Summary
: I’d like to start by saying I had to re-record this entire update due to an inopportune save state. Basically, Hilda wound up killing the boss before I could get a Snap.
: The second area is very straightforward - you can see our destination in the background.
: This room is a pretty simple teleporter maze - it’s also the last room of Vilcabamba. Despite being simple, it takes a while (probably half an hour) to finish with encounters.
: We’re now on the top floor.
: “Which means we have to find another four switches.”
: “LOOK! There’s a switch way over there!”
: When I recorded this, I had gotten… maybe four hours of sleep the night before, if we’re being generous. This was after getting maybe five the night before that. My cat is an asshole.
: I looked at this and my brain immediately went to Frank running around like a demented Captain Olimar picking up the party members and hurling them at the switches like they’re overgrown pikmin.
: The first switch is directly north of the elevator. I’m kind of amazed I was able to read the guide for this, given that I woke up and found my car keys hanging from a bottle of Worcestershire sauce in the fridge.
: You can see another teleporter in the background, but there’s an item we want to grab first.
: This would be useful against the boss if I didn’t use the Forbidden Handy Tool Technique from Covenant, which I spent like fifteen minutes reloading savestates to do.
: In theory, the technique works like this. First, you put Gamble Ring on.
: Gamble Ring makes it so that the Ring is reduced to one hit area, and hitting that area makes everything hit. In Covenant, the hit area was always consistent. That’s not true anymore.
: The technique in Covenant was to use Mind’s Eye for double damage, and turn on Gamble Ring so as to avoid missing - since the hit zone used to be the same, it was pretty much free damage.
: From the New World makes it so that the hit zone is slightly randomized (in Hilda’s case, it will always be between 4:00 and 8:00 or so) the first time you use the Ring in combat.
: Not shown: fifteen minutes of me going “What the fuck? Where’s the hit zone?” while mashing the “Reload Savestate” button.
: From there, all we have to do is push the switch and then use the teleporter.
: SP Lowering is the biggest non-issue in the game. There’s one enemy here (Tindaros) that can inflict it, but I’ve never had a fight last long enough for that to be an issue.
: This chest has a Fruity Fiber in it, and it’s at this point I realize I can show off Hilda’s final form.
: When Hilda reaches either -100 or +100 calories, she transforms into Mask Hilda (either Slim or Curvy, based on calorie count). This gives her a stat boost for 3 fights.
: At the end of those 3 fights, she turns back into the Pink Bat with 0 calories. I could use this on the boss, but I won’t. We want to save these until after we’ve obtained Hilda’s last ability.
: Someone asked about the missing abilities for Hilda, and I’ll explain them here: the one we missed in Rio is a buff for the Pink Bat that increases physical attack power (for Hilda only) by 150%.
: The other one, in Moana Village, is a revive + full HP restore, which… we have no reason to use. The only time anyone has gotten KOed was Natan during the UMA fight on the pirate ship during a take I didn’t use.
: The in-game model also gets the mask, but doesn’t have any abilities that Hilda wouldn’t normally have or anything - it’s a stat boost and nothing more.
: The purple teleporter takes us to the bottom level, and you can see the third switch in the background.
: More borderline useless stellars for our collection of useless stellars.
: “Uh oh, it looks like a dead end.”
: “Wait. There’s a design on the floor…”
: “Huh? This?”
: These bridges are mostly shortcuts, and my brain on 3 hours of sleep completely missed one. If you look, there’s a chest behind the yellow teleporter.
: It’s at this point I realize we have a lot of soul energy, so I pump up Tatan’ka a few more times.
: Tatan’ka reaches level 5, which is the maximum level. Inspire is an upgraded version of one of Ricardo’s Serenadas that increases the rate at which you gain Stock.
: Rumble Roar, on the other hand, is an upgraded version of Shania’s starting spell, Dusk Proud. It’s a dark-element spell that hits the “low” hit zone.
: Here’s where I totally miss a shortcut bridge. The chest has an Angel Souffle in it, which we do not give a fuck about outside of maybe Hilda’s final sidequest.
: I run all the way around the map instead of taking the shortcut, which is fine because Hilda can use the EXP. We’re also going to need a significant amount of Cash soon.
: I grab the shortcut anyway, because I remembered something about having to come back to the boss room, but forgot that doing so would not entail coming down here again.
: From here, it’s a nice, straightforward run to the final switch.
: On the way back, I grab another Evil Shade stellar. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but Evil Shade is another spell that performs a Hard Hit, and does more damage than Red Nova.
: “Yes.”
: “How do you know?”
: “I can always sense someone I’ve fought. All the more given her immense power.”
: Oh look, another thing from Eternal Punishment. How long until we fight Nyarlathotep?
: “I see… we’ll get her this time!”
: At this point, my brain on 3 hours of sleep is going “I am gonna fucking DESTROY this boss fight” and equips Hilda with the Magic Mind’s Eye.
: “Killer!”
: “So where is she?”
: “She’s gone ahead.”
: “I see… then move aside!”
: “I finally got the chance to kill, and I’m itching to do it again!”
: “You… you’re the one… who killed all those people?!”
: “Yeah! I didn’t even work up a sweat! It was really pathetic. They hardly put up a fight.”
: We’re now in a fight with Killer…
: And this thing, called Daoros. Daoros has every buff in the game, heals, and a pretty damaging physical attack.
: It can also use Apathy, which we don’t give a shit about. Go, Hilda!
: Shania sets Killer up for Hilda by launching him.
: And then Hilda vaporizes him on the spot. Frank and Johnny haven’t even gone yet… which means that I forgot to Snap. Worse, I had saved over my only savestate and forgot to hard save. Well, shit.
: Anyway, that’s a reset. My last hard save was in Machu Picchu, and my last non-boss savestate was… at the end of last update. Time to record again!
: Most guides for this game will tell you to take down Daoros first. Don’t do that! That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do! Let me explain why.
: See this turn order? Shania goes, then Johnny, and then Killer… except there’s a scripting thing the game does that becomes unintentionally bullshit if you kill Daoros too early.
: This is a run where I launched into a D-Combo immediately, and nuked Daoros to the ground while still doing a good chunk of damage to Killer.
: Except now, Killer gets four turns in a row, three of which he has maximum Stock on and can Double. This wipes the entire party except for Shania.
: What’s meant to happen here is that after your initial turn or two, Daoros is scripted to get several extra turns so it can buff and spam Apathy. If Daoros is dead, these turns go to Killer instead.
: If we kill Killer first, we still get the Combo Magic bonus - it applies as long as something in the combat died to Combo Magic, even if it didn’t end the fight.
: Meanwhile, Daoros uses its three extra turns and full stock it keeps feeding itself to sit in a corner spamming Apathy and buffing.
: All we have to do is nickel and dime it to death. This is FAR easier than trying to kill Daoros first, even assuming you’re not blowing your D-Combo on the second turn.
: By the way, I abused “handy tools” hard this dungeon to try and up our perfect ring rate. This is because there’s a hidden accessory that is only obtainable if you have a 95% ring hit rate and a 75% ring perfect rate.
: The accessory is… kinda bullshit. It’s called Extreme, and it’s basically Mind’s Eye except the ring is totally blank, including the needle. Doing full ring perfects is kinda miserable.
: For reference, the Ring Perfect rate at the end of this dungeon was around 48%. I don’t plan on turning this LP into a handy-tool assisted speedrun.
: We used a lot of MP that fight, but Hilda is now a lot closer to Frank and Johnny level-wise.
: Hilda dancing in the background is just what this cutscene needed.
: “All right, no more Mr. Nice Guy…”
: “It appears that Lady has broken the final seal! We have to go!”
: “Come back!!”
: Well, guess we’re not going that way.
: Shania kinda sorta punches the boulder, putting her a good… what, three years ahead of Chris Redfield?
: The funny part about all of this is that we have to come back to this very room in order to get an item that is practically a requirement to get the good ending without extensive grinding.
: This shot is so close to the “Watchers” cutscene from Drakengard.
: Wait a second… this is just the Xibalba cutscene from Innocent Sin!
: Oh god dammit! I already did this shit twice!
: I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to get out of a South American-themed RPG without Xibalba showing up, but god dammit.
: Why couldn’t they have had the ship spawn directly under Frank, and then Frank takes it over and crashes it into Space Brazil?
: It even looks like Eternal Punishment’s last dungeon inside.
: The wheel starts spinning.
: This cutscene is voiceacted, but looking at the screenshot there’s only one thing I can hear.
: “So just what are all of these ‘procedures’?”
: “Now if I were to go and tell you that, you’d turn right around and kill me, wouldn’t you? Hmm?”
: I didn’t capture it, but the camera goes on to the gem above Lady’s head and it glows blue for a second.
: “Could it be? I hope it was my imagination…”
: We’re now back in Moana Village, and Gerard’s motorcycle has some fucked up lighting. There’s a sidequest we can take almost immediately upon entering.
: The guide tells you not to do this, because you’re required to go through the next dungeon (where the sidequest is) twice anyway, but it’s a Frank sidequest.
: “Oh! The next MISSION!”
: Okay wait, defectors to who? Are there Polynesian ninjas? I mean, of course there probably are.
: “NINJA defectors!? Then ol’ Frank shall become a NINJA hunter!”
: “Britney, you sound kinda different.”
: “Are all of Frank’s friends… strange?”
: “The guy’s special.”
: We can also turn in some snap cards for what’s actually a pretty good reward.
: Gale Vortex is an 11-hit spell that hits the “high” hitzone and is a knockdown. I give it to Hilda, even though I probably shouldn’t since Hilda is entirely anti-air spells.
: This girl is the start of another sidequest for Ricardo, but we can’t activate it until after the next cutscene (and after leaving the village).
: What I’m going to do is skip the next plot cutscene (for now) and do some sidequests instead. First, we have a handy tool for Johnny that… is actually useful.
: “Aaaah! M-m-master, when did you get here!?”
: “Whoa! Quit with the yelling! I just got back… you know, you’re acting kind of funny.”
: “No, it’s nothing. You know I could never hide anything from you, right?”
: “Now you sound even more suspicious…”
: “Ah! I’m saved… no, I mean… Master, there’s a visitor!”
: “You’re trying to hide something… aah, never mind. Yes, how can I help you? What’s the matter? We don’t get too many little girls coming here by themselves.”
: “…A missing cat?”
: (Hm… this might be just what I need… if the master goes and handles this job by himself, then I can…)
: “Huh? What’re you so worked up about? I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it…”
: “So, that means you accept, right!? Just what I would expect of the master!”
: “Hey, I didn’t say I accept yet either… aagh, oh well. First off, I’ll need to talk to your dad. Where can I find him?”
: We need to go to Times Square anyway, because there’s a Lottery Member there now.
: “Yeah. A little while ago, I got a request from Mia…”
: “Do you think that the cat could have wandered off on its own?”
: “So, you think somebody stole him…?”
: “Hmm… maybe I should go and talk with them. Do you know where I can find them?”
: “Here, Chelsea, and Harlem, huh… got it. I’ll go and talk with them.”
: The lottery member is on the same screen.
: This one is supposedly a standard Ring, but it took me some significant usage of ‘handy tools’ to complete.
: Cure Plus heals more than Arc Cure but only hits a single target. It has its uses, but outside of combat it will almost always be cheaper to use Arc Cure.
: This guy shows us the location of our first suspect, who won’t show up there otherwise.
: “I want to ask about the cat that’s missing from the shop you work at.”
: Let’s head off to Chelsea now.
: Again, there’s an NPC we have to talk to in order to make the suspect come out.
: “Yeah, he seems like a generally bad guy.”
: “I’m a detective, and I wanted to talk to you about the missing cat at the shop you work at…”
: Finally, let’s go off to Harlem. There’s an item there I totally missed the last time we went.
: It’s kind of a mediocre chart, but with a couple of slot upgrades it wouldn’t be too bad.
: This guy at the corner unlocks the final suspect.
: “I’m a detective looking for a missing cat. Can I speak with you for a moment?”
: We then need to go talk to Lenny, at which point Johnny repeats all three stories. I’ll summarize them here:
Wells: Says he was the last one out and that the cat was already gone when he left. Randy and Taffy are both lying.
Randy: Says he was the last one out, that he doesn’t know if the cat was there or not when he left, and that Wells is lying but Taffy is not.
Taffy: He was the second one to leave, the cat was still there when he did. Wells did it and is lying, Randy is telling the truth.
: “What’s the matter?”
: “Ah, I was just trying to figure out this case, but none of the stories match up.”
: “Hmm… then that can only mean that somebody is lying, doesn’t it?”
: “You think so?”
: “Yes. It might be a good idea to go back and ask the shop owner a little more about each of their personalities.”
: “I think you’re right… I’m going to head down there now!”
: “So when they lie, they tell complete lies, but otherwise it’s the complete truth. Hmm, I think I may have it!”
: We can now solve the case. There is no way to fail this, because this isn’t Persona 4.
: “First, how many of them are telling the truth…?”
: The answer here is one.
: “Now, who was the last one in the shop?”
: Wells was.
: “Finally, who’s the guilty one!?”
: Taffy.
: “All right! Now it’s time to confront the culprit!”
: “I’m not here to ask for information. I’m here to get you to return the cat.”
: I hit the capture button at just the right time on this one.
: “Wells told the truth, but you and Randy both lied. Once I figured that out, it could only have been you!”
: “Why’d you do it?”
: “No, we’re going to give you a cat” and then Mao was gone forever.
: “I’m just a detective, so I’m not going to arrest you. Besides, the girl only asked me to find her cat, not hunt down and capture the culprit.”
: We can then go and speak to the other two suspects before turning in the sidequest.
: “Heheh, yeah, well… there is one thing I have to ask though. Why did you lie to me?”
: “Wow, you’re a pretty nice guy after all.”
: “Yeah. By the way, I wanted to ask… did you really not know anything about the cat?”
: “…Could it be possible that you knew who the criminal was all along?”
: The funny part about this is that Leon fucking vanishes from existence the moment you finish this dialog, and my headcanon is that Johnny made the whole thing up. That cat is gone.
: “Oh yeah… that’s great!”
: “I’m very impressed, Master. You handled that case all on your own.”
: “What’re you talking about? That wasn’t even close to a real case.”
: “No, no, I mean… ah, aaaaah! Oh no! I forgot something…!!”
: “Hm? What’s wrong?”
: Phone Call is Johnny’s final Handy Tool, and is actually useful for something in that it’s one of the biggest AOE attacks (if not the biggest) in the game.
: “Another package? There’s a letter as well… hey, this looks like it was written in a hurry.”
: “T-that’s just your imagination! Your imagination!!”
: “…I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”
: “…You hear that! Heheh, sounds like he’s finally starting to realize how good I am. And he’ll know even better when I catch him! Lenny, keep investigating this guy!”
: One thing I didn’t know is that it’s actually possible to see Phone Call in action right at the start of the game. It happens if Johnny dies while in the theater, before you get Shania.
: Of course Johnny has a flip phone in 1929. Frank has a goddamn satellite laser.
: The only problem with Phone Call is that it costs a whopping 88 MP, which at current levels Johnny can use I think three times before he runs out.
: Our next two sidequests take place in Moana Village - we have to go to the next dungeon first and then immediately exit.
: “Huh, that’s curious. Isn’t that a Japanese kokeshi doll?”
: "A kokeshi doll?’
: “Yes. It looks coquettish, that’s why it’s called kokeshi!”
: I looked it up, and there’s apparently no concensus on where the word “kokeshi” came from.
: “Why are you talking nonsense?”
: Kokeshi are not at all meant to represent gods - they were originally meant to be toys.
: Karoshi is a Japanese term for “death by overwork”.
: “Huh? Was that supposed to be a pun?”
: “Not again!”
: “Humph. Well, it’s not like his sticky fingers are anything new.”
: This, sadly, is the last one of these cutscenes in the game. This is Frank’s penultimate weapon - his last one is part of his character sidequest.
: There’s one last sidequest, and that is Ricardo’s.
: We then need to leave the village and return.
: “I see… so did you write back?”
: The next part happens after visiting the next dungeon.
: “Hm? Why yes, but… what’s wrong?”
: “You can’t read it at all?”
: “If that’s the area, then I may be heading there sometime. If I have time, I can go take a look.”
: “But don’t get mad if I don’t find him.”
: This quest is a bit of busy work. First, we have to go to Arkham, just outside of Gilbert’s lab.
: “You seem to be really flustered. Was it something I said?”
: “Jail? Why?”
: “In jail, huh… Hmm, I wonder what really happened.”
: And now, we need to go trudge back through Alcatraz to the left area of cells beyond the metal detector gate.
: “I just want to talk.”
: “Hey, hey… we came all the way to this prison just to talk to you.”
: Another trudge back through Alcatraz to Moana Village later…
: “You mean you already learned to write?”
: “That’s pretty impressive. All right. How about if I deliver the letter for you?”
:" ‘Mister’? Am I really that old…?"
: Ricardo is 27, and funny enough is the third youngest character in the game after Shania (21) and Johnny (16), which is rare as shit for a JRPG.
: Going up from there, Natan is 35, Frank is 50 (though I fucking refuse to believe that), Mao’s age is listed in the art book as “Maybe 100?”, and Hilda is around 400.
: My theory is that Frank is actually older than Roger Bacon and simply respawns every time he dies.
: “He’s okay, I’ve been to see him.”
: “Yes. You threw a letter into the ocean a while back, did you not?”
: I tried to see if this was a reference to a particular novel from the time period, but didn’t find anything. What I did find was that there was a noteworthy message in a bottle experiment from 1929.
: The experiment involved a bunch of Germans throwing a message in a bottle (set up so that it could be read without breaking the bottle) with instructions to report where it was found and then throw it back.
: Supposedly, the bottle went 16,000 miles in six and a half years, though I only found one source (a book from 2010) to corroborate it.
: “I’m not the one, but I was entrusted to deliver a reply from the one who did happen to pick it up.”
: “A little girl wrote it. She learned to read just so she could write to you.”
: “Hm. Maybe because she was happy? Isn’t it sort of romantic, to pick up a letter carried by the ocean?”
: “There was even a pushy mailman that came all the way to your cell to deliver it. …Maybe somewhere in your heart you were actually hoping for a reply?”
: “No, I didn’t say anything. I don’t think I’m the one to tell her. Do you want me to deliver your reply?”
: “I see…”
: “I don’t mind, but… is that what you really want?”
: This is the point at which Ricardo becomes worth using, and is probably the point at which I will ditch Shania. The Girl’s Letter gives Ricardo his second Serenada attack, as well as two skills - one of which buffs the entire party’s physical AND magic damage, and one that buffs physical AND magic defense.
: A lot of Shania’s skills are shittier versions of Ricardo’s. As an example, that one we got last update? Ricardo has that, but it costs half the MP and he can do it upon picking up the Old Man’s Diary.
: There may be a single… tiny problem with this, but we can solve that with ‘handy tools’. I’ll explain that at our next destination.
: And now, let’s finish this update off by going back to Vilcabamba and heading to the room where we fought Killer.
: There’s a chest here, which was only not visible in the cutscene thanks to some very specific camera work.
: This is the reason we might have a problem benching Shania. You see, what ending you get in this game (unlike the original and Covenant) is based entirely off one thing: did you max Shania out?
: By that, I mean that you need all of Shania’s totems AND all of her totems must be upgraded to their maximum level. That is the ONLY thing that determines what ending you get.
: I think these are Shania-only, so I don’t think you can just equip Johnny with them, for instance.
: Next time, we’ll watch that cutscene and then go on to the next dungeon. We will be doing the Frank sidequest. There is always time for Frank quests.