Update 5: Taurs Are The Worst Furry OCs
Moving on, I eventually picked up a third weapon and equipped it. Roland also levelled up to 4.
Just like literally any post-WoW RPG with random drops, equipment drops are color-coded. White is the most common and also the weakest, followed by blue, followed by red. There might be a purple in there somewhere, I forget. Just know that red drops (like this sword we just found) are generally a cut above everything else.
By the way, elemental weapons actually look different and I really appreciate that. Typically, they’re not something you want to be using as your main weapon, mostly because they convert all of your damage to elemental.. meaning enemies can be outright immune to your physical attacks. Fortunately, there’s nothing in this dungeon that resists fire.
Well, crap.
Every boss gets an alliterative intro card similar to Ocarina of Time.
The Black Knight is level 8, compared to Roland’s 4. You can see that his name is in orange - enemies are also color-coded by difficulty based on their level compared to yours. Most of the time, taking on stuff five to eight levels above the party’s isn’t too bad. This fight is mostly about staying behind the Black Knight (who is very slow to move) and hitting him repeatedly.
You can see that I’m not even taking damage and he’s already at half health. Good thing this isn’t FF14 (even though that is absolutely what this game is) because this is about the point where a catchy vocal-heavy theme song would start playing before the boss actually gets serious.
Well, shit. Unfortunately, we don’t get a theme song.
There is no way this isn’t someone’s furry OC.
Welcome to Phase 2. In this phase, the Black Knight has significantly larger hitboxes.. at the cost of being much easier to flank than he was before.
The good news is that all of his attacks continue to be forward-facing, so we can just slip right in and mash the attack button until he dies. Fortunately, we only need to get his health about halfway down before..
Yeah, this is DEFINITELY someone’s furry OC.
Roland, having clear experience with bosses that spam line AOEs, dodges effortlessly.
Evan, however, is busy standing in one spot and not moving. Come on, kid, you had like a full five seconds to dodge that!
Unfortunately, Aranella appears mere seconds before Evan can be incinerated and.. yeah, this kinda makes no sense. Evan weighs all of like, maybe fifty pounds wet. She could probably just have picked him up and run.
Continuing the theme of making Evan’s life hell, Aranella dies in front of him.. for the second time in 5 minutes. Unfortunately, these are Cutscene Flames ™ which are instantly lethal instead of doing maybe 30 damage and some knockback.
Roland quickly reaches for the gun he completely forgot he had..
And just straight-up caps that motherfucker in the face. Roland does not fuck around. I also made a (low-FPS because my internet connection sucks) video of the fight:
Yep, he’s super fucking dead. Naturally from falling and not from being shot in the face multiple times from a 45-caliber handgun.
Like I said, Roland does not fuck around. Unfortunately, this is one of the few remaining times we’ll see him shoot someone in a cutscene.
So anyway, it’s here that I’m going to advance my “Evan is Dead” theory where Evan actually got incinerated and the rest of the game is his final thoughts before dying. We’ve just crossed the line right into where the game becomes aggressively mediocre.
As good as the models (at least some of them) in this game look, they were clearly not meant to be viewed from certain angles. You can sort of see how Aranella’s eyes aren’t lined up correctly.
The rest of the line is “a total dipshit”. That’s absolutely canon.
So okay, what I want you to keep in mind here is that Evan is reduced to a sobbing heap and clearly traumatized from watching some NPC we’ve known for maybe 10 minutes die. Just keep this in mind, because after this cutscene he will almost never mention it again or show any signs that her death had any real impact on him.
Seriously she’s worse than John Wick’s wife for post-mortem guilt trips. Next thing you know, Evan will get a dog in the mail and spend hours staring at family photos.
And.. she’s dead.
Remember how I said the models definitely were not intended to be viewed from certain angles? This is one of them. Evan looks like a gremlin or something.
If this were a good game, Evan would go on to build an army without a country in the middle of the ocean. This is not a good game.
The first time I saw this cutscene, I was honestly hoping this would turn into a Drakengard-style scenario where Evan slowly gets corrupted by the Watchers… or at least something like Kat’s flashbacks at the end of Gravity Rush 2 where they make the plot way better and expain the whole Discovery of Gravitation thing. That song fucking ruled.
So, I can’t get into what the actual explanation for these cutscenes is without spoiling the entire game, but suffice to say they wind up ruining the plot far beyond how bad the plot ruins itself. By the end of the game, you will fucking hate that these cutscenes exist probably as much as I do. We’ll be seeing one at the end of every chapter.
So apparently, Roland decided to make camp maybe a few feet from where they exited the sewer system. Clearly this is one of those Super Metroid kind of situations where enemies can’t leave the room they spawn in.
And that’s roughly the end of Chapter 2. Next time, we’ll get to see the world map for the first time and watch the game’s quick downhill slide in quality.