Last time, we scrapped an uncannily familiar (though mercifully less difficult) tank, and got to see someone have an epic meltdown after a wardrobe malfunction. Now... Let's check up on... Whatever her face is...
Ducking down the alley (remember, the middle option is the correct password), we head back to that pig shop... Wait, were these 3 NPCs here the first time? Anyhow, since they're only good for moonspeak banter, let's move on. Oh hey, it's Karudoso again, and the yellow exclamation mark means he wants to yack, let's bite. Gyro opens up with a short blurb, and after a swift response, we're lead back to... Uh... Rukora, right... Oliver leads with a greeting... She's still going on with that repeated phrase of hers... "Gohotsu"... Why's that even important again? Oliver asks a short question and makes a little statement... Which seems to make Rukora noticeably cheered. There's some more talking... And then 'yes' or 'no'... Er... 'Yes'? And then there's a chime and a notice that... Something happened. Rukora asks a short question, eliciting a bit of an exposition from Oliver. ... Rukora uses her own name to refer to herself... Interesting... There's a little more talking... And then Maru joins in... Something about seeing things? Gyro throws in his words of encouragement... And then Karudoso asks Rukora a pair of short questions... Rukora seems to be happy... If a bit stubborn about this whole third person speech. Karudoso says something... And then brings us aside to talk. Whatever we did, he seems impressed. There's a bit more talking, Oliver gives what is probably an "eh, that was nothing" remark... And then Karudoso rushes out. Gyro talks a bit... And mentions a phrase consisting of 1 kanji and 2 hiragana in quotes... That Oliver inquires about in his next set of lines. Maru chimes in... Something about "kono kuni"... There's some prodding by the other team members... And... We go to talk to Rukora? There's now a short conversation between Oliver and Rukora... What's Oliver asking for here? Are we getting her as a team member too? Oliver talks a bit about people... And "kono kuni"... Rukora asks something about herself... Presumably how this all relates to her... And Oliver responds with an attempt at an explanation- Oh, magic screen is up... Uh...
Er... Let's try a heart spell? Heart Peace? ... No... What about Heart Cur- Yep! We have a winner! And got a nifty purple thing that looks kinda like an Elite Sword with a ball in the middle for the perfume jar. Rukora asks a bit about what just happened, and... I'm not sure if that was an explanation or not, but everyone looked rather happy. Karudoso runs in right afterwards. Oliver and Gyro give a couple comments... Which seem to please him. Gyro talks to Oliver about something involving a Heart's "Kakera"? Uh... Well, whatever it was, we got lead out, and the game's telling us to go back out to the alley, so let's do that.
Following the red arrows takes us... Oh, we're headed back to that palace place... Interesting... When we get to the approach with the two statues facing each other, we run into that green-garbed guard again... Something tells me he's not letting us through... Wait a minute... This guy has a name... ... "Zusika"? Or is that "Zutuka"? Whatever his name is, he takes us to the gate, and talks with the two guards standing watch there. And gets us waved through. There's a scene change back to the garden place where we almost got run over by that tank... Looks like we're paying Buhiideso a visit again?
Yep! This time, he's got his pigmask outfit on properly, and is a far cry from "DON'T LOOK AT ME!" when we first ran into him. His model looks pretty darn confident in pose. With the mask on, Buhiideso's outfit actually has pretty interesting patterns... For one, his entire "head" is exposed. And has some rather disarming brown stripes... If you were to compare it to a pig's head, it would kinda look like one of a young boar... Is he the prince of this place or something? And it's magic time again... Whelp, let's kneejerk this and start with Heart Spells...
Looks like Heart Cure was meant to do the trick... And our masked friend seems to have a bit of a migraine. We got an amber-gold sphere for our trouble... (What do these things do anyways?) After fidgeting around with his head for a little longer, our man in blue pulls off his mask and- Oh hey, the VAs are back! Maru mentions something about Jabo and "shinjiru" a couple times... There's some more words from Maru... And then Buhiideso has a "huh?" moment... Oliver mentions something about Bogu and Jabo... ... What's the connection between the two again? Other than that they both tried to seriously mess us up? Buhiideso wasn't really expecting that, the mention of Jabo seems to make him a bit incredulous. The music from Rukora's room starts playing again as Gyro starts to ask a couple questions... And Buhiideso talks a bit more about Jabo. There's some more back and forth between Gyro and Buhiideso... Oliver seems a bit taken aback by Gyro... Buhiideso starts asking stuff... And then makes a statement... Which catches Oliver very off guard... And Maru. And Drippy. Gyro keeps talking with piglet here... And has a bit of exposition... What's going on here? Whatever it was, Buhiideso seems like he's getting quite a bit all at once. There's some more back and forth between the two... Gyro talks a bit about Jabo... And presumably why we're gunning for him... And what we know about him... Which probably explains why it's only four text cards long... Wait, why does Gyro keep calling this guy "Rasu"?
The music switches back to the normal ominous fare... And Bushiideso talks a bit about the local empire... "Koteheka"? What is that? It keeps popping up again and again... (It's 4 kanji: 星. 帝. One I don't recognize... And 下.) Buhiideso gives some parting words to us about the local government... And the VAs crap out. A phrase in red pops up... "Gosuto's Valley"... That our next stop or something? Whatever it is, it has something to do with this empire... There's some more yakking... And a red phrase of 6 katakana... "Geradeioso"... Whatever it is, Oliver's getting a bit tired of the indirect approach... He yells out that name... Buhiideso explains a bit about what this thing is... But he doesn't seem to be having much luck getting someone to calm down... So whatever it is, it's in this valley... The conversation shifts over to Gyro, who is far less crabby about the topic... Geez, Oliver, what did he tell you? That you're never going to get your sandwich-maker mother back or something? Drippy mulls a few things over... And Oliver and Maru have that "Oh shoot, maybe we shouldn't yelled" look. Gyro asks something about the Bogu Empire... That one 4-Kanji phrase pops up again... There's some exclamations from Buhiideso... And... Laughing from Maru and Gyro? And Oliver finally lightens up a bit himself. And the screen fades to black and we get prompted to save...
Hey wait a minute... Those guards have those pig masks of theirs off! ... I wonder... Heading down the parade route reveals that while a number of the locals have ditched those pig masks... There's a few that are still holding onto them... Wonder why... Fashion statement? Following the red arrows the game provides for us, we see that a bunch of folks on the upper levels have also been ditching their masks... And a number of them are giving out quests... Which we'll skip for now. Following the arrows takes us out of the industrial hellhole this empire sets up shop in, and- Oh great, the outside Imagines... This is going to be fun figuring out where to go next... We run into a couple new faces in an encounter, including a purple and white bipedal robot-looking thing with a huge head and jaws (think a less simplistic Chain Chomp with bolts on the sides of its jaw hinge and a head fin mounted onto an anorexic body), and a white, brown, and yellow griffin-kitten. They're not quite as intimidating as those blowtorch Imagines from earlier, though they'll still whallop you for around 20 HP a go, so don't dawdle with them. Another encounter has us run into a floating green eel thing with purple headfin and yellow tail, it's actually kinda weak, though dangerous with buddies since it likes to lower your defense... Hey wait a minute, are those gravestones in the battle backgrounds? What's with the suddenly morbid atmosphere? Oh, and those eels apparently have an annoying habit of teleporting in front of you to pick fights. Another encounter has us- Ooh! Pretty flying moth! That encounter has us up against an Imagine that kinda looks like a Luna Moth, except with a yellow and white body with green abdomen, one of those green eels, and a floating blue head and bronze body in the middle of a toothed gear. Oh hey, there's the valley we're looking for!
We head in and... That's a lot of tombstones... Guess Buhiideso meant to say that it was the city's necropolis or something... There's an imperial guard posted right at the entrance... Presumably telling us to watch our step... Yay... Heading further in, we see a ton of tombstones, some rather creepy and lifeless-looking trees... You know, the sorts of things you'd normally expect to find in a graveyard. Gyro opens up with some commentary... Followed by Drippy. Oliver brings up "Geradeioso"... Is that who we need to smack around here? Gyro makes a comment... Which gets Maru a bit on the "concerned" side... Clearly someone was annoyed by that. Our grappling gun wielder wasn't too thrilled to hear that response. There's some more exposition from him... And... Drippy promptly freaks out and is joined by Gyro and Maru in freaking out over... ... An owl's cry? Whelp, the music sounds much less forboding now... And Drippy seems more upbeat... What's going on? Oliver and Maru seem confused... While Gyro seems frustrated with Drippy... There's some back and forth between a surprisingly bouncy and upbeat tear fairy and a not so bouncy or upbeat thief... Who finally chillaxes a bit. Whelp, that was short, now he's ranting at Oliver. Okay, maybe it wasn't a rant, Maru chimes in with a more cheerful demeanor, and Oliver's talky sprite seems a bit more positive right now. Alright, dungeon crawling time. It's really weird to see such colorful and cheery looking imagines skulking around a graveyard, but eh, I've seen stranger. Another encounter has us up against a purple-haired and red, yellow, and black-bodied palette swaps of some "dancing shaman" Imagines that I distinctly remember being annoying and spamming status, so let's get rid of them first. They're not too dangerous, a good 160 or so damage will put them down for the count (for reference, Rucci is now doing like 70-80 from the front row). The shaman-things have an annoying tendency to evade normal attacks for some reason though, and appear to be able to induce confusion.
We get to a fork, pick up a red mallet from a red chest... And then get to a huge chasm in the other fork a short distance away from a MP crystal... There's an exclamation point that pops up when you get near... Guess it's time to make some magic... Float? Or something else? ... Nope, not float... Uh... After playing around a bit with some spells, we try the ones around spell 29, the one with the Grim Reaper-looking figure under it. Spell 28 does the job. It looks like a 'U' with a vertical slash through it. It causes a stairway to form between the two sides of the chasm... Convenient!
We get chased to another fork in the path in this dungeon, and a scene with the party starts... Maru opens up with a question, apparently unsure which way we should head off for. Drippy and Gyro make some comments, and Maru and the camera point out a swirling blue Will O'Wisp along the lower path... She runs up to check it, and gives Drippy a good scare... We run up to the thing... And it dances for us a little... Before plowing into the ground and vanishing. Clearly that wasn't meant to happen, Maru, Gyro, and Drippy all seem more than a little startled... As does Oliver. Drippy tells us to get our wits together... Maybe... And the game gives us control over the party again. Alright, since this is the end of the lower fork, let's press on with the upper one. Those two-legged frog things from the dungeon in Ding Dong Dell have a purple recolor here... They're not too intimidating... But I could have sworn I just saw zombie Imagines lurking around... ._.
Huh... Rucci has a split "evolution" at level 25... He has one that's superficially similar, but redder with shared weaknesses and strengths... And a fire spell... And one blue one with a purple cap in place of hair with superior stats in everything barring magical offense with a water spell... And a resistance to water and weakness to fire... Hmm... Well I do like a good stat buff... So we'll go with Blue Man Group Rucci.
Eh... There's a glowing green door... Let's check it out- Wait, was that second fork in the road to the right always there? (There's one further down with a HP crystal at the end.) Oh, so there are Zombie Imagines. More specifically, Imagines that look like zombie human males... They can give you a bit of a scratch, so keep Oliver and anyone else squishy far away though thankfully not infectious. (Ate 26 HP clawing from middle movement cell with Oliver.) The lone left fork takes you to a red chest with a black item in there... Looks like a cape or something... The top right fork takes us to another split. Right takes us to an alcove with a blue paintbrush-looking thing... Hmm... Maybe now would be a good time to see if any of this junk we're picking up can boost party stats... We find that that cape we just got buffs Rucci's defense slightly... And swap out his sword for a set of claws to get some Wolverine action (and a nice attack and magic attack boost too). Kree gets a mallet and a suit of armor.
There's another set of forks. According to the map, there's three... But the right one is cut off by a wall of tombstones and oh hey, there's another glowing green door... Which is on the other side of the tombstones. In another run-in with those floating eels, we find a thing that looks kinda like a fish-eyed blue doll with a green scarf and halo- Oh wait, it's a double halo... And it's extremely squishy. Whelp, that solves that. There's two forks to the left, one going down that leads to a MP crystal. The one going up takes you to a ledge with a red chest with a bottle in there, and around the horn towards that door. Another encounter with those eel things throws us up against a green ghost-thing holding a book with purple head-veil / "hair". As with everything else we've encountered so far, you should be able to stomp it flat in a single round of turns by attacking. We check the glowy door... And once again, it vanishes... And so do the line of tombstones! So they are doing stuff! Oh hey, there's one of those green chests. Looks like we can use that grappling gun more than once! Huh... Can't reach it from here... Backtracking and putting Gyro into our party, we get ourselves a blue soda bottle... Alright, back to the bench with you, Gyro. We eventually make our way to a passage... And... The map says there's a building here...
There's a scene that starts here... Maru makes a bit of a comment... Maybe "look at that"... And dashes offscreen yet again, much to Drippy's lack of amusement. Oh. It's a house... But what's a house doing in this place? And... Who's there? There's lights on... And Maru calls at the door... But we don't get a respon- Oop, nope, we've got one... There's some short explaining from Oliver, Gyro, and Maru... And then we get taken in by a blue-haired woman who looks kinda like Rukora... She's apparently called "Yuuriso"... She explains a bit about herself... Which surprises Maru... (Not that that's a hard feat.) After a short admonishing... I think, from Gyro and another blurb from Maru, Yuuriso goes on... Says something about "one person"... And Maru is surprised again... Asking something about the people of this valley. Yuuriso mentions something about death... (Well there's no shortage of that here!) Also, that music you might remember from the "you will cry" trailer pops up... Something about there now being one person... After some acknowledgement from Maru and Gyro, Oliver asks something about... A road? A street? There's something about some sort of king... And that same descriptor comes before the character for ground... and then hiragana "no" plus street... Something's Street... There's talk about something that happened 100 years ago... There's talk... About the people on this street... About this valley... Whatever this is, it must not be fun to recount, Yuuriso's model is crying on the lower screen (even if her chat sprite isn't showing it). There's some more talking... Apparently we just volunteered ourselves... For... Something.
The group then leaves the house... And we're prompted by the map to keep on chugging up the hill. We get some sort of scroll for our trouble... "Bokoboko's Map"... Huh. That would be handy. Alright, onward! And we run into a save point and a place to swap our Imagines... At the outskirts of a rather dead-looking town... Let's save and call it an update here. I've got a feeling that things are going to get... Interesting.
Takeaway Points:
- When in doubt and prompted to use magic on a NPC, try Heart Cure and Heart Peace first. The game seems rather keen on having you screw around with peoples' hearts and souls with that stick of yours.
- The Bogu Empire's sense of taste in clothing appears to be ordained via royal edict. Hence why so many people are eager to ditch the pigmasks after Buhiideso does.
- Also gawking at official art, it would appear that Buhiideso might be the Emperor after all...
◊ (Also, it appears that Rukora isn't who I thought she was in the last update.) Wonder how come I didn't notice those tusks on the talky sprites?
- There's a completely rational explanation for Buhiideso's behavior, really! He's clearly an Otherkin!
- Also gawking at official art, it would appear that Buhiideso might be the Emperor after all...
- The scenery, and judging by the setting, the plot, takes a minor turn for the morbid right around here. Not that you'd be able to tell from the amazing technicolor wildlife harassing you.
- Perhaps that's why the zombies are harassing us, after all, we're kinda stomping around on their tombstones.
- The VAs showed up a bit for our second meeting with
King PBuhiideso, but the animators appear to have taken a bit of a break this time around. - There's a save point right outside of the ghost town. Which probably doesn't bode well for what we're going to have to put up with in there.
- As we found out with Rucci, some Imagines can apparently turn into multiple kinds of Imagines. Seeing as I have no idea if this is going to come back to bite me or not, make sure to put some hard though before picking one form or the other. (Alternately, just go with whatever looks cooler.)
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 21: 118 HP / 81 MP
- Rucci: Level 25: 194 HP / 96 MP
- Kree: Level 21: 122 HP / 70 MP *
- G: 5495.
- Play Time: 49 hours, 19 minutes, 40 seconds.
Next time, we'll take a couple pages from Max Brooks and fend off zombies while searching for whatever nasty has made its home in this deserted town.
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