Part 47: Black is white, up is down and short is long
Update XV: Black is white, up is down and short is longSong Title Reference: Everything You Know is Wrong – By “Weird Al” Yankovic
We’re back to main updates and have now completely finished all of the Star Maidens character routes. No more bonding updates for us, no sir… Although we will still be stumbling through a shit-ton of side events from now until the story kicks back in, which should be roughly 3 more dungeons from now.
We’re still a ways away from the ending, is what I’m saying. God dammit, has it really only been 38 hours? Steam is telling me it’s been 50. Either way, I’ve definitely spent more time on this game than I did with Conception II.
…Time has not exactly flown by in this game, though. My save file for CII was 40 hours or something I think, but that went by in a flash compared to this game.
Anyway, don’t mind my
Barely any votes were cast for this last iteration of Team A(wful) despite the vote being up for like a week and a half. Even still, there was enough of a consensus to construct something. An Astromancer was included in this team by default, because I somehow missed including them in the original poll and wasn’t able to edit them in afterward. I hadn’t noticed until a few votes had already been cast, so I couldn’t just redo the poll from scratch.
RNG determined that Astromancer was to be a Female, and also that a Female Paladin would fill the remaining slot (there was a three-way tie for the last spot). As such, the final version of Team A(wful) is made up entirely of lady warriors.
Final Team A(wful): Rose the Bondsman (Mother: Arie), Riela the Paladin (Mother: Lillith/Lillie), Isabel the Astromancer (Mother: Farun), and Yuffie the Ninja (Mother: Reone).
Team A(wful) has a good selection of skills, including the Team Skill Photon Driver. Team Skills are something I haven’t really talked about much in this game, mainly because the Star Child Teams for this LP have been assembled largely at random.
If you go to Team Edit and then take a look at a Star Child’s skills, you will be able to see a full list of available skills, including possible Team Skills that they can trigger. Hitting “Y” (Triangle on the PS4 version) over a greyed out skill will show you what conditions need to be met to get access to it.
Unfortunately, one of the reasons why I haven’t talked much about Team Skills in this game is because their unlock conditions are much more restricted than in CII. Killing Field needs a Ninja and an Archer. Hunters cannot substitute for Archers, which means that in order to use Killing Field, you’ll need to pass up a more advanced class and instead slot in an early game class. In CII, Team Skills had multiple possible combinations you could use, not just the one, so they could often be triggered just by shifting some Star Children around to different teams.
Anyway, because of how our teams ended up, Photon Driver was fairly easy to get (Team C also has it). Photon Driver just needs an Astromancer and a Bondsman on the same team. The only sub-condition is that the Astromancer needs to have “Shine”, but that’s easy to do at this stage of the game because you’ve likely picked up more than a few Light Matryoshkas (unless you’ve been blowing them all by creating a bunch of Mono-Light teams).
Moving on, Teams B and C went in a different direction this time. Nobody suggested anything for Team C, so I decided to just take the Top 8 posters in the Conception Plus LP thread and turn them into Star Children, then build two teams out of them. Commander Keene was in the Top 8, but I excluded them because they already had a namesake Star Child back in Team A(wful) 2.0 (it was Cmdr. K the Magic Knight).
Team LPB is made up of: Polsy the Hunter (Mother: Femiruna. User: Polsy), Neoman the Dungeon Master (Mother: Mirei. User: SSNeoman), Twybil the Ninja (Mother: Reone. User: The Flying Twybil), and Raitzeno the Magic Knight (Mother: Reone. User: Raitzeno).
I should mention that because Polsy was the “Japanese Version Checker” for the LP, I gave their Star Child the honor(?) of being created with the Polyoshka. The Polyoshka’s appearance is based on Dengeki Playstation’s mascot, so it felt like the most appropriate way to use it. That said, I still have no sweet clue what the damn thing does. Maybe it’s useless and doesn’t do anything, or maybe Polsy the Hunter will one day randomly explode. You’re guess is as good as mine.
Team LPB’s signature skill is Arrow Fusillade. It takes a major chunk of MP to use, but it can be potentially devasting, especially since Polsy the Hunter has a Class Skill called “Hawk-Eye” which boosts crit rate.
Team LPC is made up of Slaan the Paladin (Mother: Sue. User: Slaan), Anni the Astromancer (Mother: Alfie. User: AnAnonymousIdiot), Mokino the Ninja (Mother: Arie. User: Mokinokaro), and Blaze the Bondsman (Mother: Sue. User: BlazeEmblem).
I originally had Mokino as a Thief, because I thought it matched with Mokinokaro’s forum avatar more, but I decided to upgrade them to Ninja instead, since they would have been the only “base” class in the group and that didn’t seem fair.
Team LPC has a lot of the same skills as the other two teams, but they benefit more from Photon Driver because of their much higher MAT.
So those will be our Star Child Teams for the remainder of the LP. There are no more new classes, so I didn’t think it necessary to have any more changes to our lineup (I also don’t want to have to grind up another batch of these little buggers from Level 1 to Level 50+).
As it is, all Teams have a similarly good spread of stats, so I don't think there will be any problems arising from sticking with these kids for the rest of the game. TEC is kind of a weakness for everyone, but so far I've never seen anyone (Itsuki, Star Children, or monsters) miss an attack in this game. Critical Hits might be a little rare, but that's not a deal breaker.
So hey, before we head off to the Virgo Labyrinth and seal that up. I want to point something out that I recently learned! You see those Star Children up there? They are the old thread teams. The ones we just replaced. I didn’t set them free into Granvania because the city level is maxed now, so all we would have received was money (once the city level is maxed, you start getting money when you make Star Children independent. The amount is based on the level of the Star Child).
I just want you to keep a few of those Star Children in mind as we take a little walk.
A little walk to a seldom used city function.
We stop by the Scavenger and get ready to send out one of our Star Children to go hunting for items.
And hey! Look at those powerful Star Children we can send out! Awesome!
Here’s the thing. I doubt anyone remembers this since it was back near the start of the LP, but the Scavenger is supposed to work like this: You go there, choose a Labyrinth you’ve already cleared (or entered), then pick one of the Star Children to go out and look for items for you. The Star Children you can choose from are supposed to be drawn from the Children that you’ve made Independent, but as you can see, the ones we are currently able to select are taken from our reserves, not from the Independent children.
I only noticed this because I popped by the Scavenger at one point just after I had emptied out our reserve forces (you can only have 50 Star Children at a time in total). It was then that I found myself unable to send out anyone on a Scavenger hunt. Originally, I thought I had made a mistake and gave you all the wrong information. It worked this way in CII, so maybe I had just written that part of the tutorial from memory and didn’t bother to pay attention to the tutorial card like I should have.
But then I went back and checked to make sure.
So yeah, it turns out that it wasn’t my fuckup. It just took me forever to notice the error because I rarely ever use the Scavenger. Either the translators or the developers (probably the translators) actually put the wrong information in the tutorial card. This wasn’t a one time slip up either, because the Scavenger tutorial has 2 tutorial cards…
…and the second card has the same error.
Just… come on, Spike Chunsoft. Is this a huge deal? No, not really. If you use the Scavenger then you’ll fairly quickly figure out that the tutorial cards were wrong. It’s not like this will confuse the player to the point that they can’t make use of the gameplay feature.
But we’re still talking about a case of the game misinforming you about its own functions. It’s yet another example of this game not receiving any form of editing or proofreading. Either that, or the person responsible for that stuff was on sick leave during the development/localization of this game and management wasn’t informed.
It never stops. It really doesn’t. We’re finished with story content (for now) and we’re finished with the Bonding Routes, but Spike Chunsoft’s absurd mistakes continue. Well, if nothing else, at least it always proves to be entertaining. Also a little sad, but mostly entertaining.
Anyway, off to Virgo. Let’s knock off the next Labyrinth and take another step towards finishing this thing… before the duct tape and string that holds it together finally falls apart and the game fries my computer or something.
Virgo’s Labyrinth takes… Hold on a second here. What the fuck? Why does Mahiru’s dungeon get such a unique look? On top of the columns being dressed up in Mahiru’s school uniform, the walls are also decorated like bedroom windows and the doors look like they came from a classroom or something. We can also see a clock way off in the distance. But that’s not all—
The doors even open differently than the other Labyrinths. The left side of the door will slide open like a Japanese style door, as opposed to every other Labyrinth where the doors swing open in a Western style.
Why was Mahiru the only one to get this kind of attention for her Labyrinth? Every other Star Labyrinth we’ve seen so far has just been a colour swap with maybe some decorations on the columns (like the Femiruna wigs in Leo).
Whatever. At its core, it is still just a palette swap. It’s just strange to see Mahiru’s Labyrinth get such a personal touch when everyone else just gets a color change. Ruka’s dungeon sure as fuck didn’t get that level of detail. We didn’t get the walls of the Cancer Labyrinth made to look like the walls of the Orphanage building, or Mirei’s dungeon to be made to look like her lab.
There isn’t much else to show in this Labyrinth. We’ve seen all of these enemies before. The screenshots above are just showing the ridiculous damage that Arrow Fusillade is capable of on a fairly reliable basis.
Photon Driver isn’t bad either. Keep in mind that the damage you see above is neutral (the Bootes enemy being attacked has Light element defence).
There was a screenshot a few images above where you saw me triggering the Virgo Blessing, which reduces BP consumption on this floor. This is the result when combined with Bondsman (who also reduces BP consumption for MECUNITE). MECUNITE typically costs 50 BP to trigger.
And the “Fuck you! Kill every enemy on the field!” skill typically costs 40 BP or so.
Bondsman by themselves only reduce the amount by about 5 BP, but when combined with a Virgo Blessing you can pop MECUNITE for barely anything and annihilate every enemy on that floor with little resistance.
That was basically all for this Labyrinth. We didn’t score any cool new weapons or awesome armour. I’m really jonesing for some new weapons. There are a ton of cool looking ones in the Database, but until we actually get our hands on them we can’t get a good look at them (unacquired weapons/items/gifts are blanked out in the Database. You only get to see a black outline of it). One that I personally want to find is (what appears to be) a beam sword for Itsuki.
Oh, hey, it’s this thing. We saw this boss in the anime review update. So then I guess Anime Itsuki tackled the Virgo Labyrinth first (we weren’t given a choice. We had to clear Aries as our first Labyrinth).
Another Light based Impurity God. Teams A(wful) and LBC I think have Dark element as their attack, so they might not be dealing out a lot of damage during this fight. Thankfully, none of our Star Child teams have Dark as their defence element, so that means Aeriae won’t be dishing out any super effective damage.
Granted, Aeriae won’t really be getting a chance to dish out any damage, super effective or otherwise. Aeriae is backed up by 2 Crater L’s that have identical skills and only barely different stats.
Aeriae itself does have strong MDF, as Mana said, but its DEF is marginally higher so Magic is still the way to go for this fight.
The only true risk in this fight is if you ran in with a bunch of Star Child teams that have Dark defence. Light attacks will devastate teams with Dark elemental defence and Aeriae has Searing Brightness, which is capable of hitting 2 zones at once. It’s possible to get pretty messed up in this fight.
We’re not in that situation though. Team A(wful)’s defence element is Light, Team LPB’s is Fire, and Team LPC’s is Earth (which are all neutral against Light).
Our Star Child teams are also terrifyingly strong. This fight isn’t going to be a challenge and frankly I don’t feel like even giving Aeriae a chance. Let’s just crush this walking Iron Maiden.
I have Itsuki use Blitz Blow against one of the Crater L enemies in order to bump the Chain Drive gauge. Then I have Team LPB use Gran Chain on the other Crater L in order to bump the gauge again.
If you use CD boosting skills against a single enemy, then that enemy will get chained once the gauge gets up to about 75%. However, if you spread out your CD boosting skills to all of the enemies, then this won’t happen. This will let you max out the CD gauge, which will then chain all enemies on the field. You can pull this off in 3 turns without fail (unless one of your units manages to miss somehow) as long as each Team has a CD boosting skill (Gran Chain, Temple Chain, or Blitz Blow for example).
Before I can do it, Aeriae succeeds in getting an attack in. It hurts pretty bad, but Team LPC is still in okay shape. I don’t bother to heal and instead just have them use Temple Chain on Aeriae.
With all of the enemies now chained, I have Team A(wful) MECUNITE and use their “Fuck You” attack.
This kills both Crater L enemies and takes a small chunk out of Aeriae’s health. I then have Team LPC heal themselves up.
And then proceed to have everyone throw their strongest attacks at it. Itsuki uses Crescent. MECUNITE’d Team A(wful) shoots it with their little beam for another 7k in damage. Then Team LPB hits for 9999 with Arrow Fusillade.
Barely alive and one attack away from being defeated, Aeriae manages to break out of Chain and uses Searing Brightness for… well, it did damage in the quadruple digits. We’ll let Aeriae pretend that it went out like a man instead of an infant.
We got some sweet EXP from it at least, mainly because of the Chain bonus. Although given the ass kicking that our new Star Children just handed out, I’m not sure that it was really needed.
Actually, I take that back. I shouldn’t tempt fate like that. God only knows how strong the enemies will be in Ophiuchus by the time we get around to dealing with it. Every bit of EXP helps, because it means less potential grinding in the future.
Anyway, you know the deal. The screws go in the holes and blah blah. Let’s bounce.
So, with that out of the way, what’s on the docket for this update? Well, the shop has new stuff, but it’s all outdated so I won’t even bother going over that. The Tavern exclamation point is just for the boss we beat (we get some Matryoshkas as a reward, which we don’t have a use for anymore since no more Star Children are needed), so there’s nothing worth examining there. What stupid side stuff haven’t I shown off yet…
Oh, right! Something I’ve been deliberately ignoring this entire game because of the possibility of spoilers for the Star Maidens.
I showed this off way back near the start of the LP, but at the time most of the pages were just “???”.
In the character section of the database (you can technically also check this from the Church and Star God Academy), you will find the stat sheets for the Star Maidens as well as a little blurb about who they are. You’ll also notice up next to “Star Maiden Data” that there is a prompt for Left Bumper and Right Bumper. Hitting either of those will bring you to the Maiden’s “Likes/Dislikes/Facts” page.
Now that we’ve seen all the main Bonding Events for each Maiden, we can take a look through these for interesting details without having to worry about spoilers for the character’s route. Spoilers such as Arie liking blades/weapons for example. We didn’t learn this about Arie until early Bonding Level 4 I think, yet I’m pretty sure this part of her profile has been filled out since Bond Level 2 was first unlocked. So it’s possible that we could have had “Arie’s secret room” spoiled 4 bonding events in advance. This is why I’ve been avoiding showing these off until now (I originally discovered this with Femiruna).
Anyway, we already know everything about the Maidens and their respective routes now, so let’s have a look. Arie likes fluffy things, which makes sense with her hat and that shawl thing she wears. She also likes cleaning, which we learned as soon as Itsuki started talking to her. The blades/weapons thing came way later.
As for dislikes, there isn’t much in the way of surprises. Not liking expensive things is pretty understandable since Arie is a nun. Ditto with Faithless People. Defiance is a bit strange, if only because I’m not sure what kind of defiance is being talked about. Arie isn’t really the “ruler across the hands” kind of nun. She doesn’t exactly bark orders at people or anything. Could just be defiance of the church, but it’s not as though we’ve ever heard of the Granvanian Church issuing any edicts.
As for the personal details, we already know that she’s a preacher, loves cleaning, and is caring. Preacher does seem a little strong based on what we’ve seen of her though. She’s never been overly pushy of her religion towards the children or Itsuki. Maybe this is just a reference to her job as a Sunday school teacher or something.
Tarua’s profile is a little more revelatory… although only barely. We know she likes sports, we know she likes to run, we know about the head patting and her need for attention/recognition from people like Boss and Itsuki. Her love of sweets is something that I think we learn of during generic events.
In terms of dislikes, Staying Still is an obvious one. Studying is also not surprising since it kind of requires you to sit still. Magic Transmission is something that I think she will mention in her dungeon message. I guess it sort of makes sense for her, since technology is something that isn’t Boss or Running and is therefore outside of Tarua’s interests.
Lillith/Lillie’s is a strange one to parse. Which things are Lillith related and which ones are Lillie related? Lillith definitely likes cats and we can assume that Lillie does (she did catch a stray one because Lillith really liked it). Same goes for Cake, although I don’t think cake has ever come up in their events so I’m not sure if they both have that sweet tooth. Lillith likes cute things, but does Lillie? I guess she did force Itsuki to go buy her a bunch of outfits during one of the event, so she’s probably interested in cute stuff as well.
Dislikes are all obvious and are probably shared by both personalities. A dislike of Studying/Tests has mostly been hinted at by Lillie. I think one of her generic events has her trying to get Itsuki to help her cheat at one or something.
The Personal Details portion is equally obvious. Scared of Fortune seems more like a Lillith thing, though. I don’t think Lillie has ever said anything about being afraid of having her own fortune told.
Ruka’s has a bit more to offer. We got a hint of her liking plants when she gave Itsuki that parrot plant thing during the main story, although I don’t think she said anything specifically about plants during that. Tofu-wrapped sushi is out of nowhere. Maybe one of her generic events brings that up. Girly Things is a side of Ruka that we’ve seen more of as her route as progressed, such as when Itsuki gave her that ribbon and she asked him to put it on her.
Dislikes is mostly stuff we know, although I don’t think her dislike of scary stories has ever come up. Maybe it does if you select her as your partner during Star Maiden Camp, since that involves her and Itsuki wandering through a school at night while the other Maidens try to scare them.
Personal Details are all things we already know about her. We still haven’t seen any definitive proof of her ability to read minds, but we certainly know how stubborn she is and that she is a solid cook.
I showed off Femiruna’s during her Final Bonding events. She still dislikes Carrots, even though one of her early events has her trying to overcome her aversion to them and discovering that they actually don’t taste bad at all. Although, that part of her route was sort of dropped as soon as it came up.
The weird parts here are Femiruna’s like of Disciplinarians and basically all of her Personal Details section. Someone trying to discipline her for doing something wrong, as well as her loneliness and snootiness, are all things that Femiruna’s route started off with but quickly dropped in favour of focusing on her apparent masochism.
Yeah, that’s right. Remember early on in Femiruna’s route where she was secretly lonely and sad because her family status prevented her from forming friendships with other students? Or when she tried to change her snooty ways when Itsuki wasn’t willing to overlook them just because Femiruna was rich? Yeah, all of that kind of fell by the wayside as Femiruna’s route went on and greater emphasis was placed on her getting turned on whenever Itsuki was rough with her.
Mahiru’s profile is pretty standard stuff. Haven’t really heard much about her not liking small bugs, but that’s a typical “girl” thing, so it’s not that surprising that the School Idol character would have a fear like that. She’s athletic and doesn’t like to lose, which is also a very School Idol/Ms. Perfect kind of thing. I’m not sure why it says she’s “Actually Serious”, since Mahiru is often pretty goofy (especially when she’s with Itsuki). Maybe it means—
…Wait a minute. What… what the hell is that doing there? “Sadist in Private”?
I’m not sure that’s a detail we needed to know about Mahiru. Unlike Femiruna, I wasn’t getting any strong hints of something like that. Maybe this is a holdover from “Old Mahiru”?
…Let’s move on to Mirei.
Nothing much stands out with Mirei. We learned of her love for baths. Coffee is something that we haven’t seen her gushing about, but it makes sense for someone that pulls all-nighters. Everything else are things we’ve learned about her over the course of her route. She definitely lives by her own rules and she’s definitely proud of her abilities as a scientist. Her nearsightedness has been the subject of a few events so far.
Reone is also fairly straightforward. Although, I don’t think we’ve ever heard about her love of canned food. That seems like the kind of thing that a doctor wouldn’t be down for, especially considering how concerned Reone has been shown to be in regards to Itsuki’s/the students nutrition.
Her dislikes all match up with what we’ve seen. Not sure we’ve seen much about her aversion to sweet stuff, but she is a doctor and plays a role in managing the nutrition of the lunch menu in the cafeteria, so it’s not a big surprise.
Her Personal Details section is a bit hit or miss though. Erotic? No doubt about that. Wants to Teach? Ehh… the only times she has shown a desire to teach are when it comes to Itsuki and the Classmating ritual. She’s never been shown doing anything like what Arie does. Bad Girl Personality is true, I guess. She used to be a pit fighter, but that was out of necessity for her and her brother. There’s been no indication that she was doing it for thrills or to look like a badass. There’s also the fact that those days are in the past. She’s a responsible doctor working at the Palace now and she gets overly worried about the smallest cut or bruise that Itsuki gets. She does break some rules, but she does it either out of sympathy (Yuzuha’s medicine) or out of a twisted sense of responsibility (trying to shoulder the hospital plan by herself because she wants to make amends for her brother). Not sure I would describe that as a “bad girl” personality.
Nothing new in Sue’s profile. The scholarly aspect of her is something that doesn’t get a lot of attention though. Mirei asked her about it in the bath during a Star Maiden Camp event and she does seem to be pretty knowledgeable about animals, but we don’t really get any moments where she flaunts her intelligence. We also don’t get to hear anything about the animal research that she’s supposedly doing (according to Mirei).
Farun’s profile is about what you would expect. We know first hand that she likes to talk, considering that her events are usually ones where Itsuki barely manages to get a word in edgewise. Senseless Comments is a bit harder to parse. The one time I can remember where this comes up is when Itsuki says that he knows/understands her and Farun cryptically replies by asking him how much he really knows about her.
We’ve seen some of this stuff from Collette, but not all of it. The only time Spicy Food has come up is during the School Festival, but we didn’t get any hints that Collette liked spicy stuff (the food was insanely spicy because Mahiru screwed up the recipe, so Collette was busy freaking out about the prospect of people not being able to eat it). We did get a bit of her love for gossip, mainly in regards to the school mysteries that Mahiru kept dragging us through.
Heights are something I don’t think we’ve ever heard of. Collette has never been up in a high place during her events. I don’t think Roaches have made any appearances either, although her not liking them is somewhat understandable since she runs a bakery and therefore wouldn’t want them skittering around all over the place.
Her Personal Details thing just draws further attention to the fact that Collette is a fucking child. Other than that, her being obsequious should be obvious since she’s running her own business. Salespeople are often that way, whether out of desire to keep their business afloat, or out of a desire to keep their corporate overlords away from their paycheque.
For those that don’t know, obsequious basically means an ass-kisser. It’s a person that is overly flattering or complimentary because they’re trying to get something out of you.
Honestly, I don’t think we know any of this about Yuzuha, at least in terms of her likes. Has she ever mentioned anything about liking colorful candy? Or feathers? Or perfect rice balls? I sure as hell don’t remember that stuff. Also, why “perfect” rice balls specifically? Weird…
Her dislikes are a bit more obvious. We know she doesn’t like crowds, because people tend to be assholes towards her by openly talking about how weird she looks/acts. Exercise makes sense now that we know about her disease (exercise would tire her out and make her sleep more often, thus shortening her lifespan). Not sure where the dislike of bitter drinks comes from though.
As for Personal Details, the only one I’m not sure on is “Obsessive”. “Hates Aggression” is something I could see considering how shy and meek she is. But I don’t think we’ve seen any obsessive behaviour from her. Maybe it’s talking about her lugging the coffin around everywhere out of that morbid belief that it will make her death less of a hassle for people?
Finally, there’s Alfie. I… I’m not sure what it means by her liking “Straight Things”. Is that referring to swords and lances and stuff like that? Because that’s the only thing that comes to mind. Alfie has never talked about how straight a particular thing is.
It’s worth noting that “Love” is still under Dislikes. I’m pretty sure that part of her has changed over the course of her route, so I don’t think this is correct anymore. I guess the developers would have had to shift Love to Likes and then take out one of the other things while also slotting in a new Dislike. Probably easier to just leave it as is, regardless of any character development.
Loving Teacher I definitely understand. She’s tough on the Star Children, but there’s no argument as to whether or not she cares deeply about them. Good Cook and Gives Gifts are two things that we’ve never seen from her though. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten any hints about those either. Giving Gifts is especially funny considering that Alfie is the only Star Maiden that doesn’t have a “Starmas Gift Giving” event. The only thing she is ever shown giving (I think) is her Valentine’s Day chocolate, of which she only has one type (the other Maidens have Choco and Favor varieties of chocolate. Alfie only has Favor). Speaking of…
I didn’t get a chance to show this during the Valentine’s Day event because Alfie was dead at the time. Although Alfie only has one type of V-Day chocolate, hers is specially designed with an imprint of her likeness, whereas the other Maidens only use their Star Sign symbols (or the associated animal/object of their Sign).
Anyway, that’s all for this sad excuse for an update. What were we doing next…? Oh, right. I was going to do the Beach Events and Flower Viewing Events… Actually I think I had scheduled the Flower Viewing Events to take place before this dungeon update. Oh well. Doesn’t really matter too much. The important thing is I don’t have to watch the next few episodes of the anime just yet.