Last time, we left off right after our first couple of tutorial battles in Ni no Kuni. Now, we'll:
滝の回廊.
- Walk along the red arrow and so on. On the way to a monster. The fight to retain power. Now we can use. Rounded shape of the chip's power to invent her magic defense. Hey Jim, and I will have teeth and screen.
- Walk until you see the blue box on the bottom right to use magic to open the chest to Unlock アン ロック below.
... I'm sorry, what? Er... Looks like we'll be looking for a blue box? And using this
◊ cute little sign whenever we find it, I guess...
Picking up from the last save point we made it to, we see that our handy fourth wall violator is telling us to go north to a passage marked by a cave... Well, since we're kinda stuck on a straight line, and it's kinda pointless to backtrack, let's go forward.
And we reach a distinctly non-cavey place. Looks like it's an extension of the forest, with a little stream cutting through it. The title cut matches up with the kanji and kana given by the guide, so we're obviously in the right place (kinda hard not to be when your dungeon has a whopping 2 directions to navigate). Right off the bat, Shizuku and Oliver have an unvoiced exchange... Shizuku brings up some points in quoteblocks (though not highlighted red) with Oliver asking short questions... I think that Shizuku just brought up the X button... And now he mentions the B button... Oh. He's making you root for your bag (in case if you were a lazy bum and hadn't done so already), presumably to get familiar with the different functions you've unlocked at this point. Since we kinda did this last update, let's breeze through this part. The conversation continues on a bit, Shizuku mentions the Y button now... And brings up a spell name... I think that this one is Heal, but will need to look back at second update to check... And he politely reminds you that your magic sucks up MP as you use it, so no fair drawing infinite pictures, I guess...
And we finally have the freedom to move around again after Shizuku shuts up. There's a rock bridge over a ri- OMIGOSH THERE'S AN ITEM CHEST! Must... GET! It's located on an alcove splitting from the path further o- Huh, another bird-cat? Wh-
... And we've blundered into another battle. For all you Dragon Quest 9 players out there, the encounter system for enemies is apparently fairly similar. If you get noticed by an enemy, it'll turn red and get some yellow expression marks and rush after you. This battle is fairly uneventful, a little swat from Oliver and Rucci from the middle cells (17 HP damage combined, no damage taken) is enough to down the thing.
After mercilessly slaughtering vanquishing the adorable fiendish cat-bird, we reach the treasure chest (a RED one, mind you), and score a bread roll. Hmm... While we're here, let's see if we can mess around with Ni no Kuni's encounter system and movement system...
A quick trip to and back to the save point from earlier generates another of those cat-birds from before (so Ni no Kuni resets enemy placements). Probably heard us whaling on its friend or it's the original one and a masochist. A quick shuffle of the party to the first row and spamming of the attack command reveals that moving closer to your enemy DOES indeed boost your attack (Oliver did 8 HP damage, Shizuku missed which was fairly obvious from the kana and the exclamation mark and the little woosh sound effect, and Rucci did 13 HP, and we all outran the cat-bird again), with the opposite presumably holding true if you decide to hug the back row of cells.
After harassing defeating another cat-bird, we valiantly press forth in along our lushly foliated line... Okay, maybe it's not a line... Looks like you've got to unlock your map via progressing through it, a feature that the cheap and unfair DS remake of Final Fantasy IV had (whether or not we get a reward for completing the map remains to be seen). A quick pummeling of a Totodile Kremling croc reveals that Shizuku is apparently the team Exp sponge right now, as he's the only party member that hasn't leveled up within the last 2 fights.
The path branches into two near where we fought the croc, the north branch dead-ends at a stream, so if you're speedrunning, hug the sou- Ooh. Clearing inbound... Looks like there's an alcove too. Doing a quick sweep of the alcove will expose another red chest, which has... ... Some sort of shrub in there... After coming out of the alcove, we run into a green and yellow Venus Flytrap thing... Who apparently has (off-screen) buddies...
Welcome to our multi-opponent battle in Ni no Kuni. On the bottom screen, we've got our beloved party, on the top we've got that Flytrap from the overworld, some sort of daikon sprite... Thing, and a purple lizard. Being the idiotic daring souls we are, let's stay in the front and gang up on one of the enemies. Using the attack command reveals three icons each of the enemies, The flytrap has a blue one, the radish has a green one, and the lizard has a red one. But meh, ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK! The flytrap outruns us all and apparently raises its defenses (which STILL isn't enough to keep it from getting downed by Rucci and Shizuku with a little over 20 HP damage), the radish does too (and winds up eating Oliver's attack intended for the flytrap for 5 or so HP), and apparently wastes a turn trying to recover HP, while the lizard is the only one that we outran (and possibly the most dangerous, as he apparently cut Oliver's defense). The radish is finished off by Shizuku and the lizard gets one-shotted by Rucci, who manages to deal an ungodly 27 HP of damage. A little red shout bubble under the hapless lizard suggests that like other JRPGs, Ni no Kuni apparently has critical hits.
Continuing on, we find a pretty blue crystal, and proceed to poke it press A nearby it. The crystal proceeds to explode into a million tiny pieces, and we get a message about our MP (it is presumably replenished). A short distance away, we manage to stumble into another battle, the new faces here being an anenome thing and some sort of green levitating seal. ... Okay, apparently Rucci's 27 HP attack might not have been a critical hit last time. He repeats the same feat on a hapless Totodile ripoff right off the bat (minus the red notice, to boot), the anenome is apparently made of glass or something, as it keels over after a 12 HP bum-rush from Shizuku. A few more spammings of the attack command later (or more accurately, one that was actually important, Rucci's), and we finish off the seal (Shizuku being our only casualty, with -7 HP).
Pressing on, we find a 3 way junction. Let's check the bottom and right first, since they seem to both dead end. The bottom one has another flytrap to beat up if you're inte- ... And we just got ambushed... No new faces, though apparently those flytraps will make shells out of their traps to boost their defense. The moral of the story is to never let your enemies sneak up on you, as they will get free hits, and you won't be able to control your position when they do (luckily for us, their attacks were all pathetic, dealing -1 HP a pop). A short backtrack north reveals that enemy placements are reset even while you're in a single chunk of overworld/dungeon/whatever (so for all of you concerned about the Pokemon rejects monsters we're whaling on, it looks like we might not be roughing them up that badly). Anywho, the other dead end has that blue chest the guide referred to earlier.
A quick attempt to open it like we did with the red chest earlier reveals that the thing won't budge, triggering an unvoiced exchange between Shizuku and Oliver. Shizuku drops a highlighted term again. 2 Kanji, "no" in hiragana followed by 2 more Kanji... And continues talking for a bit before going quiet... Er... How do we use that Unlock spell again? Oh. Right. Trying to open the box again will bring up the prompt to whip out that stylus and sketch an Unlock symbol (the potholed thing from earlier). A few attempts (and quick mental rejogging of the TL:DR rules of magic in-game) allows us to produce a Unlock spell (refer to page 26 of your copy of "Trope-Tan" if you have one) that the game deems good enough and get some sort of bottle. We note that our sucky little drawing ate 2 of Oliver's MP, confirming Shizuku's warning earlier to not go too crazy casting spells.
- Continue until you see the safe.
- In the pool over the boss ヌシ managed out.
Looks like we're looking for a save point, if that last "safe" that the guide mentioned was anything to go by... And we'll be facing our first fight that (possibly) doesn't involve woefully underpowered creatures that look more like a potential pet than something to legitimately fear.
Pressing on to the leftmost of the three branching paths nets us another red chest, with 100 G (I feel so rich now!) under a scenic curve under the ribcage of something that probably would have merited a change of clothes if we met it while it was still alive. In one of the battles en-route, we have the red shout box appear when Shizuku drops a purple lizard with a single hit, and after paying closer attention to the results screen and making a random guess careful deduction, conclude that it either corresponds to critical hits or scoring items from the monsters you mug defeat, as to which one it corresponds to, I'm presently not sure. By now, we have figured out that the amount of Exp you receive from a given type of enemy is static, and that it is merely each consecutive level demanding more and more Exp to reach (like pre-Generation 5 Pokemon games), so if you're wondering why your rate of Exp gain has suddenly slowed to a crawl, it's (probably) not because you're doing it wrong.
We reach the save point that the guide mentions in the next area (it's fairly small, so the game gives you the entire map), and press on with our HP and MP restored, praying that beating up everything in sight has gifted us with stats that are sufficient to handle this upcoming trial. In the next part of the forest, we run into a rather pissed off looking bipedal tree... Thing that looks sorta like the offspring of a Typhlosion and a Grotle with six eyes, bandaged forearms, and a tooth necklace. Shizuku is fairly freaked out at first (probably because the sin against nature is like 9 feet tall), but then calms down briefly, before the tree monster notices us, and proceeds to spaz out again.
Since we have no idea what this thing is capable of, let's test the water with our running attack pattern. Shizuku drops 2 highlighted terms, which, being non-fluent in moonspeak Japanese, doesn't really help me. Also, you get different music than your normal monster encounter music for this battle, and the boss, unlike the other monsters we've been fighting, gets an orange life bar in the top right of the top screen. Our strategy looks like it will be decidedly non-viable, as our rather angry-looking foe (or is it trying to be playful? I can't tell with those beady yellow eyes) used an attack that hit the entire party in one swoop and Rucci was the only member of our party to take less than 10 HP of damage... So let's park Shizuku and Oliver in the back and experiment a bit... And being a nimrod, I wind up hitting the auto-battle button, which drops Oliver into critical territory for HP and Shizuku under half health. On the plus side, we discovered that our assailant apparently burns easily, assuming that we survive long enough to exploit our discovery... A hasty reshuffling of the team, two bread rolls, and a little bit of luck later (boss decided to use a solo attack on Shizuku as opposed to a group attack like the rounds before), Shizuku and Oliver are brought back from the brink (Shizuku took as much damage in the back row from the tree... Thing as Rucci did in the front from the first attack). Playing around with our newfound discoveries (including confirmation of our suspicions that hugging the back row cuts the amount of damage that you take), we have Rucci play physical offense, Oliver chuck fireballs from his stick wand, and Shizuku act as our team's buffer. 2 rounds of this are enough to bring the abomination down to a fifth of its health, and have it to start to visibly totter. Two more rounds of this is able to finally bring the thing down, and we make a rather late discovery that meatshielding is a viable strategy in this battle for the boss' move that affects the entire field. Also the red shout-box IS apparently a critical hit notice, since Rucci and Shizuku had it pop up over them after getting hit by the monster's field attack. In this first boss battle, we get 44 Exp, 16 G, and some sort of orb item.
When we return to the overworld, we see the tree monster pick itself up (offscreen) and lurch away, deciding that we are the worst playmates ever not worth the time or effort to try and swat after painfully being burnt by Oliver's Fira Fireball spells and jabbed by Rucci's steak knife sword. Shizuku and Oliver yack a bit in boops and we're free to move again. After a brief revisit to the save point to nurse our wounds, we press on using our handy dandy fourth wall violator, dutifully following an arrow to a path that fans out towards its end. And get interrupted by a voiced(!) exchange between Shizuku and Oliver...
And discover that all this time, we have been in a cramped, stuffy (and rather linear) dungeon, and have stumbled out onto the overworld. A quick run around reveals an immediate similarity to Dragon Quest 9's overworld (which, given that Level 5 developed the darn thing, makes an awful lot of sense): enemies are still encountered in the same fashion as in dungeons, items lying around are glimmering blue specks, the top screen has a map of your general surroundings. There are a couple important differences: Forests are about as passable as cliffs, you go around them, not through them, also you can save here through your main menu (like in a number of Squaresoft games), and as in our initial dungeon, the game prods you where to go. The enemies here are also different, our first battle pits us against a Mad Duck Vullaby without its bone effects vulture and some sort of purple, orange, and cream leaf creature. Another battle gave us a white-feathered purple unicorn-raptor and a red rhino-pig. All of which went down rather quickly simply by spamming the attack command.
And now we've reached some sort of gate... Shizuku and Oliver talk a bit... Er... Help me out here, guide.
ゴロネール王国.
- Talk to the guard post card lazy right. He asked us to do the quest [001 やる気 の ない 門番] for
- Talk to the guard on the left card. Let us cast ハート ピース Heart Peace.
- Check with the right casting ハート キュア Heart Cure.
Uh... Okay... Looks like we're in a kingdom... And drawing pretty pictures casting spells here...
Shizuku and Oliver have a voiced back-and-forth... Jabo pops up again... We talk to the lower left guy after regaining control, and get nothing beyond a long-ish blurb... Moving onto the right guard, we talk to a guy in a cat-eared helmet who looks like he just got fresh out of the local slackers' convention, and true enough, get a quest. And something related to a heart pops up as a highlighted term... Oliver and Shizuku continue on a bit... And then after stopping, the top left guard butts in. A few more words later, we are freed to move about.
We go over to the guard on the upper left, and like magic Shizuku mentions Heart Peace as a highlighted term. One dud followed by one rather awful-looking Heart Peace
◊ (which is in page 24 of the phonebook spellbook) later, we get one of those 8 missing spots filled in that little blue perfume jar from the menu (a red thing that looks kinda like a fireball, on the right side of the second column down).
We then head back over to slacker and cast a Heart Cure
◊ (page 25 of "Trope-Tan", if you couldn't already tell from the image). A little light bounces between slacker and Oliver after sketching a symbol that looks close enough to a Heart Cure, and we get what looks kinda like a glowing seed. Shizuku has a voiced interjection after this, followed by boops, again. Slacker looks and sounds like he's gotten turned on by something feeling better, and we find out that the guards DO have VAs after all... Who are there for all of 5 or so seconds, presumably talking about how happy they feel at the moment. The two go back to boops, Slacker yacks with Oliver a bit and drops a long highlighted phrase in katakana and hiragana, rambles on a bit more, drops another with 4 hiragana followed by 2 kanji, and after he's done, we're informed that we have something by the game, which was important enough to point out in red text.
- After completing the quest. We will be displayed on two video cards, sound, and then he would open the door to let go.
Sounds simple enough... But video cards? Seriously, Google?
Slacker and his buddy yack a bit with their VAs, and true enough, the gate is lifted. We also get a notice that says that we have completed Quest #001 on the top screen. This then cuts to some sort of movement screen composed of 10 dots going from a handy "Start" to "Goal", the first two with crowns. Er... Not sure what this does yet... Shizuku blabs a bit, and you're given the freedom to press onwards.
Into a European-looking town with a fish motif (which becomes immediately familiar to anyone who has seen one of the trailers or otherwise looked at the game box). We have a cutscene showing Shizuku and Oliver bounding off into town when we follow the arrow on our map, Oliver being thoroughly impressed and weirded out by the town. With the local townsfolk and their kids mobbing him to look at the stranger dressed in something other than garb straight out of Dungeons and Dragons Oblivion a stereotypical medieval(-ish) European setting. Since the game allows us to save from our menu in towns, let's do so and stop here for now.
Takeaway Points:
- If a red shout box appears after a hit, it means it was a critical hit. Ideally, these should appear under your enemies and not under you.
- Level 5 DOESN'T hate kleptomaniacs after all. They just like to keep them waiting.
- You can save anywhere on the overworld or in any place not named a dungeon. Otherwise, you'll have to make do with (rather generous) save points. UNLIKE the save points, your HP and MP aren't restored if you save from your menu.
- Hanging out closer to your opponents raises the amount of damage you deal, as well as the amount of damage that you take. If you are more conservative, hang out further away from them, but be prepared for a longer fight.
- Auto-Battle (thankfully) only lasts for 1 round of attacks.
- Defeating the first boss, TL:DR version: Keep all members NOT named Rucci away from the topmost row of movement cells. Have Rucci spam attacks, Oliver spam Fireballs, and use Shizuku to buff everyone's defense. To get around this boss' attack that affects all columns of movement cells, hide your party members behind Rucci, as he will be able to tank this boss' attacks best, and the range of effect of this attack doesn't carry on after the first party member that it encounters in a vertical column.
- Your fashion sense makes you stick out in Ni no Kuni about as much as walking down a suburban strip mall in full BDSM gear does. How much longer Oliver will remain in this state remains to be seen.
- Rucci apparently joined the party to make the rest of us look bad and feel inadequate.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 5: 35(/45) HP / 24 MP *
- Shizuku: Level 5: 45(/50) HP / 19 MP *
- Rucci: Level 6: 61 HP / 26 MP *
- G: 280.
- Play Time: 7 hours, 50 minutes, 12 seconds.
Next time, we will explore more of this wretched hamlet town, and attempt to progress a bit more in our quest to rez Oliver's mother.
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