Part 11: BioCorp Labs

Update 11: BioCorp Labs

Welcome back. Last time we tried to enter BioCorp and wound up being gassed by some of Ryu’s former allies. Nina used a strange power to purify the gas, but the effort caused her to pass out.







:…dispersed somehow.







Nina turns and smiles at Ryu, but she’s still coughing pretty heavily. And if you look closely, there seems to be some kind of black residue clinging to her wings.





: But I know where the answers are.





The game gives us control here.



First thing’s first - use Multimeds and Antidotes to get the party healthy again.





As luck would have it, one of the Rangers was carrying a BioCorp ID.





The door to LowSector Junction is locked, in case you were wondering. All we can do is head back into the labs. So let’s get going.









The card reader accepts the Ranger’s ID, unlocking the door to BioCorp.



It’s been a while since we’ve seen these sterile green halls.



At the end of the first floor we come to a small open area with a save point. You can also see the three vendor girls at the very back, although I didn’t need to visit them just yet.





Going through the door to Ryu’s left triggers a scene.

Music: BioCorp







: You find anything?



: The lab chief’s room is at the top of the complex.





The scene ends and we find ourselves in the BioCorp labs.





Most of the levels up until now have been fairly linear. You start at Point A and follow a straightforward path to Point B. There haven’t been many side areas or alternate paths to explore, aside from a couple of dead ends containing an item or two. In a way this makes sense, since we’ve mostly been following freight lines and purpose-built tunnels.

This changes once we reach BioCorp. The labs, while not massively complicated, are much more open than any of the places we’ve been to before.





The first floor isn’t so bad. There are two rooms on the eastern side, along with a corridor that runs adjacent to them.





Said corridor ends in a D-Ratio door, so we can’t explore further that way.





The western corridor has only one room, but it contains a new enemy, the Goo Plasma.



Goo Plasmas are the electric variant of Goo enemies. They absorb electric damage, but are weak to fire. Not that it matters much, since their physical defences aren’t that great either.



They can cast Lightning however, so it’s best not to underestimate them.



This one drops a sword for Ryu after dying.





The same room as the Goo Plasma also has this door. It’s not a D-Ratio door, but it is locked nonetheless. Hmm…



At the end of the western corridor is the elevator up to the next level.





The second floor of the lab is a bit more expansive than the first, as the following map screen shows.



We begin in the top left, and our overall objective is to head up to the next floor by taking the elevator in the top right. We can access that right away, but there are a ton of rooms to explore and a second elevator heading downwards that warrants some investigation.





The first room we find seems to be some sort of observation chamber. There doesn’t seem to be anything on the other side of the glass though.



Stepping out onto the walkway leads us into a cavernous chamber with a colossal genic restrained in the middle.



On the other side of the walkway we meet these lovely creatures.



These plant-animal hybrids are Rafflesias. Depending on how you deal with them they can either be complete pushovers or a total nightmare.



On the surface they don’t seem that tough. Ryu can cleave off around half their HP with a single combo. They’re also slow, and half the time won’t even manage to outspeed Ryu.



Offensively they pack Iceblast, which we can deal with at this point.





They also have an area of effect attack that deals no damage but has a chance of poisoning anyone in its radius.



All in all they aren’t too much of a threat…unless you use magic on them.



Hitting Rafflesias with magic gives them a fairly hefty powerup. This includes trap runes, so even G-Flares and Joltballs will trigger it.



Powered up Rafflesias gain a number of benefits that make them a royal pain to deal with. All of their stats double and they gain more AP to attack with.



They also start regenerating their HP at the beginning of each round. Worst of all, these powerups can stack. Every time you hit a Rafflesia with a spell its stats and regeneration double again.



As such, chain casting spells can easily make battles against these guys unwinnable.





There is a silver lining, though - every time you hit a Rafflesia with magic, their experience payout also doubles. So long as you’re careful and don’t get too greedy it’s possible to grind some good experience out of them.



Killing the Rafflesias grants us this floor’s Treasure Key.





The treasure chest is located in the northern half of the level, in a room we can access by taking another walkway. The huge genic isn’t a threat, but we’re not out of danger just yet.



This particular walkway is infested with Buzzes, giant flies that have appeared in several other games in the series.





Buzzes aren’t too tough. They only have around 200 HP and are weak to fire.





If the battle drags on too long they’ll gain a weak poison attack, but other than that they’re not much to write home about.



They are always worth fighting however since they regularly drop Longfoots, which permanently increase a character’s movement range by a tiny amount.







Recognise this room? It’s the one on the other side of the observation window we saw earlier. We couldn’t see the Hychees through it because they were all clinging to the ceiling.



It also contains the treasure chest. Opening it gives us Roundsaber, a Lv. 3 Skill for Ryu!



Roundsaber is a pretty solid skill. An attack power of 150% is nothing to sniff at, and it can hit multiple enemies in an arc. Deathbringer is far better against single targets though.



A lot of the rooms in this facility contain these battered old specimen tubes. Most don’t even look like they’ve been broken out of, just rusted through. Hell, we saw genics stuffed in crude cages the last time we were here. It just reinforces how even the high-tech areas of LowSector are slowly decaying.





This elevator will take us up to the third floor, but we’re not quite done here yet.







In the southernmost part of the map we find a corridor being guarded by two soldiers.



These enemies are Patrollers. Patrollers are incredibly weak enemies who can be killed in a single combo, but like Rafflesias, they have a gimmick.



Attacking one gives you a warning that they have radios and are therefore dangerous.



Actually killing one gives you a message that it has called for backup.



This doesn’t seem like a problem at first. No other enemies appear mid-battle, and the surrounding area is completely empty.







…Oh.



Shitshitshitshitshit





Unfortunately the elevator down is past here, so we’re going to have to fight. These guys are Bouncers, and four of them are summoned for every Patroller the player kills. They tend to spawn away from the party, usually in narrow corridors or intersections that make them hard to avoid.



Bouncers are glass canons. They have fairly poor HP and defence but can cast the powerful Lightning spell that hits everything in a line.



They also have stun batons that can inflict Bind, making them dangerous at close range as well.



You can steal valuable Zennypurses from them, but they really don’t like having their savings pilfered and will gain an extra attack per turn if it happens.





The best way to deal with Bouncers is to soften them up with explosives, then lure them out in dribs and drabs. Ryu’s new Roundsaber skill is pretty good at cutting through several of them at once, as is Lin’s Blow Up! and all of Nina’s basic spells.





Bouncers also occasionally drop the Lightning Skill Item when they die, thereby granting Nina her first Lv. 2 magic attack!



I haven’t been showing most of it, but enemies in BioCorp drop a lot of loot to the point where I needed to make a quick pit stop to appraise and sell some of it off.



The Ranger Edge+2 is a straight upgrade to Ryu’s original Ranger Edge, but has less attack power than the Buster Sword. The Plasma Maser deals electric damage, while the Handgun+1 packs a significant punch compared to what Lin has equipped at the moment.



Our armour haul consists of two Sleep Checks, which only Nina can equip. There aren’t any enemies in the labs that can inflict Sleep, so we don’t have much use for them at the moment.



Arma has some nice gear this time around. I pick up the Thor’s Hammer+3 for Nina, giving her access to weapons that boost all three regular elements.





Through the magic of editing we can teleport right back to the elevator down to 1F.







Music: Imminent Crisis



The first room we come to is a Danger Room full of Goos. We have the yellow Goo Plasmas, along with a new red Goo we haven’t seen before.



These are Goo Rubies. As you’d expect, they can cast fire spells. This includes the basic Flare as well as the far more dangerous Fireblast.





Thankfully, you can stop them from casting the latter by striking their elemental weakness. Getting hit with an ice spell limits them to only casting Flare.





The room containing the Treasure Chest is right next to the Danger Room, but there’s something else in there too.



The creature facing the wall is an Armstrong, and they’re one of the few enemies I’ll genuinely be trying to avoid during this playthrough.





Armstrongs are tough. They have the physical defences of Duke Battlers, only you can’t break their armour to do more damage.





Even Ryu’s strongest skills barely scratch them. Lin’s guns are lucky to score single digit damage.









They have two basic attacks, a truck-like slam that cleaves off a huge chunk of HP and a truck-like slam that cleaves off a huge chunk of HP -and- knocks the target back across the room.





If that weren’t bad enough they can also heal themselves with a special move called Goodnight. Although this does put them to sleep it isn’t much comfort since they’ll just wake up as soon as you attack them anyway.







The best way to bring them down is with magic and judicious use of armour-piercing attacks like Fang. Nina’s new Lightning spell is excellent for this. Armstrongs are also vulnerable to status effects, so inflicting Bind is a good way to make sure they never get near your party members.



Lots of healing items is another good idea.





After seven straight minutes of chipping away at the Armstrong’s HP the big beast finally dies. They give some nice experience, but nowhere near enough to counterbalance the painful slog of actually fighting them.



The treasure chest contains Blunt, a spell for Nina.



Unfortunately it’s pretty much worthless. A 10% penalty is peanuts, and hitting elemental weaknesses is far more useful.

Anyway, that’s it for this update. Join me next time as we complete the rest of BioCorp and hopefully find out just what is up with Nina and her strange abilities.