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 Previously, Ken and Lind had a bit of a wander around Ozport, where the main airport was related. Today we'll definitely continue a bit with the hunting, since that's been somewhat neglected for a little while. Also, it's time to start picking up the plot threads once again! To start with, since Nek keeps appearing in a Santa suit, it might be interesting to head over to Eterna with Linda and have a chat with Elizabeth about that.  This is actually an entirely optional scene, and it's pretty easy to miss, too! Namely, you will recall that we've been told that we're free to visit here whenever we want, but that she may be busy and not be able to meet us. So I ended up having to try going back and forth a few times, until finally she was available for a chat!  As always, we want to go through all three of these, so let's start with the first. A joke here, but not one easy to translate into English. The point is that she is spelling it out from katakana into latin letters, but also the fact that "neko" means "cat" in Japanese. Whether she's just pretending to not get it, or if something else is afoot, we'll have to figure out later. Let's move on to the next one. Ah, yes, that old story about how Elizabeth has managed to retain her looks even at an advanced age.   And, as always, Panheim crawls out from under the table! Ken receives from Dr. Panhein medication "Binbin A". This guy... keeps giving us different pills every time we visit! If you're wondering about the name "Binbin", it's one of those typical Japanese "onomatopeic" adjectives, this one describes something kind of strong or loud, like music or a headache. It is, also, a slang for "erection". Considering also, that the effect of using this item in battle is a random increase of all stats (same as the previous one we got), I think it's safe to say that he's trying to peddle variations on the Viagra pills if you ask me. In any case, we're ready to go.  Heading out, I think it's time to capture a few more species, don't you?  Over here in that big lake just south of Eterna, which is now not frozen because it's Summer, we can find...  ...a bunch of hippos! This is one of the designs which haven't changed a huge amount since the PC Engine version:  Incidentally, while wading through the lake, Ken receives a message notification. We'll sort that out in a moment, but first more hunting.  Here's another species which we can find in the lake...   This one is a bit more obvious (although I still think it looks awesome!). Of course, we have here a pair of turtles! Nothing too unusual ability-wise, but definitely very high HP, so just need to be a bit careful there. In fact, we're probably a bit underleveled for these guys, especially Linda! There is actually here one other species which we can find during the summer...  These are tree frogs. But as you can see on the screenshot, they are all males. In fact, in this general area of the northern lake, it's basically impossible to find any females. Both males and females appear in another location, so whenever it happens that we run into both sexes, we'll talk more about them. For now they are not of any use to us, as in order to hand them in at the ark, we have to have at least one male and one female. In any case, we'll do some more hunting later today, but right now let's head back up to Eterna and listen to the new message!  The message is actually from a person we haven't had a chance to meet yet! Here it is: Hmmm, the plot thickens. What does he want now? Only one way to find out: we'll take the Bird Line to Paraside and talk to him. Paraside, as you might remember, is that half finished junk town. Notable things you can find there is the guy who "disassembles" animals, and also hunters for hire.  Here we are. Before we go and find Hume, we'll do the usual "tour of the town", which for Paraside we haven't had a chance to do yet! To begin with, let's talk to this guy standing in front of the hotel. We have in fact already talked to this guy last time we came here! Let's head into the hotel.  Well, ok, but we probably won't be staying either. Next is the gentleman on the sofa. This story about a phantom beast in a blizzard was definitely mentioned to us before... but, we have barely scratched the surface of this game, so we'll just have to be patient until we have a chance to get to the bottom of this. In the end I decide to stay over just to fully refresh our HP and everything else. So here's where we're at right now:  As you can see, Linda is catching up pretty nicely. This is good as we'll be catching some relatively tougher animals later today.  For now, though, let's head to the butcher shop which is right next to the hotel.  So there will be some tutorial messages still here too. We mostly already know this stuff so I'll skip some of the less interesting ones. Now let's talk to the other guy here in the shop.  Our next stop is the dog shop, which for some reason in this town has both a MAN and a DOG sign outside! We'll find out in a second why that is.  Starting with the person on the right... Ok, that's pretty funny. the "human" doctor is simply indicated with the "MAN" sign. The other person here simply reminds us to bring here an injured dog so it can be fixed.  On the other side of the building, by the dog pen, there are two more people. First the woman standing by the sink... If dog is knocked out in battle (0 HP) then you have to bring them here to be healed, but usually at very low HP they will on their own run away and leave the battle. They will, however, be available again for the next one, so this is not a big issue. We have anyway already experienced that when fighting earthworms. There are some animals where you have to be a bit more careful about your dogs, but we'll see more on that topic next time! The ranger standing there by the wall:  Outside of MAN/DOG shop, there's this person...  We continue our tour of the town with this person... Well, we've heard this before about Hume. But who is this Gomez person now? Spoiler: we'll find out in just a few moments!  Back over here, there are also a couple of people sitting on pipes by the fire. This seems kind of inconsequential, but actually remember this comment for later (not today though)! The other guy:  Ok, enough of that, let's finally head inside, into the famous "Junk Palace", which is apparently built like a maze inside!  The first thing we find is an animal trader. Yeah, this Gomez seems to be some kind of a celebrity around these parts... The ranger standing there gives us another, pretty literal bit of tutorial: Again, this is something we already know, the different "elemental" resistances shown on the screen where you equip the weapons and clothes.  Now let's talk to this lady here. Does it have something to do with that performance enhancing drug that all hunters seem to be talking about as "good old days"?  And finally one last person in the immediate area. I still love it how this game always makes sure to give "in-world" explanations for its technical limitations, such as the fact that all animals of the same species use the exact same sprites, but might have a varying level which drives their HP, attack and defence! Next we'll head up those stairs.  Here we have like a bar area. First let's talk to the guest sitting at the table. The waitress:  After going past the bar, we'll take this staircase up to the third floor.  First, let's quickly chat with this person sitting on the bed... Turns out, Linda's parents are divorced! Anyway, heading into the big room...  ...this is actually where all the hunters for hire are hanging about! We'll talk to all of them in order, starting with the one standing next to the staircase! So I decide to pay this guy 2000 G and see what we can get out of it. We're told to come back in winter to find out the result of his hunt! Luckily, it's now summer, so winter is not too far away. Let's try to remember to stop by here at some point! Next, let's talk to the guy standing by the table. I hand over another 2000 G to this guy, and am told again to come back in winter. Let's see what he comes up with. Next is the person leaning against the wall... This is actually kind of interesting, as escaping from a battle is not so easy in this game, since Ken has to first let Linda go and only then can he go himself! Of course, when he's on his own, then he can just escape directly. Again I hand over another 2000 G to this guy too like the previous. Finally the last one, standing by the counter. This guy turns out to be a bit more expensive, so I hand over 5000 G. Let's see if it's going to be worth it.  With our hunters hired, let's now talk to the person standing in the centre of the room.  You have a portrait. Sure. Unfortunately, this guy is quite expensive, so I decide not to hire him at this time. We'll exit this room through the southern door, which brings us over to this staircase:  The person on the bed there on the right is actually Hume, Linda's father. We'll be back here shortly, don't worry!  Down the stairs, there are a few more people to talk to, and also what seems to be a "mini-church" with that mysterious Beastian symbol.  First in this room, there are two people. The first person gives us a bit of (obvious) tutorial... Obviously, monsters with "elemental" affinity result in elemental weapons, but that's more situational really. Also, you have so many other tools at your disposal (including elemental abilities), that I'm not sure how useful this really is. Anyway, the guy sitting on the bed has more interesting things to say...  In the room down here, there's another person. Indeed, keeping watch is one of the things you can do during a camp, in addition to things like sleep, process meat and so on. Why this matters, we'll find out over the course of the game.  And one last person here, before we go and talk to Hume... I guess what he means that those separate numbers 1-7 are the ones which drive your resistance to elemental attacks. But, of course those are still not absolute numbers, and they do depend on the difference in levels between you and the enemy. It just means that you can have physical defence as high as you want, if your elemental resistance is low, then it's not going to help. So basically what is called magic defence in some other games here is split into several different stats, one for each type of "element".  Actually, I forgot this counter here, which is the hotel reception. We mostly figured this one out on our own. And now for real, let's go and talk to Hume.  As mentioned, he's the somewhat large guy lying on bed in this room here.  And one last bit before we leave...  Well, that was kind of funny, but it also explains how Linda managed to escape from Nek and get to Ken's house. We'll catch up with him soon enough, but for now there are a couple more things to do around Paraside. (By the way, I just love that name "Paraside". It just fits with the overall vibe of the game.) First of all, if we take that staircase next to Hume, we get to this room:  Here we find one of those Beastian priests/shamans, or whatever they are... Presumably this is the crazy hacker elder that was mentioned before, who broke into Federation's databases?  That was quite weird. But we need more information before we can figure out what he's talking about. Now we'll make our way all the way back down to the first floor.  There we are faced with this individual. And he let's us through! Well, I was never going to pay him 100 G, especially since you can get to that spot also from the other side of the building, but I thought it was just a random funny bit, in a game which, admittedly, has a fair few of those!  Anyway, here are the equipment shops, but all they have to offer are some fairly low-level tutorial comments, so we'll just walk past them.  I do want to stop by the bank before we move on, though. I don't forget to withdraw the money, especially since Ken again got another salary in the meantime.  I think I might have forgotten to mention this, but if you keep your money in the bank, it does in fact earn interest as you can see above (it's the 42 G payment). It's pretty small, only 3%, so it's not going to help you a whole lot, though. It is, like everything else in this game, paid once every season. All right, now we can leave the Junk Palace. As we exit...  Well, it was explained before that Linda is a child from a marriage of a human man and a Beastian woman, and she certainly seems to have taken her looks from her mothers side, so this is not too surprising. Now, we have one last place to visit here... the animal disassembler!   So, today, we'll disassemble some of our extra hippos. By disassembling a male hippo, we get the following items: - some carrion (we'll need this soon!) From a couple of female hippos, we get the following: - ill fitting shoes - torn clothes But you might be wondering what even are these last two items? As the names might suggest, they are in fact pieces of equipment that you can wear. So if we try, for example, to equip the "ill fitting shoes" on Ken:  We find out that they give even lower stats than his starting "squirrel slippers". So, in the end, these are just useless items honestly (I guess they are supposed to be the remains of someone who was eaten by an animal), but there's a bit more here. All equipment/weapons in this game is strictly tied to a particular species of animal, right? They all have names like "<species_name> <equipment_name>". But these don't have such a name. So, what gives? Well, you can poke around the save file a bit and hack things in a bit, in order to find out how this was actually implemented in the game! Here, we'll continue with the update, but if you want to read a short bit about the technical side of how these items are implemented in the game, check out the "Extras" section at the end! But for now, let's exit the shop...  There is a guy here, but he just collects donations. There IS in fact some consequence to donating the money, but again this is one of those things that we don't need to concern ourselves with just now.  In the mean time, on the back wall there are various graffiti and stuff. Like here: ｜の の ゛ ｜ も ｜ へ ／ Is that supposed to be a drawing of a cat? I'm not sure.  To those who know Masaki Ooki from from Amagasaki, Hyougo prefecture: I will be going to Kagoshima. Are you doing well, Masaki? Well, these are all places in Japan, but of course there's no Japan in this game, since there's no Earth. I'm sure this is some kind of in-joke, but not sure what about. I looked through the credits and didn't see this name there. So your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, more graffiti:  To you who is urinating right now at this wall here: don't forget that you're holding the future of humanity in your hands. Also, warning: this game contains strong language (joking, but check out the left side of the wall!).  There's a Santa behind you! Ok, that's the last (and the creepiest) one! After having done this, we do have time to do a bit more hunting, which will also allow me to demonstrate another game mechanic at the same time. I think this species is worth catching because it's one of the more ridiculous animal designs! But anyway, in order to catch it, we do need to descend into an underground dungeon. We could of course take the Bird Line to the nearest town and then walk over there. But if you have lots of money, why walk? You might remember that the Bird Line also offers another service, which allows you to be dropped off (and picked up) anywhere on the map, within the current area! The location I want is actually in the West Area, so we first need to travel to a town there. So let's pick Battle Park, it's as good as any.  Once there, if we go to the Bird Line counter, and select the Shoot Service...  ...we are literally presented with the map, where we can freely chose which coordinate we wish to be dropped off at! We'll be going to C-12, which I've already highlighted. As you can see, you can only select a coordinate within the current area, hence the need to first travel to Battle Park, since Paraside is in the East area.  And just like that, we're dropped off at that exact spot!  You might already notice the cave entrance on the mountainside in the top left corner, and in fact that's where we're headed! Let's have a brief look at another dungeon and increase our species count by 1 at the same time!  This place is called Urma and, as before, we are not going to explore too deeply at this particular time, we are mostly here to catch a few animals of a cool loking species!  Walking through the cave, we soon run into some creatures... maybe you already have an idea what species this is?  Up close, we can easily(?) tell that this is simply a pair of tigers. I mean what else could they be, they have the orange and black stripes, right? But seriously, please don't ask me to try and explain what in the world is going on with their anatomy! But I have to say, this is probably my favourite design of all the species we've seen so far! So these guys are kind of tough, they have strong attack and defence and also their HP is nothing to sneeze at (high defence unfortunately also means that our dogs won't be doing much damage to them)--although strangely they don't have otherwise much in the way of abilities, they mostly rely on brute strength. So you do need to be careful. Luckily they only appear in small groups of 1-3 animals typically, which makes them perfect candidates to use Linda's "Cobra Twist" skill. Basically she will hold one enemy in a "wrestling chokehold" so that they are unable to act. Obviously, Linda is also unable to act during this time, but it does leave Ken able to deal with other 1-2 enemies in the meantime, while our party takes overall less damage than it otherwise would. This is especially useful right now, when Linda is at a lower level and can't deal as much damage, nor does she have a "all-hit" weapon. I haven't found a definitive info, but basically the chokehold status lasts all the way until the enemy is defeated. Of course, Ken will also be mostly transforming into a dolphin, for a huge increase in damage--with these guys you really do need as much power as you can get. Because I forgot to mention that tigers can also heal and buff themselves. Also they can and do dodge our attacks, too. Yeah. You might notice also the high price they sell for--this is because of the protected animal designation, therefore the normal animal dealers won't buy them. We'll have to see if we find someone who will. Incidentally, here's what the tigers used to look like in the PC Engine version:  You will probably agree with me that this definitely one of the cases where better resolution and colour depth of the PlayStation console has resulted in a much improved look!  Anyway, as we walk through the cave, we go past a staricase in order to open a chest (or in this case a crate!). Ken found Champions Belt! This is another of those battle arena items that can be sold to that guy in Battle Park who never seems to actually be there. I have been checking, believe me, but so far no luck! After this we can head down the stairs.  Another staircase up...  And another crate... but this one unfortunately contains no items, only tigers. Like in older Final Fantasy games, it just triggers a battle. But unlike those games, enemies in this one drop neither items nor money when defeated, you only earn EXP.  And, as always, as we are wandering around this cave, Ken gets a message notification! It's time to exit this dungeon!  Before we exit, I thought I should show you this... Like on the overworld, our navigation device works in dungeons too--it actually shows us the map of the current floor/area of the dungeon we're in! That's pretty wild, actually. Ok, now let's exit.  Here I activate that rescue beacon I bought last time...  ...get picked up by a bird...  ...and finally we get dropped of directly in Battle Park, where we started from! That's pretty convenient, I have to say! Before we finish our journey for today, let's just listen to that message!  The message is from Nek! So, there's our next plot pointer! Before we finish, here is where our characters are right now:  As you can see, Linda has completely caught up in levels and also while she was leveling up in that cave she also learned the ability to tame wolves and also dolphins, which means that both of those species can now become members of our party in those two extra slots! That's about it for today, and if you're interested, please keep reading to get some more info about those weird useless weapons and equipment we found earlier.  So, here's a bit more detail about those items. I mentioned that in general all weapons and clothes are tied to a particular animal species, so the question was which exact species do these items belong to. Turns out, none that you can actually catch in the game, but by some clever hacking of a save file, we can find out that there is actually a partially implemented "human" species in the game:  On the screenshot above, we see in Ken's TransCargo backpack 7 human males and 4 females!  You can even bring to the animal trader, and try to sell them--but they sell for exactly 0 G!  Like any species, they can also be transformed into meat. It costs 0 G to do so.  And, finally, like any other species they can also be transformed into weapons. In this case the weapon you get is called "Bone Remains".  Also, they can be transformed into equipment too--these are the items we've already seen earlier: "Torn Clothes", "Tattered Cap" and "Ill-fitting Shoes". As you can see, both the weapons and clothes have terrible stats. So this is kind of interesting, because there's definitely no capturing humans, processing them into meat or anything like that in the game itself (neither in the remake nor in the PC Engine original), so it's not clear why this is all even implemented, unless they had to do it to be able to have those equipment items in the game in the first place--it may not have been possible to have a "just a weapon" without it needing to be tied to a particular species. But in any case, there it is.  The first illustration for today is actually the same one that we already saw last time in PC Engine version--but the illustrator actually did another version in the PlayStation era: And then we also have some concept art of Hume: ivantod fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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