Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter Part #3

Part 3: Odjn

Update 03: Odjn

Welcome back. Last time we got into a few fights, picked up some skills and talked a little bit about the Scenario Overlay System. Today we’re going to finish the Freight to BioCorp level and hopefully advance the plot a bit.

Music: Lift

Stepping out of the lift and into the next area gives us another hint screen whose contents we have already discussed.

There’s a dead Duke on the platform, but he’s not the focus of this image. The darkness makes them hard to see, but there’s a swarm of reddish-coloured bats flitting around to the right.

These guys are Lil’ Lantern Bats, and they simply aren’t worth fighting. They’re fast, extremely numerous, have fairly decent HP despite their fragile appearance and have the ability to cast fire magic. They don’t have anything worth stealing either, so it’s best to simply throw down some bait and run past.

The next hallway contains three boxes, one of which contains a Protein. Protein increases Defence by 1, a small but welcome boost.

Through the door we come to another fork in the path. Going left will take us where we need to go, but there’s something interesting if we take the path straight ahead.

It’s a Mama Nugget!

A Mama Nugget with babies!

A Mama Nugget with babies that Bosch promptly blows up with Dynamite!

Twice!

Then kicks in the face!

Man, Bosch sure is a dick, isn’t he? Still, it’s for the best since Mama Nuggets are very tough cookies. They have a lot of HP and a very nasty magic attack.

That attack being Lightning, an area-of-effect spell that can easily two-shot Ryu and takes a decent chunk out of Bosch’s HP.

Once the Mama Nugget is dead the rest go down quickly. Here’s a quick screencap showing the area of effect for Ryu’s Side Slash skill.

Of course, Ryu proceeds to embarrass himself by missing two out of the three. Perhaps he feels bad that their mother was just blown up and stabbed to death.

Bosch has no such compunctions and slaughters them all, resulting in both party members levelling up.

The Mama Nugget drops another unidentified item.

The real prize is this golden crate. This time the randomised loot is 300 Party XP, which gives us a grand total of 596 extra experience points. I think it’s high time we put some of that stored experience to use.

I pump every single drop of the stuff into Ryu, boosting him all the way up to Lv. 9. There will come a time when we’ll need to be careful how we spend our Party XP, but right now we can afford to do things like this.

Back at the fork, you may notice some objects clinging to the ceiling in the next tunnel over.

These guys are Hychees, incredibly weak maggot-like enemies. They like to try and fall on you, but other than that they aren’t even remotely a threat. Once they’re on the ground they become immobile and won’t even chase you.

Simply attacking them on the field is enough to kill them. You get a small amount of Party XP for doing so, and each Hychee will always drop a Heal Kit. This might not make much sense at first until you recall that one of the NPCs in LowSector mentions that Hychees are edible.

Mmmm, maggot chowder…

The next room has another split path, and once again taking the furthest one leads to treasure, in this case a gold crate containing an unidentified weapon.

The next room seems normal at first, but then…

Music: Imminent Crisis

The music shifts, and we receive a warning that we have entered the game’s first Danger Room. As the text above describes, Danger Rooms lock you in until you deal with all the enemies inside, which can be a pain depending on which and how many of them the game decides to spawn.

In this case the Danger Room is full of various kinds of Duke.

In this encounter we have a regular Duke, a Duke leader and two of a new kind of Duke, the Duke Hunter.

Of the three, Duke Hunters are the most dangerous. Their weapons are makeshift guns that deal heavy damage along with hefty knockback, meaning you have to use up precious AP to get back into melee with them. They also have more HP than regular Dukes, so they’re sure to get at least one shot off.

The only good thing about them is that you can steal Dynamite from them.

Many Heal Kits later the foursome finally die and we’re free to pick up the loot.

Unfortunately we don’t have room for it all.

We begin the game with only ten slots in our inventory. We will eventually be able to expand our capacity, but for now space is extremely limited.

I wind up throwing away the two Skill Items we snagged in previous fights. Ryu already knows both of them, and identified equipment tends to sell for more money so it’s not a big loss.

Another large group of Dukes are lurking in the adjacent corridor. This time I manage to spread them out so only one of the Duke Hunters gets drawn in, making the fight much easier.

Music: Lift

The Treasure Key appears once all the Dukes are dead.

Kick is an incredibly useful skill.

The damage isn’t too impressive, but its ability to knock enemies back is tactically significant. It lets you kick enemies into traps and forces enemy melee attackers to waste AP getting back into position.

Through the next door and, hey, it’s the ventriloquist again! How does she keep getting ahead of us?

: If not, feel free to go to ‘Options’ in the Main Menu and change the controls to your liking. If you set the ‘X’ button as ‘attack’, you can avoid accidentally picking up items when you wanted to attack! Experiment and find the layout that best suits you!

Thanks, but I like the default controls just fine.

Going through the door nearby leads to a long corridor with many automatic gates that open as you get close to them.

One of the gates has a Nugget behind it.

Bosch kicks it in the face, because he is a dick.

Hilariously, he even levels up from it.

Going through the final door leads to another elevator, but this one goes up instead of down. Are we finally about to get out of these dark and unpleasant tunnels?

Music: BioCorp

Finally, we arrive in BioCorp.

There aren’t any truly serious enemy encounters for a while, so I switch Ryu back to the party leader for a bit.

Entering the Genic Processor triggers a cutscene.

Music: Origin

A heartbeat sound echoes every time words flash across the screen.

The scene switches to the inside of the processor, where we see a monstrous corpse pinned to the wall.

No, not a corpse - the thing is still moving, despite the missing flesh and massive spikes driven into it.

The music fades away as the scene ends. Then…

: Wha…?!

: Hey, you okay? You keeled over all of a sudden.

: I…fell over?

Music: BioCorp

So, Ryu is collapsing and having visions now. That certainly bodes well for the future.

Let’s try that one again.

The inside of the processor looks like a battlefield, with broken girders and skeletons scattered amongst the rubble. When we approach the huge creature we get a brief in-game scene.

: What’s that?!

: Maybe it’s some kind of experiment?

:…

: What, you scared, Ryu? It’s already dead. It won’t bite.

: Or else we’ll face the wrath…of Captain Zeno! Hah hah.

The scene ends, we gain control, and…hey. What’s that weird glowing blue cube in the top right of the screen? That wasn’t there before.

Whatever it is it’s not doing anything right now. Let’s follow Bosch’s advice and get a move on.

Okay, this girl is definitely a ninja.

: Hey, how’re ya doin’? If you think you’re in trouble during a battle, retreat! Use ‘Escape’ or choose ‘Retreat’ from the ‘L2’ button menu in front of the door you came through. You won’t get penalized if you run this way.

: Press the Start Button and choose ‘Penalty Retreat’. You’ll lose some money this way, but it’s better than dying!

This is actually some pretty good advice. Battles in Dragon Quarter can get very dicey, and running away is a valid tactic if things start to go south.

One of the first things we see when we reach the upper levels of BioCorp is a much-needed save point.

After several screens of sterile green and white hallways we reach the actual labs and holding areas for BioCorp’s creations.

Here we see some genics in cages, along with a few Hychees clinging to the ceiling.

A preview of enemies to come? We’ll have to wait and see.

HP Plus and Dynamite are always nice.

The next room is full of Nuggets, some of which have managed to escape. They aren’t too tough to deal with, especially now that Ryu is catching up to Bosch in terms of strength.

The Mama Nugget drops a Juju, an item that raises Magic. Neither Bosch nor Ryu really use their Magic stats a lot, so it’s best to hold onto it for the time being.

After dealing with the Nuggets we can access a gold crate containing a Trauma Kit, an upper tier healing item.

In the next hallway we find Jaju! Is she a ninja too?

:…to do some business! Hee hee!

Well, whatever the case may be I’m glad she’s here because it means we can finally identify some of this junk.

Our haul consists of an upgraded sword for Ryu that is most certainly not the property of one Cloud Strife, a set of armour that resists electricity and two sets of armour that prevent the Bind status.

We can equip these right now in Ryu’s backup equipment slots. These handy slots let us change Ryu’s equipment on the fly and let us adapt to new circumstances. You can switch out weapons and armour either in the field or in battle via the menu screen.

Of course, being the idiot I am I totally forget to equip the Buster Sword, so we’ll have to wait a bit to see what skills it has.