actually be useful against. The Clone rune deal about twice normal damage but leaves the character unbalanced. With Viktor, this means instant death to a lot of normal enemies.
Yeah, it was pretty awesome.
We go back inside and talk to Mathiu. He reveals that he knows Tir is Tir and that he is Odessa’s brother. He goes to explain that he was a war doctor, but he got sick of the fighting and killing that he left the army. He would rather be called a coward than have to see people die from his own actions. Even though since he was a doctor he really wasn’t killing anybody, unless he meant seeing people die on the operating table because he failed to save him, but that’s more of a doctor thing than an army thing. I guess ?
But all of the sudden he has a change of heart and agrees to help. However, he refuses the earring and says that Tir should have it because Tir should lead the Liberation Army out of nowhere. I mean, wouldn’t like Flik or somebody who actually knows anything about the army lead? That would make a lot more sense. But I guess Viktor is ok with it so whatever.
So we have our next objective, securing an abandoned castle on a lake. Neat. We head to Kaku, just a stone’s throw away, to see if we can’t find a boat to take us over.
Kaku has an item shop, armor shop and blacksmith, but the blacksmith can’t sharpen our weapons any higher than they already are. It is still useful, however.
The armor shop has a few upgrades, namely Guard robes and Shoulder pads. After getting everything I want at the moment, we go to the item shop and find…
Hell yes, now I don’t have to walk slowly everywhere. This won’t affect anything for people reading this, but it’s great for me. I give it to Gremio because he kinda sucks with magic at the moment. But to do that I have to go back to Seika, and on the way…
Fucking OW. I’m going to have to do some grinding in a bit.
Also, Flying Squirrels vs. Buckethead.
So we ask around town and apparently some guy named Tai Ho has a boat we could probably use. We just need to find him.
Yes I’d like to meet him please thanks.
She then starts screeching at Gremio.
Apparently Gremio owes money for a banquet for Master Teo and some inn bills. Supposedly the bill is really high because Gremio can’t afford it. So Camille joins the party so that she can collect the money when Gremio gets it, or something. She also says that Tai Ho is in the basement.
…well hey, just what I was looking for! I’ll get back to you after I get a castle that needs one.
Instead of heading right down to Tai Ho, I go out and get updated equipment for Camille and sharpen her weapon. Then I save the game because fuck this next part.
Arrrrggghhhhh. We have no choice to agree. He forces to play this dice game which is really based on pure luck, but seems to screw you over a lot anyway
It works like this. You roll three dice in the cup, and …hell, here’s a video with the rules and then me failing repeatedly until I win. Vimeo
Finally! I saved just to make sure.
We arrive at the castle and Tai Ho decides to join our party. I went back to upgrade him and then grinded for a bit.
Next Episode: Finally another boss, plus castle!
Looking back, that was probably more screen shots than necessary. Oh well.
Giant Slugs, Oannes, and Ghost Armor are the only enemies in here. Giant Slugs don’t do much and don’t hit that hard, Ghost Armors hit you with both their arms and head each turn and kind of hurt, and Oannes are these freakish fish things with arms and legs.
Here’s a close-up of one about to get stabbed in the face.
While traversing the misty depths of this dungeon, we come across some Toe Shoes (+9 defense accessory, not bad) some Antitoxin, 2000 bits, a Power rune piece, a Pointed hat, and some Medicine. Then, after reaching a save point with a chest containing some Medicine nearby, we come to this room.
Why however are we going to reach that chest?
Simple, walk through the wall! We get a Wind crystal for our efforts. But that’s not all!
This chest is more annoying to get to but still shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did.
You need to enter from up here, the turn right and walk over, then go down before heading left into the chest area. However, I kept heading too far down at the start which made me keep missing the right turn. But eventually I found my way through. The reward is a Hazy crystal which is nice enough. After heading down a few flight of stairs, we come across this.
It sure is, Viktor, it sure is. Vimeo
Ugh, this battle would have gone a lot more quickly if I had remembered to go back and change Cleo to the fire rune. Oh well.
Hey! What did I just rename this thing as!
The current group gathers around and Mathiu declares it be the Liberation Army Founding Day. Viktor wants a banquet and Camille wants her money, bitch, but the gathering is soon interrupted.
She gives us the Stone Tablet of Promise, which list all 108 stars and if you have recruited the person who corresponds to each star.
Yeah, only apprentice. Leknaat then teleports away after saying they’ll meet again, again.
This is not a particularly incorrect statement.
Mathiu then gives us the recruitment speech, where he says that we can now go out and start recruiting out army. He says that a fellow by the name of Lepant who lives in Kouan would be useful, so we should recruit him. This is the next plot point, but we can do a bit of other recruiting first.
The next morning Tir wakes up in his room, and it’s time to be on our way. But first we can check out some of the castle.
Right next to Tir’s current room is Luc and the Stone Tablet of Promise. The Stone Tablet isn’t much to look at in this game. We’ll look at it again after we get it all nice and filled up. Over the right a bit is Mathiu. He’ll tell you again about Lepant, and then Viktor and Cleo come over and join the party, leaving two empty spots open that I fill with Yam Koo and Luc for the moment to get a little bit of experience.
I’d show off more of the castle but right now there really isn’t anything interesting to see, it’s pretty much empty until you recruit more people. So let’s head off to Kaku and from there recruit a few more…recruits.
This fucker just would not move when I first landed so I had to get on the boat and go back to Kaku before he’d move his fat ass. Jerk.
At the blacksmith I sharpened Yam Koo’s Uranami Spear to a Seigetsu Spear. Luc’s weapon doesn’t change names yet. Luc is a great magic used but a poor attacker. His weapon is short range so you’d need to have him in the front row to even hit, but then he’d get killed easily so it’s really not worth it to even sharpen his rod. Yam Koo can do a Unite attack with his brother, I’ll demo that in another update.
We have our first new recruit! Sergei installs an elevator in the castle which makes it a little easier to go from floor to floor, as elevators are wont to do. He can also be used in battle but I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually used him. He’s all we can recruit in Kaku for now, so let’s head over to Seika.
Marie opens up an inn inside the castle. It’s useful as inns are wont to be.
Onil gives you advice for recruiting and plot point hints and stuff I think, but I forget.
That’s it for Seika. Remember that guy standing outside Kwanda? Let’s go!
Chandler opens an item shop in the castle. It has everything you’ve seen at item shops so far and continues to add stock as you find new item stores.
Not all recruiting is as easy as talking to the person, however. Different recruits have different requirements that you need to fulfill before they’ll join you. Some will only join you after a specific event in the game, some will join you only if you have certain characters in your party, while others will only join if you bring them a specific item, and so on. We’ll get to each recruit’s requirements as we get to them.
The only other thing I do is put the Lightning crystal on Cleo because it’s awesome. And to demo it I guess.
Next Episode: Robots!
It's nice that you're talking about what each character's role is, 'cause I always forget. Who's the psycho woman with the kitchen knife that follows Yam Koo and Tai Ho around? What is -she- good for?
You know how dwarves always live in caves and crap? Well maybe Toran used to be the Dwarf castle, and the dwarves just preferred having caves to actual rooms and halls and such. Seems the sort of things dwarves would do. Then maybe their king died or the zombie dragon chased them away or something, so they all moved over to where they are now.
I mean, that's more plausible than people just randomly calling some giant rock with caves a castle, isn't it?
Maybe? I think they both fight with kitchen knives. Although only Kimberley's is actually called a kitchen knife...
But, since at the time I had Luc I decided to show off his Wind rune as well as the Lightning rune on Cleo.
We can do three Lightning rune spells with Cleo right now, Angry Blow hit one enemy for about 150-200 damage. Rainstorm deals about 100-150 damage to all enemies. Raging Blow hits one enemy for around 600 damage and is great for bosses at this point. The Lightning rune will be the most useful rune for boss fights for a lot of the game.
We can do the same three levels of Wind spells with Luc as well. Wind of Sleep casts sleep on all enemies but it’s pretty useless. The Shredding hits one enemy for around 400 damage, and is pretty useful for bosses as well as this point. Healing Wind heals one party member for a lot, better than Drops of Kindness.
Next we’ll head over to Kouan to hit up Lepant for help.
Kouan has an inn, an armor shop, and finally another appraiser. Let’s check the armor shop first.
Ouch. See, this is why we needed to cheat at the shell game to get the 100,000 bits, and even that probably wasn’t quite enough to afford everything for very long. I got Leather armor (+14) for those who could wear it and Karate uniforms (+10) for the rest, and Emblems (+8 Magic bonus) for the guys. Unfortunately, Cleo would benefit most from Emblems, except only male characters can equip them. Oh well. She gets a Blue ribbon (+6) though. Off to the appraiser!
Woo! A Peeing Boy! Just what I’ve always wanted. Any (?) items you pick have to be appraised at one of these shops. It costs a few hundred bits but a lot of the time the antiques are worth a good amount. The antiques are set in what they are when you get them, whether it’s through a chest or enemy drops. Certain enemies of course drop more than one type of antique, and you have to appraise it before you can sell it. You can either sell any antiques or save them ro display in the bath later. But right now it’s best to sell everything as we need money. For example, the Peeing Boy statue we just got is worth 16,000 bits. Not bad.
In the inn we find this woman. You can try to recruit her but she won’t join you until you get stronger. Meaning you need to be at a certain level. I think it’s like 30 or so, so she won’t be around until a bit later.
Ok, now we can go talk to Lepant.
Or not. Damn you random guy!
It looks like we might have to find another way in…
Gah, Frankenstein(‘s monster)!
Mr. Krin here informs us he has a plan that can get us in to see Lepant.
But…this is the inn?
Apparently “the inn†meant the room in the inn with the beds. Krin tells us that Lepant doesn’t want to talk to anyone because he doesn’t want to get involved with the rebels. However, Lepant loves two things above all else, his wife, Eileen, and his sword, Kirinji.
That…that doesn’t make any sense. If we steal his sword, sure he’s going to come after us, but then he is going to try to murder us and he certainly won’t listen to us. I mean, come on. But we agree to do it anyway because what the hell. Later that night…
I guess it’s supposed to be night because the music turned to "Sounds of the Nightâ€, but I’ll be damned if I could tell by the way outside looks exactly the same as it does during the day. Krin hangs a rope on the tree so we can climb up onto the roof and get into the attic I guess.
Beamtastic.
Lepant’s house has one random encounter, the Slot Man.
Yeah, I don’t know. They’re easy enough to just Free Will them though. Going down into the second floor, we find this fellow just standing there doing nothing.
This is Rock. The “big one†he wants to build is a warehouse, which will be incredibly useful to us very soon and throughout the game(s). We can raid the chests he was “guarding†for some medicine and 700 bits. Nothing in the other top room, so we go into the right room.
Robots!
If you walk in front of one they’ll put you out of the room. It’s pretty easy to avoid that, just go under and to the chest, then up and around and out the door up top. The chest here has a Counter crystal. A room outside this room has a Speed rune piece, then we head downstairs. There are a bunch of chests down here that hold a Leather armor, Fire rune piece, Medicine, and White paint.
Apparently Juppo made all the robots and stuff here.
That…infernal…contraction…yes.
What that is actually referring to is the thing in the next room we haven’t even seen yet, so I don’t even know how Viktor is supposed to know about it. But he can’t turn it off so we have to deal with it.
The “infernal contraction†is of course, a giant roulette wheel. It spins you around then stops kind of randomly, though you can sort of stop it. Depending on where it stops you’ll get a different effect. To progress you need to stop it on the top walkway. The exp spaces add or subtract 10 exp, the treasure chests give you an item, like Medicine, the monster things throw you into a fight, and the ? does something random. Let’s give it a spin!
Oops. This throw you into a fight with some Robot Soldiers. They’re kind of tough, so you can use some rune spells and unite attacks to get rid of them faster.
This is Tai Ho and Yam Koo’s Unite attack. It deals about 3x their total damage to one enemy, I think, but leaves them unbalanced for the next turn.
After a few more spins we get off and continue up into the sword room. I say sword room because it is a room that has a sword in it.
Yeah.
So we steal the fuck out of it and hightail it out of there. We meet Krin outside and head back into the inn.
It was just too real…like some kind of real doll. More frightening than you could imagine.
Tea?
Oh HELL no, we’re not falling for that again!
Viktor asks him to drink him, but Krin tries to beg off. Fortunately Viktor is able to cram it down his throat or something and next thing you know Krin is in a bed.
Enter super huge neck and shoulder muscle man! Ok, so that’s really some kind of orange neck warmer…thing. But come on, at first glance it looks like he’s bare chested and huge.
Lepant demands his sword back, but Tir tells him that Mathiu recommended him. After hearing Mathiu’s name he say he’d like to help, but he can’t and asks for his sword back. All we can do is hand the sword over.
It seems the new military commander has absconded with Lepant’s wife, Eileen! Lepant rushes and we follow, to the commander’s base at the top of town.
The guards refuse to let Lepant in, so he fucking kills them so hard they turn into ghosts right in front of us.
That’s gotta hurt.
Inside, Lepant instantly kills some more guards, but runs into a few more than he can handle.
This battle isn’t too difficult although replacing Lepant like that puts him in the back row for this battle, making him useless. After the battle that’s fixed right up in time for another group of soldiers upstairs. On the way there’s a chest with an Antique.
Why it’s that dastardly Kraze! Whatta dick.
More soldiers rush in and we fight the same battle as we just fought.
With Eileen’s life on the line, the gang has no choice but the start going off about what an asshole Kraze is.
Old friend? Why who could that possibly be?
Pahn?! But that’s impossible! Wait, no it isn’t.
Kraze demands that Pahn capture us, and Pahn declares that he isn’t sorry for what he did back in Gregminster. And yet…he still wants to follow his heart. Whether his heart is right or wrong will be judged by history.
With that brave declaration, Pahn rushes up and kinda…just pushes Kraze to the side or something. But Eileen is safe! Isn’t that great. Kraze tries to defend himself with empty threats against Two, but we won’t have any of that.
Oh yes. Yes we most certainly do. For your crimes against…well, us, we sentence you to death! By let’s say, oh, stabbing I guess?
So yeah he’s dead. Anyway, Pahn wants to join us again, so why the hell not. He’s a star after all. Lepant joins too, and Eileen comes along, as do Krin, Juppo, and Giovanni, because…I guess they felt like it. You don’t even really get a message saying they join you, they’re just kind of already at the castle and you put some of them in your party and whatnot. I don’t think Giovanni actually does anything though. On the way out of the base you can get a Water rune piece from a chest on the first floor.
Now, before we head back to the castle there’s one more thing we can do. To the east of Kouan is Garan bridge.
This is Kai, Tir’s old stick fightin’ instructor. He is pretty damn awesome to have in your party, as we will soon see. But for now all we can do is head back to the castle.
Back at the castle, we find Varkas and Sydonia on the first floor. They join up after Mathiu lies to them about Odessa being away on a mission to the north. What a perfect opportunity to throw a banquet!
Well that was a great meal probably. Let’s head to our room and go to bed.
Freaking ninja out of nowhere again.
All we can is wail on him a few times before he runs away. He doesn’t do very much damage so it’s not difficult.
Pahn and Viktor and so forth rush over afterward, but the assassin escapes, all the while mocking the Liberation Army.
Now we take a nice sleep and not have to worry about anything until tomorrow…
Next Episode: Elves on the loose.
Anyway, elves. Or at least one elf. Kirkis here apparently swam all the way across the lake to get here. I guess elves aren’t of the existence of boat, or rafts, or like, anything that floats.
So the elf is put into Tir’s bed because it’s closest to the door I guess. Even though there’s an inn with beds on the first floor.
That’s…really more than I needed to know, guy.
He asks to see Odessa, so they bluff again and tell him to talk to Tir. He has come to plead for help because Imperial General Kwanda Rosman is planning a genocide of elvish proportions. So everyone agrees to help, but since the Liberation’s army is still small, they decide to send in a reconnaissance party. Which will obviously include the army’s leader, because reconnaissance parties always include the most important member of said army. Anyway, Kirkis is forced into the party.
But before we go save the elves, we have a couple recruits to find.
Meg joins the army so she can learn some “tricks†from her “Uncle†Juppo. Hey, let’s not ask questions, we need all the help we can get.
…no. Oh no. Nonono. Shit, we have to play the stupid dice game again to get this guy to join. We need to win 5000 bits from him before he’ll join, so we’ll just go SAVE and then go back and bet 5000 right away, so we only need to win once and he joins. So let’s try our luck…
…well hey, that was easy! So now we go savesavesavesave. Yea, and fortune has smiled upon this day.
Well, let’s head back to the castle.
Shiny.
You’ll get this scene with an improved castle everyonce in a while after you get so many recruits. This also marks a good time to show off some of the inner workings of Castle ANTHRAX.
This is the first floor. So far we have an inn run by Marie, and item shop run by Chandler, and the dice game run by Gaspar. No, he doesn’t warn us about a bucket or send us through a door to the god of war.
Right now the second floor only has Rock in the warehouse and Onil wandering around aimlessly.
The third floor contains the Luc and the Stone tablet, the meeting room, and Mathiu in one of the bedrooms.
The fourth contains Pahn in what I assume is his room. Then off the left across a walkway is Tir’s giant room. He’s doing quite well for himself now, as this is a hell of a lot bigger than his old room back in Gregminster.
This is the warehouse. In here you can manage the items of the characters not in your current party, to an extant, and also store items you don’t want on your party. Drop let’s you put items from you party into the warehouse, Withdraw lets you take items, and Detach lets you put all the items and unequippable armor from any character into the warehouse. Sometimes items won’t go into the warehouse from this, but I’m not sure why.
Now that everything is set up ok, we have our current party and we’re ready to roll. I went and switched out the water rune piece on Tir’s weapon and put the thunder rune piece on Viktor’s weapon and fire rune piece on Lepant’s. I also put a Counter crystal on Lepant and gave a Water crystal to Kirkis.
Finally we get to the Great Forest…Village, southeast of Kouan.
Some random guy runs up to us and blabbers about elves for a little bit, then Kirkis tells us about the secret elfin trail. But first, let’s look around.
Maas is one of five blacksmiths that you can recruit. Depending on which blacksmiths you get, they can sharpen weapons to levels 5, 9, 12, 15, and 16. Since Maas can only sharpen up to level 5, he’s pretty useless.
Sansuke runs a bath at the castle. You can bathe in it and put antiques around to decorate.
The item store has a Counter crystal for sale, but we don’t really need another one. Heading out to the right of the village, we find some enemies.
Holly Boys are sentient holly leaves. They hit for like 1 damage. Holly Spirits command them to attack you. These enemies are very easy.
Kirkis does some elf voodoo or something, and we can now proceed through the forest.
Fighting through more Holly dealies, we come across a mysterious and useful woman.
Viki ask you which Empire she’s in and then pleads to join you because that’s what she does. She’s a teleporter, you can talk to her in the castle to transport to various towns instantly. Much use is made of this feature.
Continuing in the forest, we come across chests with a Gauntlet, Escape Talisman, Needle, Water rune piece, and Fortune rune piece.
We also come across out first group of Kobold enemies. Kobolds are dog people who have a village on the other side of this forest. We slaughter a lot of their warriors in this area.
…their houses even look like dog houses. How strange. Also the village is empty.
Did not! I mean, we didn’t take away anybody who was living in this particular village, but we did kill some of your people on the way here. Also, you have an ugly face.
Well, nothing to do here but leave and head on over to the elf village.
South and a bit east of the kobold village is the Village of the Elves. And by that I mean giant freaking tree of the elves. Because they all live in a big tree.
Also, elves are assholes.
They are also Invader Zim.
Valeria tries to warn the elves that Kwanda is going to kill them all and burn down the entire forest. So the elder elf asshole just says humans are too stupid to do that and locks up Valeria. At this point I just let them all get burned because god damn elves are assholes.
But before that, let’s buy their shit.
Damn, costly. I buy just a few Magic Robes for the front row. The back row doesn’t get attacked nearly as much so they don’t need quite as much defense at the moment.
Inside the head jerk’s hut, we find this waif. She’s kind of whiny.
After Pennsylvania stops whining about being left alone, we can talk to Old Fuck, who yells at Kirkis and then has everybody locked up, because it must be be a dick and put everybody in prison day, or maybe that’s just every day around here.
In the cell you can talk to Stallion and he calls Kirkis a chicken wuss. Forunately, he’ll be more useful that Zell, eventually.
We talk to Valeria, who it turns out also betrayed the Imperial Army in order to warn the elves about their imminent getting killed-a-thon. She tells us that General Kwanda Rosman has built a destructive weapon called the Burning Mirror, which can burn down the entire forest in an instant.
Pennsylvania comes along whines about why Kirkis likes humans. Kirkis goes into a touchy-feely why can’t everyone just get along speech. Also, there are dwarves and everybody hates them too. The dwarves are the ones who apparently designed the Burning Mirror. She lets us out, but Stallion runs the hell away. Valeria however joins the party, making me kick out Lepant.
Now we need to go to the dwarf village in order to ask for their help to beat the Burning Mirror.
Along the way we run into a new enemy, the Strong Arm, plus a new mage subset of Kobold. We also have Valeria and her unique rune, the Falcon rune.
When Valeria uses the Falcon rune, she leaps up to an enemy and repeatedly stabs them in the face, dealing about 2x her normal damage. This is a very good rune, as she can use it every turn as it has no side effects.
The Strong Arm also has an attack where it chucks another enemy at you.
At this point I headed back to the castle to remove Lepant’s equipment and do some other stuff because I forgot to remove it before I removed him from the party.
Here’s the bath. As you can see the male and female sides are separated so as not to incite any pixelated hanky panky. You can put antiques on the pedestals and later even change the bath’s motif.
After that we head down to the sub-basement and Viki will teleport us to any town we’ve been to.
Back near the Village of the Elves we have to cross the Dwarf Trail before we can get to the Dwarf Village.
The Dwarf Trail has palette swaps.
Plus dwarves.
Along the way we find chests which include a Feather (+9), Karate Uniform, Sacrificial Buddha, a Killer crystal, and a Guard robe. The Sacrificial Buddha revives a character once if it’s in their inventory. Fairly useful, though expensive and otherwise kind of rare. The Killer crystal is pretty great. It ups the occurrence of critical attacks. Put it on a character with high attack power, like Viktor, and they’ll start mowing everything down.
Near the end of the trail we meet this dude again. He mutters something about a sickness and then wanders off again.
Here we are in the Dwarf Village. The Dwarf Village has an array of shops, such as a new armor shop, item shop and a blacksmith that can sharpens weapons up to level 9.
The item shop has a new crystal, which is useful but not really worth the money it costs.
Meese here joins you as long as you’ve recruited Maas. Yes, all their names are like that. He can sharpen weapons up to level 9 as well.
However, to sharpen a weapon from level 5 to level 9 costs a combined 26,000 bits, so to get everybody’s weapon up to snuff, we’ll have to do a bit of grinding. Right now we can only afford to sharpen Tir’s, Viktor’s, and Valeria’s weapons up to level 9.
Fear not, after a brief respite of tea and cake* I have returned to bring forth another installment of this fantastically wrought...thingie. There's probably another party selection thing coming up soon, or if anybody just wants to see a specific character be played, there's that too.
(*aforementioned respite did not in fact include either tea or cake. There may have been watermelon, however.)
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.
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.