In the last update, we spent some time getting derailed sidetracked by the process of playing around with the recruiting mechanics for Ni no Kuni's Imagines. In this update, we'll be doing something to actually advance the story for a change.
Hmm... Where did we leave off at the guide?
- After you win, we will come back to ババナシア 王国 we went out to get the map.
- Walk to the south. Next destination is 南 の 港町 ビッキーニ.
... Right, that would probably be a good place to start.
In our time-honored tradition of 'mindlessly following the red arrows,' we run from the inn we crashed at last time back out into the desert. Going south as the guide tells us to reveals that we can now make it through that southern pass by virtue of Maru's dad not being around to breathe over our shoulders, with a town with a red arrow highlighting it. Things through the pass are much greener, with actual trees. And some sort of riverside town. Looks like that's our stop...
On a side note, it appears that lowered HP may have an effect on recruitment rates after all. As the skeleton warriors we got ambushed by were much more receptive to Maru post getting smacked upside their bleached skulls.
Now we'll...
南 の 港町 ビッキーニ.
- I went to Event traders are trying to sell us pot. I will host it has to print something, print it. いでよ なべ まじん after a giant monster coming out of the pot, it's almost like we are in the pot.
The item has been included.
- After walking to the beat. Talk to people inside the event occurred.
- I went to the boat with ゼルガス.
- Will come back to the original dealer, he is a monster egg on our Ticket Exchange.
- Back out to the ババナシア 王国.
... Okay? Anywho, let's check out this 'pot' we're getting...
When we enter the town, there's a brief animation with the game models of Oliver, Maru, and Drippy entering a rather tropical-looking town gate, with Rucci joining the party by materializing shortly afterwards. Rucci says some stuff at the gate... A change from his normal mute antics. Oliver presumably asks "What's going on here?" and Drippy makes an attempt at explaining. Maru makes some commentary and there's some short banter before everyone gets a brief start from our friend Tabby the Tablet deciding to not be dead weight in our bag for once and appear before the group. Drippy gets a little annoyed with Maru after she gets a good lung workout and our block friend speaks. Everyone but Drippy being rather astonished by him (Drippy for his part looks rather unimpressed). Blockhead drops a string of 5 red katakana, Oliver asks about it, and then Drippy butts in, prompting a red string of 3 hiragana and 4 katakana. Tablet says a couple more words before Oliver and Drippy take over, prompting our stone buddy to poof back into our region of hammerspace. Maru and Drippy say a couple words before we press on.
On our way, we get accosted by a sailor in a red do-rag and purple pants who looks like he's had a bit too much of this 'pot' we're looking for some sort of substance that probably explains the PS 3 version's PEGI 12 rating. Fortunately for the story, Oliver, being the naive dipwad that he is, talks to the obvious stoner instead of continuing right on trucking as a normal person would. Maru gets a bit irked and either yells at us a bit or the stoner, maybe a bit of both. The stoner then presents to us- Oh how cute... He's on pot, so he's giving us a pot! If you've been paying attention to your game menu, its pattern matches up with the upper middle square that's been grayed out this entire time. Looks like we're about to get an ability out of this.
There's some more talking, presumably about what on earth this thing is and what it does. Something about 1 G... Is that how much the pot costs? Or how much it costs to work the thing?
Drippy puts in his two rather visibly unimpressed cents and we get the option with one box including the Kanji for 'buy,' and the other containing the option that presumably says 'piss off'. Let's be dumb and buy this thing. We do so, Stoner tells us what a smart choice we've made, while Maru rather visibly gets freaked out over... Something... Perhaps our idiocy.
After a few more words from Stoner, there is much conversation amongst the group of what on earth to do now. Drippy drops a highlighted phrase consisting of 2 Kanji and 2 hiragana and Maru makes a rather startled-sounding question. Oliver asks a question of his own, and Maru apparently goes into exposition mode. There's some more talking... And apparently Oliver gets prodded into something that he bit a bit more off of than he intended to, judging from his 'WHAT?!' expression.
... And now we get prompted to enter something from Trope-Tan... On page 61... Uh... Would that be that string, 'いでよ なべ まじん'? ... Seeing as Google Translate says it apparently means 'Come pot genie,' that looks like an affirmative... Alright, let's summon that (hopefully benevolent) genie!
We punch in the magic 8 kana, and get treated to a cutscene of a red genie in a purple turban with a white feather popping out of the pot, yelling at us in Simlish while getting into our faces repeatedly. And then going through an amusing sequence in which it roots through its pot, fishing out an umbrella, some fruit, a cat, a fish, and a pair of boxers, before finally getting its mitt on a schimtar and then takes up its blade and pot lid as the boxers undercut the moment by falling onto his face before getting poofed out of existence...
... Wait just a minute here! Genies are supposed to grant wishes, not wield wea- ... Crud.
Enter surprise Boss #1 of this update. Let's start by getting Maru out of here, and hugging the back row. Uh... Let's toy around with some of Oliver's fancier spells, do likewise for Taillow (who has replaced Maru for the moment), and have Rucci set up and then stick to the tried and true "stab in face with glorified steak knife". In our first round, Oliver's 6 MP spell does 85 HP of Attack, and Taillow's 12 MP spell raised his offense. And Rucci... Kinda doesn't appear to have done anything Oh yeah, Taillow also got a Schimtar to the face for 25 HP. Let's go aggro in this next round with Rucci and Taillow, and play around with a slightly less expensive spell with Oliver. Rucci dishes out 31 HP of damage, Taillow does 40 with his spellcraft, and Oliver's 4 MP spell did 65 HP of damage. Also, that round, we learned that this genie has an attack that hits everything but 2 given corners at a time, which took 44 HP off from Taillow's total. Seeing as this genie's still at like 75% health, let's regroup and heal up. In our next round, we place everyone in corners, the top corner taken by the obvious meatshield on the team, and have Taillow and Rucci perform straight attacks while Oliver heals our feathered fiend friend. That time, Taillow did 47 HP damage and regained 57 HP from Oliver's Cure spell, Rucci did 67, Oliver ate a 26 HP stab, and our pot genie is at around 60% health. Looks like we know who won't be using spells for now... Doing a round of all-out attack deals 91 HP damage from Oliver's 6 MP spell, 65 HP from a steak knife jab, and 47 HP from a tackle by a beta Taillow. Seeing as our boss is down to less than a third of his HP, let's play a bit dangerous and try that again...
...
Which isn't enough to drop him... Fortunately, our now rather exhausted boss had the genius decision of attempting a defense buff with like 10% HP left instead of doing something annoying like attacking. Let's just cherry tap this guy. One tackle from Taillow later, we are 1197 Exp and 141 G richer from our experience. Which is enough to allow Totoko and Kree to both level up.
After the battle, Oliver and company are understandably startled, and our genie friend is rather upset. Presumably at getting his head handed to him by a 10-year old with a stick. The genie yells at us a bit more, drops a highlighted phrase containing 2 hiragana, and 2 kanji, one of which is the one for 'person'. Drippy cheerfully relates the phrase with one that he dropped before our surprise boss battle of the day. Oliver has some rather exasperated lines, and then our genie returns to whining. Oh wait, maybe not, we just got his pot. Which is apparently how one item crafts in this game (which would explain some of the junk he's got lurking in there). There's a bit of a back and forth between Oliver and our new genie companion, and he gives us some sort of red jar for our trouble along with some herbs, a blue jar with a gold top and... Something that took a string of 11 hiragana and katakana intermingled together to describe.
It is at this point that the game prods us to try our hand a bit at item crafting... Er... There's two options... Clicking the left one prods us to add something... And get a nifty animation of the genie stirring up his pot and giving us... A golden vial? Yay?
It is at this point that we get steered to the Imagine interface. Hey, was that cloud always on Rucci? Let's see if we can ditch it with these different icons... The brush doesn't do anything... Neither does the hand or green... Whatever that is. What about the cupcake? OH! That's the jar that the genie gave us! If you give it to Rucci, he'll chug it and ditch that depressing storm cloud. Mission accomplished?
There's some more talking between Oliver, Drippy, and the genie... And we eventually get prompted if we want to save... Well... Saving IS a good thing, so let's do so.
After this point, we're freed to go and skulk about this town a bit... There's a 2-story building of some sort to goose-step through, but unfortunately, it appears to be more or less eye candy... Moving on (westward)! There's a seaside hotel and perspective shift first thing when you enter this next area (handy since our current party is in need of a bit of R&R). Unfortunately, those views in 'I can't believe it's not Polynesia' come at a price. This place's catmaiden clone charges 90 G a visit! There's a forked path up ahead, let's head tow- Oh? There's a cutscene... Oliver and Maru talk a bit and some kid in swimming trunks runs up to us, with an elderly woman following in tow, a rather large and buff guy comes along (also, this place either has an abundance of surfers, or a severe dearth of cloth, it appears that top shirts are an optional fashion accessory among the local male residents). There's some talking by the surfer guy and a line from the old woman... Which apparently startles Oliver, and plants Drippy firmly back into 'what sort of idiocy is this?' mode. There's a bit of talking and exposition... Oliver freaks out some more over some water something or other... And apparently gives Drippy a good scare too. There's some more talking... Oliver and Maru apparently hear a bit from surfer dude that soothes their initial misgivings, while Drippy remains fairly skeptical... And get taken back to that house from earlier. Only now, we're all apparently in swimming attire. Neat? But is it just fanservice for all of the less savory Maru fans out there cosmetic? ... Apparently so. But it is rather thematically appropriate... Anyways, back to exploring this town...
Going up the top fork from earlier will take you up another fork... If you press north from THAT one, you apparently run into some docks... Going left at either of the two forks takes you across a bridge... Where the local bookstore clerk clone has his shop on a nifty-looking flat-bottom boat. The NPCs in this town seem to have an abundance of chat sprites. Take the time to yack with them and see Studio Ghibli's handiwork! Anywho, that's probably our cue to head back to the docks... There is an NPC with a quest that we will ignore that's the bottommost of these blue dots...
Running up to check out the ship docked here will lead you to a gnarly looking guy with a gray streak and an eye patch... Talking to him gets him to drop a red phrase consisting of 7 katakana and 1 Kanji... Looks like it's the one for "number". Unfortunately for us, our conversation takes a bit of a turn for the worse... This guy apparently has something that's keeping us from getting our feet aboard this boat... (Which appears to be the same one that you use in the PS 3 version. There's some more talking... Oliver apparently makes an offer to help this guy out... And apparently gets laughed off for it...
Oh, in other news, if you haven't been indulging your inner klepto in this town, be sure to! Some of the barrels have money lying around in them! (There's one at the end of the dock with 100 G alone, and one with 50 G back where we got our genie pot). There's a building in here... Along with a NPC marker that's flashing... Hmm... Wonder what it is...? It's some burly guy with a stache and poofy hair with a green glowy thing and a young guy with a slipknot... Going up to talk to them reveals... Oh... We apparently have to cast some sort of spell... Uh... Time for Heart Peace?
Guess that was it, because the green glowy thing is gone, and we filled up one of our vacant spots on our perfume jar that occasionally pops up... Wonder what it does though...? If you talk to the duo they'll give you a quest, alright moving on... Oh, also, for you explorers, there's a balcony from this house where you can find a tourist catboy.
The game gives us red arrows again... If you follow them, you'll- Oh. It's the stoner again (also, this dump is apparently the local item shop)... Get out of my way, I've got metaphysical arrows to chase! And... We get a ticket? According to our guide, it's apparently for an Imagine... But I'm buggered as to how to use it... And the long moonspeak explanation afterwards was kinda lost on me. As you follow the arrows out of town, some woman in a purple dress and white parasol apparently heads in, says a couple words to the local item shop clerk, and then heads off... Wonder what's her angle?
But anyways, this is apparently the part where we blow this town for now, so let's save and call it an update here.
Takeaway Points:
- The layout of the third town:
| Dock with Ship | Pathway | Inn | Walkway + Item Shop (Get Your Genie HERE) |
| Water | Bridge | Bridge | ↕ Between Gate and Item Shop |
| Bookstore | Gate | ||
- This southern town is a really nice vacation spot. So nice, that the VAs and animators went on vaction during our visit to it.
- It's also a kleptomaniac's dream come true. Smashy smashy for some free G!
- Strategy for defeating
Marvinthe Pot Genie: TL/DR Version: START WITH AS FULL HEALTH AS POSSIBLE! You fight against the Genie more or less the moment you set foot into this town, so if you've been mugging the local Imagines instead of ignoring them, keep that in mind. Afterwards, hug the corners of the movement grid. The odds of you dodging the Pot Genie's diagonal slash are low, but you will be guaranteed that at least ONE team member will dodge the attack this way as opposed to potentially none. This guy also can use defensive buffs, so walking into battle with buffs of your own is probably a good idea. Beyond hitting a little hard, he's not that intimidating otherwise. - Defeat Equals Friendship is apparently a cardinal rule among hammerspace genies. It might explain why there's apparently living creatures lurking in our red friend's pot.
- When
rudely awakeningsummoning the pot genie, you must summon him with the magical moon runes: "いでよ なべ まじん", otherwise the game prevents you from continuing.
- When
- The guy who is presumably the captain of the ship at the docks is an utter jerk and we will be attempting to pitch him into the sea if at all physically possible. Yes, I am totally justified here. He laughed at us!
- If you ever wanted to see Maru in a swimsuit, Level 5 was way ahead of you here. Sadly, the new duds we picked up here seem entirely cosmetic in nature.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 18: 104 HP / 77 MP
- Rucci: Level 21: 151 HP / 82 MP
- Taillow: Level 19: 128 HP / 63 MP*
- G: 6151
- Play Time: 33 hours, 50 minutes, 49 seconds.
Next time, we will make a trek back into the desert, and hopefully make some progress on hijacking getting that ship out of port.
Comments
