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

[Timrod]

Shadow Hearts: From The New World is the fourth and final game in the Shadow Hearts franchise, not counting the two pachinko machines that were released after the company that holds the rights decided to simply give up on it. It comes after Koudelka, Shadow Hearts, and Shadow Hearts 2, aka Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

Why are you doing this game?

One of the things that got me into LPing in the first place is a screenshot LPer who goes by The Dark Id - he posted almost exclusively on SA’s LP board and was really good friends with a lot of people from there.

I spent nearly a year LPing this game after hearing that he was dying of cancer… except he wasn’t dying of cancer, had been making up shit for at least the past ten years - including that he had a dead daughter (she was never real), had a wife (she was a sockpuppet account) and was some kind of PMC super-soldier who was really just a Metal Gear Solid fanfiction.

My original intention was to kill off this LP in the event that he died, and given that he announced his own death last night, I will take him at his word one last time and kill this LP off. If anything, the lesson here is to always question even the most innocuous shit and not let people get away with anything.

This LP was also not genuine in that the game kinda sucks and that I was kinda suppressing that because at the time I thought I was doing it in tribute to a dying man. Please excuse that.

Fanart

: Warren sends in tribute to the game’s new main character.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Alright, let’s do this. The first thing we want to do is turn on subtitles because the first five minutes or so are one giant FMV. I recorded it (and will probably re-record it) right here.

: So what you’re saying is that you’re every protagonist in an RPG. Got it.

: The doctor looked our protagonist in the eye and went “I’m afraid it’s been… I dunno, maybe five minutes.”

: I should’ve photoshopped a meter onto these that reads “RPG PROTAGONIST” and fills until it’s going off the screen.

: Yeah, this is why I played the Kill The Past games. Really helped me get over the nightmares after all those bad games I LPed.

: Anyway, enough of that shit, here’s our opening FMV.

: Welcome to New York, which as we all know is the only city in the United States.

: This feels like I’m playing some kind of knockoff of Tekken Tag Tournament. There’s this feeling I used to get when playing games on an emulator that I’d never seen in real life where I’d feel like I was playing an elaborate bootleg, and I got a little of that here.

: And here’s our protagonist. A Rude Hero, this guy is not.

: And then this guy, who… honestly looks a little like Agent Kato from the first two games.

: This book should be familiar to anyone who played either of the first two games. I’ll take bets now on how many children are going to be sacrificed to revive someone’s dead relative this time around.

: And then we have this lady, who looks like a KOS-MOS knockoff. The Dark Id said at one point that he’d rather eat a bullet than LP Xenosaga. I might dunk on it at some point in the future, because that game wasted like 30 hours of my life and I want it back.

: This guy’s jacket is trying real hard to be the one the guy in The Bouncer wears, but just isn’t quite there. Has a little bit of that Spookies logo vibe from Soul Hackers, though. That’s another game I really should get around to LPing someday when I can look at an SMT game and not immediately vomit.

: This shot looks more like something out of Parasite Eve than a game set in 1929. That’s when this game is set, by the way - and given the general dress of the protagonist, we’re maybe a few short months from the stock market crash that begins the Great Depression.

: Quit looking at me like that. Persona 5 deserved what I did to it.

: Oh, it’s just an Ubisoft Skylight we probably have to press E to smash through.

: The mysterious native lady undoes her bra strap, as you do while standing on the roof of a skyscraper in 1929. By the 1960s you couldn’t find a single skyscraper without a nudist on it.

: Most people would look at this and go “Okay this is a little weird”, except I played Skyrim once with this mod that was supposed to improve physics and instead made the female characters’ breasts into physics objects that could, among other things, instantly kill people with physics damage and vibrate through walls.

: Uh, what.

: This is the first shonen manga I’ve seen where someone transforms into an early 2000s scene kid.

: That’s not quite the expression I’d make if a winged elven lady dressed like she just robbed a Hot Topic crashed through my skylight, but yeah, okay.

: This is the theme that plays throughout New York. Note, by the way, that while I could upscale everything past native PS2 resolution, I won’t.

: Meet one of the handful of returning characters from the older games. Lenny was a mid-boss in a weird Vatican murder cult in Shadow Hearts: Covenant before he turned in his giant spiky shoulder pads and turned his life around.

: I’m not sure if this guy screams Jojo midboss or rejected Resident Evil midboss more.

: You know, that one.

: Oh man, we’re going to Silent Hill?

: Don’t forget the whole “being part of a murder cult” thing.

: The attempted murder? Nah, that’s not what landed him in Silent Hill. It was not paying the bail money that did it, sort of like how James Sunderland got sent there for being circumcized and for no other reason whatsoever.

: I don’t know if it’s the PS2 graphics or what, but Johnny looks goddamn uncanny when he smiles like that.

: I mean, when you put it that way, half of Big Dick’s job was talking to ghosts and listening to people monologue at him.

: Do you want Elon Musk? This is how you get Elon Musk. Stop that!

: Lenny really should just be all “Okay, I guess I’ll have to go be an independently wealthy business owner” and just take it over himself.

: Lenny, don’t make this weird. You’re making it weird.

: We have one tiny bit of gameplay before another cutscene hits, so let’s get through that and we’ll start the game in earnest next update.

: The big teal-colored circle is our first save point. I’m still going to save normally even though I’m playing on an emulator, since savestates can fuck shit up over the long term.

: There’s a Talisman of Luck in the plant, which works exactly the same way it did in the earlier games: it’s the basic revival item.

: Unfortunately, the shitty Fandom page for this game does not have a proper transparent version of the dialog portraits, probably because From The New World is kind of the black sheep of the Shadow Hearts family. Oh well.

: This is also where I found out, annoyingly enough, that the game switches resolutions for cutscenes. In cutscenes, it’s in this weird pseudo-widescreen resolution, and in the rest of the game it’s 4:3.

: “My name’s Johnny Garland, and I’m 16. I’m a private detective living in New York City. And like Lenny was saying, the truth is my father died three years ago, and I was supposed to take over running his company.”

: “But living on an inheritance doesn’t really do it for me, so I opened my own office.”

: “That accident didn’t just take my family… it also took part of my memories. There is something important I had to remember. Something significant… something that really means something to me!”

: "It might help me someday to remember. I haven’t told this to anybody… not a soul… not even Lenny.

: Next time, on Shadow Hearts: From The New World, we’ll run into an immediate Simpsons reference that most definitely was not in the original Japanese script and then explore Times Square.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome to the streets of New York, circa 1929 - even though the handful of NPCs on the streets and lack of any visible crowds makes it feel a lot more like Connecticut.

: Just like the older games, NPCs on the street have names (and sometime descriptions). Naturally, we run face-first into a Simpsons reference. This game came out in 2005, The Simpsons had already been a zombie for half a decade by that point.

: I’m pretty sure the Hudson River was so polluted in 1929 that you couldn’t fish in it, just like it is today. To this day, over 200 miles of the Hudson is considered a Superfund site by the US Government.

: Depp might just be confused because of his ex-wife, Amber the Regular Maniac.

: And, of course, a reference to Winona Ryder. I’m not sure what it is with Japanese media and Winona Ryder - Mizzurna Falls also has a character named after her.

: “I-I don’t peep! I was on a love affair investigation.”

: The person we’re looking for is this kid, who is… just kinda loitering by a dumpster. I’d like to remind you of something which will come up again in just a minute, and that’s this:

: I guess now we know why there were all those people in YIIK who were standing around dumpsters, but that’s not the only thing the Allansons, uh, “borrowed”.

: “None of your business! Anyway, have you seen the person in this photo?”

: “Times Square, huh? OK, I’ll go check it out!”

: I’m not sure what the better interpretation of this line is - the interpretation that Johnny, who has somehow lived in New York his entire life, has never heard of Times Square, or the interpretation that no one who actually lives in New York goes to Times Square.

: We can access the world map now, and since there’s nothing else we can do here, we can go off to Times Square… right after I go back and grab some easily-missed items. Shadow Hearts and Covenant were games you did not want to play without a guide, and this is no exception.

: There’s a Mana Leaf right in front of this car, with zero indication that it’s there.

: As is par for the course for Shadow Hearts, every healing item is some kind of mystery plant that blooms once every thousand years and is only useful when it blooms, and yet you can buy them anywhere.

: We can also go back into Johnny’s office to get a couple of chests with items in them.

: Thera Leaves heal 75 HP, which at this point is more than a full heal for Johnny.

: And now we’re ready to move out.

: Welcome to Times Square, home of IT OLD CHICAGO. What does IT OLD CHICAGO sell? Hell if I know.

: I looked up “bread with pepper sauce”, and it’s apparently a thing. Think garlic bread, only with roasted red peppers instead of garlic.

: Wealthy George has his car repossessed three months later after losing absolutely everything the Great Depression. By the way, there’s a hidden item on this screen. Can you guess where it is?

: It’s behind the sign.

: I’d like to point out that at this point in history, Harlem is in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance and redefining what it means to be Black in the United States. This is the golden age of jazz music.

: Anyway, if we keep going north…

: The building’s name is a reference to a party member from Covenant, along with his creepy doll that may or may not house the soul of his dead daughter. Clearly, he must’ve been kicked out of France.

: And here’s the return of Gerard Magimel, the kind of offensive gay merchant from Covenant. This time, he’s separated from his brother, who is presumably preoccupied with the collection of softcore gay porn trading cards Yuri gave him in Covenant.

: Shadow Hearts as a franchise should probably come with one of those “Everyone was harmed in the making of this game” warnings at the start. ESPECIALLY this game.

: “Uh… um… it’s Johnny Garland, but…”

: “Johnny, huh? That’s a nice name. It’s got a nice ring to it…”

: Now, I know this game came out years before DmC and shouldn’t be blamed for this, but I absolutely get the same vibe from it. We have Shadow Hearts at home.

: “Hey, Johnny baby-- can I call you that?”

: “No! No way!!”

: “Oh, so cold-hearted… well, no biggie. I’m Gerard Magimel, a merchant. This is my honey, Buigen. We just arrived in this land. Nice to meet you.”

: “Ahh… nice to meet you too. Um… I’m in a bit of a rush, so I’m just gonna get going now.”

: “Well, aren’t you an impatient boy? And we just got to meet you…”

: “That’s right! Stay and talk a little longer. I’ll even give you something special of mine!”

: “A point card?”

: “That’s right, a point card. If you shop at my store, you’ll collect points on your card. When you collect enough points, you can buy things for cheap, or we’ll pay more for things you want to get rid of. (If you’re successful with the Ring…)”

: Oh christ, the Ring. We’ll get to that in a bit. If you’ve played or read LPs of the first two games, you know about the Ring. God bless the Ring.

: “Did you just mutter something?”

: “U-uh, no, nothing. Anyway, this card’s a great deal! Aren’t you pleased?”

: “Hey hey - no fair cutting in, Gerry! Well, in that case, I have a present for the boy, too.”

: Not cool, game! Not fucking cool!

: “Whoa… you can do magic with this.”

: “Keep it on your body at all times. Just pretend that it’s me.”

: “No…! Honey, how audacious!”

: “Uh… well, thank you. Can I get going now? I’m really in a hurry…”

: “Oh really? That’s too bad… all right, we’ll be doing business around here for a while longer. We’ll be waiting for you, Johnny baby!”

: I’d show off how the star chart works, because it’s one of the few things that can be definitively called an improvement over the way Covenant did things, but there’s not really much to it just yet.

: For the most part though, From the New World is the Eternal Punishment to Covenant’s Innocent Sin, in that almost everything is a step backward.

: I suppose that would make YIIK the Persona 3 FES in this equation, which adds up because Persona 3 kinda sucks mechanically and then The Answer comes along and makes it all so much worse.

: On the side of the Geppetto building is the person we need to talk to.

: “Really!? Where? Where!?”

: “Near the theater in Chelsea, huh? Got it! Thank you!”

: We can grab a tent out of this box here that’s just kind of sitting out in the open.

: The game finally gives us a lore explanation for why Yuri kept throwing away all those tents.

: Chelsea is where we get to see the game’s battle system, which is… let’s put it this way, if I wasn’t intentionally holding back, I would be dunking on this game harder than I did Eternal Punishment.

: Don’t worry, ma’am, I’m sure your kids have been sacrificed in a demonic ritual. Alternatively, they’re summoning demons and making weapons out of the souls of their dead friends.

: Honestly, it’d probably be better for all of us if Johnny got snatched up and replaced with a better protagonist. Like, you know, Yuri. Or anybody, really.

: I did the math on this one. The civil war lasted from 1861 to 1865. Even assuming this guy signed up in 1865 at the age of 18, he is a minimum of 82 years old.

: Before we go too far, though, there is what I’ll start calling a bullshit item hidden on this screen. While it’s not technically a requirement to progress, it might as well be. You’ll see why.

: The Coral Lariat is an accessory that I believe has been in the series since the first Shadow Hearts. It slows the speed of the Ring by 25%. The Dark Id never used these, but I’m going to just for this dungeon because it also boosts magic attack by 2 points.

: “People don’t get shot in this town” - quote from man shot.

: “What happened, mister? Are you OK? It looks like you’re hurt.”

: I don’t know why, but McCoy looks like an extra in Sonic 2006. For that matter, so do a lot of the NPCs in this game.

: “A strange rumor?”

: “This is the run-down theater the person in Times Square was talking about, huh?”

: “Sounds shady… like the perfect hide-out. Yeah, it must be here! Thanks, mister!”

: This is the first dungeon of the game, the tutorial dungeon. I highly recommend that if you are playing this on real hardware, you immediately stop. I mean, just in general. Go play something else.

: There’s a mana leaf hidden off-screen in this area, before we enter the dungeon proper.

: “I’m not a journalist. I’m a detective, and I’ve come in search of someone. I’d like you to let me through.”

: And now we’re in combat. First, I’d like to explain that orange bar labeled “SP”. That stands for “Sanity Points”, which have unfortunately been a thing since Shadow Hearts 1.

: Sanity Points work like this: you lose one a turn (usually) and at zero, your character goes “Berserk”, which causes them to do dumb shit like waste expensive items on the enemy and attack the party.

: If this happens with one character, it’s an automatic game over.

: And now, the Ring. The Ring (full name: “Judgment Ring”) is a QTE that pops up every time you perform an action in combat. Hitting the orange area is a “hit”, the red area is a “strike” that does slightly more damage (or heals better, or whatever).

: You know, looking at the Judgment Ring… I feel like I’m somewhere else. A bad place. You ever get that feeling?

: Now, here’s why this sucks. By default, Johnny needs a minimum of two hits to kill either of these guys, who are generically named “Thug” and “Fat Thug”.

: You’ll notice that on the turn meter, Johnny’s portrait turns red - that’s because that’s the point at which he will go Berserk, and for our purposes pulls out a revolver and offs himself.

: Now, let me tell you about an even more annoying mechanic.

: You’ll notice under “Attack”, we have “Handy Tools”. Apart from both of those words being a lie, Handy Tools is Johnny’s special skill. What does it do, you ask?

: It makes him pull out a camera and take a picture of the enemy. Now, there was a character in Covenant who used this exact mechanic except it gave her the Shadow Hearts equivalent of the Enemy Skill ability from Final Fantasy.

: Snap does nothing. It has no effect in combat. What it does is give you a “snap card” of the enemy you use it on. You need a minimum of around 120 snap cards to unlock a dungeon very late into the game.

: There’s just one problem there. A lot of the enemies only show up in one particular location, and some of these locations (like the theater) can’t be re-visited. While we can get the snap cards for the Thug and Fat Thug later, there are a lot of enemies where we can’t do that.

: Now, you might realize if you’re doing the math that I just wasted a turn using Snap, which means that Johnny is now incapable of finishing this fight… sort of.

: Through the magic of some Handy Tools of my own (read: savestates) I simply hit a Strike on the Ring, which does exactly enough damage to one-shot the other Thug.

: Let me tell you though, Snap is a straight up shit mechanic in a game like this. It works in games like the FF7 Remake because you’re not on a constant death timer. Here? Kind of a dick move.

: I didn’t record it, but Johnny’s end-battle quote here is “Don’t mess with New Yorkers!”. You know that kid in all the 80s movies who gets shoved into lockers? That’s basically Johnny’s voiceactor.

: Oh good, an orphan. Now all we have to do is find the Emigre Document and grind her into paste.

: There’s no way she isn’t secretly the ringleader of the hobo yakuza.

: “OK, I’ll go and look for your brother. Stay here and wait until I come back.”

: “I will, I will. I may not look it, but I’m a detective. Finding people is my specialty!”

: Immediately down the hall from Nancy is another fixed tutorial fight.

: Notice how there’s a green gauge with a “1” over it on the bottom of Johnny’s meters? That’s Stock, which is one of the mechanics I really, really do not like.

: Stock works like this. It builds up over time, and allows you to either do a Combo with multiple characters for a shit-ton of damage, or alternatively use Double to perform two actions in one turn. Unfortunately, Double doesn’t allow you to attack twice - you can attack and cast a spell, but can’t do any one action twice.

: Because there are only two enemies here, I can get a free Snap on the regular Thug enemy. One other thing I should mention about Snap that makes it doubly shit: some enemies need to be hit with it multiple times to give you a snap card.

: I use some uh, Handy Tools to get another strike and end this fight just before Johnny runs out of sanity.

: This time, we get experience and money. Now, there’s one other thing I’d like to point out, and this is why the stock system sucks - notice how Johnny has that “2” over his stock meter?

: Stock carries over between battles, and given that the developers nerfed the shit out of SP in order to force you to interact with this mechanic, you will be forced to grind stock at times.

: What makes it even worse is that there’s another mechanic, which we’ll see coming up, where enemies get their own stock meters… and so you wind up spending all of your stock to stop them using theirs.

: I guess I can explain how the star charts work now.

: Instead of having a “Dominance Capacity” stat that governs how many spells you can equip, the star charts have slots of varying shapes and levels. The only reason this is an upgrade is because you don’t have to memorize which magic crests have which spells on them.

: There are a couple of items upstairs we might as well grab, along with some bullshit that we’ll see in a minute.

: Not shown: another battle with a generic Thug and Fat Thug.

: Seals are stat-raising items that raise a stat from 1 to 3. If I remember right, using them outside of combat always gets you a 1, while using it in combat gets you a 2. Using it in combat and getting a strike on the Ring gives you 3.

: This is the right side of that big room we saw coming up the stairs. If we go to the left side…

: There’s another thug guarding a chest, and I’m not sure why I bothered to grab it, honestly.

: The Leather Belt boosts physical attack power by 2, but it’s not enough to make a difference.

: You see, there’s a save point up here. We actually need to clear this fight to progress.

: This is a battle against two Fat Thugs and a Thug that I immediately lose because I missed a Judgment Ring spin trying to get a strike and forgot to use my uh, “Handy Tools” beforehand.

: The reason I missed the strike is because if you do a Double attack, the red zone on the Ring becomes way smaller. Let’s compare this to Johnny’s normal attack ring.

: By the way, now that we’ve used Snap on the enemies, we can see their current/max HP and element. For reference, Johnny is Non-Elemental, which was usually reserved for Yuri’s ultimate fusions in the older games.

: We’ll learn in a few minutes why the door won’t open, and it makes Johnny look like an even bigger idiot than he already is.

: You’d think the answer to progress would be this big middle door I’ve been avoiding, but… no. It actually isn’t.

: The answer is that fighting those Thugs near the save point raises a plot flag that spawns another group of Thugs in the hallway on the far side of the stairs.

: One thing I want to show off is Johnny’s “I’m a whiny little bitch” pose at the start of battle.

: It’s funny how characters in Dark Souls can two-hand a knife and not look like a bitch, but Johnny just cannot pull that off.

: Johnny pops a critical on the last hit, which doesn’t matter but is nice anyway.

: The good news is that Johnny gets a fifth sanity point when he levels up. Unfortunately, the developers still had not figured out the technology necessary to increase your HP/MP by the amount you gain at level-up so you get the extra max HP/MP but your existing amount isn’t increased to fill the gap.

: Just behind where that encounter was is the door to our objective. What’s kinda funny is that you can come in here before you trigger the battle upstairs and this room is empty.

: “I finally found you! It’s not safe here, so let’s get back. Nancy’s looking for you.”

: “The fire escape?”

: And then we get into another three-enemy fight made slightly less shit by the fact that Johnny has 5 SP now instead of 4.

: “You aren’t to come here again, okay?”

: They’re not going to come here again until they can find some new thugs to inhabit the place. Johnny has singlehandedly ruined these kids’ shakedown racket.

: “Oh right. You said something about a fire escape?”

: “Jiggle it up a bit… I see.”

: Johnny is an idiot. I swear, I think he’s the only videogame protagonist I can think of who fails to open a door not because it’s locked, or barred, or one of those doors that don’t open from this side you see all the time in Dark Souls, but just because it’s slightly harder than average to open.

: I mean, I don’t think Shiroyabu is that much of an idiot, and he doesn’t know the difference between a mailman and a hitman.

: I like to think that she’s saying this in such a way that it’s incredibly obvious she’s making fun of him.

: We’ll do the boss fight next time, because there’s another load of cutscenes coming up. In the meantime, let me post the item descriptions for Johnny’s gear.

: With a knife like that, I’m not sure I want to know what kind of “household jobs” a family is doing, unless that family is the mafia because then I guess that item description makes sense.

: This is the battle theme for the entire first half of the game, and it’s actually pretty good.

: This is the background music for the theater, but there’s an opera track being played over it that isn’t anywhere on Youtube as far as I can tell.

[Timrod]

Summary

: As soon as we open the door at the top of the fire escape, we hit the start of a chain of cutscenes.

: “Just shoot the motherfucker” - Sakura Natsume, The Silver Case. Man, I miss that game already.

: It’s not as obvious in screenshot form, but this guy is “I can’t stand up straight” levels of drunk.

: Honestly though, this scene reminds me a lot of Clock Tower 3. Only problem is that Johnny is way too much of a dipshit to be a magical boy.

: I feel like even Shiroyabu would’ve had this guy on the ground by now.

: He’s afraid Johnny is contagious. Also, I just want you to pay attention to how big Johnny’s hands are in this shot. Boy’s got some goddamn yaoi hands going on.

: Admittedly, if I was approached by an anime boy with freakishly large hands, I’d probably react the same way.

: And now this goes straight into Silent Hill.

: The camera cuts away and there’s some various squelchy meat grinder noises.

: Johnny loses all five of his sanity points and immediately faints.

: And now we’re back at the opening cutscene.

: This time, we’re playing as the weird Hot Topic angel lady, whose name is Thunderbird. This is a tutorial fight to teach us why the Stock system sucks.

: You’ll notice our Attack option has switched over to Hard Hit. Remember how I said enemies can get Stock as well? This how you get rid of it. Hard Hit costs half a gauge to reduce 1 enemy Stock.

: Unlike Johnny, Thunderbird has three attack areas on the Ring, and it is VERY easy to miss the first one (and thus fail your entire attack) if you don’t know it’s there.

: Now, let’s say, just hypothetically, that you forgot to make a savestate at the start of the fight and accidentally missed that attack because you weren’t aware how Thunderbird’s Ring is different. What happens?

: That’s what happens. You might ask how that’s possible given that Thunderbird has 20 SP, and the reason is that Thunderbird uses more than 1 SP a turn, the same way Yuri’s Fusions did. Fortunately, Thunderbird going Berserk is not an auto-fuck.

: Instead, she’ll start casting Dusk Proud and wins the fight by herself. Dusk Proud does Dark-element damage.

: I’d ask what the point of taking her clothes off is if they magically regenerate when she transforms back, but it’s pretty clearly some kind of racket. I mean, think about it: put on some expensive designer shit, transform, and then transform back and you have the clothing equivalent of BitTorrent.

: Well, that’s not ominous at all.

: And now, for something completely different.

: Oh look, it’s that mysterious red-haired guy from the intro cutscene.

: These two were designed to look like Yuri and Alice from the original Shadow Hearts, because From The New World, apart from being the Steel Ball Run we have at home, is also the Shadow Hearts we have at home.

: The next several seconds are flashes of red and people screaming.

: Man, where was this magic red glow that kills cops when we needed it in Eternal Punishment?

: The red-haired guy tries to run, but doesn’t get very far on account of the whole “being shot in the stomach” thing.

: If you labeled the red guy “Timrod” and the hand “Having to record Eternal Punishment”, that’d be a pretty accurate summation of that LP.

: That guy totally just lost 5% of his max HP in exchange for a useless item.

: They’ll explain the red aura thing in a minute, but for now I like to think that it’s some kind of brain exhaust from dumbfucks like Johnny trying to rationalize an unlocked door being locked.

: Speaking of useless dipshit protagonists…

: They were totally taking bets on whether he was dead or not.

: The guy is looking at me like “Yeah, you could’ve had me as the protagonist but now you’re stuck with Johnny.”

: They really were completely incapable of making Johnny resemble an actual human, and I feel like even if Nautlius/Sacnoth had access to the PS3 or PS4 they still wouldn’t have managed it.

: Anyway, welcome to the rest of the game, which will largely be Johnny perving on Shania (the native woman). This… I think was inspired by a 1980s manga called Ghost Sweeper Mikami.

: If you haven’t read The Dark Id’s LPs of the first two Shadow Hearts games for some reason, Malice was a plot device largely constrained to the first game, where it summoned Yuri’s ghost dad to kick his ass.

: Lenny would know a thing about that given his background as a mid-boss.

: Oh, that makes sense why Johnny was glowing like that, it’s because he’s an incel. Got it.

: That would be Lenny’s former boss, a cardinal at the Vatican who also ran a secret society dedicated to… actually, it’s not really clear what they were trying to do. Take over the world or some shit.

: Said cardinal spent half of Covenant being zapped in the balls by a Japanese spy with a ridiculously massive chin until he turned into a demon and got punched out by Yuri.

: Even though face capture wasn’t really a thing until the late PS3/PS4 era, my theory is that Johnny’s model is using a primitive form of it where they hooked up a pumpkin or a volleyball or something.

: Metal Gear!?

: That’s… kind of a leap there.

: I think this was my exact face when I played Tatsuya’s Scenario for the first time and realized how godawful it was.

: The protagonist of Ghost Sweeper Mikami, despite being as much of a pervert as Johnny, somehow manages to be less of a bitch than he is.

: I mean, given that the guy was probably on his way to Silent Hill anyway, is anyone really going to be surprised?

: I think it’s the eyes, but Johnny looks like some kind of reptile in this shot.

: Seriously though, what the shit is with Johnny’s facial expressions? Did David Cage animate this?

: For the record, I did check to see what Shania’s name is in Japanese, and it’s the same.

: “I am Natan. I should be the main character, only the writers decided to go with the whole Mikami thing.”

: No, I did not add that in.

: As soon as I saw this, I immediately went to try and figure out how much of a pain in the ass it would be to go from Manhattan to Boston in 1929.

: In modern times, it’s about a 3 and a half hour trip, depending on where Johnny’s office/bedroom is and what traffic is like. Most of that trip is through Connecticut on Route 15 and Interstate 84.

: Throw in the fact that most cars in that era had a way lower top/average speed than modern ones, and the fact that I-84 didn’t exist in 1929 (it was built in the 1960s) and it’s probably more like 5 hours.

: On the way out of his office, Johnny runs into another one of those hobos he’s stabbed like twelve of in the past day.

: “It…? What’s ‘it’?”

: This really, really makes me wish I hadn’t used that one Neil Cicierega mashup in one of the other LPs.

: Oh, you mean heroin. No, Johnny’s too much of a bitch to be a drug dealer.

: “Huh…?! W-why would I have something like that?”

: Ah yes, the lottery sidequest, also known as the reason I won’t do this game on real hardware. This is a sidequest that goes back to the first Shadow Hearts, when a 700-year-old monk started a lottery ring in his spare time.

: “Huh? What’s this? A lottery ticket…?”

: “So what’s what you were talking about.”

: The lottery is, of course, a Judgment Ring. Landing in the red area gets you the top prize, which you can only get once. If this is anything like the older games, someone’s best equipment is locked behind winning all of these.

: I should mention that the prizes change in New Game + if you ever play that for some reason, in that the top prize changes to a Third Key. Keys were an item in the older games that let you attack multiple times provided you never miss a Judgment Ring spin. You could stack them to hilarious effect.

: We can now go to Arkham University, but we don’t want to do that just yet. There’s an item that we can only get now that we’ve gotten past the tutorial boss.

: It’s all the way back in the theater, where we met Marlow Brown shortly before he got devoured by otherworldly horrors.

: Next time, we’ll take Johnny to college.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Now that we’ve gotten everything in New York, it’s time to head to Boston.

: We get to take about three steps before there’s another cutscene, because that’s how this game is.

: “Huh? Me?”

: “Nope. This is our first time here.”

: “No way! Walk around with a crazy guy like that? Are you kidding?”

: We can grab a Talisman of Luck from the pillar here. I then went off to the right, because there’s a cutscene that’s kind of hilarious.

: I didn’t take a video of it, but I want you to imagine these NPCs pretending to powerwalk while also having a metal rod up their ass. It’s ridiculous.

: “Huh? You mean me?”

: “N-not as far as I know…”

: "U.S… Walking…Warriors…Brigade…? What’s a ‘pedometer regiment?’ "

: This is another returning sidequest from the first two games. The pedometer is an accessory that counts steps taken, but only in areas where there are random encounters. Usually, this eventually nets you a piece of someone’s ultimate equipment.

: No one tell Foley he’s uh… almost four decades early for the Vietnam War and almost six for Full Metal Jacket.

: “…Yes sir…”

: This reminds me so much of another PS2 game called Covert Command, which also tried the Full Metal Jacket thing but did not understand it one bit.

: “Yes sir!!”

: “I don’t really have any idea what you’re talking about, mister… so, I think I’ll just be on my way now…”

: “…Sir…”

: We’re going to want to slap this on someone and keep it there for the entire game. Johnny is probably a good choice because unlike Yuri, he’s not a primary source of damage. Anyway, I’m gonna skip some of this dialogue because all it does is explain what the pedometer does.

: I’m going to skip some of the NPC dialog here, even though The Dark Id showed most, if not all of it in his LPs, simply because there’s a lot of it.

: John Maynard Keynes didn’t publish his economic theories until the mid-1930s, seven years after this game takes place. Then again, given Johnny, it’s entirely possible it took them seven years to get here.

: The localizers definitely had fun with this one.

: I mean, you’d think he would’ve known that earlier given that just two years prior, the government had formed a regulatory agency for it that would later become the FCC.

: To the left of that room we were just in is the library, which we have no reason to go into given that Johnny is probably illiterate.

: I looked up what kind of choices Johnny might have had, and there’s not a whole lot. One interesting bit is that the precursor comic to Nancy debuted in 1929.

: The only thing we really care about in here is an extra Cure spell we can find on a bookshelf in the back.

: Upstairs, we want to head into the door on the left, which is just offscreen.

: In here, we want to talk to this guy to find something out that we could have found out on our own (and actually did, offscreen) but that we need a plot flag for.

: “The sealed-off room?”

: “Next to the school, huh… thanks! I’ll go check it out.”

: Now, you might ask, does Johnny say the door is locked if you try to open it before talking to this guy?

: Yep! This door, for reference, is one screen to the left of where we entered the area.

: Before we leave, there’s a Seal of Life in the corner of the stage. Let’s grab that.

: Oh, and there’s some optional dialogue that’s kind of interesting.

: It’s that last line that gets me. Has there ever been a lesbian manga where one of the characters goes full on Weekly Shonen Jump and does the whole “I guess I have no choice… forgive me, master… just this one, I have to go all out…” thing, and then they pull out that “Women love me, fish fear me” hat that was all over Twitter a few years ago?

: Anyway, back at that door…

: “Oh! Right. OK, then proper detective-like, I’ll go ask around the school.”

: What this entails is going back up the stairs and to the classroom on the right side, which was previously empty.

: That’s not an ominous sign at all.

: “The under-path huh…”

: Now, you might ask “Could we go into the under-path before, not knowing it’s dark?” and the answer is no. I don’t know why they make you get the lantern when you have to unlock the door with a plot flag.

: The Chemistry lab is on the first floor, on the right side.

: “Hey, boy! We meet again!”

: “That voice… could it be…? It is!”

: Johnny clearly has the vision cone of a stealth game guard.

: I wish I had done this game before Persona 5, because I would have had Salty Vanilla draw Joker and Yusuke in this motorcycle, except it’s painted the Japanese flag colors and the sign reads “NO BEING HORNY”.

: Unfortunately, Salty Vanilla is on vacation for the next couple of weeks.

: “Cheer up, I have some good news for you boy.”

: “Well, not really good news, but something he forgot to tell you last time we met.”

: “Hey, Gerry. I thought you said that was our little secret?”

: “Uh… if you’ve got something to say…”

: “Realigning?”

: “That’s right. I alter its attributes and open holes and stuff. Of course, I charge for it, but I’ll do it cheaply for you, boy.”

: I feel like if someone told me that their job was to “open holes”, I’d probably turn around and start walking the other way.

: Johnny realigns himself to Chaotic Dipshit.

: Let me explain how this works. You pick a slot on the star chart, and you can either increase its level (which lets you put higher-level stellars into it), decrease MP usage by up to 50%, or increase the strength of whatever is in that slot, but we can’t do that yet.

: The door to the steam tunnels is right by where we got the Pedometer earlier.

: The building I worked in two jobs ago had steam tunnels (which had since been converted to a basement for the service people) and it was my favorite spot in the entire building.

: Not far from the entrance, we get into another tutorial fight. Natan, with his dual revolvers and “GUN-FU”, goes first. God dammit why couldn’t he have been the main character. It would’ve been Turok except less bad.

: You’ll notice we have a few new attack options. These include “High Angle” and “Knock Down”. Let me explain what those do.

: If you look up in the top-right, you’ll see two blue bars next to the enemy’s name. This indicates what kind of attacks can hit the enemy - the bottom bar is “low”, middle is “mid”, and the top bar is “high”.

: The best example I can give is that Shania’s main damage spell only hits “low” targets, which means that if we run into anything that’s flying, we’ll need to knock it down first for her to hit it.

: We also get introduced in a brief tutorial to the “Combo” and “D-Combo” options. Combos are neutered from how they were in Covenant - you have to spend Stock to use them. What they let you do is have each of your party members take their turns together, which can be used to burst down enemies.

: I should mention that Shania, like Yuri, cannot use magic the way Johnny and Natan can - instead, she has to use Fusion. Fusion does not take up a turn in a combo, meaning that the one real advantage Combos have is letting you get a Fusion off for free.

: D-Combo, by the way, is a Combo that takes two Stock instead of one and allows you to Double with each character, meaning you get potentially six attacks off at once.

: Right around the corner, we run into the second enemy type here - Sergei, which is supposed to be some kind of cursed monkey. Naturally, we need Johnny to waste his turn Snapping.

: You might notice we’re missing card 3 - that’s because card 3 is the Deep One that Shania fought in New York. Most bosses don’t allow you to Snap them, you instead have to get their card through a sidequest.

: “He’s out? Or maybe… maybe the beasts got to him first?”

: “Oh man! If so, he might be in trouble!! But, the door’s still locked… hey, let’s search for the key! Maybe it’s laying around here somewhere?”

: There’s only one way to progress, so let’s do that.

: Oh, great, now they’re going to have to re-train Johnny because he’ll get confused when there are doors with no levers nearby.

: Right behind that door is a hallway full of Gagus behind a thin metal grate. I’ve played Resident Evil, game, I’m on to your shit.

: It would, admittedly, have been a really funny plot point if Professor Gilbert was making the 1920’s equivalent to a Minecraft mob grinder.

: “I wonder… but it’s hard for normal people to catch beasts.”

: The camera moves and you can hear Johnny flip the lever off-camera.

: “They’re coming!”

: I had a shot that got a little fucked up. Gagus have 33 HP at this point (they’ll get more once we reach the next cutscene) which puts them just out of reach of being one-shottable by Natan. Shania can one-shot them if she lands three Strikes on her Ring.

: Gagus mostly use Rock Bump or a physical attack that hits for about 22 damage and reduces evasion by 30%.

: Shania levels up off this fight, which doesn’t really do a whole lot. Dusk Proud costs a whopping 20 SP, so the extra 10 SP won’t allow a fourth cast.

: “It looks like the levers open not just the doors, but the cages as well… let’s be more careful from now on.”

: This dungeon is really simple, there’s a few more doors (and one more cage) we can open.

: One of them is a shortcut back to where Johnny pulled the lever in that cutscene to open the cage, and at this point there’s nothing to do but move on.

: We’ll leave this cage for the way back. There’s a chest in it, but up ahead is progress and there’s what’s probably the best cutscene I have seen in a game in a long goddamn time up ahead.

: Thankfully, it’s already been recorded on Youtube. WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION. DO IT.

: If you’re not watching it, this guy’s name is Frank. Frank has an accent that is… unclassifiable. At some points he sounds kind of like the Spy from TF2.

: Frank is a goddamn American hero and also my favorite character of any of the RPGs I’ve done an LP of, even though mechanically he’s a copy-paste of the gay vampire wrestler from Covenant.

: If I ever go to a convention again, there is absolutely no way I am not cosplaying this. What sucks is that I was due to go to a speedrun marathon in June, but that wound up getting cancelled.

: The sound effects at this particular point are incredible, and I really, really want whoever did the character design for this game to take over Persona.

: Natan is like “What the fuck game did I get hired for, I thought I was going to be in the one that at least sorta kinda takes itself seriously.”

: This is another fight against three Gagus, and it’s over pretty quick.

: Trust me, this gets even better.

: This game is mechanically kind of a trainwreck, and that absolutely sucks because the character designer was completely on fucking point for this game with the exception of Johnny.

: My immediate reaction to this was “I bet his original flight plan was to fly from Chicago to New York, and he wound up in South America because he’s Frank.”

: Frank is a goddamn ninja who learned to be a ninja in Brazil, something I think only Frank is capable of.

: Here’s what I want to know. How the FUCK did the Allansons play the Shadow Hearts games and then come away with… whatever it was they came away with to make YIIK?

: Johnny does not understand what Brazilians are capable of. I started on a World of Warcraft private server a few weeks ago with a sizeable Brazilian population and let me tell you, I have seen some shit.

: The biggest crime here is that we did not get a Frank spinoff action game.

: Frank’s weapon is a giant saw mounted to a sword hilt, because Frank is a goddamn visionary.

: Yes. Frank is going to be a permanent fixture in our party. I don’t care if it turns out he sucks stat-wise and I just don’t know, he stays. This is Frank’s party now.

: Doors mean nothing to Frank. Frank goes where he pleases.

: You have no say anymore. Frank is the main character now.

: Next time, we’ll Frank our way through that door and find the inevitable bossfight on the other side. I was kinda without internet for half the weekend, and it’s already Tuesday night.

[Timrod]

Summary

: We might as well pull this lever because there’s a Stellar in a chest in the corner, plus we need to grind stock for Frank. The boss here basically requires that everyone has full stock to start.

: Frank has 8 Sanity, the same as Natan, and is Light element. This is going to be important because the upcoming boss is Dark element - meaning Frank will be our best damage dealer.

: Frank’s only mechanical issue is that his damage ability can only hit airborne enemies, meaning that in most cases we’re going to need a Double or D-Combo to use it.

: Frank starts with three attacks on his Ring, the same as Shania. He also comes with Holy Edge, which could theoretically buff Natan or Johnny’s damage against the boss, but in practice isn’t the best way to spend a turn.

: Bright Rage is a Light-based spell that I probably should have put onto Johnny, since he has nothing else he can do with a Double, but we need to Snap this boss. Apparently, the “No Snapping Bosses” rule only applies to bosses that Johnny isn’t in the party for.

: Frank is about to obliterate this fucking door.

: I love Frank so fucking much.

: The pose here just kinda gets me.

: God dammit Johnny stop being such a little goddamn bitch I swear to god.

: There’s another Stellar hidden in a corner behind the door, which we have no particular need for at the moment but I’ll grab anyway. There’s a save point up those stairs, so clearly the next room is…

: An anticlimax. This room plays the background music that plays when you’re in the university campus, and you can hear people laughing and playing outside.

: The box has a Leather Cap inside, which is a defense-boosting accessory. I toss it on Natan.

: Rarely do I see a game where the cutscene director is this level on point with all of the character animations and poses. It is a goddamn shame that Nautilus got reduced to making pachinko machines.

: Someone get me a goddamn mod for Ace Attorney where you can play as Frank. You could fix how bad most of the cases in The Great Ace Attorney were that way.

: My favorite part of this cutscene is that Shania and Natan are… just kinda there taking it all in. I feel like that’s really the only response a normal person could have to being in a room with Frank.

: I happened to run into a Sergei before the fight while I was grinding stock for Frank, and I’m pretty sure Frank can oneshot them.

: Or, you know, Johnny’s knife will become a lightsaber and impale it through the mouth. That works too.

: Johnny does not deserve cutscene powers.

: “Her power!? If you know something, then tell me now!!”

: This cutscene isn’t canon because Frank would’ve stopped Gilbert singlehandedly if it was.

: Igornak looks like a rejected design for William Birkin’s super-zombie form in Resident Evil 2. It’s actually a relatively easy fight - provided you know how to abuse the combo system. You’ll notice that Igornak starts with a Stock and is going after Johnny, but before the rest of the party.

: Igornak has a three-hit combo, and each hit has a chance to apply Poison. By itself, Poison isn’t too bad - but if you get hit with it a second time, it becomes Deadly Poison. Deadly Poison does something like 10 to 15% max HP in damage each turn.

: What we want to do is immediately launch into a D-Combo. Unfortunately, Johnny can’t do much with a second turn - he can’t Snap unless he’s the last person in the combo.

: Johnny passes to Shania, who does a regular attack and then casts Dusk Proud. One of our side objectives here is to do a 25-hit combo, so we want to pull that off if possible.

: Shania passes to Frank, who uses his regular attack to launch Igornak, so that he can use Ninja Star.

: Frank’s animation for Ninja Star consists of him doing a bunch of Naruto hand motions to make an F…

: And then throwing a giant fuckoff shuriken at the enemy.

: Natan follows up with a regular attack and Slug Shell, his first special attack, to bring the combo counter to 24. At this point, we’ve done well over half the boss’s health in damage.

: One of the major problems with the Stock system is that for some reason, the boss gains Stock during a combo, meaning that you need to save at least half a bar of stock for the end to prevent the boss from Double Attacking.

: Igornak has 500 HP, and we’ve taken off 359 in one combo.

: On its turn, Igornak beats Frank down to 9 HP, because it knows he’s the biggest threat in the party.

: Now, here’s what I’d like to point out. Before the boss’s turn, it had one stock. Johnny used a Hard Hit to remove it… and now it’s back to having a stock again within one turn.

: In the end, we finish the fight exactly one turn before Johnny would have gone Berserk.

: A 25-hit combo gets us a new gun for Natan. If you really feel like using some Handy Tools, getting 100% strikes on the Ring gets you a Lottery Ticket, but given that the strike area lowers on a combo, you’d probably need to TAS it to hit every one.

: The only place we can go is back to Johnny’s office, so let’s do that. Technically, I still need three more Snaps of both of the enemies in the basement, but I’m going to wait on that.

: “No, I’m sorry. Not only has he vanished, but apparently Gilbert wasn’t even his real name. No personal information, no leads.”

: “I see… that’s just great. Now what are we going to do?”

: I know who Frank’s master is, and believe me when I say that whatever your guess is as to who Frank’s master is, it’s almost definitely wrong.

: “Frank’s Master? Is your Master all there?”

: “Of course! No doubt about it. But, Master is traveling around America, so Frank has no idea where Master is…”

: “What, so we have to go out looking!?”

: Wait… hold up. You’re telling me Frank is the goddamn Hokage? I mean, I’m not surprised that Frank is the Hokage, it would make no sense if he wasn’t.

: “Master is a very unique individual, so they’ll surely find her soon!”

: “You’ve got subordinates!?”

: I refuse to believe for a moment that at least two of those subordinates aren’t his kids, whose names are Frankruto and Franksuke.

: “Princess! You can’t mean…”

: “That’s fine with me, but where is it you wanna go?”

: Normally, I’d stop the update here, but there is a scene coming up that is peak Frank, and let’s be real here, we’re all here for Frank. Let’s just step out of the office, and…

: “A ghost? What, again…”

: I mean, it hasn’t eaten him or turned him into orphan soup, so it’s probably fine.

: “Consider yourself lucky. Not many people get to see a ghost. Well, I’m in a bit of a rush, so…”

: This is going to lead to the re-emergence of a running joke from Covenant.

: “Uh, yeah. Sure. Looks like I don’t have a choice…”

: Looks like we found the ghost. We just need to apply Frank. I would not at all be surprised if Frank is a licensed exorcist.

: “It doesn’t really look that scary, though… all right, I’ll just sneak up on it here so it doesn’t get away…”

: We can add stealth to the list of things Johnny sucks at.

: “Wh-Who are you!? Don’t you know it’s rude to creep up on people like that!?”

: “You’re the one who’s creepy! You look like a ghost!”

: “A…a ghost!?”

: Let me explain this for a minute. In Covenant, there was a character called the Ring Soul, who was part of a sidequest of sorts where you’d track him down to upgrade each character’s Judgement Ring.

: Part of the joke was that Yuri kept referring to the Ring Soul as a “Ring Spirit”, causing the Ring Soul to become increasingly dejected.

: “…I’m still an apprentice, though.”

: “I don’t really understand, but that sounds pretty impressive. But what is a person who governs all fate doing in a place like this?”

: “I was looking for something. This little boy had it a minute ago, but… aah! That thing you’re holding there! Let me see it!!!”

: “What? You mean this?”

: “I knew it… it’s a Ring Fragment! Please, please! Give it to me!!”

: “…Well, I don’t really have any use for it, so I guess it’s OK.”

: The rest of this cutscene is a tutorial that I’m going to skip in favor of showing you how it works directly.

: In the menu is a new option called “Customize Ring”, which allows you to do a couple of things. First and most important is changing the number of attacks each character has per Ring.

: Most characters have a maximum of five attacks per Ring - some have fewer. Adding an attack costs an Attack Boost, which in this game can be reassigned freely. I don’t know if they were consumable in Covenant, but I think they were.

: You can also do something the Allansons absolutely should’ve picked up on for YIIK but didn’t because they are incapable of learning anything and change how the Ring works.

: Technical isn’t bad if you have… Handy Tools… in that it increases damage done at the cost of making the hit and strike areas smaller.

: Gamble Ring is only really used for an exploit much later in the game.

: Now here’s the thing the Allansons really should’ve picked up on. You can, at your option, straight up turn the Judgment Ring off. This lowers your damage, but means no QTEs.

: Added Effect lets you put status effects on your regular attacks. Evasion Down is kind of useless, but later we’ll get items that do things like lower defense on hit or inflict poison, which… yeah, I’ll take that.

: Before we leave for the Grand Canyon, we can go back to Gilbert’s office and get a lottery ticket off this desk.

: Honestly, this seems like Johnny’s own fault. Why the hell is he wearing that jacket in… probably Arizona or Nevada, if I had to guess.

: “Anyway… what are we doing out here? Why did you drag us out in the middle of nowhere?”

: We did it for Frank. Trust me when I say what you’re about to see tops the Ninja Art of Unlocking.

: “Uh huh. You looked like a bird, I think…”

: “No, not a bird…”

: I mean, I was gonna say “One of those early 2000s kids with a Deviantart account who got let loose in a Hot Topic that was located next to a Spirit Halloween,” but okay.

: “For a short time, I have this ability… I can borrow power from the Spirits.”

: I mean, unless we’re talking Drakengard here where you sacrifice your ability to talk in exchange for a giant red dragon, or alternatively the ability to eat babies.

: I was very, very disappointed that there was no ending to Drakengard where the baby-eating elf becomes 50 feet tall and has a steel cage match against the giant pregnant demon ladies.

: Seriously, just imagine this giant elf going “I’m gonna make Roe v. Wade look like a goddamn joke” and then she pulls out a knife and fork and goes to town on the giant demon babies who are destroying everything.

: Now, one thing I forgot to mention is that my first reaction to seeing Shania’s fusion animation was “It is a goddamn crime that Frank does not have a Fusion ability where he runs off screen and comes back in a really poorly-made costume”, and that’s when I immediately contacted Salty Vanilla.

: Salty wanted to go with a magical girl transformation like Shania has, and I could not bring myself to say no. Speaking of which, it’s Frank time. We’re just going to… skip ahead a bit.

: There’s a whole village ahead that we’re just going to ignore for now. We’ll see that in the next update.

: At the end of the village is this cactus. There is no indication you can interact with this cactus, but we need to do just that.

: “Yeah, it’s pretty big…”

: “…Boy. After hearing that, what DO you think?”

: “Huh? I wasn’t thinking anything in particular…”

: That’s because you suck, Johnny.

: You know what you should do? There’s no music in this cutscene, so let’s go ahead and put something more appropriate on.

: “Fighting all alone… it won’t lose to this dry earth. What bravery!!”

: “Uh, sorry. I’m not following what you’re saying…”

: “But don’t worry anyMORE! From today, Frank will be with you!”

: RULES OF NATUUURE!

: Why yes, Frank does just so happen to keep an adjustable katana hilt on his person at all times.

: “Aaaack! You can’t take that! Put it back!”

: The gay vampire luchador from Covenant had this same gimmick, except it wasn’t nearly as amusing as the way Frank does it.

: Next time, we’ll explore the Grand Canyon. To finish this off, have some fanart from Warren.

[Dragolord09]

Well Timrod, I wish you luck in completing this game and finish covering The Dark Id’s project in doing all the Shadow Hearts games.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Now that we’ve gotten Frank’s new weapon, let’s look around the Grand Canyon.

: Inventive Ost has never heard of zoning boards, and that’s a good thing.

: The tent behind Inventive Ost has a Silver Bracelet in it, a returning accessory from Covenant. Covenant had an accessory to prevent each status effect, and the Silver Bracelet prevents “Mental Break”.

: Mental Break is a status effect that causes you to lose MP every turn.

: Unselfish Aura sounds like a special attack a Final Fantasy boss would have, only it’s from one of the SNES games and was never properly coded so no one knows what it actually does.

: Right outside the tent is a chest with a Phoenix Tail. The item description reminds me of that weapon story from NieR (another game The Dark Id LPed) with the phoenix that gives away all its feathers to save a starving child, who then stabs it to death and eats it.

: I also remembered that there’s another Ring item up at the start of the area, which we definitely want because this is one of the better ones. Lowering defense is never bad.

: Except The Spirits Within. We don’t talk about that one.

: There are only two more tents to visit - the Chief’s tent and one other. The Chief’s tent is progress and also has a Poison ring item in it, which I slap on Natan.

: “We’ve only come back because we have something to ask you. So, Zonda. I want you to tell me the location of the altar where the spirits of the earth and ocean slumber.”

: “Hey, who’s that?”

: “He is the head of this village. He is also Shania’s betrothed.”

: If I was stealing The Dark Id’s thing, I would put a line here where Natan goes “You do not stand a chance.”

: “I heard their parents, each heads of their respective tribes, decided it. But that’s a thing of the past now.”

: “I absolutely cannot lose, that’s why.”

: This does, admittedly, sound like every married couple I’ve ever known. “Why do you need to renovate the bathrooms? We just renovated the bathrooms last year!”

: “I can’t. I haven’t finished getting revenge.”

: “I need to renovate the bathrooms because they must suffer. That is why I must renovate.”

: They fled because they realized Johnny Depp’s career was about to go to a very weird place and none of them wanted a part of it.

: “What about the Earth Spirit… Tatan’ka?”

: And now we unlock a very simplified version of Yuri’s main mechanic from Shadow Hearts 1 and Covenant.

: “Thank you, Zonda…”

: “Understood. You need not worry.”

: “Lord Nvwoti? I understand.”

: The Eagle Statue is the first of Shania’s upgrade items. Killing enemies gets you Soul Energy, which you can then pump into the statue to upgrade the fusion associated with it.

: Bar Rod is effectively a wind-element version of Frank’s Ninja Star that hits two or three more times. It’s also where I’d go if I drank, but I don’t drink.

: Evil Eye is a Dark spell that can theoretically hit multiple targets, but that’s more or less totally random.

: This cutscene angers me, and you’ll see why.

: “Who’s this guy?”

: “Nvwoti. The Healer of this village.”

: “What did you need from me? If you could be brief.”

: “This? This is what you have been working on all this time?”

: “Hm… this is a good jar. How does it work?”

: That is, admittedly, some 10/10 dialog right there. Fucking nailed it.

: “I’m afraid we are in the middle of an urgent journey. Please ask someone else.”

: “I am sorry, but what else can I do?”

: “…Natan, it’s OK if you take it on.”

: “Princess. But…”

: “You have got to increase your strength from here on out anyway. We just can’t get too sidetracked.”

: “…I understand. Lord Nvwoti, so how does this work?”

: We get like eight different items here ranging from honey to fly paper.

: “I see. However, if I am unfamiliar with the UMA’s disposition and habitat, I have no way to trap them.”

: “True to your title, Lord Nvwoti. But what about the valley’s guards, who let the UMA invade so easily?”

: Now, this is what pisses me off. You have a setting in which it makes sense that Bigfoot exists, but Bigfoot isn’t a party member. Why the fuck isn’t Bigfoot a party member?

: “I understand. I believe I have enough information now.”

: We’ll see how UMA hunting works in a little bit. Before we go out to the next dungeon, Gerard has some new stuff on sale.

: He has a new weapon for Johnny and Shania, which is good because that’s about all we can afford. Gerard also carries the Schofield II for Natan if you didn’t get it off the boss, and the Cactus Saber if you somehow missed the cactus.

: And now we can continue on a single screen before I backtrack to New York.

: The screen immediately beyond the guard has a Ring Fragment hidden in a bush. We’re going to want to cash this in because we have a solo boss fight coming up.

: “Um, hey, I’ve been meaning to ask… just what are these fragments? Why would you collect something like this?”

: “Something like this? How rude! These are the fragments of the Judgment Ring of a person who died unfulfilled. So basically, these are the broken pieces of that person’s Judgment Ring. They’re very precious!”

: “I…I see.”

: “All Ring Spirits have to come to the human world and search for them as part of their training.”

: “I understand that, but… if this is your training, shouldn’t you be the one gathering them?”

: “Yeah, but well, ah… ummm. Ah! Oh no, look at the time! Well, if you find any more, make sure to bring them to me! I’m counting on you! bye-bye!”

: Okay, we’re ready to keep progressing… directly to another cutscene.

: “Huh? Whose voice is that…? Could it be? This wooden pillar just talked?!”

: Frank isn’t in this cutscene, but he should’ve been just to go “Johnny, you saw a guy summon a knockoff William Birkin from another dimension, and this is what you find strange?”

: “To forge a pact with the Earth Spirit.”

: “And what are the qualifications?”

: “What should we do, Shania?”

: “There’s no question about it. No matter what the trial, we’ve come prepared to handle it.”

: The ‘trial’, in this case, involves running one screen to the left. However, now that we’ve talked to the pillar…

: Random encounters are on, and even worse, we get surrounded on the first one.

: Our two new enemies are Maii and Tonakh.

: Maii is kind of annoying in that it builds up stock fast, but it likes to cast Mirage for a 30% dodge bonus that… actually, it never really did anything in Covenant, and it doesn’t do anything here, either.

: Johnny’s “Evasion Down” skill also procs pretty frequently, especially compared to Poison or Sp. Def Down.

: Tonakh only has 34 HP, but can inflict Small Ring, which… honestly doesn’t do much apart from halve the size of the Judgment Ring. Everyone but Johnny can kill these in one turn.

: If you want to get all the Snaps, you need four Tonakhs and two Maii, but I’m going to wait on that.

: Just to the left is the mural the pillar was talking about. Even though it’s pretty clear, we have to go up and “search” it for it to count.

: I get the hare and deer, but… why the frog?

: There are three different questions Dohkwibuhch can ask, and it’s randomized on a per-game basis. The mural is always the same. For reference, the other two questions are “Assume the hunter catches his prey and procures two horns. How many animals remain?” and “Above the head of whom does the sun on the mural shine?”.

: The third enemy type here is “Argen Tabisu”, which is a pretty clear mistranslation of “Argentavis”, an extinct species of giant bird native to Argentina. What they’re doing in the Grand Canyon is a mystery.

: Argentavis hits 3 times for a good chunk of damage, and has pretty good odds of inflicting Mental Breakdown. This can get really ugly if an enemy manages to combo you - which can happen easily, as there’s a chance that a Maii spawns with a stock.

: There is one thing that prevents these encounters from going into bullshit territory, which is that the enemies here cannot Double Attack, only Combo. This means that if you have one enemy alive with Stock, they’re never going to use it.

: “Then why are you and that guy so unhappy about it?”

: “In order to make the pact, Shania must do battle with the Spirit, alone, and win. However, even if she makes the pact successfully, she still has to allow another life into her body. Something normal humans can’t withstand.”

: “Can’t withstand? Will Shania be alright?”

: “She’ll be fine. If worst comes to worst, I will defend her with my life.”

: Worst comes to worst, Frank will make contact with Bigfoot. I want to see Frank make contact with Bigfoot.

: That’s not really a question, but okay.

: Our job now is to go through a couple of screens and look at all the murals. Honestly, this reminded me a lot of Dwarf Fortress, where it is not uncommon for a dwarf to go into a hallway and spend several weeks carving elaborate pictures of themselves eating cheese while screaming into the walls.

: Near the last mural is a Pocket Watch, which negates Ring effects.

: There’s also a pretty well-hidden chest near one of the earliest sets of murals that has a Shield stellar in it. Shield reduces Physical damage, while Barrier (which we also have) reduces Special damage.

: It’s kind of a crime that the game will not accept “A lot”.

: We take about another three steps before we wind up in front of a third talking magical wooden statue.

: This part has some important items, and is also where Bigfoot hangs out. I wonder if Bigfoot is friends with the statues.

: Red Nova is important because it’s a spell that also acts as a Hard Hit - this means, as far as I can tell, that you can Hard Hit twice on one turn by using a Double if you really need to nuke an enemy’s stock.

: This spot is a straight line across from where that chest is, and this is where we can find Bigfoot.

: “Should I set the trap here?”

: If you say yes, you’re given a list of items to use as bait.

: Now, we all know the correct answer should be “Nothing at all, because Frank has known Bigfoot for years and they are best friends”. Yes, I am getting Salty Vanilla on that.

: God dammit! Why is Bigfoot invisible!? This is some bullshit!

: Now, here’s the dickish part. Johnny goes first, but as I’ve mentioned before, he cannot Snap during a combo unless he is the last person in the combo. We do need a snap of Bigfoot, even though that makes no sense.

: Bigfoot hits pretty hard, and so we want to get him down quickly, but not so quickly that Johnny can’t get a Snap of him.

: Frank goes last, and we get a new option: Combo Magic. Combo Magic is only available to the final person in a combo or d-combo, and only works if you have full Stock.

: Frank can call in an orbital laser because of course he can.

: Unfortunately, Combo Magic can miss. That’s not great. It’s time for some, uh, Handy Tools.

: With around 40 HP left, Bigfoot nukes the hell out of Johnny using Red Nova.

: Johnny gets the Snap of the invisible Bigfoot… and then Bigfoot Doubles.

: In two attacks, Bigfoot has nearly killed Natan. Thankfully, Shania finishes him off next turn.

: Most of the UMA fights drop something - in this case, we get another Totem for Thunderbird.

: In this case, we get the ability to lower the SP cost of Thunderbird’s spells. 15 Soul Energy is cheap enough, so I go ahead and pump it up.

: Johnny leveled up after the fight, and now has 6 SP. The extra buffer is nice in case we run into a longer fight.

: Rapid Shot is a straight upgrade to Slug Shell that hits one more time. The only difference is that it only hits Low, while Slug Shell only hits Mid.

: Next time, we’ll get Shania a new fusion and have a run-in with the mafia. There will be Frank cutscenes.

[beast_of_burden]

Man, The Dark Id. I used to read his archived LPs during high school, and actually saw The Third Birthday one live. I hope he’s able to get his wish of living at least longer than Kissinger. I was going to check if I had the right person he wanted to live past, but the new Twitter automation system killed his account.

[Timrod]

You’re completely correct, it was Kissinger. I’m kinda pissed they deleted his account, but at the same time, I think he’s the kind of person who would prefer to have his account deleted rather than it staying around forever. Part of me does wish that someone had archived his tweets, simply because he was such a foundational LPer.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Back at the final statue gate, we run into one of the two murals just south of where we fought Bigfoot.

: Just past it is a well-hidden Third Key. I’m pretty sure this is meant to be used in the upcoming boss fight, but we have “handy tools” for that.

: The other mural is maybe a screen to the south. I ran around for just a little bit to get Shania back up to 2 stock, because the upcoming boss fight kinda sucks if you don’t use that Third Key.

: He’s not joking. The boss is effectively on a timer, and if you screw up a QTE or happen to get a random miss, you’re probably going to lose.

: We want to make sure that Shania has her maximum number of attacks. I considered turning it to Technical, but didn’t wind up doing that.

: You can’t see it, but Johnny smacks right into Shania when she stops.

: This fight would have been a thousand times better if it was Frank trying to drink Bigfoot under the table.

: The first thing you should notice is that Tatan’ka starts with a full stock gauge. We have to remove that immediately and keep it down, otherwise he will remove potentially 80% of Shania’s HP in one go.

: I could have fused into Thunderbird, and the only reason I didn’t is because there’s not much of a reason to. Thunderbird’s best spell only hits High, and we will never have the stock to Double.

: Tatan’ka’s standard attack hits three times and does about a third of Shania’s max HP in damage. If he’s ever allowed to Double…

: He has the potential to use Red Nova, which not only hits for almost as much damage as his physical combo, but also removes a full stock bar. Getting hit with this means the fight is now unwinnable.

: On Tatan’ka’s third turn, he gets to go twice, with one of those being a guaranteed Double. This is why getting hit with Red Nova is a loss - with two turns and a Double, Tatan’ka can very easily instakill Shania.

: As long as you’re consistently hitting Strikes, you can win this fight with just physical attacks in five turns.

: Because I went a little overboard on the “handy tools”, we get a Hit Area Expand for hitting all Strikes.

: Shania gets a new tattoo, which immediately made me think of Sae in Persona 5 and her canine-themed tramp stamp.

: Oh yeah, speaking of fusions, Salty Vanilla finished that picture.

: Frank has had enough of this weird pelvic tattoo shit, and moves to claim this cutscene as his own.

: The ninja whispers something unintelligible into Frank’s ear while some odd sound effects play.

: I beg you, someone make a mod for the PC version of Persona 5 Royal where during any cutscene where Akechi or Makoto show up, Frank shows up and does this and the cutscene is over.

: Johnny, stop trying to be the protagonist, you cannot beat Frank.

: Speaking of Frank, Salty Vanilla also sent me a sketch of Frank being best friends with Bigfoot.

: There is a lot of cutscene here.

: Now, I get what they’re going for here, but this is time they could have used on more cutscenes with Frank in them.

: What an original name. I’d make a joke about Christine Love’s “Ladykiller in a Bind” here, but there aren’t enough lesbians here for that.

: “Shania! Are you feeling better now?”

: “Yes, sorry for worrying you. I’m ready to go anytime.”

: We have Tatan’ka now, and could power her up - but we won’t, because we have 90 Soul Energy and we’re going to pump it into Thunderbird instead.

: Arc Gale is a full-party buff spell that costs roughly 40% of Shania’s MP at this point. It boosts speed, which means more turns, which means more stock. We’ll be opening boss fights with this.

: Chicago is now open, and because we already turned in the Bigfoot sidequest, there’s nothing else for us to do.

: This whole thing feels like a bootleg Yakuza cutscene.

: I’m not kidding when I say that Frank can oneshot the mafia.

: There is no way Al Capone will not be a boss fight at some point, given the track record of the first two games.

: “Yes. She’s been in this town for a few months now it seems. But…”

: “But?”

: “It appears my men were chased off by the mafia for some reason before they could see the Master…”

: “That’s no good. Well maybe…”

: We have to go around and talk to some NPCs, so we might as well do that.

: The Pisces chart comes with a number of stellars pre-installed, so let’s grab that. It’s not hard - I missed it by a pixel on my first attempt and used some ‘handy tools’ to get it the second time.

: I did a search to see if McManus was a real person, and no.

: Oh man, are we gonna get to see Frank wrestle a tiger?

: “A great big cat…?”

: There’s a Hit Area Expand in a box near Gerard that I grab and put on Frank’s first attack. Frank’s first attack is a little annoying to hit with the input lag from the emulator.

: We can go into the bar to progress the plot, so let’s do that.

: Someday, I want to see the mariachi equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse, where they do mariachi music about the “Dark Quinceanera”. I can guarantee it would not be good, but it’d be amusing as hell.

: I did do a little digging into the Irish mafia scene in Chicago around this time, and from what I can tell, the McManus family is based on the North Side Gang, who were rivals to Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit.

: The North Side Gang wasn’t really an “Irish” mafia, outside of being led by a gangster by the name of Dean O’Banion for a few years until he died in 1925.

: At this point in history, though, the North Side Gang was being run by Bugs Moran, who was of French Canadian descent. The thought of a Quebecois mafia is actually kinda hilarious when you think about it. The other mafias have to subtitle their dialog in both English and French, or the Quebec mafia won’t deal with them.

: In reality, Capone spent almost the entirety of 1929 in prison.

: “A really strong bodyguard…”

: I looked it up, and according to Wikipedia at least, most states had no minimum drinking age at all before 1933… except Connecticut, because Connecticut apparently sucked just as much in 1929 as it does today.

: As soon as we leave the bar (and change screens), we run into the mafia.

: We have two new enemy types, the “Petty Mafioso” and “Mafia Hoodlum”, who I’m pretty sure are re-skins of the Thug and Fat Thug from New York.

: Annoyingly, this is the only place you ever encounter these two enemies… and of course, we need snap cards. In fact, we need THREE of the Petty Mafioso.

: Technically, we can get snaps of both enemies in the arena sidequest later on, but I don’t really want to do that.

: Frank can oneshot the Petty Mafiosi, so I have him do that and leave the other one alive but at low HP so we can farm Snaps.

: The mafia guys can inflict Fast Ring and Tight Ring - the first is self-explanatory, the second shrinks the Hit and Strike zones on the Ring.

: For our efforts, everyone who isn’t Shania levels up.

: This is Frank’s mafia now. Admittedly, ninjas would probably be really, really good at bootlegging.

: “What!? The Master’s orders?”

: “We don’t know either, but, he seems to be a student of Mao.”

: “Oh! That would be a big help!”

: We can grab a Lottery Ticket from a chest here, which is an alley to the left of where we entered Chicago.

: And now we can enter the club. Yes, that’s a club and not a casino. Don’t ask me, I don’t know.

: This confirms that Johnny’s camera probably once belonged to Anastasia Romanov, who was a party member in Covenant. She had a camera, but it worked as an Enemy Skill kind of thing.

: “So you know about them too, huh? I got this camera from my butler. It’s really incredible. If it takes a picture of a living being, it prints out the picture as a card, and for some reason it doesn’t need film.”

: There’s no way Lenny isn’t following us somewhere in the shadows and reloading the film when Johnny isn’t looking.

: Edgar was the person who invented Anastasia’s cameras, which he traded to her in exchange for clockwork eggs. At this point, Anastasia is probably busy trying to marry Yuri’s cousin.

: “Wow. You really know a lot about cameras. Are you a famous photographer or something?”

: “Umm… Masatoshi Moreno Yamaguchi… 3 year consecutive Snap Master in 1913, 14, and 15…”

: Yes, I checked. No, he’s not based on a real person as far as I know, though there is a Masatoshi Yamaguchi who directed both of the live-action Kaiji films.

: “What’s a Snap Master?”

: It is canon that Frank can do this at will, except he gets a team of those Brazilian soccer announcers who get incredibly excited about everything.

: This sidequest is how we get all the snap cards for bosses that Johnny isn’t in the party for.

: “No, I don’t think so… are you a collector?”

: “Wow. So maybe some of those collectors would be willing to take my snap cards off my hands for a good price!?”

: “Sounds pretty interesting. Maybe I should try and collect some snap cards myself.”

: We’ll leave it here for now, since there’s even more very long cutscenes coming up. I also may have spent several hours working on The 25th Ward this week trying to get two updates out.

[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.