It’s time to go and once again brazenly confront Yamato about something that we really shouldn’t know. It’s a good thing Yamato is (kinda) on our side and isn’t an Ace Attorney villain. The others are already at JP’s HQ bugging him about the secret weapon, and he correctly guesses that they’re here on Hibiki’s suggestion, and once more pays no attention to exactly how we uncovered the magic circle. The reason he hasn’t used the circle yet, he explains, is because doing so will drastically deplete the Dragon Stream’s flow of chi, thus lowering the barrier protecting the remaining parts of Japan from the void. Any victory they achieve through its use will only be temporary (BTW, looking at the top screen map shows that most of Hokkaido has vanished already). Fumi asks how long it will be before all of Japan is swallowed in that scenario and Yamato estimates that it will be three days at best and one at worst, but if they get to Polaris first and restore the world, then there will be no problem.
That sparks another argument among the characters over who’s method of restoring the world is the right one until we get to have Hibiki channel Yu and tell everyone to calm down. In the end, everyone decides to put their grievances with each other aside so that they can focus on Mizar as a united front, and everyone decides to go through with the plan to use the magic circle. Using it is going to be a multi-step process, Yamato explains. First, we’ll have to pull out the three stakes that are used to resonate with the towers in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, then we’ll have to give the Dragon Stream a physical form - which, as he bluntly explains to Airi, is a dragon, what else could it be? To do that they’ll need to unseal another special demon like with Kama and Shiva, only there’s an added complication in that he thinks this demon, being one with the earth, has been damaged thanks to Japan’s erosion. They’re going to need a medium to make up for its lost power, so he’s going to choose one of the party based on whatever criteria is required. Once Yamato departs the others thanks Hibiki for getting Yamato to listen to them, and we’re on our way once more.
Okay, so we have time for two events before the next story mission at 1:00PM. I’m going to speak with Hinako at the Umeda Station concourse first since it’s been a while. She’s still depressed over her apparent lack of usefulness to the party, but perks up considerably when Airi, in a rare bout of straightforward honesty, comes by to say that she actually is impressed with her dancing, and Hinako realizes how it can serve as a morale-booster for her audience. Putting on an impromptu performance in the ruins of the stadium draws a fascinated crowd of refugees, pulling Hinako out of her funk and elevating her Fate to Stage 4. Next is “Ultimate Test” at Nagoya JP’s with Fumi. She’s performing her final experiment with Jungo, but the machine goes out of control once more, this time looking like it’s electrocuting poor Jungo. After some moments of frantic dithering Fumi finally shuts it down (by smashing it with a chair), and actually shows, for the first time all game, a sense of human empathy by hesitatingly asking if he’s okay. Fortunately Jungo is built like a brick shithouse and was able to completely shrug the damage off, but even so Fumi mumbles that research might not be worth it if it harms the subjects and tells Hibiki that she needs some time alone. This awakening of human emotion also brings her up to Fate Stage 4.
Time for Part 1 of the operation to beat Mizar: deactivating the barrier. At JP’s HQ Yamato explains that for this operation we will once again be split up into the same teams as during the Megrez battle, and like before I am sticking with the Team Nagoya makeup of Jungo, Airi, and Fumi. We are going to Mt. Fuji to pull out the stake that corresponds with Tokyo Tower (we will always go to Mt. Fuji; presumably the other teams go to other geographical landmarks near Osaka and Nagoya), which is only a quick Terminal ride away. Once there, and after the group makes sure to comment on how cold it is at Mt. Fuji’s summit, we hike a short distance into the crater to find a JP’s facility: a series of catwalks around the edge of the abyss, with the giant pillar-like stake located at the bottom. Yamato explains over the phone that in order to pull out the stake we will have to send the appropriate code to the activation terminal sitting next to it at the bottom level, and we will have to do this a total of three times, in a set order. And also the power of the Dragon Stream is drawing lots of demons our way, because naturally we won’t be getting out of this without any fighting.
Mission 31: Barrier Failure
- All three seals must be deactivated
- The whole party cannot die
I am comfortable in using the phrase “tits up” to describe how this mission went. The map design and the mission gimmick conspire together to make this one of, if not the most dragged-out missions in the game, even if you come prepared.
For starters, we first have to get down to the bottom level to reach the activation terminal. Not only does that involve heading down one-panel-wide staircases, it also involves walking past Legions, and as I said earlier Evil Bind is incredibly annoying on these sorts of chokepoints. I try to use Avians like Vidofnir and Badb Catha to immediately leap over the guardrails and assail those bastards before they can do anything. The once we get to the activation terminal and have someone, y’know, activate it, it’ll rise one level and extend a control panel. We then have to drag someone up there, then have a third person deactive another control panel that points towards the starting point on the other side of the map. Sounds simple in theory, right?
Wrong. The complication is that while we’re trying to trek back and forth demons will constantly be spawning, and they all manage to be Demonic Spiders in some way. Aside from the aforementioned Legions we’ve got Pisacas with the upgraded version of Ghost Wounds, Possession (in addition to cutting your movement and attack range they can inflict Curse on the entire team), Mothmen who tenaciously hang on with Endure, Take-Mikazuchi with Lham Deargs for Agitate fun times (guarantees one critical hit for each party member and raises overall crit rate), and more. It can get overwhelming very quickly, especially since ways to replenish MP are so limited. At a certain point it makes more sense to just go directly for the team leaders instead of bothering with all three enemies. Fortunately Jungo, who was at Lv. 45 going in, was already very close to maxing out his Strength stat (same for Fumi with her Magic), so he was really good at using Assassinate to do so. Even so, by the end I was down to only Airi and Fumi with demons that were close to dead weight thanks to resource depletion. About the only silver lining here is that Multi-Strike can be cracked off of the Take-Mikazuchi, meaning that Hinako’s reign of destruction is about to begin.
Completing the mission earns us 2300 EXP and 5900 macca.
The stake rises up, but apparently it was serving as a cork for Mt. Fuji because then the place starts trembling and the party barely manages to escape through the Terminal just as the mountain erupts. Everyone regroups back at JP’s and Yamato compliments everyone on a job well done (absolutely no mention is made of the fact that Mt. Fuji erupting should be really bad news for Tokyo) and reports that the remaining barriers have indeed collapsed. Time to move on to the second step, using a medium to unseal the demon key to the magic circle, the Celtic sun god Lugh. Now, unlike with Shiva and Kama I can’t exactly figure out why the deity Lugh was chosen for this particular sequence. Reading up on him online, there doesn’t really seem to be much relevance between his myths and what we’re going to be using him for. The imagery that we will be seeing seems to draw from the claim that thunderstorms were caused by the battles between he and his grandfather Balor but eh, seems kinda random an tenuous to me still.
Regardless, Yamato repeats the part about needing a medium to make up for the power that Lugh’s lost to the void, but this time adds that he cannot guarantee the life of the medium. That gets everyone riled up again but since there’s no other way to beat Mizar they all decide to grit their teeth and bear it, so Yamato announces that based on data gathered during the checkups on Day 4, the one with the most spiritual aptitude for this is...Io. The Tokyoites and more empathetic members of the party act like they’ve just been punched in the gut, and Io runs out of the room without a word. Naturally Yamato completely brushes this off, saying that if she’s not completely brainless she’ll go through with this anyway, and also once we’re thrown back onto the overworld we naturally get the day’s death clip. This one’s pretty short and simple compared to the others, just showing Makoto holding Io’s dead body on a street with everyone else gathered around. What the clip does not show is the fact that said death involves her apparently hemorrhaging blood from every pore, which you only get to see if you actually let her die. Daichi and Hinako immediately run up to Hibiki to ask if he’s seen this and they urge him to go check on Io and say something to comfort her, since they’ve kinda-sorta picked up on the fact that she’s the kinda-sorta love interest of the game.
Io is at her usual spot in front of the ruined 109 facade in Shibuya, appropriately despondent, admitting to Hibiki that she’s really scared to die. The game does give you the option of being super-duper douchey by telling her that she’s being selfish, but if you say that you’re a horrible person who deserves to feel bad. So instead we have Hibiki say all the right things, reminding her that the death clip is not necessarily a death sentence, that it’s only human to be scared, he’ll protect her, all that emotional anchor sort of stuff. All of these give her a fair amount of Fate points, but since I hadn’t seen many of her events lately she didn’t achieve a new stage. She does however regain hope and conviction, declaring that even though she’s scared she’ll channel Lugh for everyone’s sake.
That’s all we have to do really. Whether Io lives or dies in this scenario is tied to her Fate level. She has to be at at least Stage 3 to survive until the day’s end, I believe, but since she, like Daichi, seems to have a relatively low point threshold the only real way to have her be below that point by now is if you’ve deliberately gone out of your way to ignore her the entire game. With that taken care of, there’s still a bit of time until the channeling stuff commences, so I’ll cut things here and see you all again next time.
Compendium
- Pisaca
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- Hindu demons who live in the dark and feed off of human energy. Oftentimes they are depicted haunting crematoriums, and when they possess people to feed off of them their victims are overcome by insanity and other bouts of irrational behavior. They speak their own language, Paisaci.
- Scathach◊
- A warrior woman from Scotland who trained the legendary Celtic hero Cu Chulainn and gave him his famous spear, the Gae Bolg. Her name means "Shadow", and she was sister to the warrior-woman Aife, whom Cu Chulainn killed when she invaded Scathach's territory.
- Pabilsag◊
- Also known as Pa Bil Sag, Pabilsag is a part man, part scorpion being who was revered by the ancient Babylonians as the one who guards the entrance to the demon world, fearsome enough to even frighten the hero Gilgamesh. He is thought to have become the model for the centaurs who appeared in Greek myth centuries later, and the archer depicted by the Sagittarius constellation is thought to have been him.
- Queztalcoatl◊
- A god of the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl was often depicted as a feathered serpent who was one of the chief creators of mankind. It is said that when Hernan Cortez made contact with the Aztecs they mistook him for the god, a mistake that the Spaniards took advantage of that ultimately led to the Aztecs' downfall.
- Badb Catha◊
- An Irish war goddess who visits battlefields to soak up the bloodlust and death and drive soldiers into a furious rage. Her name literally means "battle crow".
- Hecate◊
- A triple-headed pre-Olympian Greek goddess who was often associated with gateways, the Moon, magic, and other aspects of witchcraft.
- Kresnik◊
- A traveling Croatian shaman who is eternally locked in combat with his rival, the black vampire Kudlak. Like Kudlak Kresnik can transform into an animal at night, always identifiable by its white color.
Comments
This one? It's pretty interesting, but there are a lot of plot threads to keep track of. There are a lot of things going for it, though, including Gendo's [Oh, Crap reaction] to seeing Comp-users in action against NGE angels.
