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Shei-kun posted:I keep hearing all this loathing for the next section and it is only making me more eager to see it. My memory of the next part consists of getting lost for hours while trying to find the correct path, and that's not even getting into the unforgiving boss fight. The only other dungeon in any game that gave me as much trouble as this one was Ocarina of Time's Water Temple, which (rightly) has a similar reputation.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:31
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Oddly enough I never really struggled with sense of direction or getting lost (either here or in OoT water temple). The boss, on the other hand, I loving hated. I regularly blew through my early-game stockpile of herbs on that.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:36
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Vil posted:Oddly enough I never really struggled with sense of direction or getting lost (either here or in OoT water temple). The boss, on the other hand, I loving hated. I regularly blew through my early-game stockpile of herbs on that. Once you have an idea what the hell you're doing the dungeon itself isn't that hard, but as a 12-year old kid I was tying my hair in knots trying to figure out how to get to the boss room as Freedan (which is entirely possible, but convoluted if you don't have a map in front of you) for the badly needed extra damage.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:41
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Oh. So it's like the Water Temple. O-oh.  I suddenly don't want to see it.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:44
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The Water Temple was basically a giant series of switches and you had to traverse much of the temple whenever you wanted to push a switch. Plus it's very easy to accidentally do the wrong thing and have to go through a lengthy reset process just so you can start working on the "puzzle" again. Mu is just easy to get lost in. I don't remember the dungeon itself being all that bad aside from that.
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Mar 22, 2015 23:55
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I don't remember getting lost as a kid either (actually, it's one of my favourite dungeons for the atmosphere...  ), but that boss. Holy poo poo that boss.
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Mar 23, 2015 01:11
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Krumbsthumbs posted:Lance, Lance what are you doing, stop holding onto the tail of the plane Lance. That might be the worst possible place for you to be. Will's uncle appears to be Willy Wonka, so presumably whatever bullshit magic-science goes into making his chocolate factory went into his world's-first-airplane. I'm probably wrong at that. Who is Will's uncle's portrait supposed to be?
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Mar 23, 2015 02:52
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IMJack posted:Will's uncle appears to be Willy Wonka, so presumably whatever bullshit magic-science goes into making his chocolate factory went into his world's-first-airplane. Reverse image search suggests he is Gene Wilder (who also played Willy Wonka) in Young Frankenstein. See also e.g. this image.
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Mar 23, 2015 03:01
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Reverse image search suggests he is Gene Wilder (who also played Willy Wonka) in Young Frankenstein. See also e.g. this image. Fronk-en-shteen! It's been a while since I've seen it but some parts I remember. And my argument about using movie magic science to fly stands.
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Mar 23, 2015 03:10
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Young Frankenstein is a pretty uneven movie, but the best parts are really good. It's worth a watch if you have some time to kill.
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Mar 23, 2015 03:14
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Weirdly enough I don't remember having much of any problem with Mu (not even the boss), but gently caress, the Hanging Gardens had me running in circles so much I just hated the whole thing. Viper was pretty easy though, since he starts taking damage so quickly that I just kind of kept stabbing him and he died. Whelp.
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Mar 23, 2015 04:18
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Fun note about Viper. For changing the boss from a bird to a... Stone head with wings (seriously, why did they do that?), they also made the boss easier inadvertently by lowering the hitbox on one of his attacks - specifically, the ice laser attack. All told, the boss has four moves it uses in order. Fire six feathers either left or right (whichever direction would hit you) Sweep over the arena once Fire a slow-moving feather cluster that eventually breaks into four other directions Ice laser While the first three can hurt/be evaded/blocked with some measure of skill... In the NA version, if you stick to the top of the arena, you can pretty much completely evade the last attack in that set. Not so in the JP version, where the hitbox means that you get hit with the ice shards from the ice laser collision point.
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Mar 23, 2015 04:25
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I gotta be honest, this entire next segment was one of my favorites. It's eerie, atmospheric, and incredibly hostile. The first two dungeons were ancient mystical ruins. The next is a place man was never meant to tread, Lovecraft-style.
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Mar 23, 2015 07:07
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DeathChicken posted:Weirdly enough I don't remember having much of any problem with Mu (not even the boss), but gently caress, the Hanging Gardens had me running in circles so much I just hated the whole thing. Viper was pretty easy though, since he starts taking damage so quickly that I just kind of kept stabbing him and he died. Whelp. The Sky Garden is forgivable for being confusing as gently caress, I think, because of that music. But that's personal taste.
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Mar 23, 2015 11:45
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I can see where people get lost on both the Sky Garden's and Mu. The Gardens require you to fiddle around with things topside and bottom side until you clear rooms/get orbs and is generally straightforward if you follow the Moon Tribe's hint. Meanwhile Mu requires memorization of a semi-complicated layout, it's details and the routes that will get you where you want to go. (Especially for getting Freedan to the boss) Different sets of skills/brain usage.
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Mar 23, 2015 12:15
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I was actually surprised Mu's up next, because I remember it being quite a bit closer to the end. This is probably because it felt like I spent half the loving game there. And it's only the second-most infuriating dungeon in the game! Rollersnake fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 20:20
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Update The Seventeenth: In Which Will Purifies the Well  “Is there any reason for you to expect this?” “Well, to the ocean!” “Neil, you say that, but isn’t the ocean getting a bit…” “Huh. Yeah, that’s a problem. What’s the weight limit on this thing?” “You’re the one who designed it, you tell me!” “The math is kind of complicated. Everyone out!” “Neil’s a good inventor, but it seems there’s always something missing in his inventions…I guess nobody’s perfect, including Neil.” “It’s great that you’re taking this so philosophically, considering that we just CRASHED.” “Ugh… I can’t remember anything since the water landing. Is everyone safe?” “And now I’m talking to myself. So, this is a concussion.” “Yep, definitely not seeing that either.” “…and now I’m hearing voices. And… seeing a shimmering ghost version of Kara?” This, on the other hand, is always welcome.   “This is the Palace of the Vampires…the fountain in this palace produces demons continuously…” “So that was a REAL skeleton? Wait a second…” “What’s your answer to that, ghost voice?” “In the basement of the castle is a strange fountain. The stone is there… Hurry! Hurry!” “You can see me? Wait, are you really… real?” “I practically had a heart attack!!” “Yep, that’s Lilly alright.” “I saw Erik in the other room, but something’s strange. His body is half transparent. I can see through it. And he seems unconscious, as if his spirit is lost…” “Yeah, Kara’s in the same boat. Lance probably got eaten by another sea monster or something.” “Let’s stick together. We don’t know what will happen.” “The Purification Stone… in the castle…” “Not. Helping.” “Sorry, mom isn’t coming. At least, I hope not. This is bad enough already.” I don’t even remember what I had to do to trigger this one at this point.  Continuing down toward the bottom of the palace we start having these blue slimes appear. They’re called Skippers and will kind of hop in your general direction. They’re not terribly dangerous.   “Wait, isn’t there a hole in the coffin? I could get in through the hole. I better have a look.” “Well, if you insist…” “Strange… there’s a key fastened inside the coffin. No wonder it didn’t open.” “Oh. Huh. Probably so the vampire could let himself out.” “VAMPIRE!?” “Oh. Huh. Probably should have told you about that.” “Well, at least it’s not here. But there is a strange stone inside the coffin.” “That’ll do.” The next enemy we run into is a Skuddle, which is a kind of silver slime that will leap through solid objects if necessary to get to us. They’re even weaker than the Slippers, but have a habit of kind of dropping down on you unexpectedly.  Nearby we find our third and final Red Jewel for this particular segment. It’ll be a bit before we can turn these in, of course, but that’s okay.  “Could there be a connection between this and the rock…?” “I have no idea how you figured that out, but yes.” “I… think that did something? Let’s go back and see.” “I was brought to this palace from Freejia and changed to a demon…” “What?! All the demons we saw before were human beings…?” “On the upside, at least we didn’t kill them before we found that out.”  “Listen, you’re not going to turn me off of bacon with argument like that.” “Just don’t let Kara here you say that. Wait, what ever happened to her pig?” “I’ve been very carefully not asking myself that question.” “Wait, that’s a crime? But they were so up front about it in Freejia!” “We don’t know how long he’s been here. Things could have changed.” “The party officials sold us to a vampire! I can’t believe it…” “Tell me about it.” “You’re right, but I’m seeing a theme here.” “Wait, does that mean there are two vampires?” “They bring people here, turn them into demons, and use them for labor.” “That seems like a really complicated scheme with some extra steps involved that really don’t need to be there.” “We were almost changed into demons. I’m afraid of what might have happened if you had come later…I overheard the vampires say something like the Mystic Statue can be found in Mu.” “I think those are kind of important. Thanks for the tip.”  And with that, we get entrance into the next dungeon. So.. maybe I wasn’t quite accurate about saying Mu was next. Next time: Mu. For real, this time.
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Mar 27, 2015 03:44
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For me, this was when the game got really strange. I can accept the Sky Garden because I watched enough In Search Of as a kid to know about the Nazca Lines/UFO idea. But OK, so we crashed our plane into the ocean, which resulted in being taken to an undersea vampire palace (?), where an H. R. Geiger-eque fountain in the basement (??) turns people into monsters, which the vampires apparently didn't bring back to drink their blood (?) raising the question of how they qualify as vampires, and it's sitting on top of an ancient sunken city or somesuch, just, what.
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Mar 27, 2015 04:32
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I love that place, just because *it is creepy as all hell*. I mean, drat. As said, there's no clue it's coming from the plane crash of all things.
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Mar 27, 2015 04:44
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GunnerJ posted:For me, this was when the game got really strange. I can accept the Sky Garden because I watched enough In Search Of as a kid to know about the Nazca Lines/UFO idea. But OK, so we crashed our plane into the ocean, which resulted in being taken to an undersea vampire palace (?), where an H. R. Geiger-eque fountain in the basement (??) turns people into monsters, which the vampires apparently didn't bring back to drink their blood (?) raising the question of how they qualify as vampires, and it's sitting on top of an ancient sunken city or somesuch, just, what. In the original Japanese it is a blood fountain you use the stone to purify.
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Mar 27, 2015 05:11
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Kid-me always thought this was some sort of hosed-up-by-the-comet Atlantis or something. Didn't know what Mu supposedly was besides hard to pronounce, so it made as much sense as anything, I suppose.
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Mar 27, 2015 06:42
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ZiegeDame posted:In the original Japanese it is a blood fountain you use the stone to purify. As for the vampires buying everyone to have them do manual labor as monsters: how else would they have gotten this palace built? Gotta make some sacrifices in order to get a swank pad. ddegenha didn't show it but I believe all of your friends that were transparent before the purification are back to normal afterwards. Except Eric is nowhere to be found.
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Mar 27, 2015 07:33
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There's a nice detail to this place that's not readily apparent in the screenshots, but this oughtta help: The view outside the windows changes, the deeper you go. That fountain is at the very bottom, in the lightless abyssal depths.  Man, I just love this area, and the one coming up. This part is a breather, no difficulty, just an atmosphere to grow on you and build up to the true dungeon.
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Mar 27, 2015 12:07
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 That's another one of those examples where the game used Will's text color to imply his narration, but it's written in the perspective of a different narrator.
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Mar 27, 2015 12:56
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Cheez posted:
Japanese is weird in that way - sometimes it can be really ambiguous what perspective you're speaking in, and this is an example where the translator went with Third Person perspective despite the text color indicating First Person. Basically, it's a bad translation, but an understandable one. (I don't speak/study Japanese at all, but I read this somewhere once when someone was explaining this type of mistranslation.)
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Mar 27, 2015 14:17
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EponymousMrYar posted:That makes a lot more sense than 'dark water making everyone monsters purified to pure water.' I just can't help but think that they'd have been able to skip the whole "turn them into monsters" and get a lot more productivity. I think you're right about the rest of the people being back to normal and no longer being transparent, but I think I either didn't go back or if I did they didn't say anything different so I dumped the images.
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Mar 27, 2015 14:49
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Update 18: In Which Will Slides Into Home The Ocean Palace of Mu Alright, we’ve finally reached Mu. It’s a… strange area with a strange history. Mu is a legendary lost continent that has been placed in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, connected with Atlantis, and supposedly the common ancestor of the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and other ancient countries. It was also tied in with a supposed ancient civilization called the Naacal, which sounds an awful lot like the Nazca. To complicate things further, the statues here resemble the Olmec heads which are found in the southeastern region of Mexico. Geography has indeed taken a holiday here.   We’ve got the Slipper enemies from the palace itself with the new threat of the Cyclops, a kind of stone golem that attacks by flinging rocks and attacking at close range. The latter hit like a pile of bricks, and they take a considerable amount of effort to bring down. They have 26 HP, which is 10 more than the various Cybers and more than twice as much as the ‘Pedes.  The gimmick for this dungeon is that there’s water covering parts of it, and we have to lower it to access new areas and proceed forward. It involves a LOT of backtracking, but the good news is that as long as you don’t leave any enemies you kill stay dead.  That said, this dungeon pulls absolutely no punches and will happily ruin your life. Two of these guys at once requires some careful maneuvering and quick reflexes.  The real issue comes in with these bastards, the Flashers. They teleport around and fire projectiles at you that are HOMING. You can use telekinesis to block them, but it requires quick reflexes and it’s hard to pull off reliably. They’re the cause of a lot of pain and suffering in this area, and it doesn’t matter if they’re on one of the lower levels. They. Will. Find. You. Anyway, a little further on we come to a promising chest…  “Oh, now that’s just bullshit.” More Slippers in their liquid and slime forms, along with another one of this dungeon’s gimmicks. The circle there is a type of repulsion field that will bounce you back away from the direction you’re facing when you run into it.  Right now they’re mostly obstacles, but later they’ll be very useful. We’ve also got Skuddles, and clearing them out lets us proceed.  The next obstacle is a series of spikes that come up, which we have to time precisely. The builders of Mu were kind of dicks.  Nearby there’s a room we can enter, but its purpose isn’t exactly obvious at this point. A bit more on that later…  “Okay, I don’t know who’s emptied these chests but I’m going to find them and…” “Hey Will, have you noticed that the chests are always at the intersection of where the statues are looking?” “And like that, you’ve just completely stolen my thunder.” You might notice that I’m running a bit short on life. This is the message you get if you get killed and have to restart using your jewels. I actually managed to avoid death for a bit after getting this image, to explain the difference of DP between this and all the other screenshots.   In order to progress we have to find a secret chest at the intersection of two statues and get a Statue of Hope. Presumably if this chest had been visible it too would have been ransacked. Obviously, the Statue goes back in the room we found. And when it’s on the altar..  “The ocean holds a power…” “I’m just going to leave now before you guys get any further into your weird ritual.” “It looks like we can now explore new areas.” “New areas full of things that want to kill me. I’m overjoyed.” With the expanded area we can see a few tantalizing treasures just out of reach. Obviously we have a bit more to do here…  The new level reveals a new hazard, a stationary trap type that extends out to attack Will when he passes by. It can’t be defeated or blocked, only bypassed.  We’ve also got access to a new level past this row of spikes, which requires a well-timed Psycho Dash to pass. The other side has a very welcome Dark Space, which we can use to restore HP and get some more information.   “Sea water still covers land in many places on the continent. When the water is gone you will discover the location of Rama, King of Mu.” “Wait, as soon as I started my journey? How much of this are you arranging?” “I wouldn’t ask that question if I were you.” The bright blue pathway here is a ramp to another level, which is the real purpose of the bubbles we saw earlier. Clearing out the Slipper gets us access to a bubble that we can run into and then use that momentum to boost up to the ramp to that level.  You kind of need Freedan at this point to deal with enemies who are harder to reach, like the Cyclops in the previous area and the isolated enemies walled off in their own areas.  More to the point, we’ve also got situations like this one where you have to hit the switch to lower the spikes, then book it to make it past before they come back up. Freedan’s got a slight advantage, but you could probably do this as Will.  Circling around the central flooded region we’ve got a narrow maze of pathways with a strategically positioned trap that it’s pretty much impossible to avoid completely. You’re going to take at least some damage at this point, unless you time it almost perfectly. On the other side of the maze...  “Be careful not to overlook the cracks in the cliff.” “Switching back already? You’ve got to be kidding me.” “You can now use the Sliding Attack to pass through small passageways.” “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Turning back at this point means that we still have to run the gauntlet back as will. At least we’ve got a health refill at this point.   The cracks that Gaia is referencing look like this. You have to run toward them and press the attack button down to do a baseball slide through the gap.  This opens up a whole new area to explore, although some parts of it are roped off until we clear a few more enemies out.  Speaking of, the difficulty cranks up at this point. Three Cyclops with a trap in the middle, requiring some fast footwork to get through.  On the other side we clear out some terrain and get our first stat upgrade in the dungeon, a STR upgrade. Because of the multi-layered nature of the dungeon, you don’t get stat upgrades until you clear all layers of a given area. This includes areas that are underwater, and enemies we can’t reach until their areas are drained.  “Seriously? How many of these things did they have?” “This seems awfully familiar. Yada yada yada, ocean power… you guys were kind of stuck on this Rama guy, weren’t you?” “I’m a bit more worried about the fact that there are four of them here and we’ve only found two statues. This might be a bit of a long haul.”Next update: The conclusion of this dungeon and THAT boss.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:23
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Ah, Psycho Slider. Handy for getting around and dealing with certain mechanics and enemies, but one of its handiest properties is that it has a bunch of invincibility frames.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:33
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ddegenha posted:The real issue comes in with these bastards, the Flashers. They teleport around and fire projectiles at you that are HOMING. You can use telekinesis to block them, but it requires quick reflexes and it’s hard to pull off reliably. They’re the cause of a lot of pain and suffering in this area, and it doesn’t matter if they’re on one of the lower levels. They. Will. Find. You. Anyway, a little further on we come to a promising chest…  The Psycho Slider not only has a bunch of i-frames it also does a whole bunch of damage to anything Will's foot hits during the slide. It can take out those rock cyclops in one go if you time around their 'hunched up invulnerability' form right. Really the biggest issue with it is that it requires a running start and puts you into walking mode.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:43
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That bouncing off the bubble to get enough momentum going to go up a ramp thing took me so goddamn long to figure out as a kid. 
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Mar 30, 2015 06:00
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Ah, yes. I can finally explain why getting Freedan to the boss is difficult: there are 2 Dark Space portals in the dungeon: the one with the Freedan statue near the beginning, and the one with the Psycho Slider statue further in. Because the dungeon is built around using the Slider, you spend most of your time as Will and have to backtrack almost the entire dungeon to get back to the Freedan Dark Space. Since Freedan can't use the Psycho Slider, you have to then take a long winding path to get to the boss room. If you don't have a map, it is incredibly easy to get lost and frustrated.
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Mar 30, 2015 06:01
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Zonekeeper posted:Ah, yes. I can finally explain why getting Freedan to the boss is difficult: there are 2 Dark Space portals in the dungeon: the one with the Freedan statue near the beginning, and the one with the Psycho Slider statue further in. Because the dungeon is built around using the Slider, you spend most of your time as Will and have to backtrack almost the entire dungeon to get back to the Freedan Dark Space. Since Freedan can't use the Psycho Slider, you have to then take a long winding path to get to the boss room. If you don't have a map, it is incredibly easy to get lost and frustrated. "Better" yet, you can't take that long winding path until the entire dungeon is cleared out and drained. Don't go thinking you can chump any of the dungeon with your normal killstick form; nope, this is 90% done as Will, who deals less damage and possibly takes more. (I forget - it's been ages.) If nothing else, Mu gets you really used to exploiting the unique qualities of the Psycho Slider.
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Mar 30, 2015 06:40
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But for the reasons previously explained, this dungeon is where Freedan goes from Flatly Superior In All Ways to more of a situational choice. Psycho Slider is really good, particularly if you play more aggressively, but it still has its drawbacks (range being the most obvious).
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Mar 30, 2015 07:35
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Remember the Inca Ruins? That small hole to the bottom right of the text box looks like a hole you should be able to slide through. But at that point of the game you obviously don't have that power yet, and there's no way to get back to that dungeon later. I don't know why it's there, possibly as a teaser for 2nd time players. Anyway, even with hacks, it doesn't do anything. It just acts like any other part of the wall. E: Have a better picture. 
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Mar 30, 2015 10:26
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So what exactly does Lily do when Will is between worlds turning into Freedan or back into Will? I forget if this is explained somewhere, like he's just starting off into space, or if she's vaguely aware of what's going on.
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Mar 30, 2015 12:33
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ddegenha posted:
And THIS is why Mu is where no-death runs of this game go to, well, die. Well, that and the boss.
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Mar 30, 2015 14:18
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Good old Mu. Many years ago, I spent a long stretch playing Gaia in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with game muted while my parents listened to old timey holiday music. To this day Bing Crosby still puts me in mind of water puzzles and creepy stone heads...
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Mar 30, 2015 14:39
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Ah, Mu. The point of the game where Will goes from enhanced human being with mild psychic powers to ULTIMATE DEATH-BRINGER thanks to learning the Mighty Sliding Boot of Doom. I love the Psycho Slider, and with a bit of preparation, you can combo it from a Psycho Dash for a *lot* of invincibility frames.
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Mar 30, 2015 20:35
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Yeah, now I remember why Mu gave me no particular trouble. Because Will could slide right through everything, including those floating wizard things.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:34
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My plan for Mu was to only use Will when I had to; having a projectile attack with Freedan's Dark Friar was much more important to me. But that boot is crazy good, yes.
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Mar 30, 2015 22:57
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