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

[Timrod]

Summary

: I realized we never turned in the last UMA, so let’s do that quick in order to pick up Natan’s final UMA hunt. I also got the replacement for my old LP drive installed this morning. I have named it Frank.

: This is misleading, because we can talk to Nvwoti again and get the final UMA request without even leaving the tent.

: If I was writing this, it would be Bigfoot with the Tsuchinoko on his head.

: “Calm down. When you get like that, I cannot understand what you are saying.”

: “Hm. And where is this UMA?”

: “The end? The end of the earth?”

: Ever since Innocent Sin, I will never be able to read the words “I just heard a rumor” the same again.

: “You became so excited over such limited news?”

: We need to head to Arkham now, but while we’re there, we can finally cash in all of those steps we’ve been taking with the pedometer.

: This is Ricardo’s final armor, and will be useful when we do his final sidequest in the next update. We could theoretically grab Natan’s before doing his quest… except it requires us to clear every Pit Fight.

: “All right! Thanks!”

: We can then exchange our steps for prizes. I wind up buying the Hit Area Expand and Strike Area Expand, because the Ultra Belt is kinda pointless at this stage in the game. There’s just not enough slots.

: “Went missing?”

: We’re right next to the Pit Fights, but I want to wait until we’ve done all of the other sidequests first, including all the grinding for Mao’s bullshit.

: You remember how we got a Cure stellar in here right at the beginning of the game? Do you remember where that was? I hope you do.

: The research file is in the same spot.

: “This seems to be their file. Let us take a look.”

: If they got Private Hulk, we’re probably pretty fucked.

: The Guiana Highlands are a real place that stretches from Venezuela (which is apparently where the dungeon is in this game) to northern Brazil.

: We’re controlling Natan now, and the first thing we want to do… is leave the Guiana Highlands and go back to the Grand Canyon.

: “What’s this, all of a sudden…”

: “…!? That gun?!”

: “…How could I forget? That was the first gun I held.”

: “Hey, what are you guys talking about?”

: “…”

: I’m… not entirely sure how this makes sense. Natan told us earlier that he was from the same tribe as Shania. I guess he’s adopted?

: I looked this up, and it is actually plausible - there are, in fact, black bears that live in parts of the Grand Canyon.

: “I could not pull the trigger. I was frightened by the beast before me, and of the weapon in my hand. Because of my fear, my mother lost her life.”

: “My regret still runs deep. Regret that I could not pull the trigger. That I couldn’t save my mother… and though I held the utmost power in my hands, I could not handle it. Thus, the gun is my chosen weapon now.”

: “Of course. I am a warrior of Garvoy. I will not succumb to the same fear twice.”

: “I appreciate it. And I will make a pledge now. When I pull this trigger, it will not be to take life, but to save it!”

: I think Natan has revolvers confused with the medigun from Team Fortress 2.

: Now we can go back to Guiana Highlands.

: There’s a skeleton here that Natan reacts to, so let’s investigate.

: Hulk must have gotten a posthumous promotion to Officer.

: A few steps in, we run into the welcome wagon. Seymouria (the little raptor things) have 155 HP each and can inflict Fake Ring on hit. Soldes (the flying one) has around 300 and can use Red Gravity.

: The enemies here also tend to be pretty fast, so getting stock nuked like this is pretty common.

: We want to head off to the left first.

: Now we have our objective: use bait the UMA doesn’t like to force it into a particular position, at which point we feed it and attack after it goes to sleep.

: We can then head off to the right from where we entered.

: You know, I’m not sure I get the timeline of what went on here. These guys came down here, started researching the UMA, went back up to Massachusetts to hide their notes, and then came back to Venezuela one by one and died?

: I went to look up where we go to start setting the bait, and I found something very important: BEFORE YOU SET THE BAIT, HARD SAVE THE GAME. DO NOT TOUCH THAT SAVE. The reason is because apparently there’s some kind of bug where you can get permafucked if you use the wrong bait.

: Being wary of this, I decided that instead of trying to item hunt as we place bait, we’ll item hunt first. Back to the left side we go.

: This goes on Frank. Unlike the other two P-Defend Downs, this one actually triggers fairly often - and it’ll be invaluable when we’re going up against bosses that will not allow us to buff.

: I also tested out Natan’s final ability powerups. With the Missing 51, Natan sucks a lot less than he used to - his specials are now definitely worth using over his regular attack.

: We can also go up into the boss arena to find the Thief Earrings, which increase both money and item drops - in other words, they’re useless unless you’re trying to grind to max all the star charts.

: There’s also a Lottery Ticket here, which I suppose we could blow on more Hit/Strike Expands. The rest of the items we can grab while setting the bait.

: If we go north from where we found Vince’s body, we can find the first bait point in a small alcove off to the left.

: Here, we want to bait the area with honey, which gets us a random encounter with a bunch of Seymouria.

: “It disappeared… no. It is putting distance between us, and watching us.”

: We then need to head to both of the larger bodies of water in this area - one is in the southeast near where we found Vince, and the other is in the northwest corner.

: We want to plant a Maiden’s Hair at each of the spots.

: This tree is near the north-western pool of water, and we want to plant Gold Ore here.

: The Morpho Scales go here.

: Here, we apply Fly Paper. We now have all the trees marked, so it’s time to actually bait the UMA again.

: Johnny, that’s not a UMA.

: Finally, we need to head to this waterfall - it’s right across from where we planted the honey earlier - and set out the last bait item, the Hare.

: “Its thirst for blood has gone away. Perhaps it is now full. Full beasts should return to their lair.”

: “It’s not here.”

: “…Uh, isn’t that a problem??”

: “Of course. Brace yourself, it is coming.”

: For the record, I went into this fight with a really unoptimized star chart loadout. There are much better ways to do this fight than I did it.

: This thing is Mudopkan - it’s Light-element (which is admittedly not great because I forgot to bring Dark Edge for Frank) and has 5,000 HP.

: Mudopkan has Ring Abnormality, which sucks - not because we can’t avoid it, but because it works like Johnny’s Snap ability and increases Mudopkan’s speed for a turn.

: Our new strategy in fights is to have Frank (and whoever winds up with SP-Defense Down 3, which comes from Ricardo’s dungeon) attack until they manage to land their Ring effects. In this case, Frank gets it on his first attack.

: We then have Hilda cast Arc Surge, followed by Johnny casting Rage on Frank and Natan. This gives both Frank and Natan an effective damage increase of 72%, not counting the 20% from the Demon Earrings.

: The trickiest part, and one which requires extensive use of “handy tools” that I probably would not have needed if I had Dark Edge, is landing both Natan and Frank’s regular attack as part of a D-Combo.

: This screenshot, by the way, is with Natan being the second one in the combo chain. That 72% extra damage is REALLY nice.

: Frank brings the total over 3,000 with a regular attack (he has Wind Edge on to not take a damage penalty) and Fast Snowball.

: The party at this point in the game is DISGUSTINGLY overpowered.

: We could have done even more damage with Dark Edge, but this will do.

: The second pair of Demon Earrings is going to be split between Natan and Mao, depending on who we’re using. For the foreseeable future, it will probably be on Mao for cat coin farming.

: The Seal of Strength is going on Frank to make him even more overpowered, because at this point I think the only thing that can outdo Frank is a 72%-buffed Hilda.

: “I regret having to put it in the jar. Let us bring it to Lord Nvwoti.”

: “Yes. While an enemy, it is an UMA worthy of respect. Please take good care of it.”

: Soul Valet is Natan’s final skill, and is… yet another anti-air skill. Why do we have so many of those?

: “I understand. It was a good experience, this hunt. Please accept my thanks.”

: I wish I could invest in a UMA-based retirement plan.

: “I see. Well then, to protect you into your old age, we are going to return to the original purpose of our journey.”

: This kind of makes me want to bring Natan to the final Pit Fight, which… you’ll see. From the New World is the only Shadow Hearts game where 100%ing the game without anyone dying is… very hard.

: As a bonus, let’s do this Pit Fight, which requires Natan.

: Natan has a short voice line here that does not at all sound like it’s even from the same voiceactor.

: He does a dance with his pistols, which admittedly kinda rules.

: It’s not really that great, possibly because it has the same fucked-up scaling that Slug Shell and Rapid Shot did up until they reached max power.

: This Pit Fight is actually kinda hard at high levels - you need to do a full combo and then kill the Ghatanothoa with Combo Magic - more specifically, Air Shot.

: Next time, we’ll do Ricardo’s final sidequest.

: Also, Salty’s piece about what I thought Frank’s final sidequest would be is done. I honestly thought it was gonna be Neo Turf Masters except Frank rides on a giant squirrel.

[Timrod]

Summary

: To start Ricardo’s final quest, we have to talk to Al Capone back in Chicago. In hindsight, you should probably do this one second out of all the final sidequests because this one is the easiest next to Frank’s.

: “You want something?”

: “Don’t make that face towards me. I just heard an interesting story, so I thought I’d tell you.”

: “What interesting story?”

: Now, if you played Covenant, you might be thinking “Wait, isn’t this just Gepetto’s final sidequest” and you’d be right. At least Nautilus didn’t re-use any assets on this one.

: “For one night only, she revives the spirit of the dead in a doll.”

: “The spirit of the dead…? That’s ridiculous! A guy like you would buy into a preposterous rumor like that?”

: “Ah, but I believe it. That’s why I want you to hear me out.”

: “In that case, why don’t you go see this person called Latisha already?!”

: My favorite thing about this scene is that the entire party at this point knows that you can simply bring back the dead using the combined anger of a thousand dead orphans and a barrel of blue juice.

: “You can’t be serious.”

: “Well, you can go when you feel like it. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

: The Doll House is an incredibly short dungeon that is also a pain in the ass to get Snaps for.

: “Doesn’t mean I believed him! But if I completely disregarded him, he’d lose face – so I didn’t have a choice.”

: “Well that was a long-winded excuse if I ever heard one.”

: “Say what you like!”

: Welcome to the Spencer Mansion Doll House. This entire sidequest, unlike the Doll House in Covenant, is a giant reference to Resident Evil 1.

: “It doesn’t seem like anyone’s here…”

: “Hey! Anyone home?”

: I love that he immediately thinks it’s Johnny.

: “That same voice again.”

: “Yeah, I heard it too.”

: “…Ah! Dammit! It’d be bad form to just go back now.”

: And this explains why we’re going to have random malice demons running around a house in Wisconsin.

: We want to start by going in the double doors in the middle.

: “That voice again. Where’d it come from?”

: “It couldn’t be… no, it’s true. The voice came from the doll.”

: “This doll? It looks like it’s not fully upgraded yet.”

: “What’s going on…! Hey, what are you?! If you’re a doll, why are you talking?!”

: Ricardo, you are standing directly next to a guy who magically came back to life after drinking a barrel full of unidentified blue substance. Also a talking cat and a lady who turns into monsters.

: Yep, we’re doing a dumbass Resident Evil puzzle.

: “Shoot! There’s no point talking to you now. Fine. I’ll go look for your ears.”

: We now want to exit this room and go into the red door on the right.

: This is going to go on Ricardo for now because he’s completely useless compared to Frank and Hilda.

: We now have enough Fruity Fiber to get Hilda into Slim Mask form three times using only items. I’ll probably use two of those in the Gate and the last one in the bonus dungeon.

: Shortly afterward, we get into our first random encounter.

: The thing in the middle is called Kareau, and we need six Snaps of it. The one on the right is Gresiru, and we need EIGHT Snaps of that. The roaches are called Gregor (and are a returning enemy from the older games) and we need TWELVE FUCKING SNAPS of them.

: The problem is that this dungeon is very small, and going between doors resets the step count for random encounters. By the time I finished this dungeon, I still did not have max Stock on everyone.

: Hilda can absolutely fuck this dungeon up and instakill everything but Gresiru with Red Gravity, and can instakill Gresiru if she uses Floral Ray instead. Gresiru is an annoying piece of shit.

: You see, Gresiru has Spirit Ward - the bullshit “fuck you, your character is dead” spell that Tamaris had back in the Garland Residence. This means we have to nuke them before they can get a turn, which makes getting Snaps a pain.

: Unshapely my ass.

: I commissioned this a while ago, but this is a plush of Salty Vanilla’s design for the protagonist of The Silver Case.

: Okay, so we know that animal hide ears are the best ones. The door behind Ricardo has another puzzle we can’t do yet, so let’s instead go out to the foyer and through the left door.

: There’s not much in this room apart from three tables with ears on them. We can only take one pair at a time, and the animal hide ones are in the back.

: “How’s that?”

: “Looks like it worked. So, answer my questions then. Who are you? How can a doll talk?”

: “And so you got trapped instead?”

: “I think I understand the situation. Before her spirit turns evil, do you have something you want me to do?”

: I’m picturing Hilda trying to talk Frank into letting her just burn the entire house to the ground.

: “Hmm… I only came to meet you, but it’s become something much more involved. Well, as long as I’ve come this far… so how do I dispel the barrier?”

: “The ruby and the lapis lazuli, right? Got it.”

: The eyes are in the bedroom, which is behind the door we saw earlier in the back of the room with all the books.

: Just above the black-eyed doll is Ricardo’s unique accessory. It’s… kinda bad.

: I had a set of dice made from lapis lazuli. They wore out really quick.

: I do not like that eye, Charlie. Its smug aura mocks me. It’s evil!

: This one plays a faint screaming sound when you hit “yes” - it’s really quiet and I wouldn’t consider it a jump scare.

: This is like a less murderous version of Hymir’s Finger/Iron Will from Drakengard - the Guts knockoff sword that gets heavier every time it kills something.

: It doesn’t matter what order we put the eyes in, so long as we have the blue/despair eye in one and red/rage in the other.

: “Don’t worry about it. After this, I have a favor to ask of you, too.”

: We’re effectively done with this dungeon… except that I had to farm stock and snaps, which… yeah I kinda gave up on that shit for a few days.

: We can trade 10 Gregor cards to this mysterious jazz man in Harlem for Ricardo’s final weapon.

: We can also trade him a single Cucumber Roll Snap in exchange for Snaps of all of the Sushi Men - including another Cucumber Roll, so we don’t even really lose a card.

: Theoretically, we could trade Snaps of several of the Sushi Men (note that Octopus and Fatty Tuna were both bosses that Johnny couldn’t be present for) for some special cards.

: We COULD do this, given that Octopus and Fatty Tuna are both in pit fights, but I won’t just yet. Assuming we did, though…

: Yes, there are Snap Cards for all the party members. I don’t know why we couldn’t just… I dunno, Snap them ourselves, but whatever.

: Before we go to the boss, I use a couple of Seals and also equip Mirror Bracelets on everyone.

: “Huh?! W-What?!”

: Oh great, another dumbass who thinks he can raise the dead.

: Ah, the old Maiden Astraea gambit. I mean, technically we did already pillage and/or plunder this entire house, but the boss has a Crucifix and we want that.

: “That’s not the way it works. You guys put the owner of this house into the doll, right?”

: “Not only that, but if you stay like that, your spirit will turn evil. Actually, a lot of beasts have been summoned to this house. You won’t be able to get out alive.”

: “Hey. Are you listening to me?”

: “You think she’s your girlfriend…? Wake up! That’s just a doll. Your lover is dead. If you keep her like that, you’ll also lose her spirit forever. We must return the doll maker to her body quickly. Then you can have her return your lover’s spirit back to the other world!”

: “What? You couldn’t have…”

: “And Clyde, you agree with that? You took her life, for this doll…?”

: “Good grief! It’s too late then.”

: “But you’re not you. You’re already not yourself. You became an evil spirit long before.”

: “Now that I know you are evil…”

: Well, shit. Clyde just got sent to the Own Zone.

: Dana is a potentially very difficult boss fight.

: Dying hits EXTREMELY hard. This by itself is enough to kill Hilda in one go.

: Not even Frank could survive that. Time to reload.

: On Attempt 2, I discover that Dana is - at least as far as I can tell - immune to having her physical defense lowered. I have Hilda attack to lower her magic defense instead.

: With the Hooligan Lantern, Frank can do absolutely disgusting amounts of damage with a regular physical attack. This is with Rage and Heat Edge (as Dana is Water-element) on Frank.

: At this point, Frank’s abilities are little more than bonus damage. Fast Snowball and Demon Bomb do around 450 damage.

: Hilda follows up with Pumpkin Bomb and Floral Ray for another 1300 damage. At this point, we have broken the game in half.

: Johnny adds another thousand damage using trash spells. This is what sucks about Johnny - there’s not really much of a reason to give him the good spells when Hilda exists.

: Ricardo follows up with Combo Magic and Dana is dead within three rounds or so.

: The second pair of Warlock Earrings are going on Shania - unfortunately, we can’t give Hilda both of them. 504 Soul Energy should be enough to max Shania out.

: “We didn’t wind up helping either of them.”

: I mean, that’s about what I’d expect from this party.

: “Yes. There’s also the doll maker. We can’t leave without saying anything…”

: By the way, on an unrelated note, I bought the Mario RPG remake. The remake has a little badge on your save file if you manage to Snap every enemy. It also has Stock. The Shadow Hearts curse is real.

: “Freed… when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad… but your body…”

: “…I’m sorry. I couldn’t do anything for you.”

: “Huh? H-hey! Wait!”

: “…Ah.”

: This feels like a cutscene you’d see in a Super NES game.

: “Edna… but I still can’t forgive her. The person who stole you from me, or myself, for having to end your life…”

: “But…”

: You have to love how Ricardo has all this angst and Edna goes “Yeah I came back from the dead, bye now!”

: “Me?”

: “I won’t laugh. I wonder what it is… I can’t wait.”

: “…Thank you, Edna.”

: “Wait! If we only have one night, can’t you stay longer? We still have time until daybreak. So, until daybreak…”

: Spanish guitar music plays and the screen fades to black. We could go grab Ricardo’s last muse item… except it kinda sucks. Instead, let’s go right back to the boss room.

: Searching the chair Dana was sitting in gives us this, which goes on Hilda. This is going to be very useful against a couple of bosses in the Gate.

: What we really want is this second Crucifix, which goes on Frank. The first one is on Hilda.

: “I found it… this is it…”

: “What’s that?”

: “Edna left this for me. Looks like something’s written here… it’s a half-finished musical score…”

: “So I see. It looks like you were able to meet her after all. But to think she’d write a song… why would she do that?”

: “That’s obvious. It’s for me to finish by my own hand…”

: The Unfinished Score is why Ricardo’s unique accessory sucks. Let’s just take a look at it in battle, shall we?

: Yep. The Melody: Rage ability costs 600 MP - this is with a 20% discount from the Priest Earrings, and even with the 20% MP boost from the Oracle Earrings, Ricardo does not reach 600 MP. In fact, without those accessories, the earliest Ricardo can cast it is level 65 - which is to say you’re not doing it short of New Game +. With them, I think the earliest you can do it is level 50 or so.

: You might ask what it does that would make it cost that much MP, and the answer is that it gives a Third Key to the entire party (except Ricardo himself). The only party member this is going to be useful for is Frank.

: The good news is that we have enough Soul Energy to fully max out Shania. There’s still one statue I need to grab from a Pit Fight, but once we have that, we can do her sidequest.

[Timrod]

Summary

: To get Shania’s last statue, we have to do this particular Pit Fight. This one SUCKS to do early on because you have one character, so doing anything less than a one hit kill is probably not gonna work.

: There are two fights, both against enemies from Las Vegas. The first is two Butchers and a Ghoul, while the second is six mafia guys.

: The entire thing is like six minutes of Frank using Fast Snowball followed by Demon Bomb to clear one enemy at a time. If you get lucky, the enemies will bunch up and let you hit more than one at once.

: In hindsight, what I probably should’ve done is used Hilda, given her the Gathering stellar, and then had her use that to pile the enemies together and wipe them. Whatever.

: We now need to level the Owl Statue all the way. I checked, and merely having the statues isn’t enough - you do in fact need to fully level all of them.

: The funny thing is that Thunderbird is an objectively worse Tatan’ka when fully leveled. It has worse stats in everything except Agility.

: “Yes. The bindings of the pacts were quite painful. Yet now, it feels like I’m the one who has received power from the spirits.”

: “…So you knew all along? I am born of the Garvoy, but my homeland has already been destroyed by that woman…”

: “My village?”

: I mentioned this before, but the ending you get is determined by one thing - that being if you finished this sidequest or not. This is why I saved this particular sidequest for this late in the game.

: It is possible to do this one earlier if you were to go to the Gate and fight a couple of bosses (which isn’t necessarily a bad idea, since the fourth and final Crucifix is in there) and use that Soul Energy to level everything.

: What I’m probably going to do is clear the sidequest up to the boss, save the game, record the boss fight, and then go back to the pre-boss save and grind Mao’s dumb bullshit so that I have an easy path to recording the bad ending.

: We’ve now unlocked the final location in the main game, not counting the post-game dungeon.

: “Yes. There’s no trace of it left now… but this is where Natan and I lived up until three years ago.”

: “That old lady said something pretty meaningful, but I wonder what she meant…”

: “This feeling… is it fear? Why…”

: “W-what’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?”

: “The spirits are stirring inside of me… is there some power in this village…?”

: “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

: “No, there’s definitely something here. Let’s search. That’s why we came here.”

: There’s not much here to do apart from going up that ramp in the background… except, you know, find an item critical to the good ending hidden in scenery, because this is Shadow Hearts.

: “Yes. Our village was built vertically on both cliff faces of the valley. If anything’s here, it’ll most likely be found in the upper levels that the average villagers avoided.”

: Shortly after, we get our first random encounter. Tsui Zooi are firmly within one hit kill territory for both Frank and Hilda. Xukrus is significantly sturdier, but isn’t really a problem because it spends most of its time casting Seal for no effect.

: The third enemy type is Ignis, which has around 375 HP and SUCKS. They can cast Apathy, but generally won’t unless someone can be hit by it. Instead, they prefer to use Red Gravity as a Stock nuke.

: If we keep going up the path, we eventually come to this gap on the left side.

: “Yes.”

: “The ladder?”

: “In this valley, there are lots of these sort of crevices. When everyone was still around, there were ladders placed across all of these crevices so you could walk across…”

: “If we put the ladder across the crevice, we can cross…”

: Now, the funny thing about this to me is that you’re probably looking at this and going “Wait, if people needed to cross this gap multiple times on a daily basis, why the fuck didn’t they build a bridge?”

: Oh wait, they did… just not over the other gap for some reason. Off to the left is an Angel Souffle in a chest, which we no longer care about.

: I also give La Sirene a try. La Sirene sucks. Current Breath is a single-target spell that does Dark damage, just like the rest of Shania’s spell list.

: The problem with Shania at this point is that her damage sucks. Even Johnny is out-damaging her at this point. With her unique accessory, she becomes slightly less bad but still bad.

: The building on the right has a Lottery Ticket in it, but we don’t really care about those any more. The stairs have a gap in front of them, so the only thing we can do is head off to the left.

: “If we use this ladder, we can cross that crevice back there.”

: There’s a dead end just around the corner with this in it.

: On the way back from where we got the ladder, there’s the second statue for Shania’s final fusion.

: Now we want to head back to that first gap.

: “Father? Shania’s dad?”

: “Wild Mist… he was a great warrior. Even with the gun arts I possess now, I do not know that I can beat the chief.”

: “Huh…”

: “Look, Natan. Back then, I couldn’t have even dreamed of lifting these up, but now I can hold them steady in both hands.”

: “Yes. Seeing the Princess like that reminds me of the old chief.”

: “I’m not strong enough to be called Wild Mist. Neither my body, nor my heart… but, I’ve finally gotten one step closer to him…”

: I hope when we get back to The 25th Ward that Uehara has a scene like this where he goes “I’m not big enough to be called Big Dick. Neither my body, nor my dick… but, I’ve finally gotten one step closer…”

: Wild Mist is Shania’s final weapon. We probably won’t use it much, but we do want it just in case because we have another one of those spirit fights coming up.

: There’s also a Strike Area Expand around the corner, which I make sure to grab.

: Now that we’ve got the weapon, we can move the ladder and make progress. Garvoy Valley is also a fairly short dungeon.

: There’s one last Fruity Fiber here, which should give us enough for the post-game dungeon. My goal is to cheese as many of the bosses there as possible using Mask Hilda.

: “The Altar of the Sky? So that’s where you…”

: “That’s right. That’s the place where I made my pact with Thunderbird.”

: This room is a great place to grind Stock. You see, most of the bridges in this room are trapped.

: Going on the trapped bridges gives you a fight against 6 Tsui Zooi, which the party can easily get down in a single turn.

: We also want to grind as much Soul as possible here. I don’t think I’ll need to bring out the “very handy tools” for this, but we do need a shit-ton of Soul Energy to level all these statues we’ve found.

: The path through this room is pretty straightforward. We start by going to the left from the entrance.

: “Shania…”

: “I’m not depressed or anything. I was just thinking about the past. I think that it was around here… near a round house connected by four suspension bridges, I buried treasure when I was a kid.”

: What is this, Innocent Sin?

: The bridge going to the save point is a trap, so let’s instead go this way.

: The middle bridge has a Thera Extract at the end, and the top bridge is progress.

: Here’s the house Shania was talking about. For some reason, the game doesn’t give you the ? over Shania’s head, but her unique accessory is right here. You can just mash X near the building and you’ll get it pretty quick.

: “What’s that?”

: “A dream catcher. Among us, it’s a charm known to trap bad dreams.”

: Oh yeah. I made one of those in an art class as a kid.

: “When I was small, I was crying after a scary dream once, so my mom made it for me. As it turns out, it’s now my only keepsake from her…”

: “I see… but why did you bury it?”

: “It’s a silly story. Boys in the village teased me, saying ‘Only babies are scared of their dreams!’ So I hid it. It was really important to me though… but thanks to me burying it way back then, I can hold it once again now.”

: The Dream Porter is an accessory that’s only really useful in random battles. With a Double, and with the Warlock Earrings on, Shania can ALMOST pull Frank or Hilda numbers. Almost.

: I have to wonder if the reason Shania’s damage sucks is because they balanced it around her starting every battle with full Stock, even though this thing is obscure as fuck to find.

: South of that house is the save point, but more importantly…

: I love that they put one of the most vital endgame equipment pieces in a random piece of scenery. At least the other ones were in boss rooms.

: To the right of the Dream Porter house is the third statue for Shania’s final fusion, also inside a random piece of scenery. Keep in mind we need all of these for the good ending.

: From there, the Sky Altar is one bridge away.

: “Yes. There’s nothing left here now, but… three years ago, the day after Lady destroyed the village, this is where I received the power of Thunderbird.”

: Uh, Shania?

: “So I could get my revenge, see? …Huh?”

: Before we go any further, we need to make some… adjustments… to Shania. I take all of Hilda’s accessories and put them on her, along with a Flare Brooch. Sure, she’ll be burning through 6 SP a turn, but that’s 11 turns - plenty of time to kill the boss.

: The final statue is here as well.

: “I have no memory of it either. This door shouldn’t be here…”

: At least we don’t have to farm demon rumors to open it.

: “This light… where is it trying to lead us…?”

: Clearly this is the yellow light of Piss, the third ingredient of humanity.

: We get a fully-voiced cutscene here, which leads me to believe this was originally going to be a main part of the game instead of a side dungeon.

: I mean, of course you do, you’re standing right in front of Frank and Hilda.

: “The spirits inside me… they’re staring to stir.”

: My first thought was “Wait, Johnny can’t cum, he doesn’t have genitals”.

: “Who’s… that?”

: “That voice… Chief?!”

: “Father… it’s you?”

: I mean, it wouldn’t be a Shadow Hearts game without the protagonist fighting their dad to get the ultimate fusion - apart from Covenant, where you get it from the Roger Bacon that exists in your soul.

: Now, this would be real easy for me because all I’d have to do is go into the boss arena and ask him how to turn the surround sound in the living room on. The last time I did that, he spent half a day pulling the entire thing apart.

: “Protect…? What is this altar?”

: “The symbol of life… could it be…? Does this have to do with the woman attacking our village?”

: “Everyone in the village… just for the altar!?”

: “But wait! If I gain the power of the Sun spirit, does that mean I can avenge everyone?”

: This is what makes me think Garvoy Valley was originally a main dungeon - if I had done the Gate cutscenes, we’d already know this.

: “Yes.”

: Pictured: The party I’d rather do this fight with.

: Spoiler alert: I’m ditching Johnny’s dumb ass for the final boss.

: “He seems like a little bitch.”

: “Father…?”

: “Father! This is against our custom!”

: I’d be pissed too if I had to take Johnny to fight my ghost dad.

: “I promise.”

: Tirawa has 2100 HP, starts with a Stock, and gains it at an absolutely ridiculous rate. I want to say it’s nearly 1 stock per turn.

: That said, we do not want to let Tirawa Double, because it’ll use Shine Zephyr potentially multiple times. Shine Zephyr is a lifedrain attack that heals Tirawa for an amount equal to the damage it does.

: Tirawa also has a physical attack that counts as a Hard Hit and does a pretty good amount of damage. Now, the problem is that on my first attempt, I didn’t realize how much damage Tirawa does.

: Here’s the best way to solve this. We want to open with Johnny using a Double to Snap and do something to remove Tirawa’s initial Stock. The optimal thing to do would’ve been Red Gravity, but I didn’t have Johnny’s chart upgraded enough so I just used Vacuum instead.

: Next, we want Shania to Double and use Arc Surge and Arc Shield - I used Arc Barrier by mistake, but Arc Shield is more effective because Tirawa’s physical combo hits much harder.

: Johnny is going to spend his turns doing nothing but healing.

: Assuming you don’t get unlucky and have Tirawa hit Shania, you can Double the next turn to use Ebony Cluster twice. I got unlucky, but 300 damage with an Ebony Cluster isn’t too bad.

: One thing I didn’t show is that once you’ve done around 1300 damage, you’re going to want to stop damaging for a turn and have Shania cast Arc Gale, possibly Doubling to refresh Arc Surge if possible.

: Sunlit Vale is effectively a countdown timer to the boss wiping you. Getting an unlucky Shine Zephyr here is… bad.

: This is the point at which you go “Fuck it” and put Johnny into Awaker mode. Johnny uses Dual React, and with Shania using Ebony Cluster it’s enough to take Tirawa down.

: I didn’t take a shot of it since I finished recording before equipping it, but Thor’s Belt is a pretty nice accessory that gives +9 Physical and +10 Special attack. This goes on Frank only because I don’t have the room for it on Hilda.

: The thing is, there’s virtually no reason to use any of Shania’s other Fusions once you have Tirawa.

: “Father, your voice!”

: Let’s take a look at Tirawa. Unlike Shania’s other Fusions, Tirawa burns through 7 SP a turn. This still isn’t a problem given that she’s got 66 SP, but equipping the Flare Brooch isn’t a bad idea.

: Tirawa is also non-elemental, which is kinda nice.

: I start pumping the “extra skills” statue right away, and unlock Tirawa’s other two moves. Sanlittobello is Shania’s version of Sunlit Vale - it works exactly the same way, buffing EVERYTHING by 30%.

: Sanlittobello is how you counter all those bosses that nuke your buffs - you use Sanlittobello when Shania has a turn next to someone else, and then have the second person initiate the D-Combo.

: Tirawa starts with Shining Zephyr, and Sun Flare is a 30-hit AOE that hits all three height zones.Leveling Tirawa this far puts her a few points shy of Frank in Strength and about six points behind Hilda in Power.

: We have enough to get most of the important stuff, which… we actually won’t be using much in the near future, because up next is Mao’s eternal hellgrind for cat coins. I might take my time on that one.

[Timrod]

: It happened. For those of you who don’t know, The Dark Id’s last post on Twitter before his account was disabled - the one where he announced that he was dying - was that his dying wish was to outlive this motherfucker.

: I don’t know if The Dark Id is still alive or not, but I hope that he is, and I hope that he got his wish.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Grinding for cat coins is hell.

: The main problem is that Cat Touch sucks as an ability. At this point in the game, it’s doing maybe 70% of one of Mao’s physical attack strings, and this is with Mao having the minimum number of attacks on the Ring.

: To do the second film shoot, we need 10 Octopus coins and 5 Mackerel coins. While I tried doing this in Uyuni (because the enemies in Uyuni also drop higher-rank coins) the best place to farm Octopus Coins, hands down, is Chichen Itza.

: In Chichen Itza, you can get either one or two Octopus Coins per enemy, while also doing the fights with Mao alone - this saves on turns versus doing it in Uyuni or the Garland Residence where you have to cycle through Frank and Hilda.

: Before I do the next fight scene, I go and grab Mao’s final weapon - mostly because it’s easy but also because at this point I’m assuming the guide I’m using is correct. It isn’t.

: “Suspicious characters?”

: The person we’re looking for is directly across the street in the back room of McManus’s bar.

: “If you’re hiding here… you must be a leftover from the McManus family? Stop hiding and show your face!”

: “Aren’t you… Genaro?! What’s it been, three years? You disappeared so suddenly, I thought for sure you got scared and ran away. What have you been up to?”

: “Huh? I ordered you to go to China?”

: “Ah… now that you mention it, I vaguely remember… it was a drunken request, I’d forgotten about it.”

: “Well, I was young then too. I drank too much that day. But anyway, did you really find it?”

: It took me a while to notice the wanted poster for George W. Bush behind Mao, along with a more accurate picture of Al Capone. I have to wonder if that was a texture replacement or not.

: Admittedly, it would’ve been funnier if it was Dick Cheney or Henry Kissinger.

: “This is…! From the feel of it, it’s not just any alcohol. Something’s different…”

: “Good job. I’ve put you through a lot. I’ll put in a good word for you with Capone. I’ll see to it that you’re properly rewarded.”

: At this point, it’s been a month since the last update. I farmed exactly enough cat coins for the second fight scene, and then my will to finish this grind kinda vanished.

: Mao is mechanically the worst character in this game, and if I wasn’t playing this for the LP, I probably would’ve said “fuck it”, done the final dungeon, and then put the game down without ever finishing Mao’s grind.

: Okay, let’s film this second fight scene. Surely, we’ll get an ability that will make Mao suck less. Maybe Mao will prove to be like Natan and be less garbage once her sidequest is done.

: “Aren’t you an underling here too?”

: Sammo Meow (why the fuck didn’t they go with Sam-meow Hung, it was basically free) is a reference to Sammo Hung, who is probably the second best-known Chinese martial arts performer after Bruce Lee.

: Sammo Hung is known for being… I definitely wouldn’t call him fat, because really he’s built more like a football linebacker. He’s just kinda big. He directed and starred in a parody film called “Enter the Fat Dragon” where he played a Bruce Lee impersonator.

: “Fat Cat? Well, that seems suitable, but you look more like a pig to me.”

: Oh, right. I should mention that Mao is based on an actress named Angela Mao, who is also a martial arts performer and was in several films with Sammo Hung… including Enter the Dragon.

: Now, the thing is, I can almost guarantee you that if this game had come out four or so years later, Mao would’ve been replaced by a reference to Ip Man, who was in fact alive in 1929 and had two biopics made about him… both directed by Sammo Hung.

: Sammo Meow has something like 520 HP (the guide is wrong) and goes down in two turns. It sucks, because I’d rather have him than Mao. There would’ve been some good interplay with Frank.

: We won, and now we’re clearly going to get something that’ll make farming these coins suck less…

: Nope! Instead, we get what is arguably the most useless character skill in the game. Cleansing Spree removes all status effects and Ring status effects on all characters.

: Why does this suck? Well, mostly because we’ve been able to do that since Machu Picchu. In fact, we have several Arc Heal stellars that do exactly the same thing, and can slot them into the myriad of healing slots we have.

: And now we get to go back to farming cat coins. For the next scene, we need 15 Scallop Coins, which are a bitch and a half to get. They drop as early as Vilcabamba, but the best drops are in Garvoy Valley.

: The only really significant drop for Scallop Coins outside of bosses is Xukrus, which drops four of them. This is the best source because it requires the least amount of effort in terms of getting the enemy to the point where Mao can Cat Touch it to death (~199 HP) without having Frank or Shania kill it by accident.

: Half an hour later, I have enough coins for the next fight scene. I really, really wish the developers had the foresight to go “What if people just… don’t use Mao?” and would let you use Bream or Shrimp coins in place of the lower denominations.

: This cat does circles with his arms in a way that is very obviously a reference to The Karate Kid.

: “Looks like he’s getting psyched up. So this next guy is…”

: “What are you doing?”

: “Who in the world is Daniel… I asked you what you were doing.”

: Cat Morita is a very obvious parody of Pat Morita, who died five months after this game released. Pat Morita is probably most famous for playing Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, but he was also the voice of the dragon in Mulan (and was in Kingdom Hearts 2).

: Now, I’m not saying it’s the Shadow Hearts curse that killed him, but all I’m saying is that if in 20 years when the pachinko machine company that owns Shadow Hearts goes bankrupt and the rights get fumbled into the hands of someone who actually intends to release a sequel or a remake, please do not put me in a Shadow Hearts game.

: “Hm, you think a doddering old man like you can beat me?”

: “Like I’ve been saying, who’s Daniel?! In any case, if you’re really going to get in my way, you’d better be ready.”

: Cat Morita is weak to Instant Death, and I forgot I had that equipped on Mao from back during the Man Festival. Speaking of which, there’s a picture Salty Vanilla finished that I never posted.

: Yep, that’s a whole lot of crap we’re never going to need.

: We now have the final power up for Cat Touch, which increases its cost to 64 MP. This allows us to… farm another 15 Scallop Coins, along with 20 Shrimp Coins. Joy. For this, we’re going to want to head to Aito Cave.

: The final version of Cat Touch really isn’t much better than before. It hits for around 270 damage, which is absolutely anemic even compared to Dual React.

: Anyway, farming for Shrimp Coins sucks ass. There are very few enemies that drop more than one at a time, and Aito Cave is the only place where almost every enemy drops them.

: What sucks about this is that all but one of the enemies in Aito Cave (those being the big fuckoff punch golems) are one-shottable by Mao, so having anyone else in is a waste of time… unless the golems show up.

: Probably another 45 minutes of farming later, we have the coins for the fourth actor. Surely, this time we’ll get… I dunno, maybe an ability with an AOE on it?

: This is because Meowara is based on someone who is very much still alive - her name is Ryoko Tani, and she is an Olympic gold medalist in Judo who retired in 2008 to go into politics.

: Her first gold medal win was a 36-second match against Lyubov Bruletova, which I tried to find a full video of but was unable to, apart from some really shitty old footage with music playing over it.

: This video shows the winning throw, which is admittedly most of the match.

: As for where the “Meowara” comes from: Ryoko Tani had the nickname “Yawara-chan”, which comes from a manga of the same name by Naoki Urasawa that was published in the early 80s.

: It’s kinda wild that Urasawa went from a kinda horny manga about judo to doing Monster and 20th Century Boys. Oh, and Pluto - which I guess is where most people these days would hear of him from.

: “Well, aren’t you polite? I’m impressed.”

: Good luck with that. Judo wasn’t added as an Olympic sport until 1964 - and even then, as far as I’m aware, that’s because Japan used leverage (they hosted the games that year) to have it added.

: “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

: You know, I wish they had somehow gotten the rights to Ryoko Tani’s appearance, because she’s another person who would’ve been a better party member than Mao.

: She could have prevented that whole scene in Uyuni by fucking dunking the Awaker into the ground in under a minute.

: “Are you really bragging about your love life to me? Well, whatever. I’m also fighting for my lover. I am not going to hold back when beating you to a pulp.”

: Meowara is kind of annoying even at end-game levels, and is the reason we want to wait until now to do this. What happens is that at a certain percentage of her HP, she casts Cure All.

: You can either abuse “handy tools” to get around this, or just beat her in one turn.

: Demon Ward halves random encounters, which is bad because we barely have enough Soul Energy as is.

: This is kinda weird given that all of Mao’s weapons are sake. So, what’s it do? Is it… an actual attack?

: Nope! It’s useless garbage. Mao really is just Curvy Hilda, only without the ability to turn into Slim Hilda and do some of the best damage in the game.

: Anyway, for the next fight, we need to farm 25 Bream coins, which is a fucking nightmare because the only two places that drop them are Garvoy Valley and Guiana Highlands, and…

: Oh my, is that Baldur’s Gate 3? How did you get here? You sure seem like you’d be a lot more fun than farming these stupid cat coins…

: Oh, and… is that a preset that almost kinda looks like Frank? Ironically, Frank’s voiceactor was in a game with a create-a-character mode, but it’s one of Owlcat’s shitty Pathfinder games.

: Next time, once I get bored of Baldur’s Gate, I think we’re just going to finish the game. We have to go through most of the Gate to get to the bonus dungeon anyway, and I really don’t want to farm any more cat coins.

[Dragolord09]

Shadow Hearts curse, how and why does that work exactly?

[Timrod]

It’s something The Dark Id joked about when his computer died shortly after starting his LP of the first game.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Now that we’ve done almost all of the optional sidequests, let’s go talk to Roger in Johnny’s basement.

: “Now, using my magic, I am going to show everyone the memories left in this room of the events of that day.”

: “You can do that?!”

: I mean, that’s what I imagine the Emigre Document was for - pirating cable. The whole resurrecting the dead/immortality thing was a fringe thing.

: “Yes. I can’t do it for a long duration, but seeing just before and after the ritual should be enough. Let us begin!”

: He can’t do it for long because Roger is still in the process of inventing VHS.

: This game really has some of the best reaction screenshots I’ve ever seen.

: There’s a fan-made mod for Resident Evil 2 where you play as Kendo, the gun shop owner who dies in the first ten minutes of the original game. Kendo can time travel, and the end is him going back to Resident Evil 1 and killing Wesker as soon as he enters the mansion.

: What I’m saying is this should have been a scene where Frank jumps through a time hole, smashes Johnny’s breakable Metroid tube, and then dunks him into the trash.

: This was the exact look on my face after hours of grinding for cat coins. Seriously, I did like eight hours of pure grind back in the Persona 1 LP for Mark and Nanjo, and it didn’t feel nearly as bad.

: Bitchslapped.

: I know I reference Metal Gear a lot, but to me, this will always be the “Japanese Animes” pose.

: “Back in the past, Lady was your sister. But… don’t believe for a second that Lady and Grace are the exact same being. It’s Malice that is responsible for giving form to the dead, but it’s Will, the blue light, which constructs both the dead’s mind and its memory.”

: “The truth is… she gave away to her brother… all of the Will that was poured into her!”

: “She’s a completely different person?”

: “Better to think of her as a separate life form…”

: I dunno, this just doesn’t do it for me. It worked in the first two games when Yuri cried over Alice’s death because Yuri wasn’t a bitch.

: “Is that what you’re trying to say?!”

: “No, I’m not! But still… even if we just left her alone… the Gate won’t open anyway then… isn’t that right?”

: “Perhaps… and perhaps not.”

: “More precisely, he is the brother of the original owner of her body.”

: “So all of that talk… of a human Lady if the Gate opens… a lie?”

: “Please accept my humble apologies.”

: It’s strange that the game hasn’t told us yet what Gilbert is hoping to get out of all of this. I’m guessing it’s going to be a last-minute reveal due to cut content.

: “I know I deceived you and I admit that! But please, make no mistake! It is Lady’s will to want that Gate open!”

: “Lady’s will?”

: “She is, after all, a creature of Malice. Maybe all she wants is to return to her own world…”

: This feels to me like the writers originally intended to have Killer kill Gilbert here, but then decided it was too much of a tone clash given… you know, the whole rest of the game.

: “The Gate still won’t open either way, right? It’s too late!”

: “Wait! Don’t give up yet! There might still be a chance, you know? Now, I don’t want to sound too presumptuous… but it has been quite a long while since the blue light was released… and the Gate has yet to disappear!”

: “I’ve read, the reason is… it’s because of the large amount of Malice in the world… and it’s in epic proportions!!”

: “Get to the point! What are you getting at?”

: “The Gate won’t disappear?”

: Frank looks like he’s about to call his agent.

: I feel like this game happened before writers stopped falling for the “villain doesn’t have all the plot items” bit. You know, shit like Final Fantasy where the villain has six of the seven magic crystals, but the party has the seventh and the villain can’t do shit without all seven.

: “I have now finished telling you everything… everything you wanted to know. But what you choose to do is your decision. Only you can make it.”

: “I’ll have my ship repairs finished! So if you all insist on going to the Gate… I can help out. I’ll give you a ride.”

: Our only choice is to go back to Johnny’s office.

: From here, we need to talk to everyone.

: “Be a man and act decisively! Hesitating will get you nowhere!”

: “…So, there’s no need to push yourself if you can’t take it, OK?”

: “I killed Edna with my own hands… and I can never take that back. Just think about that.”

: “I explained the reasons for this while we were in Aito Cave. Please think about what I have said.”

: God I wish Frank was the main character. We all know Frank would choose family and become an objectively better Dominic Toretto.

: “But! It is for this very reason that Boy MUST decide! You can worry and fret… but you must think carefully.”

: “The Princess is in Brooklyn… you need one word from her more than all the things we have told you, right?”

: “One word… from Shania.”

: “Honestly, I’m confused…”

: “I don’t know if I can fight her when the time comes.”

: “She was always splitting her candy with me… and she’d take on anybody who picked on me. We played lots of practical jokes, and when my father found out, she’s the one who took all the blame.”

: “It seems like… my sister was always doing everything for me.”

: “I can’t believe it. How could she kill so many people? And try to destroy the world…?”

: “Hey Shania? I know you’re chasing after Lady to avenge the members of your tribe…”

: “I’ve thought of nothing else but defeating her… it’s filled every waking thought for three years.”

: “You know… I could be totally wrong about this, but ever since we traveled… when we went down to South America… you’ve been different, and weird…”

: “At the Chichen Itza ruins… I received the Kiss of Malice.”

: “What?!”

: Shania could get corrupted and become a stupid looking boss at any moment, only to get struck down in a single D-Combo from the rest of the party.

: “So… even if we defeat Lady… you could still…”

: “To be honest with you, I don’t really know.”

: “But say you do go crazy… I promise if you’re don’t know what you’re doing, I’ll stop you.”

: Not a typo on my part, that’s what it actually says. Also, I think about the only thing Johnny could do in that situation is complain.

: “I will!! No matter what, I’ll stop you! Just like Ricardo did…”

: “I’m glad you feel that way… and I’d do the same for you.”

: “This time… I’ll end it!”

: On the way back, we can grab the second and final Flare Brooch of the game. Just so this update isn’t all cutscene, I’ll do a little of the Gate.

: …Except that as soon as we leave the very first screen, there’s another cutscene. Great.

: “I’m not trying to thank you… but I’ll protect you. As long as I can… 'til I die.”

: Honestly, I think Killer would’ve been far more effective as a character if they ever explained what it was he sees in Lady. I mean, I get he’s supposed to be an analogue to Yuri, but still.

: “Not a very good brother, are you? Don’t you even care about your own sister’s happiness?”

: Johnny looks like some kind of fish mutant with his mouth open at that angle.

: “She doesn’t want to destroy the world!”

: Killer with that “Well… shit.” expression.

: “I couldn’t care less if this world is destroyed! As long as I can be with Lady, I’m happy.”

: “I have a wish too. It’s to kill that woman!”

: “This kind of talk really isn’t my style. If you go against Lady, I’ll cut your hearts out.”

: He’s correct, in that this time we have three people completely protected against his particular brand of bullshit.

: Well… fuck. I forgot to change the party over.

: Malice Killer resembles a couple of Yuri’s fusion forms, but he’s not really that much different from when we fought him before.

: We start off by having Shania fuse into Tirawa and cast Sanlittobello, which… fucking owns. I didn’t know if it gave the full 36% for a Ring Perfect, but it does.

: This is how you get around those bosses that remove buffs - you have Shania apply them in one turn, and then launch your D-Combo before the boss can go.

: Malice Killer has a lot of potentially very nasty attacks - everything he does is a stock nuke, and he is capable of inflicting Chain as well as Instant Death.

: Red Crest also nukes physical attack on its primary target, which would be very bad if it hit Frank.

: Fortunately, Malice Killer only has around 4200 HP, and Hilda hits him before his opening turn to get him down to under 4000.

: Also, due to Sanlittobello giving a speed buff and Johnny getting a speed bonus until his next turn from Snap, Malice Killer never actually gets a turn.

: In fact, Malice Killer doesn’t even make it past Frank. The only thing Shania did the entire fight was cast Sanlittobello. Johnny was also present.

: Supposedly, Malice Killer is vulnerable to P-Attack Down, but he’s also vulnerable to Frank critting him.

: We have reached levels of Frank not previously thought possible. The 420 Soul Energy is also quite nice - this gives us enough to max two of the Tirawa statues and nearly max a third.

: So what you’re telling me… is that Killer… is Dead?

: Admittedly, I don’t think even Yuri could stand against Frank. Just can’t win against the konyaku.

: A bunch of malice lasers hit the door.

: The wheel starts spinning.

: If there was any justice in this world, there would be an option if you’ve done all the sidequests to find Frank’s nuke in the ninja village and have him end it by tossing it at the gate.

: A World of Frank.

: Next time, we’ll see what’s beyond the Gate. I also had Salty Vanilla draw what the final boss fight of Mao’s sidequest looks like, because I couldn’t find any footage.

: The final boss is, of course, Garfield.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Meh, Frank can handle that.

: This is mostly low-level shit that we could kill in one hit.

: I’m picturing Frank coming back with a couple of 2x4s and a hammer and boarding the portal up.

: “So you know my answer!”

: “So it’s a no-brainer.”

: Mao acting like she’s going to be anywhere but the bench.

: This looks like someone’s first attempt at making a campaign map for the Xen portion of Half-Life.

: I guess I’m just not feeling this cutscene. Maybe it’s the clashing colors or the background being a mix of puke yellow and red.

: “Yes, but that right light… if we stay here for too long, we may all go crazy too.”

: “Shania, are you OK?”

: “Yes. I can bear this much.”

: The first thing we want to do is turn around, because there’s an item we can get now that Killer is dead.

: Red Crest is a spell that will only ever be good on Hilda, because it’s effectively an upgraded Red Bounce (read: a launcher) instead of being a Hard Hit like Red Gravity.

: There are two paths branching off from the entrance that contain items - nothing particularly good, except for a Thera Extract on the right side.

: The enemies here are ridiculously weak if you’ve done all the sidequests - most of them have less than 200 HP, they usually start clustered up, and as a result we can easily end fights in one turn.

: The downside is that we need a shit ton of snaps, which means equipping the Panoramic Lens. This isn’t really a problem, given that we have no reason to make Johnny use Fusion.

: One nice thing is that the battle bonus for killing all the enemies before they can move is usually a free stock gauge.

: “What a creepy tree…”

: “The red light’s blocking the way… I wonder if this tree’s rejecting us?”

: Here’s a better shot of the enemies now that I have the lens equipped - the floating thing is Phobos, the spider-looking thing is a Bokrug, and the toads are Ispus. I have no idea what any of them do.

: Now, here’s a part I don’t find particularly well designed. This area is located at the start of the right-side path from the tree. Can you tell where we’re supposed to go?

: That’s right, we’re supposed to take the northern path that you can’t even see from that screen.

: I feel like if this game was released a few years later, the camera would’ve done a pan down here once we ran into the barrier.

: This boss is called the Malice Soaker. Its main gimmick is that only basic physical attacks work on it. This isn’t really a problem for this party because of Frank.

: The good news is that Malice Soaker will almost always get hit by Physical Defense Down, and between that and Sanlittobello, even Johnny can do kinda okay damage to it.

: The boss primarily attacks by using third-tier spells, and if it gets a Double will use Ivy Bind (which probably inflicts a status effect, but I wouldn’t know because we have three party members who are totally immune to those) and then a third-tier spell.

: The damage is pretty weak, in any case.

: Because Hilda has the worst physical damage in the party, I use her first turn to drain some negative calories, bringing her down to -25. This will help us conserve Fruity Fibers later.

: We also get a 13th Fruity Fiber from the boss, which can drop either a Fruity Fiber or an Angel Souffle.

: And with that, the gate is now open.

: “Yes… I felt something evil in that tree.”

: “It doesn’t matter why. Let’s just worry about catching up with that woman now.”

: Another left/right split path. If you look really closely, you can see Gilbert just kinda standing there on the right side. Honestly, I don’t know why I even bothered to pick this up, but…

: The cutscene plays this airplane whooshing noise and zooms in on Gilbert, which is actually kinda funny.

: I’m not kidding when I say this cutscene is going to take longer than it will to fight Gilbert.

: “So what do you think? It’s rather comforting… isn’t it though? This world, and all of its cozy evil…”

: “Shame… you just don’t get it! The majesty… the awesome power that flows throughout this world… this is my kind of place.”

: “We’re not after you any more!”

: “What will happen when all of this power flows out into the world? You won’t have to wait long to find out, will you?”

: “The weak… as well as those who are strong. All are able to bask freely in this power! Just like this…”

: And now Gilbert is some kind of dumbass looking arm monster. I love how we never really learned anything about Gilbert - he was just kinda there.

: This monster design is probably loosely based on Vampire Hunter D, where the titular character has a left arm that is… I think possessed by something… and it makes a face on his left hand.

: “Just imagine how it will be then… the sheer beauty of it all…!”

: “Allow me to bring all of you inside… join me in this glorious quest…”

: Malice Gilbert starts with two Stock and has a number of pretty nasty attacks - he can use Evil Crest to reduce magic attack, which would really suck if he could hit Hilda with it.

: He can also inflict Chain, SP Lowering, and Panic, but we’re not going to see any of that.

: You see, Malice Gilbert has 4,700 HP and is Dark element, meaning Frank has an even bigger advantage than normal. We also have a perfect turn order: Hilda, then Johnny, then Frank, then Shania, all before Gilbert gets his first turn.

: I discovered that Shining Zephyr is actually fucking amazing because it heals THE ENTIRE PARTY for any damage it does.

: Gilbert had around 3900 HP when we launched the D-Combo. This wasn’t a totally optimal combo either, because I could have hit him with Holy Pulse but forgot to have Frank launch him.

: We’ll just have to settle for Tempest. All of this damage is completely unbuffed, by the way - as it turns out, you can’t cast Sanlittobello as part of a D-Combo.

: We will be putting that Fifth Key to very, very good use on the final boss.

: We also have enough Soul Energy that we could upgrade Tirawa all the way. We have all the important upgrades anyway, and I’ll probably save it for the final boss so I can toggle the ending.

: “The Gate’s power…”

: “Those who are filled with greed… will ultimately take this form! I don’t want to think about it.”

: Mao’s fucking face during those last two shots.

: Before we leave, we can pick up that little sparkle in front of Johnny.

: Admittedly, this would’ve been useful before we did the final sidequests, but now… it’s just another generic nuke doing between 350 and 400 damage. I don’t equip it to Hilda mostly because she’d be without a Hard Hit if I did.

: There’s a big looping staircase down here that leads to a couple of items - nothing particularly interesting.

: The Meteor Mask boosts Physical Defense by 10 and Magic Defense by 6. I’m not sure why you’d ever use it.

: Oh, and Hilda’s second-best weapon.

: Now, you might ask, “Timrod, what kind of amazing content do we have for the rest of the dungeon?” and uh… well…

: There’s Len! Len has 650 HP and because there’s only two of them (and they’re almost exactly within range that Frank can hit both of them with Demon Bomb) I have no idea what they do. Frank and Hilda are bullshit overpowered.

: There’s also a rare enemy here I spent a bit looking for but didn’t find. Anyway, onward to content! Surely we’ll fight some new and interesting bosses, and…

: Yep, that’s two more Malice Soakers. The end of this game is about as phoned in as it gets. This is that moment in Dark Souls 3 when you reach Anor Londo and realize From ran out of ideas two games ago.

: So… uh, yeah. That’s the rest of the game. We fight three (there’s one more on the other side) Malice Soakers which are identical in every way to the first one, and then the final boss.

: Next time, we’re just gonna go for the final boss and end this game, once I feel like killing three Malice Soakers and hunting down that rare enemy.

[Timrod]

Hi, uh… I’ve got a bit of a statement to make. Yesterday, on March 3, Slowbeef (who used to be a moderator on Something Awful’s LP board and knew The Dark Id a lot better than I did) posted a statement regarding The Dark Id. You can listen to it here.

Basically, every single thing he said was probably a lie. He never had cancer (he was telling people 10+ years ago that he was dying), his wife was a fake Twitter/Discord alt, and his daughter (the one who suddenly died a few years ago) was never real. I think all this shit only really worked on me because I didn’t know him all that well. It was apparently really fucking obvious to people who knew him better than I did, and I wish someone had told me before I went ahead and did all this shit.

This all apparently came to a head when he told his remaining friends that he was going to die today (that’s March 4, 2024) or Tuesday (March 5, 2024) and that if they saw his gaming accounts online that it was because he had either given them away or they were going to be probated in his will. This is the same shit he had been telling people for over a decade.

Am I pissed off about it? Not as much as you’d think. What I am pissed about is that I spent all this time working on this LP of a game I didn’t even really like, pretending I did like it because I was doing it for someone who was dying, and kinda giving up on my brand of LPing (I would’ve been shitting on this game a lot harder than I did) for it. I’m also pissed that I was spreading disinformation without knowing I was… though I suppose that’s the same thing my aunt (who spent a good chunk of last Christmas telling everyone about a government plot to blot out the sun she saw on Youtube) did.

I had originally planned to end this LP in the event that I heard credible news of The Dark Id’s death, and so I think it’s only fitting it come to an end on this, the day of his death that most likely never happened. I’m going to edit the first post to make it clear what happened, and will then ask the mods to close this thread.

My next LP will be the Persona 3 Remake, as someone else already finished The 25th Ward while I was busy doing this one.

[Timrod]

@moderators

Twilight Zone this, please.