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Robindaybird posted:Yeah, Inafune was kind of a dick about people leveling some well-deserved criticism about Mighty No. 9. I hope IGA doesn't go the same route with Bloodstained, but it seems so far his team is listening to the comments from the demo and beta plays.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:31
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Episode LXVIII: The Dollhouse Music: Atmosphere - Blow Up .jpg) We continue our trek east and squashing the sidequests in our path. Today's journey takes us back to the humble city of Prague where the second half of the game kicked off. .jpg) For this session, Alice is a prerequisite part of the party. The third member doesn't matter, but we'll be bringing Margarete along because we may need to do some fightin' at some point. Music: City .jpg) As we all know, the only place anything is going down in 1914 Austro-Hungarian Empire is at the two table dive bar on the edge of town. Let's roll into Gismot's joint to see if anything new is going down since last time we strolled by the tavern. .jpg)  Have you tried talking to that guy there? He's new in town, and he just mumbles to himself all the time. Is that unusual? I mean everyone else I walk past just kinda blurts out their thoughts without prompting already. Gives me the creeps. Yeah, same. Yeah? I heard the man right there ran away from his own home. To specify... which man are we talking about? The one that hasn't been sitting at that table by the door for six months. Ah. Gotcha. He said he saw some ghosts. Does that make you want to exorcise again? ...That was never my gig. More of a punching spirits sorta guy. Is there a difference?  I rarely get paid...So we need to speak with the new guy hanging out in the bar to actually trigger this sidequest. There is a really lax policy of tolerating patrons in this bar when a mumbling creep standing dead center in the middle of the bar looking at a wall and talking to himself is just quietly accepted. .jpg)  <turns to Yuri> Wha?! You're an exorcist?! If so, please help!! Yeah... I'm not actually, err... Just a little ways from here, there's a house cursed by a terrible poltergeist!!  Where the heck is Alice...? This is her kinda de— Can you suppress the spirit? I'll do anything! I have lots of money!Well, we have no real reason to do this and clearly more pressing issues to attend to here. Like, I don't know, the end of the world later this week. But sure, let's do a ghost hunting exercise for some spending money to help some random, possibly mentally ill, guy in a bar. Music: Atmosphere - Blow Up .jpg) Now, I'm fairly certain that the Runaway Ewan fella said the poltergeist haunted house was, and I quote, "a little ways from here." A new location has opened up on the world map: The Dollhouse. Which seems to be a bit northwest of Warsaw, Poland some... 600 km away. I do feel that would qualify as being a wee bit further than "a little ways from here" but maybe casual measurement of relative distance go by different terms in Eastern Europe. We're actually going to go check this one out next. Unlike Cave Temple and Ancient Ruins, which are just full stop bonus dungeons with high end enemies/bosses/loot, Dollhouse is a full blown fleshed out sidequest area. .jpg) Before we hike over to Poland to bust some ghosts, we're going to take the precaution of equipping the party with our two Crucifixes and the short straw getting a Zodiac and Cosmic Bracelets to ward off potential spectral threats. Or obnoxious enemies that spam status effects. One of the two... .jpg) Again, Alice is mandatory for this segment of the game. Runaway Ewan won't appear unless Alice is in the party, even if she doesn't interact with him in any way. Likewise, we need to have Alice along for this entire next area for... reasons. This side quest is sort of like a companion piece to Kowloon Fortress from the Asia half of the game in that it feels like an area that got cut from the main plot but they already put the work into making assets and didn't want to actually cut it. So it's just sort of awkwardly stuck in a place where it feels really weird to have a somewhat lengthy sidequest subplot. I have no actual concrete information to confirm anything about this, but this sidequest extremely feels like it was meant to be part of Alice and Zhuzhen's Spirit Detective Agency adventures alluded to at the beginning of Europe but just got relegated to an endgame sidequest with everything's stats inflated to compensate. Music: Someone's Table .jpg)   What is it? <turns to Yuri> It’s cold. Be careful. There’s an aura of bitterness all around the house.b.jpg) So Alice is now suddenly the party leader again if you needed more of a suggestion that this whole sequence was supposed to be from the beginning of Europe. I could see why you'd get rid of it because doing this and Bistritz's nonsense where the plot is completely stalled out and Yuri is AWOL back-to-back would be a wee bit much pacing wise. On the other hand, this isn't exactly a super long dungeon. It's like a 40-minute affair tops, random battles and bosses included. .jpg) Anyway, enough speculation. Let's get to it! There is a locked storeroom just to the left of the entrance. Like nearly every dungeon in Shadow Hearts, this area is heavy on the backtracking and combing the same set of rooms several times over. So naturally, we'll need to return here with a key later. Let's just keep in mind we've found a locked door right off the bat and head on in. .jpg) Wow! What a err... no, this is actually just a moderately sized house for once. I guess Jack's Murder Orphanage filled that niche but even that was honestly just an unreasonably large foyer connecting to a three bedroom house with no indoor plumbing. That place was just fronting as a mansion. Oh well, there is a point of interest downstairs just to the left of the entrance. .jpg) The Crank for winding the clock is on the floor. .jpg) OK. We've got a crank taken from a nine-foot tall grandfather clock. I'm sure that'll serve us well in busting a ghost. .jpg) There's only a single door on the first floor and it opens into a rather poorly repaired den of some sorts. Where do people even sit in this place? It's all tables and zero chairs. .jpg) One Lottery Ticket though. Not that we need any more Lottery Tickets considering there's only one member of the guild left. But there's no sense in skipping any this far into the collection. .jpg) The only other point of note in the room is this fireplace that clearly has some manner of wheel or crank in it but it's simply too dim in this room for Alice to take note of it at present. But you know, there's also something else staring at Alice in here... .jpg) Music: NDE - Near Death Experience .jpg) Random battles! Also, that stuffed antelope head either has a Resident Evil jewel puzzle or it is possessed by evil spirits. It could certainly go either way in this series. There's only three enemy types and they only attack in two different mob configurations. .jpg) These Water elemental zombie boys are Ghouls. Nothing special there. The reason we equipped everyone with accessories that warded off the fact that all of these Ghouls' strikes cause a randomized Status Abnormality. Ghouls show up in every random battle in the Dollhouse so that can get old quickly. I don't think I need to go into the mythology of what a ghoul entails. Though fun fact: Ghouls (al-ghuűl) originated from pre-Islam Arabian religions. They were still just flesh eating zombies that hung out in graveyards. .jpg) Ghouls sometimes come with these squat zombie snails known as err... Ghoulers. They're Ghouls but more so, I guess? You'd think it would be the other way around given how pint-sized these little guys are, but what do I know? Ghoulers are Fire elemental and have slightly more health (300 versus the Ghoul's 250 HP.) These guys also just do nothing but inflict Status Abnormality strikes. Why rejigger enemies you cut from an early part of the game when you can just slap status effect infliction on their attacks, boost some digits damage wise and call it a day? .jpg) The third and final potential match-up for a random battle in the dollhouse is a piss yellow miasma of skull ghosts called err... OK... Wait, that is can't be right? Is this right? Alright, if you say so Shadow Hearts. This Wind elemental skull ghost is named... Spanky. I don't know of any occult lore behind that and it's not a translation flub. Its Japanese name was also Spanky (OK technically Supankī.) Well, Spanky spams a shockingly strong Lightning attack that does 200-250 HP of a damage a cast and... that's it. These should probably be targeted first since the Status Effect Ghoul Bros are only doing around 20-50 HP of a damage a pop. .jpg) That's all there is for random battles. But since we're finally getting into some fighting in an end game sidequest, we may as well go over a completely unexplained mechanic regarding Level 3 Fusions and unlocking their ultimate attack. Amon technically counts as a Level 3 Non-Elemental Fusion even if there isn't a Level 1 or Level 2 version to build up to that point. Music: SSC - Special Short Cuts .jpg) You know how the entire game we've been avoiding having characters go into Berserk status? There's even a stat in the Score screen that will begin to admonish the player and lower their rank if their sanity wavers too often. Well... what if we ignored that and just let Yuri go Berserk with one his high end Fusions. Amon in particular already drains 56 of Yuri's total 62 Sanity on Fusion. I also equipped Yuri with the Small Jug (raises a bunch of stats while doubling SP loss per turn) to hurry the process so it isn't the entire party going Berserk before Yuri. Anyway, if Amon falls to Berserk Status, then... .jpg) .jpg) He'll automatically cast The End which is Yuri's equivalent of the Atomic Dust attack that Albert Simon Amon used back during his boss battle. Needless to say, a random battle trash mob doesn't hold up well to a demonic nuclear blast. .jpg) And now the Amon Fusion can use The End at any point it wants for a cost of a hefty 100 MP. Though the first hit is free! That's all there is to it! Just go Berserk once while using a Level 3 Fusion. .jpg) Unfortunately, we need to go do that for each and everyone one of Yuri's Level 3 Fusions individually. Not a big fan of stopping everything to perform a gimmick, especially with Fusions we are unlikely to ever use again outside showing it off the one time. But you all don't need to worry about that. .jpg) Our Light Elemental Fusion, Sandalphon, gains Pulse -- an orbital cannon strike that hits all enemies for Light Elemental damage. It costs 72 MP a cast. Which, when you get right down to it, is downright cheap for calling in a satellite beam strike. .jpg) Meanwhile, Czernobog our most powerful Dark Elemental Fusion gains Revelation the very first Special Attack we ever saw in Shadow Hearts back when imposter Roger Bacon kicked Yuri's rear end back on top of the Trans-Siberian Express. This does a load of Dark Elemental damage to all enemies as well as has a chance of causing Instant Death to enemies susceptible to that sorta thing (i.e. everyone in this poor trash mob we were fighting when Yuri unlocked it.) This too costs 72 MP per cast. Music: Someone's Table .jpg) That's about all that is to be said about random battles and Fusions while in the Dollhouse. For now, at least... The collection of Wind, Water and Fire elemental enemies present in this area is just what we need Soul Energy wise to unlock the last three lingering Level 3 Fusions. So maybe some grinding is in order after we're done with the initial proceedings. There's nothing else of note in this chair lacking living room. Let's continue to the back of the house where we find... .jpg) You can see a small key at the bottom of the fountain... .jpg) .jpg) That calls for an actually kind of tough Push Ring. That Hit Area is a near full 360 revolution on the ring and it's really easy to mash too hard and overshoot it since there is more momentum to the button mashing moving the cursor than you'd think. .jpg) That nets us a very direct answer to where the game wants us to go next. And yes, item description narrator. A key left at the bottom of a grimy fountain likely qualifies as something "not well looked after." .jpg) .jpg) Hey, we found all the wayward chairs from the living room. Shockingly, this store room is just a storeroom and not some arcane murder dungeon or haunted hell font. In here, we also find... .jpg) You started the generator using the crank for the clock! .jpg) Well, at least now we have some light in this haunted mansion. That's a start. Perhaps something back in the main house has been illuminated. Like, say, a dark fireplace, for instance. But we'll investigate that in a minute. Let's thoroughly investigate the storeroom first, eh? .jpg) Do I even want to know what is sitting in those top shelf tin cans? Murky mason jars? It's hard to say but I don't want nothin' to do with it. Now this bucket by these rusty tools? That's another story. .jpg) I'm going to need to get used to that Breaker arm system from Devil May Cry V. This, though? Ah, it's just another weird consumable we'll never use. This one expands all the Hit Areas on the Judgment Ring so it's impossible to miss. But, do we really want to waste a turn on something like that? .jpg) .jpg) In any event, the storeroom has a ladder connects to a wine cellar. I dunno, I'd probably give some haunted wine a sampling. What's the worst that's going to happen? I'm gonna have haunted piss later that evening? Pfft. There is a point of interest at the bottom of the area on what is either a decaying table or a warped steel drum. .jpg) There is a small slide plate next to them. .jpg) OK? But... can't you just hold it up to the light and see what's on it, Alice? You just activated the power. You're standing RIGHT BENEATH an overhead light! C'mon... .jpg) Well, let's see if there's a projector somewhere around here. Maybe in this back room of the wine cellar? .jpg) Naw... That's just an underground bunker sealing a forbidden evil experiment. Or an Umbrella BOW laboratory. They don't HAVE to be in full-blown mansions, you know. .jpg) Water trickles down in droplets. It seems that the weight of a huge amount of water is holding it shut. .jpg) Well, there's certainly no projector down the drowned doom hatch, now is there? Let's return to the main house and see what's upstairs, eh? .jpg) Aha! There's a projector! In this... library? This house consists of a foyer, a den with a backyard fountain, a library, a storeroom with a wine cellar and a forbidden basement. No bedrooms. No bathrooms. No kitchen. Does this even qualify as an actual house or is it just a poorly designed community center? Meh... Anyway, before we fiddle with that projector for reasons only known to Alice and her lack of understanding of how film slides work, there's a desk on the far side of the room with a journal. .jpg) Ewan took a picture of Laura and Lillith to celebrate the anniversary of their first meeting! Lillith kindly spoke to me. Perhaps this will ease my loneliness somewhat. Nice meeting you, Lillith! .jpg)  Yeah, I know Alice. Who spells Lilith with two "L"s? Well, enough of that. About that projector... .jpg) Merry Christmas, Laura and Lillith! December 24. .jpg) OK. December 24th. Christmas Eve! Just the festive time of year for a 12 year old to take a sledgehammer to the face, ya know? Let's just keep that date in mind and return to the first floor of the building no humans actually dwelt in. .jpg) Now that a lamp has been turned on by the restored generator, Alice can detect the gigantic wheel inside the fireplace. That'd make the thing a wee bit difficult to use for its proper function. But then if you'll take a closer look, you can see the fireplace itself doesn't have a base. It's just the wooden floor down there. This is the worst fireplace I've ever seen. Is there even a chimney? I wouldn't be surprised if it just rose to a bricked off section of the wall. .jpg) This fireplace wants some digits out of us and since literally every puzzle in the game involving digits has just been transcribing a date we learned only minutes earlier, obviously the passcode is December 24th or 1224. .jpg) Note: The player does not get to actually hear the sound of water draining. Just Alice.  .jpg) .jpg) But we have been somewhere that water has played a factor earlier. Back we go to the forbidden dungeon hatch in the basement. Let's just slide that sucker open and... .jpg) Oh, so there is a bedroom in this house. It's just in the sub-basement of the storeroom. Silly me. So umm... I suppose we should get to investigating this edgy child's haunted rear end room. It looks surprisingly dry for having apparently been submerged in water just no more than five minutes earlier. Those crayon doodles and blood painted walls were shockingly water proof. Also that rocking horse is just rocking on its own. Must be a draft. .jpg)  (It felt like the doll turned around and smiled!)Well... you're looking right at it, Alice. Did it ACTUALLY turn around and smile? And if so, would that actually be so unusual? You've been battling a horde of zombies and ghosts for the last fifteen minutes alongside your regularly transforming into a monster semi-boyfriend. A haunted doll should be a small fry. .jpg) I cannot believe Winnie the Pooh is loving dead. I'm just glad some hero finally did that insufferable garbage tier Disney character in already. It's about drat time. .jpg) Alice, I'm squinting really hard and while I can clearly see several instances of the word "Help" the word "me" is entirely absent from that wall. Do we need to get you glasses, Ms. Elliot? This quest is throwing your visual competence into question. .jpg) What a remarkably fancy bed except for all the parts that seem like they were retrieved from a dumpster. .jpg) Alice, we the player can see the doll and it has not moved nor smiled. This is turning into a Sci-Fi Channel ghost hunters level of crap. Are you going to walk around the room and claim to feel a chill coming from a particular spot next? Perhaps mark out over some unusual cluster of dust that strikes the camera lighting in a peculiar manner? .jpg) The most important thing to be found in this creepy child's room is a third Crucifix hidden next to the bed. Now all three active characters can stop worrying about status abnormalities. Not a bad haul. Welp. Beyond that it doesn't seem like anything is worth mentioning in this room haunting wise. Let's just head for the exit. However... .jpg) <turns around and looks around> Wh-who's there?! Ahha ha ha... Over here. Don't see me?Alice steps forward toward the rocking horse. .jpg) Heehee! Don't be so scared. You're my new friend, right? In place of Lillith? Part-time exorcist, actually. Well, I was... It's a long story. C'mon. Let's play! Is Lillith the girl on the slide? ... ...So that means, you're Laura?! Yes. Lillith died. Ewan only comes home once in a while. He has been away for some time now. He's in a bar in Prague. ...That would explain it. Come on, play with me!.jpg) .jpg) Yeah, OK. How difficult can it be to defeat a haunted do— .jpg) AWW CHRIST!! Of all the enemies to bring back from Koudelka, why'd it have to be the dead fetus orb!?    Video: Episode 68 Highlight Reel (Watch if you want to see some trash mobs get completely overkill deleted.)   Czernobog Render - That's not how you punch. You're gonna hurt your wrist doing that! The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 17, 2018 21:54
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The Dark Id posted:
May be missing an Alice portrait or two here?
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Dec 17, 2018 22:26
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Man, that insanity music works very well with Yuri as a freakish demonic beast suddenly unleashing absurdly powerful attacks completely beyond your control. It’s very appropriately unsettling.
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Dec 17, 2018 22:55
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I feel like we don't beat up enough fetuses in RPGs. It's one of my top 3 concerns. Right up there with the state of the USA and where my favorite flip-flops are.
Rabbi Raccoon fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Dec 17, 2018 |
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Dec 17, 2018 22:56
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Maybe the snails make Ghouls, making the snails Ghoulers?
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Dec 17, 2018 23:01
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Yay, undead child murder! Again! Taro Yoko would be proud.
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Dec 17, 2018 23:32
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I remembered the doll house being a lot creepier than it seems now. Oh well.
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Dec 18, 2018 01:26
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Why wouldn't they bring back the Fetus Orb Monstrosity?
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Dec 18, 2018 03:11
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ultrafilter posted:I remembered the doll house being a lot creepier than it seems now. Oh well. Playing the whole game is usually a lot scarier on its own, from the giant spider monster bestiary descriptions saying they like doing stuff to the rear end of poor innocent NPCs, to the bloody village of pets that turned on their rear end in a top hat owners and cute little Tiny becoming a giant rear end monster, and whatever the hell went down with Albert and Wugui in the meantime. The first time I played this game I expected it to be dark but not Resident Evil/Silent Hill levels of dark.
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Dec 18, 2018 03:32
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DiggleWrath posted:Yeah, the release of Might No. 9 was garbage, and Inafune handled it poorly. But all I was saying was Mighty No. 9 was after Inafune left Capcom, and therefore probably wasn't the reason Capcom was trashing its own business. The reason for that, as far as I understand, was that inafune was the one who pushed them towards the of westernizing their series, aka the decision that got us DmC: Donte may Cry. I also heard, but not confirmed, as with the above, that he was behind a lot of their worst decisions at the time (such as the in disk dlc fiasco) But, again, that later bit is just rumors.
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Dec 18, 2018 04:23
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A haunted wine cellar's not a big deal; Vintners and connoisseurs are well-versed in wines and spirits.
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Dec 18, 2018 05:30
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Neddy Seagoon posted:A haunted wine cellar's not a big deal; Vintners and connoisseurs are well-versed in wines and spirits. BOOOO. BOOO I SAY. BOO THIS MORTAL. BOOO! *throws ectoplasm*
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Dec 18, 2018 05:38
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Neddy Seagoon posted:A haunted wine cellar's not a big deal; Vintners and connoisseurs are well-versed in wines and spirits.
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Dec 18, 2018 12:26
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Arkanumzilong posted:The reason for that, as far as I understand, was that inafune was the one who pushed them towards the of westernizing their series, aka the decision that got us DmC: Donte may Cry. Oh! I didn't know either of these things. Welp, glad I know who to blame for DMC: DMC!
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Dec 18, 2018 13:32
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Ghoul and Ghouler, coming to a theatre near you.
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Dec 18, 2018 13:49
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The Dark Id posted:
Yeah, I know Alice. Who spells Lilith with three "L"s? Well, enough of that. About that projector... quote:Well... you're looking right at it, Alice. Did it ACTUALLY turn around and smile? And if so, would that actually be so unusually?
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Dec 19, 2018 11:43
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Episode LXIX: Orb Chaos Music: Demon's Gig .jpg) Well... at least there's only the one giant demon baby and it's not several stories tall or eating anyone. Meet Orb Chaos the boss of the Dollhouse. Quite the leap from a ghost to a possessed doll to... this whole situation. But here we are.  Orb Chaos is actually a reoccurring enemy in the Shadow Hearts series. One of the few that appears in every single entry, Koudelka included. Back in the progenitor game of the series, this thing was just a wee little thing no bigger than a mid-sized boar. Back then it went by the name Tamacoss. Tama being just a direct Romanization of the kanji for Ball/Orb and the coss part being a mistranslation for Chaos. They actually just got this one right for a change. The Shadow Hearts original receipt and smaller Koudelka incarnations are downright pleasant compared to their later downright hosed incarnations. .jpg) This bundle of joy is a Light elemental enemy packing quite the pool of endgame bonus boss caliber health with a hefty 7500 HP. For reference, Albert Simon/Amon had a collection 6000 HP between them and the final throw down with Arcane Olga had only 4500. So we're going to be here a wee bit against this bulletsponge. .jpg) Especially given Orb Chaos' moveset. Do you enjoy bosses that cast defensive buffs? How about offensive buffs? What if they just had nearly every single available boss buff in the game? As that's what Chaos Orb might have in its arsenal. On the plus side, it will waste quite a number of turns just spamming buffs in succession. The AI for boss baby seems rather obsessed with having at least three buffs active at all times. .jpg) The psychedelic rainbow Iris gives Orb Chaos a 30% boost to evasion. That's fine. We're not going to be using much in the way of physical attacks. Who wants to touch a great big fetus orb? Although, this thing seems to have garbage evasion to begin with so this barely helps. .jpg) Charge boosts Physical Defense by 30% in case any of those attacks happen to hit. No no no! Don't shake the baby! .jpg) Sanctuary we've seen a few times before cast by other mainline enemies. This one gives a 30% boost to Special Attack defense. Now that one is a little a bit annoying. You already have 1500 more HP than any boss outside the final dungeon, boss baby. Cool it with the additional defenses, will ya? While these are the three buffs it chose for this fight, Orb Chaos can also potentially cast Battle Cry (buff Physical Attack by 30%) Accelerate (boosts its evasion/speed) and Release Magic (boosts is Special Attack power 30%) It's a tiny bit annoying it went all defense on our go against it for the LP. But we can deal. .jpg) .jpg) This orb can roll or... more like a slushy squirm toward a victim and make nauseating, juicy squicky noises to slap them around with its front arm and maybe follow-up with a headbutt if it's feeling saucy. This does between 70-250 damage to a single target depending on how many times it feels like smacking someone. For some reason, Orb Chaos just seemed to HATE Alice during this fight and targeted her the vast majority of the time. .jpg) .jpg) Beyond that, Fetus Legion only has one attack but it is a doozy. Expression is a flood of tears that hits the entire party for upward of 250-300 HP of damage. Additionally, if we didn't have everyone equipped with Crucifixes then everyone would get the book thrown at them with status ailments on top of losing 2/3rds of their health. .jpg) Needless to say, Alice is on immediate Arc duty any time Expression comes into play. Which... is nearly half of Orb Chaos' overall turns in this long slog of a fight. .jpg) .jpg) Meanwhile, we're going to have Yuri transform into Amon and start spamming Demon Rays with every turn. I know we just got The End and you'd THINK the unlockable hidden special ability on the very easy to miss optional Fusion would be the go-to spell to cast. But nope! Demon Rays only targets a single enemy but it does more overall damage. Hell, if we trotted out Czernobog and have him spam Revelation it'd also do more damage than The End since Revelation is Dark Elemental magic. Demon Rays costs a spicy 86 MP a cast but it does do a fairly respectable 575-600 HP of damage. Revelation does around 550 for 72 MP a cast. The End does sub-500 damage for 100 MP a cast. .jpg) That said, with Yuri's MP reserves, we're only getting four casts of Demon Rays before he's spent so Margarete is on support duty making sure he gets MP topped off to keep the pain train going. .jpg) .jpg) Otherwise, since this bundle of joy decided to spam every defensive buff in the book, most we're getting out damage wise with Margarete is like around 200 HP with On Switch or MAYBE 150-175 with just trying to abort this travesty with bullets. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) In any event, let's just skip past twelve minutes of Yuri doing Sentai hero poses to shoot eye lasers while Margarete takes pot shots and Alice keeps calling in favors with God to heal everyone's scrapes as a giant undead baby cries poison tears on everyone non-stop. Music: Results .jpg) A bounty of Cash and EXP showers our party. Margarete levels up twice and learns her penultimate technique -- Bazooka. .jpg) .jpg) You don't get any points for guessing what that Secret Weapon does... It's literally just a comically oversized rocket launcher dropped into Margarete's hands which hits all enemies with a freeze round for a sizable amount of Water elemental damage. Huh, ain't seen freeze round explosives since Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Poor old Nemmy would get bodied like it was a random battle encounter if he went up against this party. .jpg) More important than giving our incredibly unsubtle spy a goddamn bazooka to ambush her targets, we've gained the actual reward for doing the Dollhouse sidequest -- the Holy Book of Flesh aka Alice Elliot's ultimate weapon. This grants +85 Physical and +89 Special Attack. I'm uncertain if it's wise to be handing over our nice religious girl cleric the K-Mart brand Necronomicon. But, I'm not going to argue with those stat boosts. Music: Someone's Table .jpg) <shakes head> This doll's been alive all this time... She must've been so lonely. So she used Ewan as her plaything... ...Who? The man we received this job from initially? When did that happen? Back in Prague...? Wait. That was related to all of this crap?! What did you think we were doing here, Yuri? I dunno. You're the one that took the lead as soon as we got here. I just started punching ghosts. ... ...Well, at least this doll is at peace. <turns to Alice> Hey, what about yourself? In the real world, the only people who like toys are little kids! A doll wanted a toy human... So like... was that doll possessed by a ghost child or... What was that whole thing about? I've learned not to ask too many questions when it comes to exorcism. The job is done. Let's just go get paid before it turns out the client skipped town or was a ghost the whole time. ... Or maybe they were a ghost the whole time and were actually the ones who hired us and were just doing suicide by exorcist. That one always stinks. Do you get paid for that last one? No... <shakes head> Let's go..jpg) And that concludes our time with the Dollhouse. We only had to run back and forth across the whole area once. That's pretty sparse by Shadow Hearts dungeon standards. .jpg) Technically, the sidequest is over, and we can just move on. But let's return to Prague and get a debriefing from our quest giver, eh? Music: City .jpg) I never noticed how piss yellow that beer decal was over the unreadable bar sign text. That's not the most inviting hue. Maybe that's why all this bar gets is haunted degenerates and ghost hunters. .jpg) What's that? You're looking for the guy who asked you to do that job? Already don't like the way you're phrasing that... Strange thing is... he's vanished. OK. Like faded from existence vanished or bolted out the door when you weren't looking. Sir, I carefully attend this spot all day every day looking in the very direction you find me in at present. The fellow simply blipped out of existence. You can ask Yuria to confirm. ...Alice ain't gonna be happy about this. God DARN IT! Gives me the creeps..jpg)  Ho, I get it! Trying to scare me, right? I need to shake off my nerves with another drink. How many is this today, lady? It's a Tuesday so hmm... Pretty sure it's Wednesday. Even better! Bottoms up! ...Welp. So much for all that money Runaway Ewan was going to pay us to get rid of his poltergeist. If we check the spot where he was standing, we find... .jpg) The stain looks like it spells out "Thank you." .jpg) And that's the conclusion of the Dollhouse sidequest. Alice gets an unholy tome wrapped in human flesh and Gismot needs to mop up his bar because a ghost scribbled blood graffiti while stiffing the party for the job. With that done, we say goodbye to Prague forever. Tune in next time as our revisit of Europe reaches the furthest east to Romania where Keith finally gains relevance for the first time since... err... well, the last time we were in Romania for the plot. Shadow Hearts continues!  Video: Episode 69 Highlight Reel (You should see the horrific orb child in motion.) The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 20, 2018 16:54
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RIP Alice getting paid for the whole thing. But I guess a Discount Neconomicon is about as good to get "paid" with.
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Dec 20, 2018 17:48
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Good to see Margarete is prepared to fight any Metroids the party comes across. A freeze bazooka is like ice missiles, right?The Dark Id posted:That said, with Yuri's HP we're only getting four casts of Demon Rays before he's spent so Margarete is on support duty making sure he gets MP topped off to keep the pain train going. The Dark Id posted:In any event, let's just skip past twelve minutes of Yuri doing Sentai hero poses to shoot eye lasers while Margarete takes pot shots and Alice keeps calling in favors with God to give everyone's scrapes * as a giant undead baby cries poison tears on everyone non-stop. The Dark Id posted:I never noticed how piss yellow that bear decal was over the unreadable bar sign text. That's not the most inviting hue. Maybe that's why all this bar gets is haunted degenerates and ghost hunters.
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Dec 20, 2018 22:52
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I've now seen all 4 incarnations of this enemy. The FtNW version is still the.... best? Yeah, best.
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Dec 20, 2018 23:19
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Welcome to Shadow Hearts Endgame, where the strategy of "Yuri spams lasers, Alice calls in heavenly favors to keep him upright, and whoever you like most of the rest tosses around Mana Roots" will play on loop until there's no demons left to do it to.
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Dec 21, 2018 02:31
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The best thing about the versions of this enemy in the other two games is that it's a plot mandatory dungeon boss in both of them. It's technically not canon that this team got whacked in the face by those Chinese dick demons or nearly got butt poisoned by the giant spiders from the beginning since they're just random encounters and you can miss them by chance, kill the absolute gently caress out of them before they do anything, or simply run away, and even with Alice's stint as one of the Ghostbusters being part of the plot this is still entirely optional content, but it is canon that the following two teams did get monster baby goo all over them in some form or another.The Dark Id posted:Howabout offensive buffs? 2 should be a period. 3 should be Orb Chaos's, I think.
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Dec 21, 2018 03:28
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Now I just kinda want to know when everyone involved in that died and how that all played out to reach that point. Was the doll always haunted, that sort of thing. It doesn't really matter, but now I wonder. Also, I like how you half think Margarete is shooting a fireball cause of the rocket propelled part of the rocket launcher. Episode LXVIII The Dark Id posted:In any event, the storeroom has a ladder connect to a wine cellar. Episode LXIX The Dark Id posted:seems rather obsessed with having at least three buffs activate at all times. Should be "active", "these are", "front", "doozy", "we just got" (or "I just got"), and the last one comes off kind of awkward using the same "was a ghost the whole time" wording essentially twice in a row. Maybe the second one could be "Or they were the bad ghost the whole time and hired us ...etc."
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Dec 21, 2018 03:52
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Got some major Inside vibes from this thing. Giant blobs of flesh with hands sticking out are just universally creepy.Shitenshi posted:3 should be Orb Chaos's, I think. Orb Chaos'. You leave the extra s off of words that end in an s.
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Dec 21, 2018 04:32
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Brainamp posted:Got some major Inside vibes from this thing. Giant blobs of flesh with hands sticking out are just universally creepy. That one depends on what style you choose to follow. For plurals I always leave off the 's', e.g. the monks' monastery, but for names that end in 's' it's less clear-cut. You can use s' or s's.
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Dec 21, 2018 06:21
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quote:Though fun fact: Ghouls (al-ghuűl) originated from pre-Islam Arabian religions. They were still just flesh eating zombies that hung out in graveyards. Arabic fairy tales be weird.
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Dec 21, 2018 12:20
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You would think that an exorcist, let alone an entire party of supernatural freaks would learn to recognize a ghost before taking a job from them.
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Dec 21, 2018 13:24
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Maybe this Ewan fellow figured out Albert's teleportation technique, and also he likes to write on the floor in blood, but is otherwise a normal human being.
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Dec 21, 2018 13:37
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Weeble posted:I've now seen all 4 incarnations of this enemy. It's great how they managed to make so many visually distinct variations on creepy baby ball, but make them all recognisably the same monster. The FtNW upside-down pregnant lady, but with a giant swollen baby head for a belly, but it's got a little foetus blobbing around inside its head/belly is pretty fantastic in terms of hosed-upness. Alice getting a book bound in human leather is also pretty metal. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Dec 21, 2018 |
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Dec 21, 2018 14:28
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quote:Alice getting a book bound in human leather is also pretty metal. Another thing that was apparently historically bound in human skin? Erotica. Gives "skin mag" a completely new meaning, don't it.
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Dec 21, 2018 16:34
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Medical textbooks were also bound that way too, you can see a bunch of them in the Muter museum in Philadelphia. Along with a bunch of other stuff that would fit in nicely with this game and Kouldeka.
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Dec 21, 2018 20:06
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quote:Medical textbooks were also bound that way too, you can see a bunch of them in the Muter museum in Philadelphia. It doesn't hurt that the kind of stuff you'd find in a turn-of-the-century anatomny is really kind of similar to what you'd find in the Émigré Manuscript, either.
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Dec 21, 2018 20:13
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Isn't skin that you have lying around always skin that no one's using any more?
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Dec 22, 2018 00:44
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ultrafilter posted:Isn't skin that you have lying around always skin that no one's using any more? "Hey man, why'd you take that skin I had lying around? It was really tying the room together!"
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Dec 22, 2018 02:55
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RandomMagus posted:"Hey man, why'd you take that skin I had lying around? It was really tying the room together!" "Well now it's tying my goddamn book together, so lay off  "
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Dec 22, 2018 02:56
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ultrafilter posted:Isn't skin that you have lying around always skin that no one's using any more?
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Dec 22, 2018 12:40
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Ah, Shadow Hearts. This game and Covenant are two of my favorite RPGs ever but I couldn't get into FtNW at all. Someone needs to buy the IP and make new games in the series.
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Dec 24, 2018 01:29
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I didn't finish FTNW either, got to a hotel running from floor to floor before I gave up, hopefully it'll get a LP eventually! Might've given it another go if Sony did backwards compatability...
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Dec 24, 2018 17:47
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 10:37 |
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FTNW has some good stuff in it, but even the devs admitted they leant too hard into the wackiness. And while they tried to improve on some elements of Covenant's combat system (ups-and-downs, really), the characters are awkward mechanical rehashes of previous ones. It has got some good stuff in there regardless though, although, yeah, it is difficult at sustaining its story momentum.
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Dec 24, 2018 18:43
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