It's been a while since my last update... A lot has happened to me since then... Almost got murdered by a couple of school projects and a midterm in rapid succession... And in more positive news, we found out a bit more about Ni no Kuni's localization since my last update. For those with a Game Informer subscription, you may or may not have noticed that Maru and Gyro got name changes in the transition from Japanese to English, which will henceforth be reflected in this Liveblog. Say hello to your new old friends Esther and Swaine. Also, NamDai appears to be fond of puns, as almost all of the Imagine names in the screencaps were plays on words... But more importantly the reviewer drew some comparisons to Level-5's PS 2-era output, especially Dragon Quest VIII. So yeah... Hype get!
Anyways... Back to our skulking around a death lizard's den... We enter that monastery thing and... Well... That's quite the security system... Apparently the path deeper into this place is cut off by a pair of dragon's head flamethrowers. There's a short scene in which the party rolls up and inspects the life-shortening security devices... And the conversation shifts into focusing on Swaine a bit... Presumably using those thief skills of his to suggest alternate ways around this rather uninviting welcome (well, there's paths to the left and right, so)... Swaine ends the scene with a crabby (or is that supposed to be determined) yell. I think we can take the hint, let's get a move on.
Hrm... Let's start with the left branch. (Attempting to run through the fire elicits a panicked-looking 'Hey, don't be stupid!' from Drippy, and the game forces you to stand down, if you were curious.) Hrm... Skeletons with knives... They look kinda like Cortez, except with actual eyes with blue sclera and black irises. Also, there's pinker versions of those elephant things that were stomping around to the south of Ding Dong Dell here too. They all hit kinda hard (skeletons averaging almost 30 HP damage and the pachyderm over 20 - from the BACK row) and the deader ones can cut your attack, so proceed with caution around these things.
O_O;
... Okay, new strategy, get rid of the elephant first! The thing has an attack that does 50 HP damage from the back row! Also, you should strongly consider not being cheap with magic on these guys, it means the difference between dealing around 20 HP per hit and around 100 HP per hit (simple spamming of fire magic 2HKOed the Imagines we ran into).
Alright... Let's backtrack and heal before trying that one again...
Huh... They have those yellow cat-bird things here too... Only slightly darker. And duplicates of Buroshiko. As in the beginning of the game, the cat-birds aren’t terribly tough. They HAVE learned how to cut your attack stat though, which is annoying around Imagines that ARE tougher. Also, the Buroshiko clones are apparently weak to ice spells... Handy.
There's purple gunk on the floor... You should probably strongly consider casting Float since it'll hurt you if you run over it. UNLIKE in the Level-5 Dragon Quests, the damage is NOT negligible (around 20 HP a tick). So if you run over too much of it, you'll kill Oliver off pretty fast.
Following the path you enter will take you into a large hallway with pillars... And LOTS of poisonous sludge on the floor. So make sure that you have Float cast, and RECAST it whenever it wears off! There's three paths that branch off from the end of the hall... Let's check the middle one... Also, on another note, it seems like "enemy versions of Imagines you already have" is a recurring thing in this dungeon. Just ran into a duplicate of Seba. There's two forks in the middle path. The first one takes you down a windy goop-covered passage with a red chest with some sort of blue bottle in it. The second has stairs that lead up a floor... ... Okay, note to self, the brown and ice blue ouroboros lizards are BAD news. They can hit EVERY movement cell with an attack that can potentially inflict poison. (Fortunately, their attacks beyond that are rather weak.) But let's backtrack and heal first. This dungeon is *really* MP-intensive... (Though VERY rewarding for exp gain.)
When you hit the top floor, the thing you'll notice off the bat is that your Float magic will have worn off. Keep that in mind if you need to backtrack! Things are also quite a bit brighter in here, you can see light coming in through archways to the outside... Hmm... This actually seems like it goes on for a ways... Wonder what's up here...? Sticking to the leftmost paths leads us to a... Dragon statue?
... And our MP's running low again... Let's backtrack and try again. On our way back down the steps, we almost got Oliver wiped out after getting ambushed by one of those skeletons while checking out an alcove. Ironically, there was an HP crystal at the very end. >_>
*sigh* Dungeon crawling, take 3! Whelp, since we're down here anyways, let's check out those 2 other passages on the first floor to check that they're not both dead ends or something.
... And they WERE dead ends! Oh well... At least they both had items... (Right path wasn't even a "path", it was pretty much a hole in the wall with barrels.) Apparently we'll be sticking to the left path for a while. The right fork up at the top is barricaded with a locked door- ... Wow... So apparently if I had gone 2 feet further south past the Dragon statue, I'd have found an MP crystal. And what IS with all these puddles of poison anyways? Dragon vomit? Going past the poisonous goop on the stairs takes us to... A flaming barricade, wonderful... How are we-? Huh? There's an exclamation point over the statue-? OH! It put the barricade out! Okay, so the statues will let us get around the various deathtraps in here... Wonder what ELSE we'll see...
The path beyond the barricade is pretty straightforward, and thankfully cle- OH, THAT'S how we were supposed to unlock the right fork! It's a shortcut! (And given how there’s a set of stairs to an uncharted part of the dungeon back downstairs, I’m rather thankful for its existence right now.)
While backtracking, we manage to get Phyco wiped out thanks to not watching his HP bar closely enough. (Hint: You get KOed, you don't get EXP.) Oh well, at least there a- Oh hey, one of the flamethrowers is off! Looks like we know what we need to look for next...
Heading down the new set of stairs, we run into a room in the middle of a path that runs around it with a MP crystal and a purple chest (because I still haven't figured out how to upgrade Oliver's wand). After getting chased through a couple of closed doors by one of those yellow bird things, we wind up on a path curving left towards...
Huh... So THAT'S where the right turn at the flamethrowers went... Alright, back into this place... Let’s try and find that other statue... We hug the rightmost paths... And get led to a dead end with a red and a blue che- Wait a minute, did we just get AMBUSHED when we opened the red one?! Fortunately, the Imagines are more of the same we’ve been seeing... Pink elephants, jaguar-men, and a flying owl... Human... Thing. Yeah, the Imagines here are kinda strange given their setting. It's not exactly "Dragonopolis" here. Hrm... Let’s try the other room that had a doorway... The map shows a fork heading north...
Oh, it takes us back upstairs again. The initial path is kinda straightforward. Keep trucking left to find a red chest in a pit, head directly down upon backtracking out of it to press deeper into the dungeon. Fortunately, there seems to be none of that poisonous sludge lying around, so run free without having to worry about conserving MP!
The path you take eventually dumps you in front of a door. It's locked, so head left first to in your search for that dragon statue. The leftmost room takes you to a room with a MP crystal and some tables set up with a Jolly Roger in the background...
... A jolly roger? What is this, a pirate dragon shrine? The room right next door has some gears... And a lever... Wonder what pulling it does... Oh! It opens up that sealed door from earlier! Which lets us through... To some stairs...
To the next dragon statue! Bingo! (There’s also some gears in the top left corner in an alcove, though they don’t seem to be too important.) Alright, let's shut down that other flamethrower and pay a visit to the (clearly reclusive) master of this place. ... Wait, just going up doesn't solve it? Uh... Let's try those gears again...
... Okay, we need to cast a SPELL on them... Presumably to get them turning again... Uh... Let's take a look at Trope-Tan's spell list again... Hrm... There’s one with a picture of watches... And we have stuck gears... Let's try that one...
Huzzah! And now let’s saunter over to that statue, and...
Goes out like a charm~ Let's backtrack and heal before heading off into the vast unknown that didn’t want to hear from us. On our way back to the save point, we find out 3 things: 1: You can get Totoko's type of Imagine through enemy encounters, 2: The Imagines here are annoyingly difficult to run away from, 3: Half of the team was on the verge of leveling up. Given the sorts of EXP yields we’re seeing from the Imagines here, I think I'll take on an extra battle or two before the obligatory boss fight so as to round the horn with more party members.
After reaching the save point, and backtracking to get into one more fight to send Felis and Oliver over the brink for leveling up, here we are... Let’s see what lies beyond this place’s security system...
Hrm... How do we position our team for this (likely imminent) boss fight? Hmm... Let's roll with Oliver... Swaine for his status-inducing gunslinging... And... Phyco. Alright, let's do this!
Heading past the now-stilled flamethrowers takes us to another save point... With a manhole to rearrange Imagines. Looks like that guess was right... Okay, let's see your ugly mug, jerk!
The next room is a tall chamber with a purple and gold rub on the stone floor... And some massive chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. The camera cuts to the end of the room... Where's there's a throne... And a grumpy-looking dude in a beard with what looks like a vaguely draconic kabuto helmet. He yells at us... And a red dragon (six limbs, so no love for you wyvern fans) swoops down and roars at us. (Wait, is this this guy's pet, or is this actually Mr. Crabby here?)
Anyhow, let's play around with type weaknesses and have Swaine attempt to poison this thing in our first move. And the answer is... It doesn't like getting soaked... Alright, guess we know what witchcraft to use on our scaly friend here. Unfortunately, this thing seems to be shrugging off poison without any issues... Wait... I can see flames around its mouth... Uh... Maybe it would be good to shuffle the group around next turn.
We try more of the same as last time... And find out that leaving Phyco to guard Oliver was simultaneously a very good and very, VERY bad idea. On the plus side, the meatshielding actually protected Oliver... On the plus side, it kinda dropped Phyco down to 17 HP. Let's bench him for now and see what sort of damage Rucci’s water special can do and have Oliver play medic this turn and try to play a different tack with Swaine and go for this thing’s eyes.
... Well that was a really good use of 32 MP. It dealt about as much damage as Oliver’s normal ice attack did! Hrm... Let’s have Swaine heal Oliver this round and have Rucci stall again so that we can drag out and heal Phyco.
We do that and... Oh boy... The dragon just boosted... Something... Uh... Alright, Swaine, let's let someone else handle this one... Let’s bring out our resident tank and taunter, Kree.
... Uh... Okay, that kinda backfired... Apparently whenever this thing charges like that, it’s about to hit in a vertical column... Which kinda just one-shotted Phyco and took off most of Kree's health... Er... Let’s see if we can switch Phyco out, otherwise, we might be kinda screwed here...
And the answer is, thankfully, we *can* switch out like that... Rucci wound up taking Phyco's place. Let’s heal up Kree and boost Rucci and just chip away with some stabbing and ice spells.
We hunker down with Kree to buy time to attack. He’s able to tank a normal hit with less than 10 HP damage, thankfully. And use our next turn to attack with Kree and Rucci while Oliver finishes up healing duty. We got in around 130 HP of damage. Pretty good! ... Except the boss boosted its defense as its move for the turn.
A couple rounds of all-out attack reveal that we can do around 200 HP of damage per turn (Rucci + Kree attacking, Oliver using Ice magic). Unfortunately, the boss can also do around 30-40 HP damage just through normal biting, and- Oh shoot, he’s about to do a flame attack again... Let's see just how sturdy Kree really is here...
And with defense, Kree can shrug off a hit from the front row with just 46 HP! And thanks to his meatshielding, Rucci was able to get in a 124 HP jab. Hrm... Maybe we should hold onto this formation for a bit...
We all-out-attack in the next turn, and once again do around 200 HP damage. (Oliver's limit break, which we built up in the interim, is sadly laughably ineffective. It did all of 33 HP in damage.) Oh well, back to the normal attack + ice spam.
Hrm... Oliver's running low on HP and Rucci's attack boost wore off... Let’s fix that.
... And it's prepping for another beam spam... Again. Alright, new strategy, fan out LATERALLY before having Rucci taunt!
And it worked! We got both Oliver and Rucci out of the woods thanks to Kree, though he’s not looking too good right now. On the upside, neither is the boss. He’s looking more than a little worn-out right now. Let’s heal up Kree next round and have Rucci make potshots with his steak knife.
A couple round of that, and the boss is pretty much on his last... Oh come on, REALLY? Can’t you just concede defeat instead of being a spiteful jerk and beam spamming us in your last turn?! Oh well, Kree's back to full-ish health. Let’s use our same strategy of distraction to mop this joker up.
Thankfully, the beam of doom never materializes, and Kree simply takes a 12 HP nip. Unfortunately, the boss simply won't keel over. So let's go for a showboating finish and cherry tap him with Oliver's wand.
One wand-swat later, and our red friend's done. And slumps over exhausted onto the floor.
I’m sure you probably don't concur with us, but your sacrifice was well worth it, Phyco. Also, we have the option of upgrading Taillow again... Options are a form with better stats, but a 2x more expensive wind spell, or a form with a lower Magical attack and HP stat, but with a cheaper fire spell. Well... Seeing as Wind!Taillow appears to have no weak, whereas Fire!Taillow appears to be allergic to water, that was a really obvious choice there. Taillow's now blue and white. With some spikier headfeathers.
Returning to the game, we find ourselves- HEY! No fair using trap cages!
King Crabby and a few other grunts run up, rub the whole "getting caught thanks to not dying to his pet" thing in our faces. Esther is understandably pissed about the whole ordeal while Swaine's too busy freaking out about it. There's some ranting by Crabby, and some counter-ranting by party members, Oliver appears to get particularly into it... Crabby mentions something about "Kurafutaa"... What on earth is that supposed to be?
Oliver gets let out... And there’s a couple of flying contraptions in here... Uh... Okay... What about the *rest* of the party, jerk? I can still see them behind those bars! Crabby brings up a long string of red... 2 Kanji, 5 hiragana characters... What is this? There’s some more yelling... And... Magic time! Alright, back to brute forcing...
... Alright, scratch that, let's fish out that English guide... ... Spell 50, huh? It looks kinda like a key on top with a horizontal line underneath. And these guys are apparently air pirates... Guess that explains the Jolly Roger we saw earlier... Also, Cranky's name is apparently Herubushi.
There's a short cutscene in which Herubushi forces you onto a flying contraption and you trade potshots with each other. It's apparently a minigame. There's 2 parts. The first part is simply you surviving Herubushi shooting at you for around 30 seconds. (Thankfully, it's not "one hit, you die" like in some shmups. You have a HP bar.) In the second part, you have to down HIM, and dodge rocks. You use the D-Pad to move up, down, left, or right, and the A button to fire. Your ammo eventually depletes, though regenerates with time if you give your itchy trigger finger a rest. (Those of you who like to murder everything with beams of death in Cave shooters will be a bit disappointed.) If you do get shot down, you can repeat the whole process. (Took me around 4 tries.) After finally shooting up Herubushi's broom, there's a scene in which a certain purple dragon
◊ that you may or may not recognize from the PS 3 sizzle reel shows up and ambushes us, chasing Oliver around. Herubushi does what anyone who sees a massive death lizard pursuing a 10-year old on a flying bike would do and pumps it full of energy bullets, causing it to fall out of the air. Oliver, being the moron magnanimous soul that he is, swoops after our purple assailant, and attempts to use a built-in grappling claw to pull it out of a nosedive... He's not quite successful. He causes the dragon to crash into the sea instead. Which is probably better than into a mountainside, but still. Not a flawless victory here.
For our first attempt at shooting up Herubushi, we get ranked in 3 categories... Which were scored 75 - D, 1200 - B, and 83:87 - B respectively. For a total rank of C... Whatever that means. Yeah. NEVER getting aboard one of those things again... At least until I know what on earth's going on. But hey, I got 800 EXP out of it! And we get asked if we want to save here... But of course!
Back on land, Herubushi is still giddy about those three times he shot me down before I finally got him. Oliver speaks what everyone else is thinking and demands that everyone be let out already. (Friggin' finally.) Oh hey, that purple lizard that tried to kill us earlier is here too!
Esther and the others seem to be fairly happy about being outside of a cell again... And Barney the Wyvern seems strangely non-aggressive... You know, when MOST creatures try and make friends, they do it without spraying fireballs randomly!
There's some more talking... Things get tense between Herubushi and everyone else... Again... He mentions something in red... Something about the heavens... A road... And... Something in Katakana. Oliver brings up something about the Bogu Empire... Which Herubushi gets a little smug over.
Yeesh... At this rate, we're gonna wind up in a cell again...
And after a short scene change, we're brought up to what appears to be some sort of... Wait, is this a FLOATING platform? If any of you saw Laputa... Yeah. It looks kinda like that... If you weren't looking in the direction of the massive tree-overtaken ruin. ... Wait, it *is* floating! And it's even got catacombs just like Laputa!
If you follow the path, you'll be led in to a passage which takes you by an inn... There's an NPC that glows on the map here too. If you yack with her, you'll get a chance to use Heart Peace and get a lovely yellow gem for your trouble.
Whelp, we're stuck here... But one thing hasn't changed... The local inn is still run by a catwoman. Let's save here and navigate "I can't believe it's not Laputa" in more detail next time.
Takeaway Points:
- General pointers for surviving Dragon's Nest Island:
- That purple gunk on the floor? DON'T TOUCH IT! Seriously, use Float or something!
- Unless if you've got a crazy-massive inventory of MP and HP-restoring items, DON'T fight everything that you see! Many of the Imagines that roll around the hallways here will make your life suck if you can't handle them quickly. Which is kinda hard to do with single-digit MP.
- Furthermore, there's a save point, make use of it if you wind up level grinding thanks to the generous exp the local Imagines give.
- Surviving Herubushi's Large, Horned, Flying Pet, TL/DR version:
- Paying careful attention to your foe's last move and current appearance is key here. This overgrown skink packs 2 charge moves, one is his fire-breath attack, which will carry on until it strikes its first target, the other is a nasty vertical beam attack that WON'T stop when it hits its first target (as we found out with Phyco). As such, there's no one single arrangement of movement cells that will let you dodge 90% of attacks as with some of the bosses we've fought earlier, instead, you're going to have to make good use of prediction and shuffling around your party here. The best way to survive the massive plume of fire is to put someone in the front row to tank it and allow everyone behind him or her to take no damage. For the beam spam, try and draw your attacks to someone who can survive it, or otherwise move everyone into separate movement columns, heal anyone who's low on HP, defend if you're still not confident about your odds of survival, and hope for the best. Beyond that, the fight is fairly straightforward as long as you make sure to heal from time to time. Simply throw your strongest physical attacks and water/ice spells at Puff here, and you'll find yourself in the winner's circle eventually.
- Studio Ghibli seems to have a thing with pirates... Who aren't too active being pirates. Of course, we kinda just met Herubushi and friends, so there's always room for him to show us up.
- On the other hand, they roll with armed air bikes and consort with friggin' dragons, I wouldn't want to push their buttons too much either!
- It remains to be seen how it is that they're able to basically roll around like normal people in this floating city that they've taken us to... Wonder what their angle is?
- Also, they're kinda hit or miss in terms of how gracefully they accept defeat. Beating up one of their lizard friends: bad. Shooting down one of their air bikes: surprisingly chill.
- On the other hand, they roll with armed air bikes and consort with friggin' dragons, I wouldn't want to push their buttons too much either!
- Unfortunately, there were no animated cutscenes this time around. There were some fairly flashy cutscenes making use of in-game models though.
- This makes it the third occasion where I've actually had a character get their HP bar fully wiped out. On the plus side, we learned that they're not locked into place after all. (You just can't do anything on their turn.)
- Surviving Herubushi's attempts to turn you into a target:
- ... Yeah... Probably not the best one to give advice here... But basically, don't get hit, and don't crash into rocks! Move around on the bottom screen using the D-Pad to dodge bullets, and whig some of your own right back at him.
- It is unclear whether or not Barney will actually allow us to travel on him like you can in the PS 3 game, but hey, the game bothered to introduce him to us, so that would suggest we haven't seen the last of him.
- To answer the title of this update: To befriend a dragon, the correct method is to defeat it first! Given how actually fighting these things is a major drag, having someone else defeat it for you, and then saving its scaly behind from blundering into a world of hurt is the preferred method of going it if you prefer not trying your odds of becoming an ash heap.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 25: 141 HP / 91(/92) MP
- Rucci: Level 28: 217 HP / 118 MP
- Kree: Level 27: 155 HP / 81 MP *
- G: 19248. ( WOW! )
- Play Time: 58 hours, 14 minutes, 08 seconds.
Next time, we will find out why it is that Level-5 not-so-secretly dreams of adapting Laputa: Castle in the Sky into a game.
And try and make progress into turning Barney into our epic mount.
