Part 25: The Revolution Will Not Be Shown On-Screen
Update 25: The Revolution Will Not Be Shown On-ScreenOther possible update title: Repetition is Not Always for Emphasis
Click for music
Finally, we've finished up with everything we need to do before attacking the A.o.A directly in Amaterasu City.
As soon as we start to walk up the bridge, we get trapped in a cutscene. Because god knows we can't ever have agency in this game unless we're doing completely pointless things.
If that sounds like a contradiction, then it is because this game makes no sense unless you warp the rules of reality.
Kite: OK, we're going into Amaterasu City!
Teddy trundles up to us.
What the fuck are you doing here.
Kite: ...Teddy! You came over here!?
Teddy: Yeah, I came with Lisa and the others. Hey Kite, can you wait a moment before you go in!? Lisa is bringing everyone from the Resistance!
Kite: Then, what about the A.o.A...?
Teddy: They've been routed by the Resistance! Once we get the four cities, we only have Amaterasu City left!
What do you mean, Teddy? Do you not see these stupid badges I had to go to the ass-end of nowhere to collect? FUCK YOU, you assholes, you could have helped instead of, oh, I don't know, making me do all the work?!
Fuck the Resistance. And fuck the A.o.A too, while we're at it, bunch of assholes.
hahahahahaha, yes. Yes the badges were pointless. Yes. I never would have suspected.
Kite: I see! So now...
Teddy: Yeah, it's our final battle! We're going to defeat the A.o.A!
'We' aren't gonna do shit, it's all going to be me saving the day like always until you idiots swoop in at the last second to share the glory.
So inconsiderate, right? "IT WUZ A TEEM EFFURT" BULLSHIT.
Kite: Yeah, right on! If we fight together, the A.o.A is nothing!
So, yeah, we don't get to refight Knightmon, or get revenge, or anything fun like that. Just a smash cut to this scene.
Lisa: OK, first release the people of this city!
Leader Chuck: Everyone, come on, Charge!
...Um? Where were these guys earlier? ...Also, 'Meech'? That guy's parents must have hated him.
Wow. Just. Wow.
Kite: Yeah! Lisa and the others are here too!
Teddy: ...but what's happening in the Real World...? I hope Destromon hasn't started attacking yet...
You know what this means!
Yep, it's another video.
Destromon flies up to some city. I'm guessing some place in Japan, given the source of the game, but it's not obvious.
And then he opens fire. With lasers. That curve in midair.
That is not how lasers work.
But Yeti, they are HEAT-SEEKING LAZURZ. Where's your Suspension of Disbelief!
Shattered into a million pieces. A state, coincidentally, this game will be entering as soon as I'm done.
Long story short, it was a really bad idea to put the oil refinery/power plant in such an easily-bombarded location.
City Planner: But sir! What if some battleship, or monster, or battleship monster attacks? It'll be destroyed!
Mayor: No! Fuck the environment!
And then yeah, the Gundam lands amid the flames for a picturesque shot like every other monster movie. You think this game can have an original idea? Pfft.
>Gundam
Oh, now you're stealing my jokes, huh, Yeti.
I can't have an original idea either
Kite: We're going to defeat the A.o.A!
Teddy: Yeah, you're right! We're almost there so let's go!
Yeah, let's go fight the A.o.A and kick them out of the city.
Christ. Let's just DO it already. We say the same lines over and over.
Kite: Oh, Nick!
Teddy: Nick, what's our situation?
Nick: Ha ha ha It's good! A.o.A inside the city surrendered quickly!
Kite: Then the city?
Nick: Oh, we got it back already! Then only the Administration Center is left!
...So. Uh. They already cleared out the city. Since searching the city for A.o.A would require them to do more than copy, paste, and replace all NPCs with pigs.
Geez, this game.
Kite: ...what?! Then we don't have a chance to beat them up!
Nick: Ha ha ha. That's why we came to get you. We want you to help in the attack on the Center!
Kite: All right, leave it to me! I won't lose! Teddy, I'm gonna go up ahead!
Teddy: Be careful! I'll be right there!
So, uh, yeah. Completely empty of A.o.A. The only real NPCs around are the Resistance folk, and they don't do anything other than pat themselves on the back for taking back the town. Lisa and Nick just remind you that you need to go murder everyone in the Administration Center, so get going.
Keith's up here too, being as useless as ever.
Keith: There's no problem at the moment! Once we get back the Administration Center, it will be perfect!
The only other human in the city is Dr. Osomatsu, who acts as the Digimon Lab for this town.
Dr. Osomatsu: I was in the bathroom, and look at this!
Yeah, he only escaped because he was in the bathroom when the A.o.A swept through, Oinkifying everyone.
Stay classy, Digimon World 3.
Works.
...What?
It's a shield so automatically crap.
Some quick detours to pick up the chests - we had to circle down through the Sewers to get that second chest, and of course it wasn't worth it. Hmph.
Well, that's enough screwing around. I guess I should actually get to the meat of the update - murdering our way through a bunch of terrorists.
Attacker: Our beautiful world is going to come to life soon!
Not with that team it's not.
We've been through an A.o.A-controlled Administration Center before, and as always, this game can't do anything original, so the second verse is same as the first - we have to plow our way through the A.o.A soldiers blocking the chokepoints.
Hell, would you want anything original at this point?
Soldier: This is the end of the line for you!
Now, since that's boring and dull, I'm going to take this time to rant about something that I realized while spending 40 hours of my life grinding Digimon up to the correct level. Namely, the Skill Level system for leveling the Digivolutions.
Now, first off, I'm not a game designer, that's more Giver's schtick. But I can still point out the flaws in the system that I've spent a ton of hours working with. And something I noticed, while mashing X repeatedly to beat up the trash mobs on the first screen, was that there's literally no point to getting a Skill Level Up unless it's a multiple of 5 - the only time you unlock Techs or Digivolutions is on those nice, round numbers. Every other level is completely pointless.
Soldier: I'll make you regret ever coming here.
So, since empty levels are really annoying and obnoxious, why not just make the level up requirement five times higher, and chop out all the unnecessary ones? Seems like a simple solution, right?
Problem is, there's a reason for the more frequent but pointless level ups. It triggers a release of... dopamine, I think, in the brain. It's the same thing that gets released when you refresh the forums page and you see new posts in a thread, or when you check your email and you have a new email in the inbox. It conditions us to check more often - or, in DW3's case, to keep playing. The end of the Digivolution levels shows that problem; at a certain level (95 for most Ultimate Digivolutions, 90 for most Megas, 50 for the worst offenders) the requirement spikes to 50 DVEXP instead of just 10. The level ups slow to a crawl, and it's terminally boring.
Soldier: Stop your meddling now!
That means that upping the level requirement is off the table, if only because I need a reason to keep playing this godforsaken game. How about we take another route - that being small, tiny incremental increases on each level up?
Basically, each Digivolution gives small boosts to stats when equipped. More difficult to obtain Digivolutions give bigger boosts, naturally - a Mega will do more damage than a Champion, obviously, even if the numbers are the same on paper. Instead of doing that, what if we earned those stat boosts on the pointless level ups? So, each skill level grants one more HP, or STR, or SPD, or whatever.
The problem with that is what I like to call the Final Fantasy 3 problem - if we have boosts in the current job, we'll loose those boosts when switching jobs (or Digivolution, whatever). Doing something like that actually discourages switching between jobs when appropriate.
Well, that all depends with what you're going for. There's nothing implicitly wrong with that style. A 'way of life', if you will. It all depends on what narrative your game is serving. If Digimon are supposed to be highly adaptable creatures, then...yeah.
A brief break from my soapbox to point out that yeah, no chest here this time. Get fucked, game.
Ah, now we've met the "Negative Exploration Zone". Whereby exploring dead-ends isn't rewarded. Case in point, put something here. Money, maybe. Especially since you have to load screens to check this tiny-ass area. It would at least attempt to make it semi-worth your time.
Attacker: And then they'll make me a Soldier!
Soldiers aren't the common ground unit?
To fix that issue, maybe make the boosts permanent when you hit skill level 99. Switching out no longer loses those boosts, and now there's a REAL incentive to reach 99 beyond getting all the max numbers and loading all the techniques. It would make grinding easier, especially since the player actually knows that they're getting stronger, and it feeds a loop - after grinding enough, you get stronger, so grinding is faster, so you get stronger faster, so...
Could allow for super powerful secret bosses, too.
Soldier: Come my adorable Digimon!
Oh, Attacker is below Soldier. Weird.
And that's not even touching the mess that is the training system. Seriously, a random chance for getting the stat boosts that are going to keep me alive? Fuck that shit. It's a bad design decision and no amount of working on it is going to fix it.
Here, I like to think that no decision is bad if it serves the right game. This isn't the right game. Hell, just make Digimon stats shape up differently depending on which Digivolution route you take.
Attacker: Come on. I'll knock you out in no time!
This guy's actually somewhat threatening.
Namely, because he's got Piedmon and Puppetmon, who both hit really hard.
And he's NOT a soldier?
The enemy ranks are all kinds of fucked.
None of these chests are great, but whatever, free Ultra Charge. The empty chest is rude as hell, though.
You mean funny, right?
Attacker: So I have no choice but to win!
Yeah, Agumon is currently rocking Kabuterimon as a Digivolution, since it's a requirement to unlock GranKuwagamon. Also, this guy is pretty nasty for the same reasons as the previous attacker.
Soldier: But do you really think you can defeat us?!
At least there aren't random encounters while fighting here. That would just be tedium on top of tedium.
Which surprises me why it isn't a thing.
Thanks, game. Here in
This one doesn't even try to be useful.
They copy and pasted everything, including the chest locations. They just couldn't decide what to put, so they put nothing.
Soldier: I'll prove it to you right now!
You sure proved it, all right
This guy is pointless beyond the experience he gives us.
Like, not even a new team composition. Fun fact: we've already seen all the teams we'll be fighting.
And yet you used the same screenshot like- Ohhhh, I see what you're doing.
And the exit doesn't have any prizes, like in Asuka.
Soldier: I'll show you what happens when you mess with an adult!
You mean, we murder you? Yeah, okay, sure.
Another set of the Puppetmon-Piedmon-Creepymon teams. These fights are the only ones I actually take seriously, because of how dangerous they can be. Piedmon is the only Digimon that can match my attacks one-for-one every time, which says something about 1) how broken 999 SPD is, and 2) how annoying it would be to fight Piedmon without said 999 SPD.
Wow. Go Piedmon. Though, it would suck if all enemies sharing the same 'Speed Group' all count for the same practical speed. Basically, if the game considers a Speed of 500 to be in the same 'tier' as 999, then having those extra 499 points is basically useless.
I'm ignoring the entrance to the main administrative section for now, but we'll get back to it. Spoiler alert - that's where the boss is.
And I am king of all I survey. Given that I only survey pigs, the A.o.A can have it.
Soldier: No one can stop Destromon!
Are you fuckers tired of seeing this team yet? You're not playing the game, and it gets old twice as fast.
And the grand prize for fighting through every single A.o.A member is... nothing.
This game in a nutshell.
[exasperated sigh]
Might as well get on with it.
Now, you might think that you know what's coming. We already did this puzzle, but the game designers have no creative thoughts in their head, so we're doing it again.
Kite: I see! It's the same as Asuka's Game Master Room! It's a secret door! ...then what's the code? Asuka was MONSTER so maybe it's DIGITAL here...?
But it's fine, since they just give us the fucking answer after pointing out that it's the exact same puzzle
...Really? To think I've seen it all.
Except nope, we don't even do the puzzle. The door just opens.
Kite: !! It opened by itself! Why? ........?! Maybe it wants me to come in... All right then! I'm coming in whoever you are!
I had mixed feelings about this scene. On one hand, I didn't have to do a tedious puzzle. But on the other hand, why even have the scene if we immediately get to pass through? Just have the damn thing open to begin with.
Holy shit, and these game makers were professionals!?
Oh, and, better make sure you healed up before going into the Game Master's Room, since you're immediately thrust into a battle.
Guess what I didn't do
Not surprised. Making smart, tactical decisions isn't your forte.
I was expecting a tedious puzzle where I could heal first, not... what just happened, okay?
Kite: Come on. I'll take you on!
Royal Guard #2: We are stronger than the anything you've faced yet.
Royal Guard #3: With the pride of the Royal Guard, I'll defeat you!
Fun fact! We do, in fact, get to face off against Knightmon for a grudge match.
Name: Knightmon
Level: Ultimate
Location: Tamer Only
Drops: None
3 STR, 5 DEF, 5 SPR, 2 WIS, 2 SPD,
3 FIRE, 2 WATER, 2 ICE, 3 WIND, 1 THUNDER, 2 MACHINE, 2 DARK
EXP: 530, BIT: 1060
Regular Attack: No Element
Technique: Berserk Sword (Physical, Hits Twice), Soul Charge (Powers up the next blow)
Knightmon's not that tough, really. It's only got 3 STR, and that 5 SPR doesn't actually do anything useful. Just avoid physical attacks and you won't have a problem. (I say this, when all of my 'mons only have physical attacks except Agumon. Should have brought Renamon, but I didn't know.)
And yet, the Royal Knightmon are normal.
The only thing you have to watch out for is a Berserk Sword powered up by Soul Charge. That one hurts a LOT, since the boost applies to both hits.
Kite: Then the guy at the top is up ahead!
???: But I'm rather impressed by your strength!
???: ...President? Oh, yes. But can you call me Chief Officer? It sounds cooler!
This guy. This guy is trying to destroy the world.
Not sure if it's so bad I want to like it...or just bad.
Kite: Stop kidding around! Terminate Destromon right now!
Chief Officer: Hey, chill out. Why don't you join us? If you say yes, I'll make you No.2 after me!
Kite: ...no way! You use Digimon for evil... Even if I'm destroyed, I'll never be one of you!
Chief Officer: You just blew your chance. You really are a stupid boy. By the way, it's already too late to change your mind!
I'm reminded of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, where you can actually say yes to that kind of offer. Sure, the boss ends up taking over the world and you get a game over, but it's a nice little touch.
Anyway yeah, it's boss time. Hope that Knightmon didn't drain your health too much.
Boss fight!
First up is MetalSeadramon, only black, vs. Cannondramon. Cannondramon has the Dramon Buster, which does bonus damage to anything with Dramon in its name, so MetalSeadramon doesn't last too long.
Next up is VenomMyotismon vs. Paildramon (Agumon, in a different Digivolution). He's not hard, and his defenses are sorely lacking, so it's easy to tear through him. As for VenomMyotismon's bio, we'll get to it later.
Finally, out comes the big boy, and the one you're probably going to lose to.
Name: Raidenmon
Location: Unknown
Drops: Unknown
4 STR, 4 DEF, 2 SPR, 2 WIS, 3 SPD,
2 FIRE, 1 WATER, 3 ICE, 2 WIND, 3 THUNDER, 3 MACHINE, 2 DARK
EXP: None, BIT: None
Regular Attack: Machine Element
Technique: Gilead Plant (Heals Around Half HP, Powers Up Next Blow), Big Charge Bomb (Physical-Thunder, Counter Attack used after Gilead Plant)
So, Raidenmon. This guy hits like a truck. But that's not the worst part of the fight. Hit him with some Water techs and you'll carve through his HP pretty quick.
His regular attack does a lot of damage, yeah, but it's not what you have to look out for. (Also, I don't know why the localized versions of the game changed the letters on his shoulder pads to be MG instead of VD. It's weird.)
This attack right here is what you have to watch out for. It's a nasty one.
See, Raidenmon has about 3000 HP, give or take a few hundred. Gilead Plant, when used, restores a full third of that. It'll also increase the power of the next attack by half again.
Worse, if you happen to attack Raidenmon after he uses Gilead Plant, you'll be hit by this counter.
And since it's a counter boosted by Gilead Plant, it does at least 225% of the damage you just dealt to Raidenmon. That right there was the result of Kumamon using a technique that knocked off about 700 health or so.
The other problem is, Raidenmon has a very simple pattern. If he's at about half-health or above, he just attacks. Once he's below half health, he'll start using Gilead Plant every third turn and attack the rest of the time. Still doable, though you have to be careful about Big Charge Bomb if you're not faster than him. Otherwise, just pay attention and heal when you know he's going to use Gilead Plant.
The problem comes in to effect when you get his health lower than about 500. So, in the red. He will ALWAYS use Gilead Plant, no matter what. This is a DPS check boss. Don't have enough power to do at least 500 damage in a single turn before Raidenmon goes again? Fuck you, he's healing. He'll just eventually whittle you down if you can't kill him.
Though it is dickish, it's still one of the final enemies, so I can forgive it that much. Plus, it does demand that you budget your moves somewhat correctly. Don't wanna overshoot it and have him use Gilead Plant. You'll need to undershoot it and then nuke him down.
My gun dinosaur beats him, though, thanks to copious application of Pinpoint Shot (which has a higher chance of critting than regular attacks). If I'd gotten Cannondramon high enough to unlock his Signature Tech, which does extra damage to Machines, Raidenmon would have gone down a lot easier - but it didn't work out that way.
Surprise surprise, we didn't actually kill this guy.
Chief Officer: You're really strong... I wonder who would win... you or him...
Kite: ...what?
I'm sure this will never come up again. After all, we just beat the President, saved the day, so on and so forth.
No, of course not. We won!
Kite: ...hey, everyone!
Hey! Time for you all to steal the thunder, right? Cool, don't mind me. Just doing all the work for none of the credit, it's fine.
Lisa: We got every one of the A.o.A except you.
Chief Officer: ...alright. I think I've had enough. Next time, I'll play for myself.
Lisa: Oh, he's rather obedient. But there's one more thing...
Chief Officer: Destromon? You can stop it with that machine.
Lisa: OK, then! I'll interrogate him... And you guys go stop Destromon!
This is actually working out surprisingly well.
Nick: Destromon's gonna land on a city!
Teddy: Yes sir!
Kite: ...Teddy, you know how?
Teddy: Heh heh! Well most of it... The system is the same as Asuka Server's computer!
Teddy: Hold your horses!
Kite: ...Come on, please be in time!
Click to watch it!
So, uh, yeah. Big city.
And the Megazord has a giant laser on its chest that happens to be aimed directly at said city. I wonder how much property damage that'll cause.
But it's fine, because the stupid thing just starts to explode. Looks like
You all didn't do shit.
To be fair, Teddy pushed a button. That was hard.
Teddy: Destromon stopped and broke down! We won against the A.o.A!
Kite: Yeah, we did it Teddy!
Nick: I have to go tell this to the others!
Teddy: Man, I'm beat... Today just sucked...
Kite: ...really? I had fun!
Teddy: Hey, let's go to the Login Room! I'm sure everyone and the Matrix Chamber are back to normal!
Kite: ...Yeah! Let's go back to the Real World!
Huh. I think we might still have a problem.
Tune in next time for Tedium World 3!