Summary
: We might as well pull this lever because there’s a Stellar in a chest in the corner, plus we need to grind stock for Frank. The boss here basically requires that everyone has full stock to start.
: Frank has 8 Sanity, the same as Natan, and is Light element. This is going to be important because the upcoming boss is Dark element - meaning Frank will be our best damage dealer.
: Frank’s only mechanical issue is that his damage ability can only hit airborne enemies, meaning that in most cases we’re going to need a Double or D-Combo to use it.
: Frank starts with three attacks on his Ring, the same as Shania. He also comes with Holy Edge, which could theoretically buff Natan or Johnny’s damage against the boss, but in practice isn’t the best way to spend a turn.
: Bright Rage is a Light-based spell that I probably should have put onto Johnny, since he has nothing else he can do with a Double, but we need to Snap this boss. Apparently, the “No Snapping Bosses” rule only applies to bosses that Johnny isn’t in the party for.
: Frank is about to obliterate this fucking door.
: I love Frank so fucking much.
: The pose here just kinda gets me.
: God dammit Johnny stop being such a little goddamn bitch I swear to god.
: There’s another Stellar hidden in a corner behind the door, which we have no particular need for at the moment but I’ll grab anyway. There’s a save point up those stairs, so clearly the next room is…
: An anticlimax. This room plays the background music that plays when you’re in the university campus, and you can hear people laughing and playing outside.
: The box has a Leather Cap inside, which is a defense-boosting accessory. I toss it on Natan.
: Rarely do I see a game where the cutscene director is this level on point with all of the character animations and poses. It is a goddamn shame that Nautilus got reduced to making pachinko machines.
: Someone get me a goddamn mod for Ace Attorney where you can play as Frank. You could fix how bad most of the cases in The Great Ace Attorney were that way.
: My favorite part of this cutscene is that Shania and Natan are… just kinda there taking it all in. I feel like that’s really the only response a normal person could have to being in a room with Frank.
: I happened to run into a Sergei before the fight while I was grinding stock for Frank, and I’m pretty sure Frank can oneshot them.
: Or, you know, Johnny’s knife will become a lightsaber and impale it through the mouth. That works too.
: Johnny does not deserve cutscene powers.
: “Her power!? If you know something, then tell me now!!”
: This cutscene isn’t canon because Frank would’ve stopped Gilbert singlehandedly if it was.
: Igornak looks like a rejected design for William Birkin’s super-zombie form in Resident Evil 2. It’s actually a relatively easy fight - provided you know how to abuse the combo system. You’ll notice that Igornak starts with a Stock and is going after Johnny, but before the rest of the party.
: Igornak has a three-hit combo, and each hit has a chance to apply Poison. By itself, Poison isn’t too bad - but if you get hit with it a second time, it becomes Deadly Poison. Deadly Poison does something like 10 to 15% max HP in damage each turn.
: What we want to do is immediately launch into a D-Combo. Unfortunately, Johnny can’t do much with a second turn - he can’t Snap unless he’s the last person in the combo.
: Johnny passes to Shania, who does a regular attack and then casts Dusk Proud. One of our side objectives here is to do a 25-hit combo, so we want to pull that off if possible.
: Shania passes to Frank, who uses his regular attack to launch Igornak, so that he can use Ninja Star.
: Frank’s animation for Ninja Star consists of him doing a bunch of Naruto hand motions to make an F…
: And then throwing a giant fuckoff shuriken at the enemy.
: Natan follows up with a regular attack and Slug Shell, his first special attack, to bring the combo counter to 24. At this point, we’ve done well over half the boss’s health in damage.
: One of the major problems with the Stock system is that for some reason, the boss gains Stock during a combo, meaning that you need to save at least half a bar of stock for the end to prevent the boss from Double Attacking.
: Igornak has 500 HP, and we’ve taken off 359 in one combo.
: On its turn, Igornak beats Frank down to 9 HP, because it knows he’s the biggest threat in the party.
: Now, here’s what I’d like to point out. Before the boss’s turn, it had one stock. Johnny used a Hard Hit to remove it… and now it’s back to having a stock again within one turn.
: In the end, we finish the fight exactly one turn before Johnny would have gone Berserk.
: A 25-hit combo gets us a new gun for Natan. If you really feel like using some Handy Tools, getting 100% strikes on the Ring gets you a Lottery Ticket, but given that the strike area lowers on a combo, you’d probably need to TAS it to hit every one.
: The only place we can go is back to Johnny’s office, so let’s do that. Technically, I still need three more Snaps of both of the enemies in the basement, but I’m going to wait on that.
: “No, I’m sorry. Not only has he vanished, but apparently Gilbert wasn’t even his real name. No personal information, no leads.”
: “I see… that’s just great. Now what are we going to do?”
: I know who Frank’s master is, and believe me when I say that whatever your guess is as to who Frank’s master is, it’s almost definitely wrong.
: “Frank’s Master? Is your Master all there?”
: “Of course! No doubt about it. But, Master is traveling around America, so Frank has no idea where Master is…”
: “What, so we have to go out looking!?”
: Wait… hold up. You’re telling me Frank is the goddamn Hokage? I mean, I’m not surprised that Frank is the Hokage, it would make no sense if he wasn’t.
: “Master is a very unique individual, so they’ll surely find her soon!”
: “You’ve got subordinates!?”
: I refuse to believe for a moment that at least two of those subordinates aren’t his kids, whose names are Frankruto and Franksuke.
: “Princess! You can’t mean…”
: “That’s fine with me, but where is it you wanna go?”
: Normally, I’d stop the update here, but there is a scene coming up that is peak Frank, and let’s be real here, we’re all here for Frank. Let’s just step out of the office, and…
: “A ghost? What, again…”
: I mean, it hasn’t eaten him or turned him into orphan soup, so it’s probably fine.
: “Consider yourself lucky. Not many people get to see a ghost. Well, I’m in a bit of a rush, so…”
: This is going to lead to the re-emergence of a running joke from Covenant.
: “Uh, yeah. Sure. Looks like I don’t have a choice…”
: Looks like we found the ghost. We just need to apply Frank. I would not at all be surprised if Frank is a licensed exorcist.
: “It doesn’t really look that scary, though… all right, I’ll just sneak up on it here so it doesn’t get away…”
: We can add stealth to the list of things Johnny sucks at.
: “Wh-Who are you!? Don’t you know it’s rude to creep up on people like that!?”
: “You’re the one who’s creepy! You look like a ghost!”
: “A…a ghost!?”
: Let me explain this for a minute. In Covenant, there was a character called the Ring Soul, who was part of a sidequest of sorts where you’d track him down to upgrade each character’s Judgement Ring.
: Part of the joke was that Yuri kept referring to the Ring Soul as a “Ring Spirit”, causing the Ring Soul to become increasingly dejected.
: “…I’m still an apprentice, though.”
: “I don’t really understand, but that sounds pretty impressive. But what is a person who governs all fate doing in a place like this?”
: “I was looking for something. This little boy had it a minute ago, but… aah! That thing you’re holding there! Let me see it!!!”
: “What? You mean this?”
: “I knew it… it’s a Ring Fragment! Please, please! Give it to me!!”
: “…Well, I don’t really have any use for it, so I guess it’s OK.”
: The rest of this cutscene is a tutorial that I’m going to skip in favor of showing you how it works directly.
: In the menu is a new option called “Customize Ring”, which allows you to do a couple of things. First and most important is changing the number of attacks each character has per Ring.
: Most characters have a maximum of five attacks per Ring - some have fewer. Adding an attack costs an Attack Boost, which in this game can be reassigned freely. I don’t know if they were consumable in Covenant, but I think they were.
: You can also do something the Allansons absolutely should’ve picked up on for YIIK but didn’t because they are incapable of learning anything and change how the Ring works.
: Technical isn’t bad if you have… Handy Tools… in that it increases damage done at the cost of making the hit and strike areas smaller.
: Gamble Ring is only really used for an exploit much later in the game.
: Now here’s the thing the Allansons really should’ve picked up on. You can, at your option, straight up turn the Judgment Ring off. This lowers your damage, but means no QTEs.
: Added Effect lets you put status effects on your regular attacks. Evasion Down is kind of useless, but later we’ll get items that do things like lower defense on hit or inflict poison, which… yeah, I’ll take that.
: Before we leave for the Grand Canyon, we can go back to Gilbert’s office and get a lottery ticket off this desk.
: Honestly, this seems like Johnny’s own fault. Why the hell is he wearing that jacket in… probably Arizona or Nevada, if I had to guess.
: “Anyway… what are we doing out here? Why did you drag us out in the middle of nowhere?”
: We did it for Frank. Trust me when I say what you’re about to see tops the Ninja Art of Unlocking.
: “Uh huh. You looked like a bird, I think…”
: “No, not a bird…”
: I mean, I was gonna say “One of those early 2000s kids with a Deviantart account who got let loose in a Hot Topic that was located next to a Spirit Halloween,” but okay.
: “For a short time, I have this ability… I can borrow power from the Spirits.”
: I mean, unless we’re talking Drakengard here where you sacrifice your ability to talk in exchange for a giant red dragon, or alternatively the ability to eat babies.
: I was very, very disappointed that there was no ending to Drakengard where the baby-eating elf becomes 50 feet tall and has a steel cage match against the giant pregnant demon ladies.
: Seriously, just imagine this giant elf going “I’m gonna make Roe v. Wade look like a goddamn joke” and then she pulls out a knife and fork and goes to town on the giant demon babies who are destroying everything.
: Now, one thing I forgot to mention is that my first reaction to seeing Shania’s fusion animation was “It is a goddamn crime that Frank does not have a Fusion ability where he runs off screen and comes back in a really poorly-made costume”, and that’s when I immediately contacted Salty Vanilla.
: Salty wanted to go with a magical girl transformation like Shania has, and I could not bring myself to say no. Speaking of which, it’s Frank time. We’re just going to… skip ahead a bit.
: There’s a whole village ahead that we’re just going to ignore for now. We’ll see that in the next update.
: At the end of the village is this cactus. There is no indication you can interact with this cactus, but we need to do just that.
: “Yeah, it’s pretty big…”
: “…Boy. After hearing that, what DO you think?”
: “Huh? I wasn’t thinking anything in particular…”
: That’s because you suck, Johnny.
: You know what you should do? There’s no music in this cutscene, so let’s go ahead and put something more appropriate on.
: “Fighting all alone… it won’t lose to this dry earth. What bravery!!”
: “Uh, sorry. I’m not following what you’re saying…”
: “But don’t worry anyMORE! From today, Frank will be with you!”
: RULES OF NATUUURE!
: Why yes, Frank does just so happen to keep an adjustable katana hilt on his person at all times.
: “Aaaack! You can’t take that! Put it back!”
: The gay vampire luchador from Covenant had this same gimmick, except it wasn’t nearly as amusing as the way Frank does it.
: Next time, we’ll explore the Grand Canyon. To finish this off, have some fanart from Warren.