Update 22: The Plot Goes to Shit
Before I start this update, I’d like to say that this update, right here? This is where the entire plot (which is already full of holes and sinking rapidly into a pool of its own waste) completely fucking tanks. This is the point where I realized on my first playthrough that Ni no Kuni 2 is not a good game.
Back in that cutscene I skipped over in the last update, we’re going to find our next objective.
: “But we’re still missing something vital. You have people gathered here from all over the world. If you’re going to unite them, you need a banner to do it under.”
By “all over the world”, he means Goldpaw and the area immediately surrounding the kingdom, plus some pirates. There are in fact two races we don’t have anyone representing right now.
: “A…banner?”
: “What exactly do we stand for? What are our goals? Our values? That’s what I mean by a banner - a shared purpose. Something everyone can work toward. Without that, we can’t call ourselves a nation.”
Ooh! Ooh! I vote that we become Florida and make our purpose to see how many times we can top ourselves in generating stories about strange crimes that occur in the state! Seriously, if I ever get Connecticut Yankee’d to an isekai realm and have to found my own kingdom, the first thing I’m doing is making it Florida. No one would dare fuck with it because they’d get run over by a guy who is simultaneously naked, drunk, and high on meth driving a stolen pizza delivery truck.
: “Hmm…”
: “You’re the King, what kind of kingdom were you hoping for?”
And you just know that because Evan is a dipshit ten year old he’s going to be like “I want a kingdom where every day is Christmas! And the buildings are made of ice cream!”
Yep, it’s dipshit o’clock here in Evermore.
: “Sure, we know that part. But we need something more concrete than that.”
Now, I’d like to pause for a moment and restate something I’m sure I’ve said before, which is this. At no point is it ever shown that any of the four major kingdoms in the isekai realm are or have ever been at war, nor are they in any actual danger of doing so. Like, even Pugnacius probably would’ve just caused his kingdom of morons to die of their own stupidity.
: “And who doesn’t want that lad, hm? Ye think we liked bein’ at it tooth and nail with the wyverns the whole time? Or they with us?”
Further, I’d like to say that at no point in this game is there ever the sort of Undertale moment with the monsters, even though Batu sort of insinuates here that they’re not just mindless killing machines with absolutely zero chance of redemption the way they are in Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.
And the thing is, this is EXACTLY the kind of game where that kind of thing could’ve been done! The writers for this game had a fucking perfect opportunity to do the Undertale thing, and they fucking didn’t! It could’ve been a character growth moment for Evan and maybe an opportunity to show that he’s not just a Mary Sue!
He totally is a marysue, by the way.
The other major problem I have with this scene is that Batu is the voice of reason here. Batu, the guy who was ready and willing to execute a child. You would think that Roland would be the one chiming in here saying that it simply isn’t possible, but no that would be good writing.
I honestly think that this is kind of the point where the people at Level 5 decided to just turn this game into a cash grab.
But no, no one is going to correct Evan or try to set him on the right path. Instead, he’s going to just plow ahead with his plan to eliminate war from a world in which war doesn’t even exist.
Sure, there was the coup, but that’s not really a war - and as we’ll see going forward, Evan very much means the traditional international idea of war.
: “If that’s your decision, we’ll need to gather intel on our rival kingdoms. I for one don’t feel like I know enough about this world yet.”
There’s one other thing I’d like to point out here, which is that Evan’s council is composed entirely of humans, despite the fact that there are at least three different furry species (cats, dogs, and a third one we haven’t seen yet) with no representation.
By the way, even though we never see Roland tell anyone else about the whole isekai thing, everyone just sorta knows about it. In fact, I’m pretty sure every NPC in the isekai kingdom knows more about Roland than we do at this point.
Now it’s time for us to meet the worst fucking character in any JRPG I have ever played. Remember Poshul in Chrono Cross? Dial that up to about five hundred and you have Boddly.
The library in Goldpaw is right across from the inn. You can’t miss it.
Remember the evil old lady from Spirited Away? She’s back, because Fred couldn’t find any other Ghibli IPs to rip off.
Also she talks like this and I fucking hate her so no, I’m not going any further with this conversation. Basically, she wants us to do three dumb sidequests for her because the game figures you either didn’t notice or didn’t give a shit about the markers on the map.
Anime was a fucking mistake.
Anyway, our first quest is to get her a “red, red rose”. Unfortunately, we need a world map spell that is only ever used for this one particular mission to do so, because said flower is located up a cliff north of Goldpaw.
There’s an NPC in town who can teach us the spell if we recruit her, which means we need to grind more sidequests.
Li Li is on a bridge directly across from the library.
Just when it sounds like she’s going to join us…
Yeah no, we need to bring her three boar asses first. I swear, this feels like one of the developers almost became self-aware and was trying to do some meta commentary but then gave up.
Thankfully, all we actually need to do is walk straight out of Goldpaw and fight a single group of skeleplasms anywhere in the blue circle.
Unfortunately, there’s an extra step we have to take - namely putting Li Li to work in kingdom management mode.
First, I spent about half our KG to upgrade the “hubble-bubblery”, which is basically a healing item research facility. There’s a good reason for this that I don’t know if I showed off, but we can only carry a limited number of each type of healing item into battle… and when you’re dealing with superbosses, you’re going to need the stronger stuff.
Bridge is actually not a bad deal, 160KG for 5500 influence (which I believe is about 80KG/hr).
In the meantime, I started some other cheap research to boost our income to just over 4000KG an hour. Given that the cap is 5000, we’re doing pretty well for this stage of the game. I also had to “finish” the research into that faster world map movement skill.
For some reason, the game doesn’t automatically complete research - you have to click the button. This means our actual influence is a few thousand higher than that last screenshot, bringing us to around 4200KG/hr.
Meanwhile, Bridge finishes.
Man, this spell sucks. Guess you get what you pay for.
The spot where we need to use Bridge is actually more east of Goldpaw than it is north, but whatever. Some asshole went through the trouble of making this twenty-foot span of cliff invisible.
You know, I remember when Okami did this, only it was better because Okami was a good game.
The skirmish battle there is level 16, and is probably impossible with the units we have now. The good news is, however, that we COULD use this to grind up our existing units if we so chose… though we shouldn’t because we don’t have a full army and skirmish mode is pointless.
There’s also a chest here that has a sword with stats identical to those of the freezing longsword we got from that quest last update, but lacks the freeze-on-hit attribute.
The little red sparkle on the ground is the rose, which we bring back to the Spirited Away reference to get our second mission.
Her saying horny-worny makes me want to delete this game.
She also gives us this: a bottle of skin cream.
So, if you’ll remember back to when we were in Cloudcoil Canyon, there was that one area off to the side near the beginning hidden behind a prop clover, which I said contained higher-level enemies that would absolutely murder the shit out of the party. That’s where we’re headed.
We’re not going to do this, because while we do have the facility and the money to upgrade Evan’s spells, we’re missing a key ingredient.
Comely Corals can be obtained through one of the buildings in kingdom management mode, which we actually do have… but it’s a rare drop unless the building is upgraded and the upgrade is not efficient in terms of influence.
I stuck Persha in there anyway while I was working on the LP itself to see if I could get one to drop, but I didn’t get one and took her out. Why, you ask? Well, let me explain that since I never really did (and fucked if the game is going to).
You see how Tani here has a gold star next to her portrait, but Persha doesn’t? That’s because every character has a place they’re particularly suited to work: Tani’s happens to be the mining camp. They also have an experience bar. There are a bunch of upgrades later on that will require us to have levelled up our personnel - and the only real way to do that (short of one facility we’ll get much later in the game) is to put them in buildings where they have that star.
Back in Cloudcoil Canyon, our objective is pretty clear.
I already got the clover the first time we came through here, so we can just go up and fight.
What was once an insurmountable wall dies in about ten seconds.
: “But how do we get up there?”
: “Time was, I would’ve shimmied up there quick as ye could tie yer shoes. But ah… that was a while back.”
: “What about using one of your flying contraptions?”
: “Be my guest, Roland lad. But ye’ll think better of it when ye’re tumblin’ from the sky, yer wings ablaze about ye.”
: “Yeah, dead prop-leafed clover. And didn’t Niall say something about Quicken Growth not working on dead plants?”
You know what we’re about to do?
Put skin lotion on a plant, that’s what.
Three clovers later, and… oh look, it’s a miniature Kulve Taroth. No, that’s literally what this thing is, a miniature Kulve Taroth.
Meet the Incineraptor, possibly the easiest mini-boss in the game. I did this on Extreme without ever really taking more than incidental contact damage.
The Incineraptor, much like Kulve Taroth, will spend an inordinate amount of time spewing flames in a small area. This leaves its legs wide open for attacks. You can pretty much just sit here and build up MP without it being able to damage you.
The boss will fly up and try to reposition itself, which is completely pointless because it’ll just go back to spewing flames.
Just like Kulve Taroth, it also has a dashing attack that usually won’t hit anything. Thankfully, it does not have Kulve’s broken-ass hitboxes to go with it.
Unlike some bosses, the incineraptor can be stunned by a charged (or zing-powered) attack. Flatliner wouldn’t do it, but Circle Cut sure as hell did. The head takes slightly more damage than the body does, and you can pretty much build up your MP to full by the time it gets up again.
Eventually, the boss will roar and take flight for yet another Kulve Taroth ripoff attack.
Here, it’ll fly up and nuke the area directly underneath it, as well as two smaller areas to the sides of the initial blast… just like Kulve, though Kulve can’t fly.
At some point, Boy Sampson gave me an awakening orb, so I turned Roland super saiyan and had him murder the shit out of the incineraptor with repeated knockdown stuns.
Everyone levels up, and we also get a piece of armor that’s an upgrade for Batu.
That and the horn… and one other thing. Directly under the Incineraptor’s nest is a chest.
Inside the chest is a songbook we won’t be able to use until Kingdom Level 2. and probably not until Level 3 when we have actual KG to blow, because the building that uses these costs a fuckload.
Next time, we’ll finish Boggly’s last quest and probably grind more sidequests.