For Tomorrow. For Everyone. For the Children. Let's Play Shadow Hearts: From The New World

[Timrod]

Summary

: Let’s slowly make our way to the club.

: It’s obvious the writers didn’t look this up - because honestly, who gives a shit - but the 1929 White Sox (which is presumably the team Hansen would be rooting for) had a pretty miserable season. They went 59-93 and were nearly dead last in their conference - a mere two games ahead of the last-place Red Sox.

: The 1928 White Sox were slightly better, with a 72-82 record. That year, they were 5th place in the American League, beating both Detroit and Cleveland in addition to the Red Sox.

: I wish I had played this before that City of Heroes private server came out, because I would’ve made a villain-side character named Immoral Rodimus.

: The unspoken bit here is that Al Capone was a huge fan of jazz, and was a backer of a lot of famous jazz musicians.

: Good to see that Gaston got another gig after that whole Beauty and the Beast thing.

: I’m going to skip some of the NPC dialog here because we have a cutscene that… well, I don’t like it. You’ll see why.

: This cutscene starts out okay, we’ve got Frank, any cutscene with Frank in it cannot be bad.

: Yes, Frank’s master is a giant talking cat. Why are you surprised? This is Frank we’re talking about.

: Admittedly, if Morgana had been like this, Persona 5 would have been a much more tolerable game.

: “Oh come on now, it’s unusual all right! It’s just crazy!”

: “I’m afraid I have to disagree. In my tribe, cats are looked at as intelligent. To see that one is able to talk - I’m not surprised.”

: Johnny still hasn’t figured out the bit about not underestimating what Frank is capable of.

: “I haven’t been able to find him within my network, so of COURSE! I thought Master might know…”

\

: “Don’t call me a kid! We just wanna ask you something.”

: “I have no idea… Gilbert… for some reason, he seemed to know… so we need to find him and hear everything he knows!”

: You mean other than the one we just went to maybe an hour ago?

: “Anything is fine! We just really need any help you can give!”

: A historical note: Al Capone wasn’t put into Alcatraz until 1934.

: This is where I stop liking this cutscene.

: A good cutscene would have had Frank throw Garfield here out a window.

: This is character assassination! I won’t stand for it!

: “We have no choice…”

: “It’s a deal. We’ll do it.”

: God dammit I hate this so much. This is Metroid Other M all over again, or alternatively that announcement that Zelda is now going to be nothing but Breath of the Wild clones for the rest of time.

: Edna is Al Capone’s sister. She isn’t based on an actual person - the real Capone had three brothers. Two of them were part of the Chicago Outfit, the other one was a Prohibition agent.

: “He’s a wandering guitarist. Well, we say he’s wandering… but he’s been living in town for a year.”

: “Hey, I’ll go! But…”

: “Fine. We don’t leave until tomorrow… Go ahead! Have a good time until then.”

: There’s really not much to this cutscene, so I’m going to be skipping a lot of it. Just imagine a very generic spanish guitar song in the background for like 3 minutes.

: “Sorry, but I think we should probably be going…”

: “Just one more song!”

: “Johnny! We’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

: I bet Tatsuya said this to Jun at least once over the course of Persona 2.

: In case you’re wondering how long this recent series of cutscenes is, I found a recording of it on Youtube - it’s about 25 minutes.

: Finally, we’re out of the cutscene mines. Actually, we’re not out of the cutscene mines at all. Next time, another… 15 minutes or so of cutscene. We’ll also get a new “Handy Tool” for Johnny that is slightly more handy than his camera, but still not handy and actually not much of a tool either.

[Timrod]

Summary

: We’re heading back into the cutscene mines for this update. From the New World has several times the cutscenes of the original Shadow Hearts or Covenant, and I think that’s because the devs never really had the budget for voiced cutscenes before.

: For reference, the original game had maybe two voiced cutscenes per character, and Covenant didn’t have many more.

: “I’m impressed, you’ve got guts. Some guys still haven’t returned yet, so if you see them while you’re out, tell them to come back and see me. And kid, this isn’t the type of town where you let ladies walk around alone at night. Keep an eye on her, OK?”

: By “some guys”, Mao means “you need to find Frank and Natan”. Honestly, “Find Frank” should always be an objective. If Frank’s not on screen, I want to know why.

: Rage is a physical damage buff. Johnny still doesn’t have much else to do in boss fights after he Snaps, so I’ll probably have him use this on Frank.

: Natan is on the corner near where we met the photographer earlier.

: “You’ve done enough for tonight. Come back and get some rest.”

: “Yes, Princess.”

: Frank is in the back room of the bar. I don’t drink, so I can empathize with him. Seriously, Connecticut has gotten absolutely eaten by microbreweries in the last decade or so.

: And with this, it’s back to the cutscene mines.

: I have a lot to say about this cutscene. First, holy FUCK that is a big cigar. Frank could probably put a katana hilt on that and use it as a wakizashi.

: Second, Al Capone looked nothing like that at any point in his life. In case you’re not familiar, this is what he actually looked like around this point in history.

: Third, and kind of the funniest point for me - if you know anything at all about Alcatraz, you’d know that room looks nothing like a cell there. The thing is, it IS a real prison cell, and one Capone was held in.

: This pic is from the Eastern State Penitentiary Museum in Pennsylvania, and is the prison cell Capone spent most of 1929 in before he was transferred to Alcatraz.

: And here we have Eliot Ness, who uh… doesn’t translate all that well to this game’s style. He looks kinda like Mark Zuckerberg’s demented metaverse avatar. Let’s get a photo up.

: I feel like this is how you should address any cop you see.

: Something I need to clarify here: Eliot Ness did not at any point arrest Al Capone. He was brought in months after Capone was sent to Alcatraz to try and shut down the rest of the Chicago Outfit.

: This actually is pretty accurate - Al Capone was one of the first people to be prosecuted under the “drug dealers have to declare their drug income on their tax return” theory that is still used today.

: Eliot Ness spelled his name with a single L, by the way.

: I guess we know now why they didn’t bother making a new model for Al Capone. Gotta say that I think the whole Irish-flag colored suit and shirt combo might be a bit much. I’m not sure what the deal is with that chain, either.

: This feels like it’s some kind of alternate bad ending to Dagger of Amon Ra.

: I don’t know what it is about this shot in particular, but McManus looks like a rejected SNK villain design from the era between when they were still trying to replace Geese Howard and when they gave up and just went “Fuck it, every game is a dream match now, death doesn’t matter”. We’re talking… I dunno, 1997 or 1998.

: I feel like Maruki had this exact conversation with Joker about trying to get him to date Akechi in Persona 5. Face it, the art boyfriend always wins.

: Well, that escalated quickly.

: The video cuts away, and there’s a gunshot.

: When I was recording this, I started going, in a stereotypical gangster voice, “Hey! You! Dames can’t do that to other dames! Lesbians ain’t been invented yet!”

: And with that, we’re free of the cutscene mines.

: We could go right to Alcatraz, but we won’t because there’s a new Handy Tool for Johnny if we instead go back to his office.

: “What’s the fuss? Why are you yelling…”

: “This morning, this letter came to the office.”

: “Let me see…”

: “Tinkerbell…? I don’t think I’ve heard of him before.”

: “M-more importantly, please read the rest of the letter!”

: “What… what is this! This really pisses me off! Lenny! Where’s that code!?”

: “Here it is.”

: Let me tell you, there are puzzles I feel like expending effort on, and puzzles I definitely do not feel like expending effort on, and this is one of the latter.

: “Hmm… so this means that I have to arrange the numbers 1 through 9 so that they match the totals, right?”

: “Yes, I believe so.”

: “All right… stand back and watch! I’ll have this figured out in a second!”

: Three days later…

: A is 5, and B is 9. Let’s see what’s inside.

: The vacuum costs 44 MP, which is nearly half of Johnny’s total MP, and transfers a stock from the enemy to Johnny.

: “He always makes fun of me… Lenny! Find out all you can about this ‘Tinkerbell’!”

: “Huh? So, you mean to say…”

: “I’m gonna catch him myself! I’ll make him regret calling me a pee-wee detective!”

: “Understood. I’ll contact you as soon as I find anything.”

: “I’m counting on you!”

: I feel like it would not be very hard to fool Johnny. Now we can go off to Alcatraz.

: “I think just the fact that there’s no risk to our lives is pretty good.”

: “Ugh… I get it, so let’s move! Otherwise, I’m gonna barf…”

: Have we run into a single door in this game that wasn’t locked?

: “Is it locked? Well, I guess that’s to be expected.”

: “So what are we gonna do? Can you open it?”

: “This kind of old lock isn’t anything to get worked up about. Move aside.”

: “Oh! Just like Master! You’ve already MASTERED the art of unlocking doors!”

: Is that a Resident Evil reference?

: “M-my eyes are playing tricks on me! Did you just have a pouch on your belly? You just pulled the key from there?!”

: If we go back to just before that door, we can find this hidden in a corner. Seal is Shadow Hearts’s equivalent of Silence.

: This is another annoying fight - not because of the enemies, they have something like 36 HP each and can be killed in a single hit by everyone who isn’t Johnny (though Natan will need two Strikes).

: No, it’s annoying because we only run into the prison guards twice, and we need four snaps of them.

: For some reason, the game gives me four turns in a row with Johnny that I spend doing nothing but using Snap.

: I thought for a second that the guards were carrying katanas, but they’re actually telescoping batons.

: The next door puts us into a fight with six jail guards, which we promptly beat down.

: “We should be all right now. From what I’ve heard, Capone’s jail cell is just beyond here.”

: Before we go into Capone’s cell, there’s an item in a chest on the left.

: He earned the title of Big Underworld Boss after killing his master, The Underground Boss.

: This really is coming dangerously close to a MGS3 cutscene.

: I love the expression on Natan’s face. “Why did I let my agent talk me into this?”

: “Drunken Fist? By a cat!?”

: Frank! He’s gonna let that fucking cat know whose game this is, and it’s not the cat’s.

: Right after he says this, the alarm sounds and you can hear people screaming in the background.

: “Oh! NOTHING’s as reassuring as hearing that Master Meow’s going to fight with us!”

: I know that Frank is incapable of sarcasm, but I’m just going to pretend he is.

: This is fucking character assassination! This is Frank’s game! Fuck this!

: The game then allows us to compose our party… except we have to take the fucking cat. I refuse to drop Frank for any reason, and we need Johnny for Snaps, so I take Shania as the last party member.

: If we go back into Capone’s cell, there’s a very, very well hidden chest behind the bed.

: We get into a forced encounter in the very next room. These are Byakhees - I only know this because the PS1 version of Eternal Punishment made the same translation mistake.

: It’s weird too, given that X-Seed localized this game. They’re usually known for being pretty good at what they do.

: Mao has no special abilities, though she does come with an upgraded star chart that is going to be immediately taken off her and put onto Frank.

: Her gimmick, which we haven’t run into yet, is that she gets a special ability that turns enemies into coins if it lands the killing blow.

: Her star chart comes with a second Red Nova. We’re going to want to upgrade those for no particular reason at all.

: We only need one Byakhee snap, but there’s another enemy here we need SIX snaps for.

: Mao has a weaker physical attack than Natan, and has a maximum of 4 attacks per Ring. If it wasn’t for the fact that you need to farm coins to get her later abilities, she would be perma-benched.

: That dress doesn’t really scream “the kind of thing you’d wear to a murderous rampage on a prison island”, but okay.

: What I want to know is how that thing on her head stayed on this entire time, between being shot, dragged into an alley, and then somehow making it halfway across the country to Alcatraz Island.

: I know Tatsuya’s Scenario isn’t canon, but if the Byakhees he had fought in Zodiac looked like this, he probably would’ve laughed at them and they’d have fucked right off.

: We’ll handle the rest of Alcatraz next update, because it’s got a lot of backtracking, but I’ll at least show off the rest of the enemies.

: These things that look like a bug fused to a pile of entrails are “Womps”, apparently. The game’s enemy database (which I’ll show off next update) claims they’re some kind of alien virus.

: They have Red Nova, which means they can nuke our stock if they ever get a Double off. This is kind of a problem because we need six snaps of them.

: Then we have… these things. They’re called “Chon Chon”, and have around 40 HP. They’re Dark element, and Johnny has a Light-element spell that can easily wipe several of them off the board in one go.

[Timrod]

Summary

: We’re now in the actual dungeon part of Alcatraz. This room has three aisles of cells: first is this middle one.

: There’s also one on the left and right that have two floors, but we’ll ignore those for now. Let’s try that door we can see in the first screenshot.

: Huh, the door’s alarmed.

: Before we move on, there’s a Lottery Ticket over on the left side, in this corner. It took me a while to find this because the guide was not very good at explaining. What we want to do now is head to the right.

: “Information?”

: I’d like to take a second and point out that walk-through metal detectors did exist in the 1920s… but not like the one we just went through.

: Unlike modern metal detectors, the ones that would have existed in 1929 required an operator with headphones on listening to a tone. The tone would change when metal passed through the detector.

: I looked this up, and this doesn’t actually work - there’s no easy way to fool a metal detector.

: “An insulating sheet…? Where am I supposed to get something like that!?”

: “So what are your terms? You want help breaking free?”

: “A spoon? Just a spoon?”

: Frank should have been in this cutscene and had a line about having a ninja art he could use to destroy the entire island using only a spoon.

: The door to the cafeteria is directly across from the metal detector.

: There’s a hidden chest in this room. Can you find it?

: It’s behind the oven. By the way, I’m pretty sure that these attack effects get auto-applied if you use a Hard Hit, so that’s something to keep in mind.

: There’s a Spikes here in the middle thing, which is actually not a terrible idea to put on Shania. I found out the hard way that the Womp enemies can and will nuke your SP even if they don’t have a Double.

: With that, we can go through the metal detector.

: Before we do, though, we can grab a Bhodi Bracelet from the left side of the room, on the second floor. This is an accessory that prevents Paralysis, which Byakhees can inflict on attack.

: We need to go through that door in front of Johnny to progress, but there’s a few items we can collect first. Let’s head off to the right.

: Man, they even locked up Gerard’s bike. Sent to Alcatraz for bike crimes.

: The only new thing Gerard sells is an accessory we can’t afford, but I do grab some healing items to refill our supply.

: This brings our discount rank up to D, which allows us to buy at a 20% discount and sell at a 10% markup.

: In the corner is a chest with a spell that is very, very good against Womps. If you manage to get two that spawn close enough to each other, you can potentially instakill them with this.

: If we go to the left, there’s a Hit Area Expand in a hidden chest. I throw this on Frank because of course I do. Let’s go through that door we saw earlier.

: Time for another (small) cutscene.

: Is this a “it’s actually locked” scenario, or just Johnny being unaware of how doors work again?

: “Wow, you’ve got a good eye.”

: “The breakers probably tripped with all the commotion. I wonder if there’s a control room somewhere?”

: Just outside, we get a pre-emptive attack and I use Hail Dust to nearly oneshot two Womps in one turn.

: The control room is just to the right.

: “Which one? Whoa, all the breakers were blown! There’s so many switches, I don’t know which one to reset.”

: “You can try whatever, but maybe it’d be faster if we found someone who knows about this stuff?”

: Just as Mao implies, if you know what the solution to the puzzle is, you can just do it and skip right to the boss. I could do that, but I want to make another trip to the shop and we might as well take the extra random encounters.

: “How’d you know?”

: “…being a 15-year veteran, right? So, what’s the deal? Do you know how to reset the switches?”

: The prison is going all Arrival in Hell and this guy’s trying to negotiate.

: To be clear, he means the right cell block in the area past the metal detector.

: “What? Just that?”

: “The total amps designated by the switches should be the same as the numbers written on the right?”

: As previously mentioned, Murdock is in the area beyond the metal detector - he’s in the cell right above where Gerard and Buigen are.

: Murdock was arrested for attempting to ship Joker and Makoto. Remember kids, shipping is illegal unless it’s gay.

: “Oh, it’s you. I have a message from Mr. Smith: ‘We carry out the plan in 5 days.’”

: “Also, I was told to ask you about the breakers.”

: “Hmm… I better remember that.”

: While you can write this down, there is an option to repeat this at the breaker board itself.

: Peck’s cell is on the left side before the metal detector. On the way, I find a lottery ticket that none of the guides I’ve looked at mention.

: “We would love to get outta here quick, but the breakers are thrown and we can’t open the front gate. Are you the person called Peck? If we deliver you a message, we heard you’d tell us about the breakers.”

: " ‘We carry out the plan in 5 days’, but I don’t really know what it means."

: “Ah-ha. From the left? OK, got it.”

: Baracus is in the room right before Capone’s cell.

: On the way back there, I find out that you can, in fact, fight Prison Guards as a random encounter in the areas before Capone’s cell.

: “Oh, he’s scary looking… I have a message from Mr. Smith, but are you Mr. Baracus?”

: “The plan will be carried out in 5 days.”

: “What?! W-wait! I’m supposed to ask you about the breakers.”

: “I think we now have all the information we need to get past the breakers, right? All right, let’s give it a shot!”

: Now, there’s one rather important thing I should point out here: if you mess up the puzzle, you get a guaranteed random encounter against Prison Guards. This isn’t a bad idea to do a few times.

: The reason is that we want full Stock going into the boss, and Prison Guards will never show up with Womps, meaning they cannot Stock-nuke you.

: First row is simple: you can either turn on all the switches from the leftmost one except the last one (1-2-3-4-5), or go from the right and do 6-5-4. It’s very possible you’ll get this one even if you don’t know how the puzzle works.

: The second row has the numbers reversed, so we want to hit the leftmost switch (6) and the rightmost one (1) to get 7 amps.

: You know, now that I think about it, wasn’t getting a metal item past a metal detector in a prison a thing in Resident Evil: Code Veronica? I think Code Veronica had a breaker puzzle too…

: If we run into Steve Burnside, I’m stopping the LP right there.

: The third row is 10 amps, and the switches are back in ascending order from the left, so we can hit the rightmost (6) and the third from the right (4) to get 10.

: Before we go to the boss, I spend 3,000 cash to upgrade the MP efficiency and damage of the Water-element slots on both Johnny and Mao’s star charts. I also equip both of the Hail Dust stellars.

: This is some Parasite Eve shit right here. You know, I wonder what would happen if we put Frank’s cells on some bullets and shot her with them.

: On an unrelated note, I watched a friend of mine stream Street Fighter 6, and all I could think about was “Would Frank and Blanka be friends” and really, the answer is yes.

: Welp, Edna just got stomped to death by a giant blue dude who looks like a rejected World of Warcraft raid boss.

: This boss’s name is Ronwei, and he is Fire element. This is why we’re packing those upgraded Hail Dust stellars. Mao is Water element, which means she will both do more damage and take more damage.

: I’m not sure if that applies to spells as well, but I figured it couldn’t hurt, even though we all know Frank is probably a better mage.

: We want to immediately unleash a D-Combo. Ronwei has 700 HP, but you do not want to let him live very long due to his insane rate of Stock gain and how hard he hits.

: Mao follows up with a second Hail Dust and sends Ronwei flying. The optimal thing to do would’ve been to pass to Shania and have her use Bar Rod, but…

: Nah, we’ll just use Frank instead. We have now done just over half of Ronwei’s HP in damage in a single combo.

: Because Shania still has two Stock, I opt to use Combo Magic instead of having her attack. By sheer luck, we get the Water-element combo spell.

: You know what, yeah, I’ll take 560 damage in a single combo.

: Ronwei responds with Flame Mine, which is a single-target fire spell that hits pretty hard. If he chooses to hit Mao with it, Mao is probably going to die, especially if it’s a Double.

: He then follows up with Red Nova, which can’t nuke our Stock because we’ve already used it all.

: Unfortunately, Ronwei then uses Seal, which is… not great. If Johnny gets hit by this, he can’t Snap… and of course that’s what happens.

: Shania uses a Soul Benediction to remove it, and I get the Snap.

: Shortly afterward, Frank gets the final hit.

: There’s no really good bonuses for Ronwei, but the Gurkha Khukri is a nice (and free) upgrade for Johnny.

: Shania reaches level 12, with everyone else at 11 except Natan. We’ll be tossing Mao out of the party soon.

: With that, we’re kicked back to the world map for another (thankfully short) cutscene.

: “Perhaps. Well, we will try and track down that Gilbert guy. From what the kid says, it sounds like there might be some connection.”

: Next time, we’re going to Roswell for what I’m sure won’t be aliens, since the infamous UFO incident happened in 1947. We’ll get a new party member that anyone who played Covenant will be expecting… and there will be a Frank cutscene.

[Timrod]

: A couple of hours ago, I was at the gym and had a horrible thought: “Did they dub From the New World in Japanese, even though that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense?”

: That line of questioning immediately went to “Wait, what does Frank sound like in Japanese?” and I knew I had to investigate. Fortunately, I did not have to investigate very hard.

: As it turns out, a Japanese dub does exist. Even better, someone made an undub patch, which I had downloaded and completely forgotten about. The saves are compatible with the regular US version.

: No one else has uploaded this on Youtube to the best of my knowledge, so without further ado… Japanese Frank.

Shadow Hearts - From The New World: Frank's Intro Cutscenes (Japanese Voices)

[milokidd]

Thank you so much for covering this game! I got into binge-reading screenshot LP because of The Dark ID and definitely glad to know Shadow Hearts series through those LPs. Hopefully one day this series could make it onto new gen consoles in a remastered compilation or even better a remake!

[Timrod]

Summary

: This update is going to start with a goddamn war crime.

: Now that we have control, we can take a spare Gale stellar from Capone’s office.

: “Before we go to Roswell, there’s somewhere I’d like to stop first.”

: “Where’s that? We’re kinda in a rush…”

: “Don’t be such a spoil sport. I just want to go see an old friend.”

: Purramount Pictures is where we get introduced to Mao’s upgrade gimmick, which, you know, might’ve been useful to have in that dungeon we just did.

: We’re not going to head there just yet. Instead, we’re going back to Alcatraz for a couple of items I missed and one we couldn’t get because this series loves backtracking.

: Eliot Ness is still sitting in Capone’s cell.

: And apparently, Smith’s escape plan backfired. I’m sure Frank would be willing to smash a hole in the wall for him.

: Back by the control room, there’s a passage to the right with a Dark Edge stellar in it. The other chest is just a Tent.

: If we go to where we fought the boss, there’s a big, sprawling area with nothing in it…

: Except a Ring Fragment hidden on a screen we would otherwise have no reason to go to. Let’s go turn that in.

: “Thanks, but… try not to yell ‘Ring Spirit’ so loudly.”

: “OK. Umm… is there something else I can call you?”

: “Hey, now that I think about it, I don’t know your name either… didn’t we introduce ourselves?”

: “Now that you mention it, maybe not…”

: This is all that’s left of Aya Brea after The Third Birthday. Actually no, this is the continuation of a long-running joke from Covenant.

: At one point in Covenant, Yuri asks the Ring Soul about his family, and the Ring Soul mentions he has a daughter named Aya. His wife’s name was… Miyabi, I think? She probably would’ve been the Ring Spirit in Shadow Hearts 4.

: “That’s an unexpectedly normal name… I’m Johnny. Johnny Garland.”

: It’s kind of sad that I’ve read enough manga to know that she’s calling him “Johnny–kun” in the original Japanese without actually knowing what the original script says.

: “Make sure you call me by my name from now on, OK! Bye-bye.”

: If I was translating this, I would have made it “But wait, why does she keep asking about a raccoon?” and then Frank comes out of the background wearing a raccoon costume.

: We’ve got nowhere to go but Purramount Pictures, so let’s do that I guess.

: The first thing I thought when I saw this was “Wait, is that cat George Lucas?” followed by “Oh christ, that’s fucking George Lucas as a man-sized talking cat”.

: I’d like to point out that this game released in 2005, a full six years after Star Wars Episode 1.

: “Oh… Master has so many friends.”

: “Master Meow’s not the only big cat…?”

: “What? Spit it out.”

: “The money I pilfered from Capone wasn’t enough?”

: “Oh, so that’s the problem? How silly of me. Well, if that’s the case, I’ve got to raise some Cat Coins.”

: “Uh… Master Meow…? What have you guys been talking about?”

: “Can’t you tell by looking? A movie. This is America – Hollywood, no less. Without at least one silver screen debut, I can’t call myself a woman.”

: “Oh… a cat in a movie, huh?”

: “For now, leave the money concerns to me. You continue listing and booking the actors.”

: Cat Touch is Mao’s first skill, which gives you cat coins if it lands the killing blow on an enemy.

: “That’s right. Boy, I’ll accompany you on your travels, but let me do what I want to do.”

: “Right… you’re free to do whatever…”

: For Mao’s first skill upgrade, we need 5 Mackerel Coins. We could get these off the enemies in Roswell, but they drop off any enemy from the start of the game up until now, so I farmed the Grand Canyon a bit since we needed more Snaps anyway.

: The game does something kind of nonsensical with Mao’s fight scenes. Each fight costs coins, and if you lose, you have to pay the coins again… except there’s a save point in the room.

: Mao’s fight scenes are more or less a rehash of the Great Gama fights from Covenant that Joachim used to get new skills.

: “A combat cyborg? Hmph, you’re just wearing sunglasses. Think that makes you tough?”

: “Huh. Children are just the result of being in heat. I shouldn’t have to die for that.”

: This fight isn’t too difficult provided you have Mao come in with full Stock and you have Red Nova equipped. As you can see from the turn order, the Meowmenator always gets two turns to start off.

: The Meowmenator hits for around 35 damage per turn, on top of inflicting Tight Ring. There is a way we could avoid this, but it would cost all of our money and Tight Ring isn’t all that bad.

: The trick to this fight is Red Nova, which allows us to nuke the boss’s Stock without having to pay any of our own.

: “Thinking a robot could beat a living cat was your first mistake.”

: There’s exactly one other thing we can do before going to Roswell, and that’s trading some of our Snap Cards off.

: Most of the rewards are just extra stellars - we got a Rock Bump, a Gale Rod, and another Cure. This one, however…

: Gives us a card for an enemy we haven’t encountered yet. From the looks of it, this is a returning enemy from Covenant. Now we can move on to Roswell… and immediately get dumped into a cutscene.

: If you played Covenant and did all of Joachim’s quests, you know that the pink bat is his sister, and another member of the Valentine family of vampires.

: There’s a running thing where the next game’s Valentine sibling shows up in bat form at the end of their sibling’s quest - Joachim shows up in the first game, and the pink bat in the Covenant.

: By the way, the bat’s voice is… pretty annoying.

: And this would be Roger Bacon, a 700-year-old monk who stole the secret to immortality from the Vatican. He is the only character to be in all of the Shadow Hearts games (and Koudelka).

: The bat is the favorite character of people who speedrun this game, because of her gimmick. We’ll see what that is in the next update.

: I will say that I feel like Hilda would have been a totally different character if Oshi no Ko had existed in 2005.

: This coming from a guy who was in a coffin for several hundred years until Koudelka found him.

: I’d be more concerned if Roger wasn’t immortal. Anyway…

: The weird thing about this is that Roger Bacon had a working jet in Covenant. I’d almost say that this would be proof that Covenant’s good ending (which involves time travel) is canon, but it can’t be because that means Covenant never happened.

: “It couldn’t be… a spaceship?”

: “No, not really, but… what the heck is it?”

: “So… it’s a real UFO?”

: Huh, there’s a sign next to Johnny. Let’s check that out.

: Oh shit, it’s a Frank cutscene!

: Frank understands how America works.

: “When you hear that, do you FEEL something, boy?”

: “Huh? No, I didn’t say anything… I’ve got a bad feeling about this, though.”

: “In all of America, I think you’re the only one crying…”

: Shut the fuck up, Johnny.

: “Mr. Bus Stop, you can STOP crying now. Ol’ Frank will mend your broken heart.”

: The only disappointing thing about this is that Frank does not get a skill to summon a city bus to hit the enemy. The bus would be named “Bushamut” and would have dragon wings.

: If we talk to the NPC nearby again…

: Like a lot of the other areas, I’m going to cut some of the NPC dialogue. If we go over to the left side of the hotel…

: The top prize is a Ring enhancement, but let’s go for it anyway.

: This stellar is hidden in a chest in the back corner of the hotel.

: Oh look, it’s Roger’s vending machine. This replaces Gerard and Buigen in this area. We should talk to it.

: The vending machine has new weapons for everyone - we already have Johnny’s, and we don’t need to bother buying Natan or Mao one but I do anyway and then reload to get the descriptions.

: Unlike Natan’s weapon, which goes the Lupin III route of making up countries, Johnny’s knife has actual history in the description.

: The Gurkhas were an actual British military unit consisting entirely of Nepali soldiers, who did in fact use khukris when they were first incorporated into the British military in the 19th century.

: I had not realized it until I saw these, but all of Shania’s tomahawks (at least, so far, and bar her starting one) are named after chiefs of the Lakota Sioux tribe, which is presumably the tribe Shania belongs to. Her previous weapon (which I’m not sure if I ever showed the description for) is called Crazy Horse.

: Wait a second… a little girl… named “the watcher?” Did I accidentally LP Drakengard somehow?

: That’s pretty much everything we can do here. If we go off to the right, we can see that base Uninquisitive Nex told us about.

: “Ah, excuse me. We’re looking for a man named Gilbert who we think might be around here.”

: I know, right? He should have recognized Frank as the protector of the STATES and immediately let him in.

: “There is no use talking to him, yes…”

: “Well, if we can’t go in the front door, we’ll just have to go in the back, huh?”

: “What? But that’s…”

: “That’s what? We snuck into Alcatraz, didn’t we? So don’t go getting all scared now.”

: If we go back to the hotel, there’s a guy who can get us in.

: “That truck? There’s a truck that goes in and outta the base?”

: “…You hear that?”

: “Hmph, that sounds perfect, doesn’t it? That’s our best ticket in.”

: Next time, we’ll sneak onto a military base and free Roger Bacon. Natan will get screwed out of being in the party again.

[Dragolord09]

You know, I wonder if there are times that Roger regrets being woken up back in Koudelka?

[Timrod]

I feel like there are, and they get more frequent as time passes. By the time you get to the people on Youtube trying to cross the extremely cursed land of Wales in a straight line, Roger is probably trying to find a way to go back to sleep for another few hundred years because clearly the world has not heeded his warning.

[Timrod]

: The truck is a point of no return, but we should be fine. I should mention that if you do not have all of the Red Nova stellars, you definitely want to get all of them before you go in here.

: “Hmm, the facility is much bigger than ol’ Frank expected. Searching for Professor Gilbert’s whereabouts will take some time.”

: “What’re you talking about? At times like this, all you gotta do is grab the guy in charge and make him talk.”

: “A little violent, but sounds like the fastest way. Anyway, let’s get moving and find the head of the base.”

: It’s hard to see, but right behind the truck, on that ramp, is a chest.

: Raise Up is the basic revival spell. Hopefully, we’ll never need it.

: “Huh? Umm… yeah, right. We’re the new kids.”

: I’m having flashbacks to Eternal Punishment, and I don’t like it.

: “Wow… sounds pretty nice.”

: Actually, wait a second. Isn’t this that guy that Kandori shoved into the DEVA machine in Persona 1?

: “Hmm… well, now I know how great Mr. Morrison is…”

: …This really is the lab dungeon from Eternal Punishment, isn’t it.

: If we talk to Morrison again, we can ask him about himself.

: This looks so much like a Perfect Dark cutscene. Frank would main the Farsight and have the most kills without even knowing how the Farsight works.

: I hope someone remakes Perfect Dark.

: Meet Hilda. She has a very annoying gameplay gimmick that we’ll get to after Roswell.

: Hilda looks like someone threw a copy of Manga Time Kirara Carat into a nuclear reactor and an unholy fusion of Machikado Mazoku and Hidamari Sketch came to life as a result.

: You might ask if Hilda’s eyes being fucked up like that is an emulator bug, and the answer is no - that’s how it’s supposed to look.

: I feel like this probably could be a chapter of Machikado Mazoku. Hidamari Sketch not so much, unless Yuno got her head stuck in a bucket or something.

: Natan gets screwed out of his party spot yet again. Don’t get me wrong, Hilda is great - if you’re willing to grind a ton. You’ll understand what I mean when we use her in combat.

: “OK, I’m Johnny. Nice to meet you. And how about… uh… this weird creature here?”

: This is a running joke that’s been going on since Koudelka. Let’s just hit Start and see what happens.

: I made a save state before hitting Start to see if he had alternate dialog for putting in “Roger Bacon”, but there isn’t any.

: Roger is here to remind us all of the moral of the first three games: don’t fucking go to Wales! I mean, there’s also the whole bit about not trying to resurrect the dead, but really it was about Wales.

: “…Hmmm.”

: I don’t think Johnny even knows that Wales exists, so we’re okay on that front.

: “…'Cause I don’t really care that much. Well, let’s get a move on. If we get found in here, things could get difficult.”

: Roswell is a lot like a PS1-era Persona dungeon, in that the developer kind of intended you to run into walls and backtrack a bit. We’ll be taking a more straightforward approach.

: Our first stop is this room, to the right of where Hilda and Roger were. The chest has a Daphne Fruit in it.

: “Huh? Umm. no, no, you got it all wrong. We’re just the new assistants.”

: “So you believe me, right? Thank you very much!”

: “Thank you!”

: “… I feel kinda bad.”

: There’s another person in here we have to talk to.

: You see, there’s a three-part password we have no way of knowing about - the game kind of assumes you’re going to go through the door behind Zett and find that out first, then backtrack.

: Instead, we want to grab this Hit Area Expand, which I’ll probably use on Hilda, even though she can only have three attacks per Ring. Let me show you why.

: That second hit area is absolutely anemic. It’s pretty clear that they actually expect you to use all of the Hit Area Expands, compared to Covenant where they weren’t really that important.

: On the way back to where we met Hilda, we hit a random encounter. We need two Snaps of each enemy here. None of them are particularly threatening, especially compared to Alcatraz.

: Betelgeuse here has around 100 HP and attacks for damage. That’s about all it does.

: Acteon has around 80 HP and will usually spend its first turn buffing itself. It’s kind of a mystery to me why the enemies here are so much easier than they were in Alcatraz.

: Oh, right. It’s time to talk about Hilda. Hilda’s gimmick is that she has three forms, which are changed by using a move we haven’t actually gotten yet.

: Which form she’s in is governed by a meter we can’t see yet that ranges from -100 to 100. Right now, she’s in “Curvy” form, which is anywhere from 11 to 99 on the meter.

: Curvy Hilda has higher physical stats and higher HP, but lower MP and magic stats. In this form, most of her skills are geared towards healing rather than damage.

: Our next destination is on the other side of the room where we met Hilda.

: This is why we had to go right first.

: “…Who are you?”

: “Freeze! Stop right THERE!”

: “What are you doing here?”

: “…Jonin? Orders?”

: “He he he… as a matter of fact, Britney’s a ninja, just like ol’ Frank. The Jonin is the head of our clan.”

: Not canon, Frank is definitely the hokage.

: I never bothered to read this, because I know where it is we have to go.

: “WHAT?! What is this?”

: “Hmm… and the secret location is written on this memo?”

: “Hey Frank… aren’t you kinda being used?”

: Before we leave this room, there’s two items we need to pick up - one of which we probably shouldn’t know is here.

: First up is another stat-raising item. I should probably start using these.

: This is what we came here for. We need this last keycard in order to complete Frank’s secret mission. We should, however, go into the room just behind Johnny before we do that.

: That’s two parts of the password.

: We’ve got everything in here. Our next destination is the hallway immediately before the room where we met Hilda.

: If we head to the left (the right side is where we entered the lab), there’s a level 3 door. We definitely need to go in here… because this is how we get Frank’s new skill.

: Yes, unfortunately, instead of befriending UMAs, Frank’s abilities are all gained through sidequests like this one. See these three barrels? We need to check the blue one.

: Oh, it’s just a nuke. This is just an average day for Frank.

: “Whoa… that looks really dangerous.”

: Please god let Frank make a Nuke Saber.

: “…Britney?”

: Fuck that! Let Frank have his nuke! How are we going to defeat Wales if we don’t have a nuke?

: This is stolen valor! That’s Frank’s nuke!

: “It’s like she’s taking all the credit…”

: “The Jonin… He is watching ol’ Frank’s work! How THRILLING!”

: “Uh… I think he probably always has to keep an eye on you…”

: Hmm… this is the third part of the password. In order, we’ve got… “GRAY MEN LITTLE?” Whatever that means.

: Slow isn’t terrible if we manage to hit with it, so I put it on Hilda.

: On the way back to the right side, we run into the final enemy in Roswell - Sirius, which has around 45 HP and is pretty much a joke. Everyone except Johnny can kill these in one turn.

: I also remember we have a shitload of Soul Energy, and use it to power up Tatan’ka. This was a mistake, because as it turns out, you can’t use Red Nova as part of a D-Combo.

: Either one of the two side rooms where we got passwords will lead you to the next area - I chose to go the long route just to make sure everyone was full on Stock.

: Gerard and Buigen are here. Now, if you’re the kind of person that grinds, you probably want to equip everyone with a Pocket Watch, which Hilda starts with. Pocket Watches block Ring abnormalities. You probably also want four Bodhi Bracelets to prevent paralysis.

: Of course, if you were one of… those people… you’d also probably remove Frank from the party because the upcoming boss is immune to physical attacks. I am not one of those people.

: Instead, we’re going to do this boss Frank style, by simply ignoring game mechanics and nuking the fuck out of it. It’s the American way.

: “Ah, yes. Please tell us!”

: “Looks like you believe me. Thanks so much!”

: “Wow, those eyes really work for you…”

: I should mention that the password “puzzle” is also able to be bypassed if you already know what the answer is. I was only running around to make sure everyone got Stock and to see if I could grind enough Cash for a second Pocket Watch (I couldn’t).

: There’s a lot of NPC dialog in this room. I’m going to skip some of it.

: I’m willing to bet money that’s not the original line, but at least it’s a Discworld reference and not some dated meme like a lot of translations did back in the day.

: There’s an extra Heal down here, which you should equip to anyone who has a Pocket Watch on (Hilda has one she starts with).

: We can use the computer in the middle to input the password.

: Now we can get into the elevator, which is right across from where we entered the main control room.

: “Excuse me, but we’re not aliens, really!”

: You might be asking “Isn’t this that thing that was on the snap card you traded for last update?” and the answer is yes. The boss is immune to Snap.

: Given how Shadow Hearts usually goes, I would not be surprised if that thing is powered by liquefied orphans.

: Yeah, we should probably get to killing this thing that looks like it’s a rejected Killing Floor monster.

: Game can’t resist the pantyshots, apparently.

: Bah gawd, it’s the stunner!

: Meet Slim Hilda. She’s a pure caster who has lower HP, higher MP, lower physical stats and higher magical ones than Curvy Hilda. Slim Hilda kicks in when her meter is between -11 and -99.

: I should mention that I think Hilda is the first of her siblings to actually suck someone’s blood - Keith had a special attack in Shadow Hearts 1 that drained HP, and I think Joachim did as well, but none of them did it in a cutscene.

: And now it’s nuking time. We could use Hard Hit or Red Nova on Procyon here to nuke its stock, or…

: Just have Hilda nuke it. Procyon has 960 HP and is Wind-element, effectively making it the perfect target for Hilda.

: Frank uses a couple of spells, and Shania fuses into Thunderbird to hit the boss with Omega Cluster, a hard-hitting Dark spell. Honestly, the hardest part of this fight is keeping your D-Combo up.

: The boss occupies the High and Mid hitzones, and a lot of our best spells are launchers, which remove the Mid hitzone.

: Johnny follows up with Combo Magic - by sheer luck, I picked the right one on the first try, no Handy Tools necessary.

: We have effectively deleted the boss in a single D-Combo. All that’s left now is to clean up.

: Of course, the boss hits like a goddamn truck, and if you get unlucky with its multi-target skill…

: Yeah. Even worse…

: The boss paralyzes Thunderbird. This is one of the two annoying things it can do - it can also do some Ring fuckery, but we don’t really care about that.

: Ultimately, due to the sheer power of Hilda and Combo Magic, we annihilate the boss before it really gets anywhere. The developers balanced this surprisingly well, given that Frank, Natan, and Mao’s skills don’t work on it.

: I recorded the post-boss cutscene solely because of Frank. You can view it here: Shadow Hearts: From the New World - Roswell Post-Boss Cutscene - YouTube

: Several seconds of Hilda curbstomping the director ensue.

: We must be on Persona time, where “the other day” means “six months ago”.

: Looks like we’re heading to South America next update.

: If I was doing the writing, I’d have had Johnny go “Chet-chin…Pizza?” followed by Frank interrogating the director to find out where he can get pizza.

: If you know anything about geography, you’d know that what Natan is saying makes no sense if you’re in Roswell, due to the fact that you’d hit the Gulf of Mexico and would not need to cross the Caribbean.

: Of course, this is Shadow Hearts, and I would not be surprised if the Welsh somehow cursed the Gulf of Mexico so that the only viable sea route to Mexico is down the East Coast.

: Yes, Frank is moonwalking. This is why I recorded the cutscene. I wasn’t going to, and then I saw this and went “No, I have to fucking record this immediately”. Here it is again, just in case you missed it.

: Roger is clearly trying to figure out whether Natan somehow knows more than he does about the status of the Gulf of Mexico in regards to its being cursed by the Welsh.

: Roger needs her to verify that the Gulf is still there, and if not, he’s gonna need Frank to use that nuke before somebody builds a giant floating fortress or summons a demon there.

: Natan is probably going “Thank god the vampire didn’t want to come, she’d probably dive facefirst into the extremely cursed Gulf of Mexico.”

: Next time, we drive all the way back to New York to take a boat from New York to Mexico. Shadow Hearts!

: Oh right, I almost forgot: have a picture from Salty Vanilla of Frank and Bigfoot being friends.

[Dragolord09]

Sat Timrod, if the Shadow Hearts franchise in general does get remade, in all seriousness what changes would you suggest (plot, battle, artwork, characterization, etc.)?

[Timrod]

It is my honest hope that they never make a Shadow Hearts 4. That does look like it’s going to be the case anyway, as a couple of people from the original developer did come back and Kickstart a spiritual successor last summer, with a protagonist who looks like Not-Yuri. The most I would want is a 1:1 remake (think the Crash Bandicoot or Spyro remakes) with updated graphics and a better translation, and I would hope that if they ever make a new game, it would be a new franchise where they don’t have to worry about ruining anything and can go nuts creatively.

That said, I think it’d be really hard to suggest anything, simply because the developers at Nautilus seem like they know how to learn things. Even though From the New World is generally considered the weakest entry in the franchise, you can tell they were learning things - the dungeons are way shorter than Covenant’s, because they knew that a lot of the dungeons in Covenant dragged. I can almost guarantee that if Shadow Hearts 4 had been made in the early 2000s, they would have figured out that Stock was a bad addition and that things like the early parts where you’re playing as Johnny alone and die if you whiff an attack aren’t great and would have cut them.

I also don’t think I could improve on anything Nautilus wrote, or that X-Seed translated, apart from adding more Frank. The writers and creative types at Nautilus were pretty clearly the most skilled people the company had. They clearly enjoyed making this game and this franchise - you can tell because they already had concept art for characters in what would have been Shadow Hearts 4 before this game even finished production. After four games, it’s obvious that they’re actually talented and not like Satomi Tadashi where he captured lightning in a bottle and was never a good writer.

Gameplay is really the one thing I could improve on, specifically the battles - but a lot of that is already obvious. The difficulty is still kind of all over the place, which was a problem that existed since Koudelka, and I feel like the developers should’ve focused harder on removing Combos as a thing than trying to regulate them with Stock, since the end result is still that boss fights consist of alpha striking with a Combo or D-Combo and then mopping up the rest. Snaps are also irritating, but admittedly they’re totally optional unless you really want the reward for getting them all.

If I had to have a Shadow Hearts 4 though, I’d love to see them do one set in the 1950s that isn’t afraid to get political.

[Timrod]

Summary

: “Welcome home, Master! It’s good to see you’re safe… but who are the guests behind you? Are they your new friends? Quite rich in variety…”

: Lenny’s capacity for surprise apparently died in Covenant, probably when he got tossed out that window.

: “Well, a lot of things happened… but I actually have a favor to ask. It’s urgent! That’s why I came… I want you to prepare a boat. The fastest one you can get.”

: “I see, very well. I’ll have it ready by noon tomorrow.”

: “Tomorrow? That leaves some time open… what should we do?”

: “You haven’t been home for some time, so why don’t you relax just one night? Everyone, you’re welcome as well. As your humble servant, I will do everything in my power to serve you.”

: “Everyone needs to rest once in a while.”

: “You’ve got alcohol, right?”

: “It’s the duty of the master of the house to listen to the attendant’s advice too.”

: “Well, I guess it’s OK.”

: What they don’t realize is that Frank has already taken the bed.

: We get an explanation screen about Hilda’s forms here. I’ve already explained how Curvy and Slim work, but there are two other forms: the Pink Bat (-10 to 10 calories) and the Mask form. The Mask form kicks in if Hilda reaches -100 or 100 calories, and gives her a stat boost for three battles. At the end of those battles, she’ll revert to the Pink Bat.

: “Miss Hilda? Well, yes, you ARE wearing the same clothes, but… you look very much different.”

: “My figure tends to change easily. Earlier, I ate too much of your cooking, and…”

: “It’s your… your metabolism…? Ah… I apologize. I did not realize you were Miss Hilda, I did not mean to offend you.”

: “It’s all right. I was the one who surprised you… by the way, I have a question. What is this magazine?”

: “Hm? Oh yes, an old acquaintance of mine started this magazine. I bought it to take a look at it… but honestly, it is fairly boring, no? After that I didn’t see it on sale, so perhaps it isn’t published any more.”

: “Really… well, it’s certainly not very interesting… but the feature article on magic arts was very informative! I think I got a new idea for a fighting technique!”

: “Is that so? Hm… well then, Miss Hilda, I’ll give you the magazine.”

: “Is it really all right?”

: “Of course. In any case, I was planning on throwing it away.”

: “Thank you so much! I’ll cherish it!”

: This skill is a direct callback to Covenant, where it was Joachim’s second technique. We can assume Joachim is probably the magazine’s author.

: Grand Slam is only usable by Curvy Hilda, and is a multi-hit physical attack that has a chance of instantly killing its target. It is Curvy Hilda’s only offensive skill.

: Before we do anything else, I missed a very important item back in Roswell.

: Roswell still has random encounters, so I throw Natan back in the party for a bit.

: The item in question is in this area, which is right near where Gerard and Buigen set up, just outside the main control room.

: And now it’s time to max out Frank’s Ring. Speaking of which, let’s look at Frank’s new skill.

: Seismic Wave hits about as hard as Hilda’s Thorn Whip, but only hits Low.

: “OK, OK. Good afternoon, Johnny.”

: “Here’s another fragment.”

: “Wow! Thank you. This is the fourth time, isn’t it? I knew I could count on you, Johnny.”

: “Hey, I was thinking…”

: “Hm? About what?”

: “Being a Ring Spirit is a pretty important duty, right? So, shouldn’t you try to act a little more… I don’t know, dignified or something?”

: “Ugh… you’ve touched on a sore spot. Everyone always tells me that if I don’t shape up, I’ll never come of age even if I do gather all the fragments…”

: “I see… hey, why don’t you practice with me?”

: “Are you sure?”

: “Of course!”

: “OK then, I will. Well, I’ll practice for next time!”

: Frank now has his attacks maxed out… though we’re going to have to give two of them up to Shania again soon.

: This scene plays as soon as the cutscene with Hilda is over, but I left it because it’s the start of Nautilus’s favorite sidequest: the Pit Fights.

: “What? Did you see another ghost or something?”

: “Hmm… sounds like you’re telling the truth.”

: If we go back to the room where we fought the boss at Arkham University…

: Of course the first actual historical figure we meet is… this guy who looks nothing like the actual HP Lovecraft.

: “Oh, no. I’m just a… an acquaintance of someone who used to work here.”

: “Nice to meet you too… I didn’t really come for anything, so we’ll just get going then!”

: That’s probably a good idea, the faster we can get out of here, the less chance he has to start talking about his cat.

: “Help you? Do we have to do something bad?”

: I mean, you’d be indirectly supporting all the godawful fan material.

: “What!? No! No way!”

: “Why are you still talking about this? How do you think I feel about this?!”

: “…Well, if you insist.”

: We can’t actually do any of the Pit Fights yet, which is strange because in both of the earlier games you could do at least some of them when you first met the NPC for it.

: This, by the way, is the other method of getting Snaps of non-boss enemies if you happen to miss them (or just not get enough to trade). Anyway, let’s head to Chichen Itza.

: Wait… what?

: Is this a shitpost?

: And this is why we needed to let Frank keep the nuke… though I’m willing to bet everyone but Frank immediately went “Yeah okay, just kill him, it’s not like any of us give a shit.”

: Keep in mind that this game released four years before the Maersk Alabama got hijacked by pirates.

: A bit of context here. This girl is meant to be a descendant of Jean Lafitte, an actual pirate based in Louisiana who started off as a smuggler and eventually upped his game to pirating British ships during the War of 1812.

: She throws a temper tantrum in the background.

: I can’t believe this girl can’t see that Frank is a REAL AMERICAN HERO.

: If you’ve played Covenant (or read the LP), you’ll know that this scene is copied straight from Veronica’s torture scenes in that game. You might ask “Does it still work the same way?” and the answer is yes.

: For the uninitiated, you get an item after the torture scene based on who you picked and how you answered. The possible rewards include a Third Key, a Strike Area Expand, or a new weapon for the character you picked.

: Now, the obvious question is “What happens if you pick Frank?” and the answer is that you are taken to The Hague. Frank doesn’t get a weapon - he instead gets an accessory.

: Each character has a line of dialogue when you look at them, so let’s go around the semicircle.

: The obvious solutions are to pick Johnny (since he’s more or less always in the party) or Shania, but I picked Johnny after a careful analysis of the plot. Why? It’s because Johnny would probably spend the entire time sobbing uncontrollably and screaming, meaning he can’t give them anything useful.

: Of course, the problem is that the torture scenes are partially voiced, and I was only able to find Frank’s scene on Youtube because there are some goddamn war criminals out there. This means I had to record all of them.

: Let’s start with Johnny. Click here for the video.

: “No way! Let’s do something more interesting.”

: The three questions are always the same, so from here on out, I’ll only be showing off the answers, which do differ between characters. I’ll probably do the rest in a second update.

: Here’s how the reward works. Picking the first option each time gets you the Third Key. Picking the first option at least once, but then answering with the second or third option, gets you the Strike Expand.

: Answering only with the second or third options gets you the weapon. Here, I tried to answer as in-character as I could.

: Anne teleports another sword into her hand. You’d think she would be a party member, given that she has a portrait and everything, but no. We only have one more party member left.

: “…You’re kidding, right?”

: “Don’t laugh like that – it’s creepy.”

: Johnny launches out of the barrel cartoonishly and you can hear a splash in the background.

: This should’ve been another scene where Frank whips out a ninja technique, but no.

: Frank could pull a Morgana at this point and I would not blame him.

: Admittedly, that’s a pretty good plan. We could make Frank a pirate captain and ruin the entire early-2000s “ninjas vs. pirates” discourse before it ever begins.

: “Well, we’re all the way out here… let’s do some exploring.”

: “This isn’t the time for sightseeing!”

: “At the Grand Canyon, Zonda told me something… that the Ocean Spirit is worshipped by the tribes of the Caribbean.”

: “Grand Canyon… oh yeah! I do remember, now that you mention it…”

: “So as long as we’re here, why don’t we look around?”

: “Good idea… wait! But…”

: “Huh? Don’t worry. I won’t faint this time.”

: If you look in the top-left, you can see the chest where our reward got dropped off.

: I’m kinda surprised that they didn’t put in a Frank/Mao segment that works like the prison escape in Final Fantasy 8. Frank would use his hilt on the treasure chest that has everyone’s gear in it to make the Treasure Saber.

: In the “canon” recording, I wind up torturing Frank for the accessory.

: The Zodiac Bracelet protects against both Paralysis and Petrify - but this isn’t why we want it. The reason we want it is that it sells for 5,150 Cash… which is almost enough to buy two Mirror Bracelets.

: Mirror Bracelets protect against Petrify, and the enemies in the next area can do that - so it’s better to have three people protected (there’s a free one) than two. Gerard sells all the weapons.

: We can grab another Shield stellar from the bowl, which… given the rate we’ve been nuking bosses down, I doubt we’re going to see much of this until later.

: Our next destination is that shack there, right up the stairs from where we ended the cutscene.

: “He doesn’t seem to be much of a threat. Sorry for startling you.”

: “Huh? Uh, yeah. We’ve had some rough hospitality, but yeah, you could say that we’re the Captain’s guests.”

: “We will. You don’t happen to know of any ruins or other unique places that would be good for sightseeing, do you?”

: While we’re here, we can pick up a lottery ticket.

: This kinda surprised me because if I was going to put a lottery ticket in this room, I’d have hidden a chest between the stove and that shelf in the background like in Alcatraz.

: Our next destination is right behind the shack, going into that cave. There’s a healing item in the laundry press to Johnny’s right.

: “There’s two guards even here. Give me a break…”

: “Could be. Whether there is treasure on it or not though, there is definitely something odd about that ship.”

: “It’s no use just waiting here. Let’s go see if there’s another way.”

: We can head south of the prison cell, so let’s do that. I was not aware that Comic Sans existed in 1929, but that doesn’t surprise me. My bet is that it came from a cursed Welsh printing press.

: Just past the Comic Sans monstrosity is the torture barrel… except someone’s asleep in it.

: “Sorry for waking you, but we’re looking for the place where the seafaring god was worshipped. Do you know of it?”

: “Thanks for the advice. But dangerous or not, we need to get through that ship.”

: “Huh? Uh… yeah, sure. We’ll take care of it so sleep all you want.”

: Afterward, we can open that chest visible in the background.

: Ordinarily, I would leave the dungeon to next update… except we have a Frank scene coming up.

: There’s nothing much here except a save point and some stairs, so let’s go up the stairs.

: We could go to the right and make progress… or we could go up those stairs behind Johnny. Considering there’s a Frank scene there, this isn’t really a choice.

: Let’s ignore that chest for now. You see that grey thing sticking out near the bottom-left corner of the screen?

: This is a re-used model from Covenant - Joachim also used a fish as a weapon, except he used it like a club.

: “Yes. It is a marlin.”

: “Ma… ma… ma…”

: “Ma?”

: “Mike? Michael? But who’s Michael?”

: “Oh… how COULD I forget? It was 5 years ago, when I was in a fishing tournament…”

: “Gonna start another one of your stories?”

: Johnny, shut the fuck up, this is important Frank Lore.

: “My rival was beating me badly, so to reverse the score, ol’ Frank had no choice but to go for the BIG CATCH. What bit then was Mike, and our historic battle stretched out across several hours.”

: “Yes, it takes a fair amount of strength and time to catch a marlin.”

: “Who cares? Plus, your stories are so long. Natan, don’t encourage him.”

: I care. This hasn’t even begun to reach the threshold for an Allanson Monologue, let alone one of those 20+ minute Akechi cutscenes in P5R.

: “In the end, Frank suffered defeat. But after the battle, Mike came to the surface and said: ‘Let’s meet again, my fair adversary.’ But before that could happen… why did he have to DIIIIIIE?!”

: If Frank had Fusion, this would be where he’d get his second Fusion, and his second Fusion would be strapping Mike to his head and ramming the enemy with Mike’s horn.

: “Yes… I mean, I just a fish. But I guess that’s sorta sad… right, so can we get going already?”

: Next time, we’ll finish the Sunken Ship and fight a boss.

[Timrod]

Summary

: I thought when I was recording the last part that this would be a fairly long dungeon. I was wrong. The sunken ship is honestly about as long as the tunnels under the university.

: “Hey, look at that.”

: Great idea, I’m sure if the boards will collapse under the weight of a person, it should have no problem holding a probably several hundred pound boat with people walking over it.

: “But, how do we lower it?”

: “Hmm. So this is called a ‘capstan’? Well, let’s try turning it.”

: “What the…? All the handles are too short or rotted off. I can’t get a good enough grip to turn it.”

: This really feels like something Frank should be able to solve, like by using his katana hilts to extend the handles.

: “A sturdy pole to replace the handle… I wonder if there’s one around here…”

: I can picture Frank, just off screen, waving his arms and going “Hey! Guys! I can solve this! We don’t even need to bother looking for a handle!”, only, as Warren points out…

: Frank deserved better.

: There’s a hatch in the floor near the mast that we can investigate.

: “Are you scared?”

: “W-who’s scared?! Watch, I’m going in.”

: It’s a nice touch that we already know Johnny has a lantern, so this all just kinda works. This part of the dungeon is three rooms and can be traversed pretty quickly. I only got into… I think 4 random encounters during this recording.

: These things are called “Heinz”, and are why we needed that Zodiac Bracelet, because…

: They can petrify on attack. Worse, we need SIX snaps of these fuckers. This fight consisted of me nearly running Johnny’s sanity out snapping ghost photos while the rest of the party got beaten to shit.

: Heinz is the first enemy we can run into that is worth negative calories - but even if the encounter rate here wasn’t really low, you don’t want to grind these because we need Hilda in Pink Bat form soon.

: We can find another Rage here. We’ll probably be using this on the next boss, since it has enough HP that I don’t think we can combo it to death.

: To the left is a Mirror Bracelet, which prevents Petrify. I toss this on Johnny, mostly because there’s one enemy here that’s kinda rare and that we need four Snaps of. It only spawns in groups with a Heinz, at least as far as I can tell.

: To the right is this room, which doesn’t have a whole lot in it. If we keep going…

: I’m not even going to ask how they got a motorcycle here. Gerard doesn’t sell the new tier of weapons yet, but he DOES sell new armor, which I pick up for everyone.

: I’d like to point out that even with 1929 firearms, it’s unlikely that chainmail would stop a bullet, though I’ll leave that to all those sweaty fuckers fishing for Youtube views to prove.

: Just outside where Gerard is, we run into Okeron, the other common enemy type. Okeron has 240 HP and can Seal - and to top it off, we need three Snaps of them.

: And then, Frank comes through. He manages to Paralyze both of them, allowing Johnny to Snap three times without any issues.

: This room is just to the right of where Gerard is, and puts us in a cutscene.

: “It looks that way. The Ocean Spirit lies beyond that door.”

: “If we turn this rudder in the opposite direction, maybe we could cross over?”

: “Turn the rudder… so I guess we need to find that spinny thing, huh?”

: “…It’s called the helm. Try and remember.”

: In the back of this room, we can grab an Apathy ring item, which prevents enemies from building up Stock if they’re hit by it.

: I need a mod for Power Wash Simulator right the fuck now where you play as Frank with a Brush Saber.

: With the boat down, we can cross over to the last room of this dungeon.

: The room on the other side is big and empty - there’s a chest with a Daphne Fruit in it on the far side. The trick is that there’s a doorway hidden on the bottom of the screen.

: In this room, we run into the third enemy type here: Bablovia. These are caster-type enemies with only 55HP. Everyone but Natan can take these out in one turn easily, and that’s only because I didn’t give Natan any extra attacks.

: And… that’s it. We’ve seen the entire sunken ship. All we have to do now is spin the wheel.

: I know a lot of people who have their own meta-thoughts on different media, and mine is usually “You know, how do ordinary people in all these RPG settings deal with a world full of monsters?”

: It’s one of the problems with your classical RPG world design - you try to answer it and you get shit like World of Warcraft where there are level 110 peasants that could shitstomp earlier game bosses.

: Anyway, we fight a group of Heinz and everyone levels up. We’ve got full Stock, so we should be ready to go for the boss.

: Ann was later brought to The Hague for Crimes Against Frank, was immediately found guilty, and is now serving a 40-year prison sentence.

: The next boss has a pretty solid reward for getting a Ring Perfect (ie; hitting all Strikes) and we want it. The trick to this is that you can set Shania’s attacks to 1 and put the Coral Lariat on her so it’s almost impossible to miss.

: “That’s just what the pirates say. This ground is dedicated to the Ocean Spirit. Let’s go.”

: This boss is called La Sirene, and has a grand total of 308 HP. The game kind of expects that you’ve been evenly pumping up Shania’s Fusion forms, but really I’ve just been putting all the points into Thunderbird.

: Bar Blast probably isn’t the best spell, given that it only hits for around 75 damage, but between that and Shania’s attack we can down this boss in two turns - three if you’re not using ‘handy tools’.

: The boss has both an ice attack (which counters Tatan’ka) and a light attack (which counters Thunderbird) but we don’t really care.

: For Ring Perfect, we get Shania’s next tier of weapon for free.

: Shania’s new tattoo is… I don’t know what I’d call that. It’s like a tramp stamp that decided the tramp wasn’t enough and it was just gonna keep on stampin’.

: La Sirene sports the rare Double Ahoge. Seriously, I can think of maybe a handful of other character designs with a double ahoge.

: I don’t think this even qualifies as a fusion monster. This looks like the cover art for an Everquest expansion, or one of those early-2000s graphics benchmark programs.

: There’s an unspoken “When I grow up, I want to go to Hot Topic just like you” here.

: Actually, you know what would be frightening? If Hilda had Fusion. Her hair alone would probably reach the PS2’s memory limit.

: Update: I contacted Salty Vanilla.

: This isn’t even her final form. No really, it isn’t - Salty couldn’t fit all the details in the sketch.

: This sounds like that time I got stuck in an airport for a full day waiting for a flight that never arrived.

: You might have noticed a chest in the background. We’re not done with the Caribbean yet - there’s still a bunch of stuff we need to do.

: “You followed me all the way out here? It must be something pretty big, huh? Speak up.”

: “To Las Vegas? He didn’t say anything else?”

: “I see… he’s such a high maintenance man. Hey kid, sorry, but I…”

: “If you go to Las Vegas, we’ll go too. We’ve been worried about Edna too.”

: “Yeah. Sorry, but we’re in kind of a hurry.”

: We’re not going to Vegas just yet. Instead, we’re going back to Arkham University - this is because we’re about to do a UMA hunt, and I need Shania to have Stock.

: The Pit Fights are now open. Technically, it would be optimal for me to go to Vegas first because we’re short on a couple of early-game Snaps and Vegas gives us something that will help with that, but meh.

: Most of the Pit Fights I’m going to wait on until much later in the game, but this first one is easy - it’s five fights with whichever party members we want and no other conditions.

: This is how we can get Snaps of enemies that no longer show up, but fortunately, we’ve got all the Snaps we need.

: The final fight is against a couple of robots from Roswell, which we can destroy pretty easily.

: For our efforts, we get… an item that probably would’ve been useful in the opening part of the game, but is useless now.

: You know, somehow I’m not surprised that the pirate show would be in Miami.

: Anne’s room has no fewer than three items in it, so let’s get grabbing.

: We can now bring Frank up to 5 attacks while keeping 4 for Shania.

: Outside, the First Mate is actually…

: He has a powerup item for Shania, so we might as well do this.

: The gimmick for this one is that the hit areas on the Ring go invisible after a second. I got this on my first try, no ‘handy tools’ required.

: The Whale Statue is required for La Sirene to learn new spells, so it’s kind of a must if you plan on using La Sirene at all.

: This is one of the first second-tier spells we’ve found, so I’ll probably spend the money to upgrade someone’s chart to hold it.

: Up by the shack, there’s a Snap trader. We actually can’t do this first one because it requires Snaps of enemies from the university that I need to go back and get, but we can do all of them up to Difficult Request (1).

: I’m sure there’s some gimmicky use of these that will come up later, like there was in Covenant. Let’s go turn that Ring Fragment in, and then we can go to the Grand Canyon.

: “Hey, that’s pretty good…”

: “I am the will of, um… the Judgment Ring which rules over all fate!!”

: “…”

: “…No good?”

: “Uh, no. It wasn’t so bad, but that slip in the middle, and the outburst at the end were a little off.”

: “Hmm, this is pretty difficult… Again! I’ll try it again!”

: “OK. Give it your best!”

: “Deep breaths, deep breaths… here I go!”

: “I-I am a Ring Spirit… I am the will of the Judgment Ring… which rules over all fate…”

: I’m picturing her saying this like the infamous “Bone of my sword” speech from Fate/Stay Night.

: “Hey! You did it!”

: “R-really? That was kind of embarrassing. H-here’s your reward! Bye!”

: Now that we’ve got our attack count maxed, let’s go UMA hunting.

: This is where the UMA hunts get a little more involved. If we check under the stairs here, the UMA icon pops up.

: If all you read was the description in the dialogue, this would make sense - we know that Tihozhodi is covered in slime.

: This makes it clearer that it uses the slime specifically to hold its eggs in place. There’s no eggs here - and if we were to set out the bait, we’d get a random encounter instead.

: This is the right spot.

: Tihozhodhi is an invisible Womp, from back in Alcatraz. It has 900 HP.

: First we get a Snap. Now, it wouldn’t be a horrible idea to not combo immediately and instead have Johnny Double, then use Snap and his Vacuum to get his Stock back… but I don’t do that.

: Natan hits for a rather anemic 105 damage, but that’s because I forgot to equip magic on him.

: Shania follows up with Bar Rod and Bar Blast.

: If I didn’t care about people dying, I’d use Combo Magic and win this in one more turn.

: The problem is, if we do this, the boss now has two back-to-back turns on top of having full Stock.

: Instead, I have Johnny Double and use Shield on Natan to stop the boss killing him, followed by a Vacuum to reduce its stock.

: The boss can inflict Small Ring, but that’s not a big deal - certainly not worth dumping a ton of money into pocket watches.

: On the way out, I cash in the last Snap Card trade - I had to farm a couple of fights to max Shania’s Stock anyway, so I figured I’d just do it.

: Looks like a Castlevania boss. Let’s go turn in the UMA, and then we’ll do Vegas next update.

[Timrod]

Summary

: We’ve got nowhere to go but Vegas, so let’s do that. We’re going to watch a cutscene, and then immediately leave.

: Ricardo has made his way here, and we’re about to see what I can only really describe as “a John Wick scene where John Wick just kinda kills people by walking past them.”

: Ricardo walks by one of McManus’s guys, and he drops dead apropos of nothing.

: Ricardo is up to three kills without doing anything.

: I, uh… that’s a line, alright. I mean, it’s a line I’d expect in a time travel story or an isekai, but at this point, FTNW’s writers are taking every style guide they can find behind the woodshed. I love it.

: The second I saw this subtitle, I went “Yep. That’s it. That’s my update title.”

: I’d also like to point out that I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a piece of media where somebody gets offed by a mariachi. Somebody in the writer’s room was definitely crossing shit off their bucket list.

: This whole thing feels like the writers went to Blockbuster (remember, this is 2004), emptied the action movie shelf, and binged it all over a three-day weekend.

: The Dark Id actually did that at one point - he binged all eight (at the time) Fast and Furious movies and then did regular movie nights where he’d show two at a time.

: That’s how I got into the franchise - I watched the first eight with him, and then watched 9 on my own just recently. He’s also how I saw the first two John Wick films.

: I’m not missing any screenshots - Ricardo fucking teleports behind this guy and grabs him.

: Is it mono? I’m guessing it was mono.

: “Don’t say that. I’d say you have some loyal men. Anyway, is this the place?”

: I’m having flashbacks to Persona 5 and I don’t like it.

: “How about calming down a bit?”

: “Oh, I’m plenty calm, see. Trespassing on my turf, dragging Edna into this… those bums don’t deserve to be Mafia. You watch. I’m gonna go in there and pound 'em all into hamburger meat!”

: “OH, such great FEROCITY.”

: “Ho-hold on, before you start fighting, shouldn’t you search for your sister?”

: “What’s the point of searching? I already know they got Edna in there! That McManus bastard was always making eyes at her.”

: “Aah, I don’t think he’s listening…”

: “Yeah, he’s gotten all worked up…”

: “Well, we’ll go take a look and see if they’ve got your sister.”

: “You guys?”

: “If you go, it’d turn into a war, right? Besides, finding people is my specialty!”

: His specialty with an amazing track record of finding one guy who died ten seconds later.

: Shania hits him with the double ellipsis.

: “McManus doesn’t know any of us, and even if we fail, it still wouldn’t be too late for a fight.”

: Wouldn’t McManus know Mao, since Mao was running the Chicago Outfit in Capone’s place?

: And now, it’s time to turn around and go back to New York. Trust me when I say you want to do this as soon as you possibly can.

: “Huh? You don’t mean…”

: “Yes. Another letter has come from the mysterious Tinkerbell.”

: “Another one! Let me see it…”

: Ah yes, Times Square, well known for being empty at all times of day and also the best place to plan an assassination.

: “What the!? Why!? He’s making fun of me again!!”

: “What’s the matter, master? It could just be a prank…”

: “You think I can just sit back and let him say things like this!? I’m gonna go and teach him a lesson!”

: If we head to Times Square, there’s an NPC standing under the lamppost that wasn’t there the first time we came here.

: “That’s right. And you’re Tinkerbell’s assassin!?”

: Yep, we’re going there. I don’t know what it was with the early 2000s and doing this in games.

: These are all fairly easy and you have 10 seconds to answer each one.

: “Heheh, that was too easy!”

: “Hey that’s right! Where is the other one!?”

: “Harlem, huh. All right, just you wait!”

: It’s kind of a crime that Nautilus made a game taking place during the Harlem Renaissance and the best they could do was put it in as a sidequest destination where you do math.

: “That’s what I want to know. Lenny’s much better at that stuff than me.”

: “Lenny!?”

: “Yeah, he may look big and dumb, but strangely enough, he’s really good at math.”

: I mean, there was the whole part where he ran a third of a Vatican-based secret society in Covenant, and he probably had to count how many of his weird sword-hand guys got murdered by Yuri.

: We do another ten of these. This sidequest is at least pretty short.

: “Where is Tinkerbell!?”

: This is the entire reason we wanted to do this sidequest. The Panoramic Lens is an accessory for Johnny that makes Snap hit every enemy on the field.

: “Hm? Another letter…”

: “Hmm… well, at least he’s giving me a little respect this time. Hey mister! Are you sure you don’t know where Tinkerbell is?”

: A year before this game released, a Norwegian programmer by the name of Jon Johansen was arrested and put on trial for his involvement in a program called DeCSS - used for decrypting DVDs.

: Technically, he was arrested for doing math. He was tried twice and acquitted both times, and during the trial it came out that he had never written the decryption code in the first place.

: “Grr… all right! Argh, back to square one.”

: We’re done here, so now it’s time for Vegas for all of about a minute again before we head back off to New York.

: There’s a big parking ramp on either side of the entrance, and on the right side is the Hawk Statue. This one pumps up Thunderbird’s stats with each level.

: This is… I think the last Cure stellar we pick up before we start getting more useful healing spells.

: “Huh? You already know the way, Master Meow?”

: “No, I’m just heading for the elevator. Mafia bosses tend to enjoy a drink from a top floor bar with a view.”

: “Oh, I get it…”

: The casino has a ton of NPCs to talk to.

: If you’ve been following closely, you’ll notice that we usually pick up lottery tickets near a Lottery Member, and this is no exception… except the Lottery Member in this case is like halfway through the hotel.

: “Huh? We don’t have a key…”

: “What’ll we do?”

: “I don’t mind forcing my way, you know, but I don’t feel like making a scene. Let’s go look for someone with a key.”

: To do that, we’ll need to go through the casino to the right.

: Gerard and Buigen are here - you can find their motorcycle parked out front. Gerard now sells the next tier of weapons, so let’s grab those.

: There’s two chests in both of the lower corners - this one’s just a Seal of Strength, but the other side…

: Yeah, we’re going to want to cash this in.

: “…”

: “…”

: “…Hey Johnny, what’s the matter?”

: “Huh? Oh, sorry! It was just so perfect, I was shocked.”

: “R-really? Heheheh! I’ve been practicing every day!”

: “Really… that’s great though. Now all you have to do is collect the fragments.”

: “I…I guess so… it’s all thanks to you, Johnny.”

: I think you mean “It’s all thanks to Frank.”

: “Huh? Me?”

: “Hee hee, never mind. Here. Today’s reward.”

: With this, we have now maxed out Frank and Shania’s attacks.

: “Well then, see you next time, Johnny.”

: “Thanks to me… Heheh, I’m kind of embarrassed.”

: Back in the casino, we can slip through this door to enter a new area.

: “What’s wrong, Master Meow?”

: “McManus’ cronies are inside… hmm… sounds like they’re having a stupid argument about who gets to have a room on the 8th floor.”

: “Of course, cat’s ears!”

: “We don’t have to hold back with these gangsters. Let’s go, kid.”

: It’s a little confusing, but this is the door we need, even though the one in the cutscene is pretty clearly the one in the bottom-left of the screen.

: “You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me a costume cat…”

: Ordinarily, this fight would be a pain in the ass, not because of the enemies, but because we need three Snaps of the Petty Gangsters - the taller, thinner ones - and two of the Gangster Hoodlums.

: For reference, they each have around 70 HP, meaning Frank and Shania can vaporize them without even trying.

: This is where our new accessory comes into play.

: The Panoramic Lens snaps all enemies on the field, including those that would be duplicates - meaning you can get more than one of the same card at a time.

: One thing I think I haven’t mentioned is that Snap gives Johnny a huge speed boost until his next turn, so I quickly take two Snaps in a row, giving us more than enough cards.

: “Good. For one guy, he sure put up a fight. Hurry up and get rid of him!”

: “What?”

: “What?!”

: “…I see. It can’t be helped then. Hey, take me to the mariachi. I’ll make him talk before we kill him.”

: “Didn’t you hear me? I told you to take me to the mariachi! Now!!”

: I will admit it’s really noticeable how “bastard” is the only swear they can use when it’s in like every other line of dialog.

: This feels like every game of Town of Salem I’ve ever played.

: McManus spends a good like… ten seconds kicking Ricardo.

: Now that we have control again, we can go back to the elevator and use the key we just found.

: We can go left or right, but either way, we’ll run into more mobsters.

: “Important guests? Could it be…?”

: “Well, we have a little situation here. We’re going to need to take a peek at your ‘guests’ faces.”

: This is another fight against four Petty Gangsters and two Gangster Hoodlums. I didn’t even bother screenshotting it because it was over in one turn.

: The group closer to the elevator goes down in two attacks - Frank managed to be in just the right position to hit five of them at once.

: With those two groups down, there’s a couple of things we can do on the 8th floor. First and foremost is going to Room 812.

: This one was kind of a pain in the ass to hit - the Ring sweeps backwards (not really a problem) but also has a delay on it so you have to press the button early. It took me five or so tries to get it.

: This is another returning accessory from the earlier games. There’s also a Step Tripler later on, but we want this in order to get the rewards from that guy at the university as early as possible.

: We can also enter this room, which is… I think it’s 824, but it’s hard to read the signs.

: “…I don’t recognize your faces. Why don’t you quit with the acting!”

: Two attacks later and they’re all dead.

: The other reason I wanted to do this first is that we’re about to get our last party member forced on us, and I wanted to get Natan a quick levelup before we have to replace him.

: This gets us the key to Room 807, which has…

: I’m not sure what the advantage of using this over Paralysis is, if any. With that, we can finally go to Room 818 and progress the story.

: Frank is not having any of Ricardo’s bullshit.

: Fuck yeah he is!

: We now have a fight against the same mafia guys, only this time, Ricardo is replacing Natan. Ricardo is Nautilus’s apology for how bad Lucia was in Covenant - he’s basically Lucia but not garbage.

: His main attack is a gun hidden in his guitar, which would be an Innocent Sin ripoff except that Eikichi used a guitar case that was also a gun, not the guitar itself.

: “What’s wrong? If we don’t go soon…”

: “It should be around here somewhere. Damn, they really made a mess of this place…”

: The Fade-Fast Flower is Ricardo’s first “Muse Item”, which unlocks his first four character skills. It works almost exactly like Lucia’s aromatherapy ability in Covenant, except each item has four skills.

: You don’t know what each combination does until you use it, but typically each item has a heal, an MP and SP heal, an attack, and a support ability.

: “What is that?”

: “Edna gave this to me right after we met. At the time, I’d lost sight of my music. I was thinking about putting down my guitar for good. When she saw that, Edna just held this out to me without saying a word.”

: “Hmm… but why would she give you a dried flower?”

: “I think she wanted to teach me that there is such a thing as beauty that doesn’t fade over time… even now, this is like my lucky charm. I can’t play my guitar if I don’t have it.”

: We should definitely make sure to grab this - you can see it sparkling in the cutscene - because, well…

: That’s the game’s way of telling us that random encounters are now on. This is why you want to grab the Step Doubler before you save Ricardo - because that means our steps now count.

: The two big guys are Butchers, the little one is a Ghoul. Let’s see what Ricardo’s special ability does.

: We get a choice of four melodies. I already know which one is which, so let’s pick Melody: Rage.

: I’m not entirely sure where Ricardo had space to put a flamethrower in a guitar that’s already got a rifle in it, but it works.

: We wipe the Butchers out pretty quickly (they have 150 HP) and the Ghoul wastes its turn buffing. Even buffed, Ghouls tend to do less damage than the mafia guys did.

: I took a quick trip back to New York for a free heal, and now we can go to the 4th floor.

: Not shown: another mafia fight where we destroy them in one turn.

: Down to the right, we can find the second tier of SP restorative. We might actually need a couple of these for the boss.

: There’s another item hidden around here, but first, we run into the final new enemy of this area: the Automaton. Automatons are spellcasters, and generally need to be taken out first.

: Otherwise, this happens. Right after this, I got into a fight where the party got surrounded and one of these things beat Johnny down to 1 HP through a D-Combo before anyone could move.

: This room, past the healing item, is our next destination.

: I can’t read these room numbers worth a shit, but this one, to the right of where we got the Stellar in that last shot, is our last real stop on this floor… for now.

: The Angel Souffle is an item for Hilda that increases her calories by 25. Very useful if we need to make her switch forms fast - which we will need to do at a few points in the future.

: Directly across the hall is the room we picked up the key for. Surely there’s a miniboss in here…

: Or we’ll just get the key without a fight. We’ll see the 9th floor, as well as the rest of the dungeon, next time. I’m already running late this week and I need to grind a bit.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Floor 9 is pretty small compared to the rest.

: If we head directly south-west from the elevator, there’s a room we can open.

: “Huh? See what?”

: Now, you can’t see it, but I actually fucked up real bad just before coming in here. You see, the button to change the battle party is L2 - but L2 also cycles between the three possible battle parties.

: The problem is, our other two parties consist of Ricardo, Hilda, and Mao - this is because they get put there by default during the sections where you’re forced to use them.

: What I didn’t realize is that while I was checking my screenshot directory, I had my PS4 controller in one hand and nudged the L2 button without realizing it.

: This turns what would ordinarily be a piss-easy fight into a struggle for survival.

: We can at least see Hilda’s Calorie Drain in action. As it turns out, you can only Calorie Drain an enemy once, meaning that getting her to -100 for her super form is a massive fucking grind.

: What made it worse was that Hilda had no magic equipped, and Thorn Whip can’t hit anything.

: One thing I haven’t shown off yet is that you can look at key items in the inventory, and they all have descriptions. This is how you can figure out what room this key is for.

: You can pretty clearly see “406” on it. Let me show off the other keys as well:

: Room 406 is right here, just past the elevator… and sure enough, it’s the one the key goes to.

: I put this on Frank, but probably should have put it on Johnny. We’re done with the 4th Floor now.

: Back on the 9th floor, Room 904 has an optional fight in it - which I take because the gangster fights are piss easy. To the best of my knowledge, there’s nothing in Room 904.

: Directly across the hall is Room 903.

: “Yeah… and unless you want to die, move!”

: By the end of this fight, we have about 8200 Cash - which is actually enough to get the items we need for the boss.

: An explosion goes off. It’s probably Frank-related.

: Gotta love that I got this shot exactly as the army of mobsters starts clipping through Al Capone.

: Room 903 has the key to Room 1004.

: The penthouse VIP room, soon to be known as “The Frank Suite”.

: Floor 10 has a chest with a Thera Root to the left of the elevator. This is the third tier of healing item.

: Room 1004 has an Arc Barrier stellar in the plant that I forgot to get a shot of. You DEFINITELY want this for the boss, and I equip it to Ricardo since he’s going to be on support duty.

: This is the last group of gangsters. They go down just like all the rest. Also gotta love that probable Jojo reference, even if it’s to Part 5.

: Immediately afterward, I run back down to the first floor and grab three Silver Bracelets - we found one of these back in the Grand Canyon, so we only need three.

: We’re now at the point of the game where we’re fully expected to have status protect accessories on everyone. The good news is I think we can sell these back as soon as we’re done.

: I also grind out a couple of battles (just two) to get everyone to level 18. Theoretically, you don’t want to bring Frank into this next boss - but the way we’re going to do it, it will not matter.

: “We got kind of busy with those bullets flying around… but, we finally made it!”

: By bullets, he means the bullets that were never fired because all of McManus’s guys died before they could attack.

: “Edna!? You’re starting with that nonsense again!? If I were you, I’d take a quick look around!”

: McManus’s guys are clearly 10 years ahead of schedule on their guns, given that those are apparently MP-40s.

: And now, just for a moment, I’d like to bring you to the version of the game where the writers let Frank have a nuke.

: “You don’t have the BALLS! Frank has a powerful NUCLEAR deterrent!”

: “Wha-”

: “What a RIP-OFF! I don’t think that was even a kiloton!”

: “Clearly, Britney removed most of the fissile material. I, too, am disappointed, both by the explosion and at Britney’s proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium.”

: And this is why we should have let Frank keep the nuke. I apologize to The Dark Id.

: “You should be saying your prayers… along with these punks here!”

: Capone puts the gun down, but… wait, why do his guys have even more ridiculously oversized magazines?

: Edna just kind of has a shield, which doesn’t show up all that well in screenshots.

: I’ve had a headache like that before. Didn’t quite reach the “mutate into a demon” level, but it was pretty close.

: There’s a non-subtitled voice line here where Johnny goes “Ricardo! Get back!”

: Welp, Edna’s a demon now - and even worse, a demon with nearly double the HP of the last real boss we fought.

: It’s time to bring out the buffs. First, I have Ricardo use Arc Barrier - this is CRITICAL, because otherwise Edna can and will murder your entire party with her insane Stock regen.

: I have Frank cast Surge on Ricardo, because Ricardo is fire-element and therefore strong against Edna’s water element.

: Johnny casts it on Shania.

: Shania uses Arc Gale, which is important because it lessens the chance of Edna getting multiple turns in a row. At one point, she gets 3 in a row during this fight.

: Edna has three main attacks - this is the first one. Mental Break inflicts the status effect by the same name (which drains MP) on everyone…

: Unless we have Silver Bracelets on everyone. Then it’s a waste of a turn.

: 36% defense may not sound like much, but without it, Black Hole can hit Frank for over 100 damage - due to being a Dark-element spell against his inherent Light element.

: I have Johnny Snap, and because he has Arc Gale on him, he gets an immedate second turn that I use to nuke some of Edna’s stock before we initiate our D-Combo.

: Between Frank, Shania, and Ricardo alone, we do almost 900 damage out of Edna’s 1600 HP.

: What I learned is that there’s a trick to the way Combo Magic works - the four spells you get are based on who is in your party, and they’re secretly always in the same order.

: Edna has two turns coming up back to back, and has full Stock… so ordinarily, this would be a bad idea. Except…

: Johnny sends her to the Combo Dimension.

: Tempest is Johnny’s Combo Magic, and it’s also a Stock nuke. That’s a good 1200 damage between that one Red Nova and the Combo.

: Fortunately for us, Edna has a hidden mechanic where once she goes below a certain HP threshold (I think it’s 40%) she activates Surge on herself.

: Even Surged, she barely damages Shania due to her innate Dark resistance, and then throws away her second turn doing Mental Break.

: Somehow, she winds up at exactly 1HP after Johnny and Frank go again.

: If I had delayed the Combo a bit more, we could have gotten a Strike Expand for finishing her off with Combo Magic.

: Oh look, it’s Chichen Itza. Weren’t we supposed to go there?

: Wait, how did they get from being on the sign in Vegas to Chichen Itza that quickly?

: This is every time I’ve ever tried to date someone.

: 5 foot 11 versus 6 feet.

: Why do I feel like Johnny should be asking Roger where the Emigre Document is? I have a feeling it’s “lost” again.

: Anyway, as you might be able to tell if you’ve read the LP of Covenant, Killer and Lady are basically a “dark” Yuri and Alice, with Gilbert being an evil Roger Bacon.

: I don’t know why the writers chose to do this. I really don’t. Evil Roger Bacon was already a plot point in the first game.

: “Both Chicago and Vegas… should have some peace for a little while… thanks to you guys.”

: “Hey, Ricardo… you going too?”

: I mean, you kinda already watched Capone kill the guy responsible.

: We could head right to Chichen Itza, but there’s a Frank cutscene if we go back to Vegas again, and you know my policy on cutscenes involving Frank.

: “Yes. It’s Britney.”

: Oh look, it’s the bitch that stole Frank’s nuke.

: “W-what’s wrong? How can ol’ Frank help you if he doesn’t know what the problem is?”

: Wait, what. There are German ninjas now? Maybe I should have Salty Vanilla design a Venezuelan ninja after all.

: “Oh… is this the rumored Alter Ego Arts?!”

: “German ninja arts, huh… He appears to be QUITE powerful. Leave this one to ol’ Frank!”

: “It’d be better if we worked together…”

: So… I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of glitch here. The guides I’ve read say that the real ninja is supposed to have a heart over his head. That didn’t happen for some reason.

: If it wasn’t such a pain in the ass, I’d load it onto my hardware PS2 and do a console verification.

: I wound up using some ‘handy tools’ to bypass this.

: “Hey, YOU! You’re the REAL one!”

: “He he he… you have the right to remain silent. You’re under arrest!”

: “No! You’re taking all the CREDIT again!!”

: “Only the Jonin understands how HARD ol’ Frank has worked…”

: Next time, we’ll go to Chichen Itza. For real this time.

[Timrod]

Summary

: There’s another UMA in Chichen Itza, so we’re going to need to bring Natan along. Like all South American themed dungeons in RPGs, Chichen Itza SUCKS.

: I swear, it’s like Nautilus saw the end of Innocent Sin and went “Why don’t we do that”, complete with it being the biggest pain in the goddamn ass.

: The Vine Bracelet is an accessory that prevents Apathy. Unfortunately, it did not prevent me from not wanting to record this dungeon anymore and go back to playing Pikmin 4.

: Gerard and Buigen are up the stairs to the right, and we need to spend all of our money again because the boss here is another one that requires an accessory.

: To be more specific, we need four of these Bell Bracelets.

: If we go up the stairs to the left, we run into this.

: “I do not believe it to be dangerous. Do as you wish.”

: “The door has opened… I see, it opens when the floor lights up.”

: Johnny spends like ten seconds meandering up to the door.

: “It looks like a timed mechanism. You must move quickly once you step on the floor.”

: God dammit, I swear to god if this is a crystal skull, I am turning this entire goddamn LP around and going back to The 25th Ward.

: Fuck!! Fuck this! I’ve already gone through two games worth of this bullshit!

: Off to the side is an Arc Heal, which is useful given that all of the enemies here have status effects that we do not have the money to prevent.

: Shortly afterward, we get into our first random encounter. The flying enemy at the top is a Jig Ruta, which has 164 HP. Kinda high compared to the previous dungeon enemies, but not that bad.

: The real issue is this motherfuck right here. 345 fucking HP, extremely resistant to physical attacks, AND it inflicts Apathy on hit.

: Holy shit, Frank’s going fucking Super Saiyan!

: Or, you know, he’ll just tap the hannya on his stomach and fire an explosion. That works too. The only problem is that Demon Bomb costs nearly half of Frank’s total MP and doesn’t do more damage than Seismic Wave does.

: Back in the entrance room, we can open this door.

: “Didn’t you find a creepy skull before? What about that?”

: “OK, I’ll try it.”

: The next area has a left and a right side, both with a timer on them. The left side leads into the next area, but we’re going to want to grab all the stuff anyway… and we need money.

: Evil Shade is a Dark-element Red Nova, in that it’s an area attack that also performs a Stock nuke.

: The right side also has a UMA spot - but it’s a fake.

: I noticed we had a ton of Soul Energy saved up, so I leveled up Tatan’ka a bit. The reason is that the abilities Thunderbird gets from its next levelup both kinda suck, and Tatan’ka gets Arc Rage and Arc Surge, both of which we’re going to want for the boss.

: We have enough money to get four Bell Bracelets, but we’re also 51 points from being able to get a 30% discount, so I buy two of them to rank up.

: This allows me to buy all four Bell Bracelets, but also Stone Belts, which will help Johnny and Natan kill the smaller enemies.

: I spent over an hour just running around the entrance room trying to farm enough Cash to upgrade everyone’s armor - and was just able to do it after selling some old armor.

: I can’t imagine that clothing capable of generating negative ions would be particularly healthy to wear, given that ionizers produce ozone as a by-product.

: The next area past the first skull door is another tile maze - fortunately, this one’s super easy.

: This one is actually a clever bit of game design. You can see where it starts, and it doesn’t go anywhere… or does it?

: Right near the end of it, there’s a hidden chest. You can see the edge of it in the last shot.

: Here is a tip I did not think of: once you get Arc Cure, what you do is simply go to Buigen and upgrade its MP Cost Reduction to maximum, then stick it on a party member you’re not using.

: Saves a shit-ton on consumables in the long run, plus you can use all of Mao’s MP because let’s be real here, even though Natan sucks mechanically I’d rather have him than Mao.

: There’s another UMA spot near the Arc Cure chest, but this one’s also fake. Here’s how you can tell:

: The UMA description says that the UMA never attacks the same place twice - so if there are feathers, that means it’s already been there.

: Before we go through this door…

: We definitely want to grab this. Mana Extract is a late-game MP restoration item.

: There’s another Lottery Ticket in this hallway, though unfortunately Chichen Itza breaks the rule of “Lottery Ticket means there’s a Lottery Member nearby”.

: It would have ruled if you went down a random side passage and there’s a Mayan skeleton who tries to get you to play his lottery.

: This room is a slightly more complex puzzle, made worse by the fact that the UMA is in here and the random encounters here tend to include multiple Jig Ruta, who have a Stock nuke.

: Let’s get the UMA out of the way first.

: The UMA this time is the Chupacabra, which is not going to last even a single turn against us.

: The Chupacabra has 1000 HP, and Frank takes off nearly a quarter of that by himself.

: By the time Natan and Shania go, we’re pretty close to killing it. The only bad part is that it’s in the air, which means that Tempest won’t work - Tempest only hits Mid, not High or Low.

: That’s fine though, because the Chupacabra is Dark element and Holy Pulse DOES hit High.

: Now for progress. You can see here the tile that powers the door down at the bottom near where we entered. That’s where the next skull is.

: The trick is that there’s a second tile just off-screen that opens a door near the save point, which stops you from having to go all the way around to get to the bottom level.

: We’ve got everything in this room now, and we’ve got the UMA, which means I can replace Natan with Ricardo… only I kind of forget to do that and go into the boss with Natan anyway.

: To top off this shit dungeon, I get into a random encounter two steps before the door leading to the boss, so I have to run back to the save point to heal.

: This is about as close as the game gets to a Drakengard cutscene. I guess that’d make Johnny Inuart, wouldn’t it?

: God dammit, why didn’t we get the laser, Frank needs a laser to replace his nuke.

: I think Gilbert has malice confused for orphan juice, the substance of choice for people attempting to do stuff like that. This is why he’ll never be more than a third-rate villain.

: Yeah, that’s… kind of exactly what he just said.

: Man, I wish we were still in the days when there were only two Malice sites in the entirety of the American continent.

: They put Killer in the wrong game. We needed him in Persona 5, so he could punch Akechi every time he repeats a plot point.

: I wish I could rip models, because I would rip Frank’s model and re-do this cutscene in Source Filmmaker with Frank running at Lady with the Ullapool Caber while this plays.

: It’s hard to see, but Killer’s weapon is a set of brass knuckles that are effectively Wolverine’s claws… which was a weapon Yuri used in Covenant.

: Does he… not know that McManus killed Edna in the first place?

: I don’t think Wales counts as another world. Does it?

: It took you THIS LONG to realize that? Johnny as originally written is about as dense as The Dark Id’s version of Yuri.

: Oh look, it’s that dumbass eyeball monster on that snap card we got in the Caribbean.

: Jeb Niglas has 2020 HP and is Light element. I actually wound up having to reload a save here because I forgot to equip Johnny with the Bell Bracelet. You ABSOLUTELY need those, by the way.

: I have Johnny buff Frank with Dark Edge, which changes his attacks to be Dark element.

: Natan uses Arc Barrier, and Shania follows up by Fusing into Tatan’ka and using Arc Surge. Now, here’s the thing: you do NOT want to do what I did and try for a D-Combo finisher.

: The reason is that Jeb Niglas has a physical attack that doubles as a Stock nuke.

: I start off by alternating between Dark spells (Ebony Cluster and Evil Eye) and Red Nova as a Stock nuke. We have Evil Shade - which is a Dark-element Stock nuke - but I didn’t feel like running back to Buigen to be able to use it.

: The boss wastes a couple of turns casting Seal, which is great for me because by this point, I’ve got the boss down to D-Combo kill range.

: I also discovered an exploit of sorts. Normally, during a Double or D-Combo, the game won’t let you use the same spell or action twice. There’s an exception to that rule.

: If you have Shania switch Fusion forms, she can cast the same spell twice.

: Yep, that’s nearly 600 damage in a single turn.

: Frank follows up with Ninja Star and Seismic Wave, which I THINK are affected by Dark Edge because they’re both physical.

: I could have done even more damage if I had Shania buff everyone’s physical damage as well, but we did the job.

: Yep, boss is dead.

: God dammit, why does it get a cutscene laser? Why doesn’t Frank get one of those?

: I call bullshit.

: And now I guess we know what’d happen if Yuri ever met Johnny.

: That’s… probably not a good sign.

: Next time, we take our first foray into South America. No, Mexico doesn’t count for some reason.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Trust me, I was as confused as you probably are.

: I can’t tell exactly what happened here. It feels like the developers planned on recording another cutscene in between Chichen Itza and now, only they ran out of time.

: Frank is going to that direction to give his agent a stern talking-to.

: Ricardo does a hat tip and walks away.

: I should point out, by the way, that this game was written during Death Note’s original publication run - Death Note started publication in late 2003. This probably would’ve been a fucking groaner back then.

: This is actually true for 1929 - the US had not signed extradition treaties with most of South America (including Brazil) until the 1970s. Of course, I have a feeling that if the US government was to approach Brazil and say “Hey, we want this guy”, they’d probably do it.

: If you’re playing this game on actual hardware, and you’re planning on doing the bonus post-game dungeon, you’re going to want to talk to that lady near the fountain.

: We will do that later, because there is a Frank cutscene nearby. Doing the Frank cutscene skips a lot of dialog, so we’ll do it now and then rewind.

: If you head out of the north exit, you wind up in the favela. Let’s just keep going up the stairs.

: Huh… there is that brightly-colored thing off in the distance… nah, couldn’t be.

: Frank is dumpster diving, which predates a different Frank dumpster diving by a full four years.

: “Oh! Boy! Can’t you tell just by looking? I’m collecting information!”

: “I dunno about that… it looks like you’re just scrounging for trash.”

: "Har har, Boy’s still GREEN, isn’t he? Wise man once said, ‘The fundamentals of detective work are in the TRASH!’ "

: “Oh, is that right… well, knock yourself out. Good luck with that.”

: Gerard and Buigen are right near Frank, and they have new weapons for everyone. We do not have enough money to buy them all - plus we need new accessories for the next boss.

: Between where Frank is and where Gerard is, there’s a park with a tube in it. Let’s look at this.

: “A fireworks tube. You better not touch it.”

: Oh no. This isn’t going… Frank’s not going to… did Frank fucking beat the TF2 Demoman in using an explosive as a melee weapon by a full five years?

: “Fireworks?”

: “You don’t know what they are? Uh… how should I explain…?”

: “By mixing different chemicals with the gunpowder, you can change the color. They’re mainly for signaling or fun.”

: “Y-You really know a lot about them…”

: “…Actually, Daddy was a fireworks engineer, famous across the States.”

: “Huh? Really?! Why didn’t you say anything until now?”

: “Daddy wanted me to succeed him, but ol’ Frank chose the path of the ninja to preserve the peace of the States. Of course, I don’t regret it. But sometimes I just WONDER…”

: Has there ever been a character in an RPG who uses explosives as their main weapon? I feel like they should’ve gone for that.

: “That’s pretty heavy…”

: “But this is my fateful meeting! If ol’ Frank does this, his regrets will be instantly resolved!”

: Goddamn. Someone should mod this into TF2.

: I feel like Frank operates on Final Fantasy logic where having someone magdump a gun into your chest is equivalent to a papercut.

: Anyway, let’s rewind a bit and go look around some more.

: Most of these questions are fairly easy… apart from a few. With ‘handy tools’, this isn’t a problem.

: It’s football.

: The mobsters do this every time you get a question right. Someone at Nautilus clearly had a lot of fun with this whole thing.

: Ah yes, all those U.S. Army bases, well known for flying the imperial Japanese flag. Lots of weeaboos in those days.

: This one’s “an overhead structure”, which might not be totally obvious except that none of those other things exist in Chicago.

: Favela is the Portuguese slang term for a slum. The name comes from the aftermath of a war in the late 1890s, when the Brazilian army was sent to put down a peasant uprising.

: The name comes from a type of tree, under which the soldiers built rudimentary housing during the war - they were given a parcel of land in Rio and built the same kind of houses there.

: The Brazilian government has traditionally… not been kind, to put it lightly, to the people who live there.

: The Big Buddha of Freedom sounds like something some crazy middle-aged white guy would build out in the desert in Arizona or Nevada because aliens told him to do it.

: It’s three.

: This one is also three: there’s the chief’s tepee, the one that had an item in it, and Nvwoti’s tepee.

: The Warning Device is another returning accessory that isn’t really any more useful than it was in the first two games - except in the bonus dungeon.

: Of course, we have ‘handy tools’ to fix that little issue. I really should’ve titled this LP something like “Handy Tool Assisted Speedrun”.

: “Japanese culture in South America… oh, that brings back bad memories.”

: This guy has a skill for Hilda if she’s in Pink Bat form, which we could easily do by having her drain a single calorie off the enemies at Arkham… but I won’t.

: There’s a super-awkward to find lottery member on this screen - Hilda is looking right at her, she’s in a straight line to the left from Johnny.

: The reason is that if you try to talk to her, you’ll wind up on this screen where she’s only partially visible.

: If you’re using the Warlock Earrings we picked up earlier, and are either a super pro at QTEs or have access to ‘handy tools’, Magic Mind’s Eye is a gamebreaker.

: This is half of an accessory from the first two games that DOUBLES your magic damage, but makes the Ring invisible. I will probably make use of this at some point.

: Just past the Lottery Member is another Snap trader. We can only make two trades here.

: This gets us another ??? card, which is presumably for the next boss.

: Mind’s Eye is the physical version of the Magic Mind’s Eye, and works the same way. I like how one of these is just a blindfold, while the other is a magic blindfold soaked in the tears of children.

: We probably should get around to upgrading some of the star charts.

: This is going on Frank. I think the difference is how often it procs.

: I sell all our old equipment to buy three Shell Bracelets. The next boss has Poison as a gimmick, which can escalate easily to Deadly Poison, which is a real problem.

: I also grab Hilda and Mao’s new weapons, just so I can show them off. That wand sounds a lot like those “5000 dB” truck horns on Amazon - which would be classified as a WMD if they were actually that strong.

: This moves us up to Rank B, which allows us to try for a 40% discount with an increasingly difficult Ring spin. That’s about all we have to do here, so let’s talk to Frank and leave the area.

: “Quiet! That loud voice is embarrassing.”

: Johnny, shut the fuck up.

: “Frank did it! Frank got the SCOOP!”

: “Man, never thought we’d find a clue in the paper. Anyway, we hafta go there!”

: “I saw that article earlier too. According to the locals, this paper is ALWAYS full of lies…”

: “But this photo doesn’t look fake…”

: “Why don’t we just go directly to the person who wrote this and ask them?”

: “Yeah! Good idea! Rio de Janeiro Sports Publishing. And… they’re located in this town!”

: The appropriate subtitle to have any time Johnny is on screen.

: There’s some un-subtitled dialog here where Hilda and Mao realize what the stories are about and start going “Oh my god! It’s you! It’s you!”

: A quick map search tells me that the drive from Rio de Janeiro to Cusco, Peru (the closest city to Machu Picchu) takes 60 hours by modern car.

: From Cusco to the closest road to Machu Picchu is probably another hour or two, and then it’s a 3 to 5 day hike to the ruins.

: I mean, if you assume the editor is the Doom guy and can run at speeds approaching 100 MPH without stopping - which is pretty much what he’d have to do to get that picture - then yeah.

: This is every cutscene in Resident Evil 2 with both Leon and Ada in it.

: We could go right to Machu Picchu, but there’s a few other things we can get in Rio. There are also some new Pit Fights, which are… not great.

: One of them makes you fight a Thug with 200+ HP that can kill Johnny in two hits without being able to use items. We’re not doing that one anytime soon.

: There are a couple of interesting ones though, like this fight where the boss has exactly 35 HP and you need to do a 30-hit combo to finish it off… with no character skills allowed.

: This one kinda sucks admittedly because Shania can’t use magic due to it counting as a character skill, but I didn’t even need her.

: I missed an item earlier - in the corner of the little park where the Fireworks Saber was, there’s a chest with an Arc Surge stellar in the corner. This should help with turn economy.

: If we head back to the newspaper office, Boulde is here at the table. There’s also a Lottery Ticket in that trash can behind him.

: “No, not really. Just came to chat. Do you work at this newspaper too?”

: “Journal? You must have a lot of free time then.”

: “Wow! You have a hundred of them?”

: “Chicago… I have lots of friends in that town. Shall I ask around for you the next time I visit?”

: “Yeah. So, we’ll look for it, but don’t get your hopes up.”

: The diary is inside Capone’s club/casino in Chicago.

: “No, no. It’s about this guy Boulde who used to live here a while back. Weren’t you born here?”

: “Yes. Just met him recently, though… why? Do you know him?”

: “By ‘kids’ do you mean me?”

: “Anyway. We’re looking for a diary that Boulde said he lost in this town.”

: “That was quick.”

: “Yes. But why did you have it?”

: “…Do you have any messages for him?”

: “…That’s pretty cruel.”

: This feels just like a NieR sidequest, except it only took like, two minutes instead of an hour. The sidequests in NieR all sucked, and I won’t apologize.

: "I see… I at least wanted to give him this journal. Do you know where his grave is?’

: You know what game could have used almost this exact scene? The Silver Case. It should’ve been a scene after Hikari but before Yami with Tokio and Kusabi.

: “Really… but what should I do with this diary? Can I hand it over to you?”

: “But what should I do with it?”

: “…I understand.”

: Next time, we’ll explore Machu Picchu.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we leave the newspaper office, I forgot to grab this. The level 2 ring effects proc way more often.

: Surrounded… by being a dungeon I really did not feel like recording.

: Yep, they’re all dead.

: “That one might still be twitching a little… wait, no, that’s just rigor mortis.”

: “This is it, right? The Ruins of Machu Picchu?”

: “Yes, but do you think they’re really here?”

: “Yes. I’m positive.”

: Before we go into the ruins, there are a couple of items we can grab.

: One thing I should mention is that you probably do not want Shania in your party for this dungeon. I kept her in just long enough for Johnny to get all the snaps we need.

: The writers did realize the Camel was a plane, right?

: “Now, now. There’s no need for you to go kill enemies Lady overlooked, is there? Why don’t you leave them to me?”

: “You saying you can do something?”

: “Well, I can at least buy you some time.”

: I’m going to skip a bit of dialog, because this dungeon has a really simple gimmick that the game feels the need to overexplain.

: Each door has two colors. There are switches that are the same colors as the doors. Two switches can be pressed at a time. This is effectively an easier version of a bad dungeon from Covenant.

: “What’s that? It looks like this big face.”

: I wish there was an option to have Frank smash this puzzle in half. It’s really more annoying than anything.

: We find a yellow switch, which…

: Turns the eyes to Yellow/Red.

: Two steps away from the cutscene, we get into our first random battle. Wariche is the resident “big boy” enemy, but doesn’t actually do that much damage - maybe 60 to 70.

: The real problem are the little fuckers, which are called Dicteo. Dicteo have 98 HP and can inflict Instant Death on hit.

: The problem is that the only person who can reliably one-shot the Dicteo is Frank - Shania also can, but I have to ditch her and Ricardo/Natan can’t quite get there with 4 attacks each.

: Anyway, we don’t give a shit about the Red/Yellow door. It has an Angel Souffle behind it, and we aren’t using Hilda right now. Instead, let’s open up this Blue/Yellow door.

: This area has a bunch of items we want, the most important of which is a Ring Fragment.

: It’s hidden in this corner that you can only kind of see Johnny through. This means we have to backtrack through the door puzzle - including resetting the switches - to turn it in.

: “…Good! You seem a lot more relaxed now.”

: “Hee hee, I’ve been working hard! Even my father praised me!”

: “Father? You have a family!?”

: “Of course I do! What, did you think I was just born in some cabbage patch!? My father just so happens to be a veteran Ring Spirit who’s been in service for over forty years.”

: Poor Ring Soul, forever cursed to be remembered by the wrong name.

: “My dream is to become a splendid Ring Spirit like him one day.”

: “…But in forty years, won’t you be an old lady?”

: “What! You’re so rude! Just for that you don’t get a reward!”

: “What!? It was just a joke. I was kidding.”

: “Ahahah, I was just joking too. Here you go.”

: This sounds like they’re headed for a divorce.

: I should probably get around to using these at some point.

: This is here purely to give you options in case you get hit by Instant Death.

: Gerard and Buigen are down the stairs, along with a Lottery Ticket.

: Here’s the rest of the enemies in this area - Xantak is a flying enemy that is mostly just annoying, and the blob (Xi Dazun) is a buffer.

: Oh, right. We have a new battle theme now that we’re in South America. It’s… not as good as Dead Fingers Talk.

: The new area has a second set of switches that are separate from the ones in the first room. Now, here’s the fucking annoying part:

: As you can see, the room has two ways out: a Red/Green door and a Yellow/Purple door. There is also a red button and a green button - they’re both about the same distance from the entrance.

: Now, you might think “Oh, all I have to do is press the two buttons”, but the game very clearly expects you to hit the green one first - because if you hit red first, you’ve just wasted like 10 minutes.

: I should mention that this dungeon, like all RPG dungeons set in South America or that are South America-adjacent, has an obnoxious encounter rate. It’s like… probably three times higher than every other dungeon in this game.

: I just can’t escape Ameno Xibalbafune, can I?

: Anyway, like a total dumbshit, I hit the red button first. There is no way to go back and change this once you’ve pressed it.

: The next area is this big fuckoff maze with… I think four sets of doors in it. One of them is that purple/yellow door that leads back to the red and green switches.

: Now, the problem is that there’s a fairly good Ring item in this room, locked behind a Purple/Red door. Unfortunately, because I pressed Red first, hitting the Purple switch (which is in the bottom-right corner of this room) will give us Purple/Green - and unfortunately, not the good kind of Purple/Green.

: The Yellow switch is in the bottom left corner, two screens away from the purple one. We have to do this in order to reset the green/red switches.

: We can grab a Mana Root here, and then go up through that door.

: So I do that, and fight like ten random encounters doing so. I then go back to the purple switch and open the door to the item room.

: The other two items are a garbage stellar and a healing item. We want SP-Defend Down 2 because like all second-level ring items, it has a higher chance of hitting, and hitting the boss with it would be a good idea.

: I mentioned in the last update that Natan sucks, and here’s why: both Slug Shell and Rapid Shot do less damage than his regular attack string.

: Compare this to Frank, who does more than an attack string’s worth of damage with both Seismic Wave and Demon Bomb, and has a larger AOE.

: The good news is that we’re going to get some things shortly which will make it worthwhile to replace Natan with Hilda.

: Now that we’ve done that, we have to reset the switches to purple and yellow. The guide I was using neglected to mention that you can skip an entire lap around the room if you hit the yellow one first.

: Another lap around, and the switches are now purple/yellow. At this point, we can leave and go back to where Gerard is.

: If we go up the stairs and all the way to the left, there’s a second entrance into the switch puzzle.

: This allows us to go back into the big room.

: We then run down and hit the yellow switch for blue/yellow, and now we can make progress.

: This room has one immediately obvious exit, but if we go down and to the right instead…

: We get what’s actually a surprisingly good item for Hilda. You see, what I didn’t realize is that Hilda has 40 Sanity Points - nearly as many as Shania does.

: Hilda at this point is four levels behind the rest of the party, but with the Small Jug equipped, she has virtually the same stats. We can also give her the Warlock Earrings to negate the S-Def boost from the Jug but give her an additional 20% S-Atk, which will make Hilda an amazing caster.

: This next room is the last one - and is another switch puzzle.

: “Oh yeah. But…”

: “Wonder if there’s a way to put out the fire? Let’s look for another way out.”

: There’s a red switch to the left of the exit. Unlike the last room, there’s only one solution.

: “Oh, the flames went out.”

: “But only the red flames went out? Can’t determine anything yet…”

: To the right of the exit is this chest, which is unlocked now that we’ve removed the red fire.

: The center room has eight directional hallways - the one directly to the right leads to the next switch.

: We can only have one switch active at a time, but that’s not a big deal.

: The green switch is right over here, and now we can all get on with our lives.

: Before we do though, there’s a stellar in this chest. It would be really good against the boss… if I had any star charts that could use it. If walking back to Gerard and Buigen wouldn’t be a gigantic pain in the ass, I’d do that.

: Before we go through the next door, I unequip Shania completely.

: I had probably been in this dungeon for nearly 90 minutes real-time at this point due to the encounter rate.

: Frank is looking at Hilda like “Why are we even in this dungeon again?”

: “No! Gilbert’s getting away!”

: And this is why I switched over to Ricardo and Natan. We’ve just lost Shania for the rest of this dungeon.

: The game gives us the opportunity to switch our battle team - which I have no reason to do, because I wasn’t using Shania anyway.

: The game gives us a fight with exactly the combination of enemies you can see in the cutscene.

: Fortunately, there is a save point after this, so we’re free to let Frank go all out.

: Demon Bomb fucks hard against multiple enemies.

: Before we leave this room, there’s a Fruity Fiber in the corner. We’re going to need a couple of these in the next area to change Hilda’s forms.

: Several empty corridors later…

: Man, Shania really sucks at stealth, doesn’t she?

: I didn’t get a shot of it, but Shania’s eyes turn red for a second.

: Oh look, it’s that thing we traded for a snap card of. The bad news is that we need a second snap card of it because that’s how this game rolls.

: This boss is called Kerufe, and it has 2,380 HP. Kerufe’s gimmick is that it’s very fast and likes to spam Poison - but that’s not a big deal for us because everyone is immune.

: The boss will get two turns in a row quite frequently, and will probably use Gale at some point to buff its speed even further.

: Its only other attack, outside of a physical combo, is Pre-Ignition, which is a fire spell with a large AOE.

: I start with buffs - Frank uses Arc Surge, Ricardo uses Arc Barrier, and Natan buffs Frank with Earth Edge to do more damage since Kerufe is Wind-element.

: What I do is set up so that we use the D-Combo on the last turn that Arc Surge is up, and in the meantime start reducing Kerufe’s HP with spells.

: And then, Frank does it. Kerufe gets slapped with a 36% special defense reduction - this is on top of the 36% buff to special attack the entire party has from Arc Surge. It’s D-Combo time.

: Even Johnny, with his absolute garbage star chart, can hit for almost 300 damage - and that’s using Gale Rod, which is at an elemental disadvantage. The reason I do this is to set up for Frank.

: Frank follows up with a Seismic Wave/Demon Bomb combo thanks to Johnny knocking the boss to the floor, and adds an extra 400 or so damage.

: By the end of Ricardo’s turn, we’re most of the way through Kerufe’s HP bar. And now, for the finisher.

: Yep, that’ll do it.

: Hell yeah. I could have done it even faster if I had equipped the Warlock Earrings to someone, or had bothered to level up Hilda for the Small Jug/Warlock Earrings combo, but it works.

: Speaking of Hilda, Salty Vanilla finished that piece showing what it would be like if Hilda had Fusion.

: I’m surprised Frank’s people don’t have GPS trackers on Lady and Killer at this point.

: That’s a facial expression all right.

: Next time, we’ll head to the Marquesas Islands for a brief stop before another Machu Picchu sized dungeon. We’ll also get some new stuff for Hilda, which is great becuase

[Timrod]

Summary

: Man, Loloma must’ve had one fast boat to get from the Marquesas to Peru.

: Gilbert is loving this shit.

: “I’m just a little bit excited! You see, scholars from all over the world have been searching for this ‘something’ for over a hundred years! Without success, of course… that is, up until now!!”

: I need to clarify this a bit. Vilcabamba was the last capitol of the Inca before they were wiped out by the Spanish in 1572. By the 1700s, no one remembered where Vilcabamba actually was.

: One of the earliest theories, advanced by a guy from Connecticut by the name of Hiram Bingham, was that Machu Picchu (which he claimed to have discovered in 1911) was Vilcabamba.

: Side note to that, Hiram Bingham didn’t actually discover Machu Picchu - that honor goes to a Peruvian farmer by the name of Agustin Lizarraga, who had originally found it in 1902.

: What Bingham DID discover was a site called “Espiritu Pampa”, which is another name for Vilcabamba. He didn’t bother to investigate it, and due to his theory about Machu Picchu, neither did anyone else.

: For Gilbert to have correctly recognized Espiritu Pampa as Vilcabamba would put him fifty years ahead of everyone else - but at the same time behind everyone else because people knew where Espiritu Pampa was, they just didn’t know that it was Vilcabamba.

: The real Vilcabamba is, of course, not underground. The Inca had a lot of engineering projects to their name, but an underground city was sadly not one of them.

: It’s probably an elevator.

: The first thing we want to do is head into that house directly to the right of the party.

: Here, I realize that I have fucked up - the guide told me I only needed two snaps of Kerufe. You actually need three. This meant I had to fight the boss again.

: I know there’s a boss coming up we have to snap a total of 7 times. I’m not sure if it’s this one.

: In a few years, she’ll be summoning demons to do her bidding, just like the kids in England.

: You might notice we don’t have Weekly Arts 2 - that’s because we need Hilda to be in Pink Bat form for that. It’s back in Rio de Janeiro.

: Gerard and Buigen are nearby, and since we have a ton of money and also don’t really need an accessory for the next boss, we can buy armor and start pumping stellars.

: I grab a couple of Andes Ponchos for Johnny and Frank, and a Dancing Samba for Hilda. We got a Dancing Samba off the last boss, so Shania is covered.

: Now, we COULD grab Vine Bracelets for everyone, since the next boss has Apathy as a mechanic - except we really don’t want to waste the money on that.

: The reason is that the way the boss is set up, we want to D-Combo right away, which will (probably) disable the boss’s ability to use Apathy.

: I’ll take a free stat boost, why not. It’s in the same spot Loloma’s grandmother was in the cutscene before Machu Picchu.

: This one’s an invisible ring, and is… actually kinda hard to hit with the amount of input lag the emulator has. I definitely had to use some “handy tools” on this one. The red area is between 4:00 and 5:00.

: The Seraphim Straw increases the number of calories Hilda takes in… but only positive calories. We don’t want those because those make her magic stat suck.

: We also finally get the second-tier water spell, which will be very useful against the next boss. We’re going to give this one to Hilda.

: Our next cutscene is in Loloma’s house, which is just to the right. I actually bothered to record this one because it has Frank having a Joseph Joestar moment.

: Speaking of Frank, I got Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on launch day. The first rival gang is called The FRANKS, in all caps. After several seconds of screaming, I immediately contacted Salty Vanilla.

: “I never would’ve imagined that I would find any of my family here.”

: What’s funny about this is that it makes Nicolai’s achievement of releasing all the Malice in the Vatican look weaker with each passing moment.

: “Yes it’s all true… but how do you know all this?”

: Hilda and Frank are desperately trying to get a look at the bone shard.

: Okay, so we’re fighting a gate at some point. Got it.

: “Gate?”

: It isn’t subtitled, which is why I took the video, but you can hear Frank in the background going “Oh my god!” in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Joseph Joestar.

: “You mean the world will be destroyed… you’re exaggerating, right?”

: “And so… you’re asking us to stop this, right?”

: “We can’t do it. I’m very sorry.”

: “More importantly, tell us where Vilcabamba is… if you don’t mind!”

: Shania’s VA kinda fails this entire scene. I think I mentioned before that her VA is some nobody and this was the largest role she ever got.

: In fact, I think her VA is part of the reason I don’t like Shania as a character all that much, given that her entire personality is “She’s kind of a bitch”.

: I mean, I figured we got asked to come here because of all the items lying around. Speaking of which, the guide tells me this area is the source of one of the more irritating sidequests.

: “Thank you.”

: We’re pretty much done here. There is another thing we could get for Hilda if she was in Curvy form, but we don’t want her in Curvy form ever.

: And now we’re done. We’re going to go into Vilcabamba for a bit and then turn back, because there’s a Ring Fragment located not too far inside.

: “Hey, look.”

: “Ah, and that… red light…”

: “Let’s go. Let’s get that woman before the red light is released.”

: What we’re actually going to do is go back up the elevator. Why?

: Because there’s a Seal up here. It’s behind the bottom-right pillar.

: Wait a second… wasn’t this in Eternal Punishment? You know, in the room where we fought that one guy who mutated? The one at the end of Ameno Xibalbafune.

: “Lady, I’m gonna stay here. They won’t get in the way again!”

: We are going to fucking steamroll Killer’s ass, at least if the amount of damage Hilda is doing is any indication.

: "So I’d be able to check up on Lady’s power… wonder if that was such a good idea… at the worst… they may not break the seal.

: “I understand, Mr. Killer! I’ll look after Lady, don’t you worry!”

: “You’re not going anywhere, little man! Get this straight… I don’t trust you one teeny tiny bit… so there’s no way I’m letting you alone with her!”

: There’s a tutorial cutscene I really should skip, but it’s short.

: “Hm… it doesn’t move.”

: “What’s this switch?”

: Come on Johnny, you can see the other three switches from where you’re standing!

: Heat Resist is the first in a line of elemental resist spells that are… probably useless. They require a 3rd-level stellar slot, and are single-target.

: Shortly after we pick the stellar up, we get into our first random encounter. Ghatanothoa is a re-skin of the Byakhee from Alcatraz, with more HP and better spells.

: We only need two snaps of most of the enemies in this dungeon, so let’s have Hilda test Pumpkin Bomb - since we’re leaving shortly anyway.

: Oh shit, Hilda’s a devil buster! I saw this and opened the chat window with Salty Vanilla. “Can I get a picture of Hilda dumping Makoto from Persona 5 into a trash can?”

: Holy shit. Hilda is a full four levels behind Johnny and Frank, which is a huge gap for this game, and yet she’s able to oneshot enemies. Pumpkin Bomb is admittedly a pricy (and therefore damaging) skill, but still.

: Most of the enemies here are nothing to worry about. They hit for 70-80 damage, can cast spells for a bit more than that, and are pretty easily brought down.

: It takes maybe a couple of minutes to start the elevator up, counting the encounters.

: The chest has a Lottery Ticket in it.

: The Ring Fragment is directly across from the elevator, behind this pillar. Let’s go cash this in.

: On the way out, we run into two more enemy types: Tindaros and uh… “Wormy Worm”. There’s no way that’s an accurate translation. Unfortunately, I don’t know what its Japanese name is.

: Anyway, Wormy Worms are weak but have a Stock nuke, and need to be taken out immediately. Frank and Shania can do this easily with physical attacks, as can Hilda with spells.

: “Wow… that’s great. Today, even your voice sounds deeper! Your body’s a different color, too. It’s like you’re a different person! …Hey, wait? Are you really…”

: This is, as I’ve mentioned, the Ring Soul from Covenant.

: “Whoa! I knew it!”

: “Th-thank you very much… um, where is Aya today…?”

: “Hey, I think you’ve got it all wrong…”

: To end this update, I put the Small Jug/Warlock Earrings combo on Johnny and did this Pit Fight, because it awards a stellar chart that’s actually pretty decent.

: Two rounds of this and the thug is dead.

: Taurus comes with a second Hail Solid, which will be useful against the upcoming boss. Most of the rest of the stuff it comes with is mediocre, but the slots on it are good.

: Next time, we’ll finish Vilcabamba.

[Dragolord09]

Incidentally, what attack do you get out of Weekly Arts 2, and what is the item you get if you have Curvy Hilda at that particular location?