Last time, we had some fun aboard a boat... And a bit less fun watching the team almost tear itself apart via infighting. And fought another witch demon... Thing.
Now let's- Oh right, that arrow's still there... Oh well, we're taking a more circuitous route. Let's check out the casino and stadium first. The cashier sells casino tokens at a rate of 1 for 2 G, in 10-coin intervals. We'll get 10 for the sake of experimentation here. Hmm... There's a counter... One clerk has a thing with 10 coins... Another has one that says 200... Let's try the 10- Oh! It's blackjack! ... But how do I draw more cards? ... Guess it's not the yellow button. And there goes my 10 coins... Okay, maybe we need a LITTLE more than that... Okay, so the RED button lets you draw more... The yellow button lets you stop and say "hey dealer, show me your hand!" It appears that after you have enough casino chips, you can bet for higher amounts of cash. You will win back 2x whatever you bet. Hmm... Let's get some more coins to try out that 200 coin game. Ah... You're apparently trying to build 5 decks out of 10 cards with a value greater than your opponent's... Whoever can get 3 or more comparos in their favor wins all 200 coins... Unfortunately for me, that would be a loss right now... Oh well, let's try and recoup our losses at the blackjack table... (Which for some reason seems to give you 40 coins when you win as opposed to 20 for some reason... Pity?)
After around 65 hands of 10-coin Blackjack, I decide that recouping 100 of 200 coins lost is good enough, and that there's other things to be checked out here. So, let's see what else this place does... There's slots. Which work similarly to Pokemon (stop 3 reels and try and match up different sets of icons. The only ones that will actually give you a return on your 10 coins are the different strings of "7"s. Others will give you 1 or 3 coins to mock you.
After ditching the casino about 240 G poorer in casino funny money, I decide that the best thing to do to recoup our losses might be to take part in the time-honored tradition of beating the crap out of someone else for money. So... We run up to the clerk, tell her "bring it on" and our first opponent is... A woman in peasant's clothes and a headscarf? Unsurprisingly, these fights are for your imagines only, so the game filled the spot that Oliver would normally take with the highest-leveled alternative... Totoko... Uh... Yeah. Let's just beat the stuffing out of these sunflower and flytrap Imagines and move on here. ... UNLIKE their forest counterparts, these guys appear decently leveled... So be sure to keep items to heal status and health with on hand. During the battle (which took a while because I have all the tactical guile of an inebriated shrew), we found out that Totoko's spells are primarily built to cut foes' accuracy. Oh well, let's just get- Wait, ANOTHER battle? This time against a little girl... Well... At least we got our HP and MP restored... This time, we make sure to buff Rucci and Taillow's attack first before going in. Oh, also you earn no exp between fights. And our next opponent is... Some sort of snotty-looking EV Trainer kid with glasses. Oh well, let's just get him out of the way... He mentions something about 100 years... What? Oh... He has a repeat of queen pimple from the mountain pass... Looks like this might be the last battle here. Let's make sure our more fragile Imagines are in the back while Rucci takes center stage... ... Okay, maybe center stage wasn't such a great idea after Rucci lost 75 HP in one go... Let's get everyone in the back, whale away with our two attack buffers, and heal with Totoko. After a few turns, Totoko is more or less out for the count, down to 27 HP... Thankfully we can switch in... Seba winds up taking his place... And suddenly Ms. Pimple began to tank all of our hits a whole lot better... Guess it's time to rebuff that attack... Also, we wound up having to switch Seba out for Felis (this pimple simply won't keel OVER already). And... We've lost Taillow... Crap. On another note, apparently when you lose a character, the entire party slot is inaccessible... So if you're out in a dungeon and down to the last 5 HP... Switch OUT if you can. A couple rounds of desperation attacks later, and Ms. Pimple finally collapses... Alright, I want out. And to nurse my injured bird. Mr. Snot-face seems to be quick to dismiss our victory after the match (5 on 1, I don't blame him). Oh hey, he apparently remembered our name! Guess we made an impression on him! ... And... For that entire ordeal... We got... A red scale... What. Oh, and a green gem. Whelp, at least they bothered to heal the Imagines. Let's follow that arrow now.
When approaching bookie's place, the first thing that you can really notice this time is a lack of sound... Uh... That can't be good... The party heads up to the cabin... Has a small amount of internal banter... Before Oliver walks up to knock on the door... And we're let in... And that same music that was playing when Sherry and her dad reunited started up... (You might remember it as the 'this game will make you cry' music from the English trailer.) Oh hey, it's that clerk we beat up at those warehouses! What's she (or is that a he?) doing here? There's some talking... I guess maybe leaving him/her sprawled out wasn't the brightest idea there... There's an extended bit of talking between the bookie and our formerly possessed clerk... When bookie starts laughing about something... Which startles Maru. And prompts a quick word from the clerk... That startles Drippy. There's some more talking between the two... When suddenly bookie's chest glows briefly... Guess it's magic time. Yep. Except this time something about "eyes" was in red... I take it that this isn't a simple Heart Cure / Peace... Okay, so after consulting a digital copy of Trope-Tan, it appears that the eye-related spells are a dead-end... Let's try the Heart spells...
And Heart Peace appears to be the winner. We got a lovely yellow shell-shaped thing in our perfume jar now. We go up to the clerk... And... Drippy doesn't seem happy about her... Maybe THAT'S who the sight spell was meant for? ... Nope, looks like it's also a heart spell... Heart Cure after we played around a bit. And we got some sort of blue orb for our trouble... There's a bit of talking between the clerk and bookie... When bookie says something that appears to rather upset the clerk... There's a cut to outside in a rendered cutscene... When the clerk beckons us back in... And presents what looks like a massive green grenade with some gold spikes sticking out of one end there... Bookie asks what on earth that thing is... And the clerk gives a bit of a yelly answer... Before settling down a bit... Or not... She seems to be cranky again... And mentions Oliver's name in the midst of things... Uh oh... Wait, now she's smiling? What? And... We get this... Contraption... That was weird. There's some comments from everyone before we head out... Where there's some reveling... And then we're freed to follow the red arrows once again...
Which takes us to the docks and- Oh. Captain Chucklehead is here... Great... Oh wait, looks like he brought his ship with him too. That makes things a bit better.
(Save and continue from here.)
Alright, now let's actually get somewhere...Next stop, Bogu E- wait a minute... Why's it pointing at the green island south of it? ... Or is that an arrow pointing through the straight LEADING to it...? Hmm... These random encounters are wearing us down pretty fast... Better stop by that port and rest up and stock up first... We press on, and- Whoa, what's with this massive hurricane?! It's on the ma- Oh, it's that Dokoku Eye... Er... Let's head in?
There's a cutscene our ship bobbing around on some nasty-looking seas... Oliver and Gyro readying a cannon on the bow... And they aim it... And shoot that green thing out of it and at the eye- Oh, it's fireworks! It stuns the eye... And we get to see this thing in all of its glory... It's a large disk thing... Listing with its eye closed... Over the horizon... And then the sky clears up... And we get a short "We did it!" scene between Oliver and Gyro, with Maru and Drippy looking on...
And then we cut back to the casino place... Oh, it's those three stalker knights... Wait... Aren't these guys supposed to be from this Bogu Empire we're sailing into? ... This is... Ominous... They have like two lines... And then the game asks us if we want to save. That's an obvious choice there... Okay, NOW the game tells us to head to that Mordor-looking place on the ma- Oh, we got ambushed... By some palette swaps of earlier imagines... More specifically, a darker teal version of those crocs from the very first dungeon. A teal and white version of those dress-fish, and a darker green floating seal. Unsurprisingly, the croc is the most dangerous of the bunch, dealing around 40 HP damage a hit and taking 2 full turns of attack spam from Rucci and Taillow and magic support from Oliver (4 MP spell) to down. The seal and ladything are no slouches either, dealing around 20 HP a pop, with the seal apparently able to cut your defense stat. We got quite a bit of exp for our trouble though, 1223 points worth. Another encounter has us running into a blue headed and finned fish with a green body alongside one of Phyco's distant cousi- Oh wait, no. It's teal and the headfins look different... Make that what Phyco will eventually turn into. The fish doesn't seem that tough... If requiring a while to take down.
... And in another battle, we run into souped-up versions of Coulomb and those anglerfish from the sewers in Ding Dong Dell... And find out off the bat that those green fish are Not So Harmless after all. They can hit everyone in a row for 20 (or in Rucci's case, 30 due to elemental weakness) HP damage with a torrent of water. Fortunately, I kinda figured that they'd be annoying to swat and buffed Rucci and Taillow's attack in advance... But it still took around 3 turns afterwards to drop everyone... (Also, Oliver's MP is running critically low...) We put into port at the Bogu Empire... Find it to be a mess of ruins... With rails and mines further inland... After chickening out at the local fort (since we're kinda low on HP and MP here) and almost getting wiped out by a passing group of Imagines (there's a souped up rabbit-pig thing that did 70 HP to Taillow in one go)... We come to the conclusion that this is going to be harder than it looks... So let's heal up, lick our wounds, and put into some less hostile waters to regroup and restock on supplies... On our way back, we run into another of those rabbit-pigs... And a few decidedly mechanical-looking Imagines... The latter are pushovers for the most part, though one of them has a concerning ability to occasionally attack twice in a round. While getting chased back into the ocean, Chickenlegs gets an upgrade... Gets a bit redder... A larger and blonder beard and sideburns... And a hat with two spikes on it.
Alright, now that we're back in town... Let's try this again... We cough up 90 G. Lick out wounds... And proceed to go back to the stoner to be a little less chintzy and drop 5400 G in healing items before trying to storm the beaches of the Bogu Empire again. Okay, another swath of destruction across the sea later... And we make it in front of a rather ominous-looking and sounding porcine fort... I hope that there's someplace to stay in there, otherwise this is going to suck... Oh hey, 2 part intro... The first part lets you see the thing from a distance... The other lets you see... Exhaust vents? Oh, and apparently the snout on it isn't just for show... It's belching out some nasty-looking fumes. And... Now we've reached an entrance with two Pigmasks uncannily familiar goons camping out... Er... Maybe diplomacy can work? We talk to the left one... And he mentions something about #2096 and #2032... Uh... And exclaims something about... Something... The other says some angry-sounding stuff too... But at least they didn't jump us... Moving on!
Oh hey, the inn's right he- ... These local grunts are everywhere, aren't they? As soon as you walk in, a grunt in pink and a grunt in green will yack right beside the inn. And then a gnarly-looking one in black pipes up. He mentions something about a 'Great Imperial...' Something or other... And #2069... Are these grunts named via 4 digit numbers? ... Looks like that whole industrialization run amok must be hard-baked into the local culture. The green one, and then the pink grunt pipe up, and then leave. Conveniently not hovering around the inn waiting to arrest us for walking funny.
Maru has an understandable "Oh crap, we're seriously doing this?!" expression... Gyro gives his rather exhausted-looking two cents... And then we're freed to move about. Local architecture can be described as late 19th century... With a heavy Steampunk bent and tons of pig motifs... Let's see how much a room costs he- 250 G?! Wow. Even the inns are out to get you here... But since this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, let's cough up the money and rest here until the next update.
Takeaway Points:
- How the Casino works: TL/DR version:
- There's three games to pick your poison from. All running on casino funny money (which can apparently be redeemed for prizes at the cashier).
- Blackjack: Has bets in 10, 50, and 100 coin intervals. Rules are pretty simple here for the uninitiated: Get 21 points or more than whatever the dealer gets, but DON'T go over 21. Red is "Deal" and yellow is the one to lock your cards in.
- Some 10-card Game that I Suck At: This one asks you to cough up 200 coins in order to play... I didn't fully catch what was going on here (and wasn't about to use all of my G to find out). You get 10 cards and have to arrange them across 5 spaces. Cards get values of 0 - 10 (or was it 11?) Jokers through face cards, respectively. The objective here is to match up 3 of your 5 slots favorably point-wise with the dealer. Otherwise you'll be VERY poor VERY fast.
- Slots: Work like Pokemon pre-HG/SS (or Platinum for you Europeans), except I didn't play long enough to see if there was also a bonus mode. You stop the reels from left to right with the 'A' button and try and match symbols up. You can apparently add more coins, but not sure what the point of that is on account of not really trying it out. (As you probably could tell, Blackjack is the only gambling game that I can see myself not being guaranteed to lose a ton of money on in reality.)
- Your odds of winning are significantly better than they are at the Sands. So indulge your gambling fantasies after you get the hang of a certain game.
- Be warned, these games can be a major timesink after you get good at them.
- If you were wondering how such an innocuous-looking game that was rated for all audiences in Japan got a PEGI 12 (analogous to a mild ESRB Teen for intended audience) for its PS 3 release in the EU, you're probably looking at one of the most likely culprits here. It was enough to get the game hit with an 'Adults Only' rating in South Korea.
- There's three games to pick your poison from. All running on casino funny money (which can apparently be redeemed for prizes at the cashier).
- The Battle Stadium: TL/DR version:
- Here, you fight with your Imagines and Imagines alone (so maximum of 9 party members at your disposal) to fight streaks of 3 opponents. 2 not-so-challenging ones, followed by a leveled-up miniboss.
- Remember that Oliver isn't out there to support his friends with his
sorcerywand, so keep healing items handy for mid-battle. - You get all HP and MP healed after each battle, you also do not receive experience. Also, if one of your party members gets wiped out, that party slot is effectively locked to be inactive. Go ahead and guess which of these three applies to the game outside of the arena.
- For your trouble, you get some shiny baubles that are presumably alchemizable.
- Remember that Oliver isn't out there to support his friends with his
- Here, you fight with your Imagines and Imagines alone (so maximum of 9 party members at your disposal) to fight streaks of 3 opponents. 2 not-so-challenging ones, followed by a leveled-up miniboss.
- The bookie of this casino town seems to have friends with more than a passing knowledge in pyrotechnics... Make what you will of that.
- Also, when faced with a massive hurricane-making machine, the solution is clearly blind it with a firework shell.
- After subduing the eye, Ni no Kuni makes a noticeable leap in difficulty. Be prepared to start using strategies other than simply spamming attacks, and keep a close eye on your HP bars. Some Imagines will bring you to your knees if you aren't careful.
- For the less confident among you (i.e. me), this is also a handy place to level grind a bit if you have the money or items, seeing as your typical battle encounter can give you 700-1200 exp a go.
- Ni no Kuni does at times seem to suggest that Studio Ghibli made a MOTHER 3 playthrough while coming up with the game's world. The polluted wasteland ruled over by ominous, militaristic pig grunts with some issues with individuality is probably the most direct of a parallel that I've seen so far. It remains to be seen whether or not they will open fire at us with beam guns. (Though I've heard that they apparently do have a tank lurking somewhere in this smoke-enshrouded hive.)
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 21: 118 HP / 81 MP
- Rucci: Level 24: 171 HP / 87 MP
- Taillow: Level 22 140 HP / 65 MP *
- G: 3399
- Play Time: 44 hours, 25 minutes, 18 seconds.
Next time, there will be grinding. And presumably pain from Pigmask lookalikes. Hopefully in that specific order.
EDIT: Unfortunately, it would appear that life has conspired to attempt to brutally murder me in about 2 weeks, so the next update will be delayed by about a week.
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