Mother Part #23 - Let Me Be a Friend In Need, Let Me Be a Friend Indeed

Part 23: Let Me Be a Friend In Need, Let Me Be a Friend Indeed

Update 23: Let Me Be a Friend In Need, Let Me Be a Friend Indeed

As it turns out, Brutus isn't doing very well.

Neither Isaac nor the doctor have anything to say.

After Brutus says his bit, the doctor walks over to address Isaac.

Poor Isaac, even the nameless NPC can't give him any real encouragement in his pep talk. I mean, don't get me wrong, the guy's near useless by now, but you'd think they would be a little nicer in story events.

But yeah, here's the biggest punch in the gut in the entire game. They give you Super Kill Guy, only to take him away just as soon as you're used to him providing a significant boost to your party's battle ability. It's actually really effective at hitting you on an emotional level since you're so upset at losing a fantastic party member.

Brutus doesn't have any more to say, but after checking him, it's pretty easy to understand why. Also, I'm going to note my money level. It was about double that before fighting the impossible robot, so it actually counts as a party wipe when handling your money. Luckily, money doesn't mean anything by now, so it doesn't matter, but it's still a bit of a dick move.

Naturally, my first instinct upon reacquiring Isaac is to head back to Valentine and beat up about 30 gang members. I forgot to bring this up earlier, but you can't fight these guys with Brutus in your party, what with him being the gang boss and all. So why did I fight about 30 of them? It wasn't for experience, that's for sure.

It was for this. It's Isaac's best attack item and it's awesome. I'll be showing it off later, don't worry.

So when I was going back to Mt. Itoi, I kindasorta wasn't paying attention and went too far north.

How far north? I reached the worthless docks, that's how far.

There's this one guy way out here.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm THAT great, but... Oh, how about I tell you about some of my great exploits for an hour or so?

One night's rest later...

Yep. All the way out here for a free full heal. Thanks, guy that tells you to go out to the docks because it's so great.

On my actual way to Mt. Itoi, I decide to fry up some seagulls with a power I didn't realize I had.

It's difficult to explain just how nice it feels to do this damage reliably and for only 14 PP.

Eventually, I find my way back. I take the same path I took before. It's not the absolute shortest way, but I had it memorized, so it still didn't take very long.

Along the way, I found a good chance to show off the Flamethrower.

Yes!

YES!

YES!

Yeah, that was basically a free Fire gamma from the worst character. I love the Flamethrower so very much. Two problems, though: 1) you can only get them as drops from BB Gang members and drops don't happen often in this game, and 2) there's a 1/8 chance they'll break when you use them, like all of Isaac's reusable attack items.

Anyways, not long afterwards, I make it back outside, and oh boy, did the game decide I had some karma coming my way.

Last time, I basically brushed these guys aside as nothing special. Apparently, they didn't take very kindly to this and sought to make me pay for it.

Freeze omega is not your friend when the enemies use it. While not as bad as Fire gamma, it's still pretty damaging and attacks everyone.

By the way, I ran into a shitload of these guys and they were all jerks. It is sort of neat to fully understand what things like Freeze gamma does to its targets, though.

Oh yeah, apparently they can make you flustered. Flustered is this games equivalent to standard RPG confusion, so of course...

Yep, he attacked one time while flustered and murdered himself. Good job, Isaac. I'm proud of you.

As a fitting bit of irony, though, they're totally vulnerable to Freeze gamma. Then again, I think everything save the final boss and normally-invincible robots are vulnerable to it.

At any rate, remember this boat?

Yay, we have a functioning boat!

I'd post some music to go along with this, but there isn't any special music for it.

It's just as well, though, since you only use it for about 5 seconds before you run into this whirlpool.

And completely lose the boat in the process.

We end up in this underwater lab-type place. The music that plays is the same music from Duncan's Factory, but this time we don't have to worry about horrifying encounter rates.

The elevator down takes a long time. Stare at this for about 30 seconds and you start to get the idea.

So yeah.

This place is basically just a series of rooms in a straight line.

No sign of life to be seen, not even enemies.

Okay, there are fish, but they aren't in here, just in the lake.

Eventually, you find this ladder.

This very tall ladder.

Almost at the top...

Wait, did I just see what I think I saw? That can't be good.

At the top of the ladder, we find a robot. Not just any robot, mind you, but the best robot ever (okay, maybe not, but you'll understand why I would say that soon enough).

You're going to have to excuse my lack of transcribing here in a second. The text just doesn't have the same effect if it's just typed out.

Now we can understand a little of what happened to George. He was abducted and taken far from home, to be returned at a later date. After his journey, he was a changed man, studying PSI and building legendary robots in underwater laboratories. George knew this day would come and prepared as much as possible with the remainder of his life.

Immediately after EVE's spiel, we are taken out of the lab by the deus ex machina du jour.

EVE is now following our party, by the way. This is the game making amends for everything it has done to you up to this point. How so?

I think you get the idea.

FUCK YOU, GRIZZLY!
Sorry, but he deserved it.

The unspoken important thing here, though, is to keep moving forward and climb the mountain. Don't worry, you'll see why later on.

Unfortunately, the scenery doesn't get any better, but at least the enemies turn into speedbumps and not potential murder every three steps.

It's hard to convey the overwhelming catharsis you get from having EVE just straight up murder an enemy each round of combat.

More mountain climbing...

This is a pretty nasty combo to run into. Suzie is bascially the strongest enemy in the game. More on her later. NuclearRobot is a pain in the ass like all of the EnergyRobots before. Luckily, all I have to do is defend while EVE drops these two like a bad habit.

Ever go for a relaxing hike up a mountain? I haven't, but I imagine it's something like climbing Mt. Itoi while EVE is following you. All you ever have to do is defend and occasionally heal and monsters are more of a nuisance than a credible threat.

It's kind of a nice way to help push you along in the final hours of the game, which traditionally tended to be a bit of a level-grinding slog in most RPGs of the time.

Even better, EVE will have one final trick to take the monotony out of this mountain once and for all, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This little cave is very important.

It has a present, that a bit late, is greatly appreciated in this game.

The Sea Pendant. The last defensive item in the game and it's very nice. All elemental PSI abilities only deal half damage to the wearer. Without a moment's hesitation, this goes on Lisa.

We're almost at the top of the mountain, too.

It's been a nice trip, all things considered.

But you know what they say about all good things, though...

This asshole shows up, even more impossible than before.

Even EVE can hardly scratch him.

R-7038XX only targets EVE, so you don't have to worry about your party members getting one shotted, but we all know the eventual outcome of this just given how the numbers turn out.

We lose the greatest tagalong member possible.

Her explosion is enough to take out the great beast of a robot, but that only goes so far to console you.

Her once seemingly-indestructable body lies still, never to move again.

Sad as it is, this helps us out in our quest.

We gain our second-to-last melody.

Additionally, we get the Memory Chip. I'll get to its function in a minute. For now, remember how I said it was important to not go backwards with EVE following you? Allow me to show you why.

This is the little canyon-like area leading back to the healer's hut, but as soon as you step here...

Same battle you just saw, but a different place.

I always forget that the Check option exists in battle, but when you don't have much else to do, you find ways to occupy yourself.

Following the battle, EVE is lying destroyed here. Aside from not getting the nice trip up the mountain, what downside is there?

The Memory Chip. It returns you to where EVE's body is. This will be incredibly relevant soon, but as you can imagine, you want EVE's body up at the top of the mountain when you teleport there. I wouldn't want to climb this place without some sort of super killbot escorting me.

But back to the present.

We still have to climb a little, but it's not very far at all to the peak.

We are also presented with a perfect opportunity to show off Suzie.

So unlike our old friend the Grizzly, Suzie tends to rely more on PSI powers. She also has a boatload of HP, only 40 less than the Grizzly.

Suzie is also pretty resilient to damage, so Beam beta here is hardly doing more than alpha typically does to most things.

Keen observers will have noticed I had a Death Beam in my inventory at one point. I got it as a drop from a monster. It's the best single-target attack item Isaac gets, but it's not much. I couldn't stand "wasting" the multitarget Flamethrower on Suzie.

Suzie apparently really likes using Fire gamma and it was kicking my ass.

Mark was supposed to be using Lifeup gamma on Lisa here, who was reviving Isaac. Oops.

Here we see Lisa taking half damage from something not-fire, but it drops her regardless.

Suzie also doesn't really fuck around with physical damage, either. Mark's pretty beefy, but that's more than normal monsters do.

Here's one we haven't seen yet and boy is that Sea Pendant already paying off.

If you were wondering what kind of damage Mark has been doing, this should give you an idea. He's generally doing closer to 110 to monsters.

It also just happened to be the final blow, so that was nice.

This whole climing sequence after EVE's death, sans battles, only takes about a minute, even though it seems to drag on forever in screenshot form. Sorry about that.

Up is not the way to go here.

It's left you need to go.

The very last rope of Mt. Itoi, right here.

Here we notice stone with a familiar "XX" marking on it. Well, not just any stone, but what looks like a tombstone.

When we check it out, we get a small amount of a Final Fantasy vibe going on. It's also where this song got its name, if you hadn't already figured that out.