Part 15: The Ultimate Team Up!! Goku And Piccolo Combine Their Strength!!
Howdy, folks, and welcome back! Last time, on Attack of the Saiyans, Raditz, Goku's evil older brother, arrived on the planet, killed a Farmer, scared the shit out of Piccolo, beat Krillin and Goku's asses, and kidnapped Gohan. Today, we're going to get started on tracking the hedgehog haired fuck down, so let's head out.Kicking things off with a planning session. To continue, we had to talk to Bulma, and I didn't think that was worth showing in a screenshot.
In all fairness, Raditz is about four times stronger than Goku at this point. He probably ain't afraid of shit.
Well, Raditz has the highest power level on the planet, and Goku can sense those, so I'm willing to bet he could just, y'know, follow that.
However, Goku has a different, and clever, idea.
We cut to this screen, with the Dragon Radar readout laid over it.
Bulma created this radar that can sense the energy signature that the Dragon Balls give off, which is an electromagnetic signature.
Bulma didn't invent the concept of a radar to detect Dragon Balls, though. Emperor Pilaf had one of these before Bulma invented hers.
Well, here goes nothing, except the death of everyone on the planet.
: (Not much of one, but...)
: If we're all doomed either way, might as well do as much as we can before doomsday arrives!
Oh, great, who is it now!?
Oh, it's just Piccolo.
This day just seems to be getting worse and worse for this group. Raditz, the baddest motherfucker to rear his villainous head, has appeared, Goku turns out to be a space alien, he gets his ass beat (as did Krillin) without any effort, his four year old is kidnapped, and then the reincarnation of the evil King Piccolo shows up out of nowhere.
You've also been here for the last couple of minutes. You could have shot him in the back of the head or something.
: I did. There's no way you two could beat him. I'll come along with you. You know as well as I do just how strong he is...Neither of us could face him down by ourselves. But with the two of us together...There's a small chance of victory!
: I guess so...But what's making you want to help me all of a sudden?
: Don't get the wrong idea...I'm not some kind of freedom fighter or anything. I don't care what happens to your kid...That guy's just in the way of my world domination plans! Once I team up with you to beat him and those two friends of his...You're next on my list, Goku. I'll beat you down, and this time the world will be mine for sure!
: Not if I can help it...Until then, though, I think teaming up is a great idea. In fact, I guess it's pretty much the only way.
: Exactly...We need to be patient here, Goku. The idea of partnering with you is enough to make me puke, but I've got to put up with it.
: Hey, Bulma! Can I borrow your radar?
Alright, so, in case you glossed over that, Piccolo is teaming up with Goku to go fight Raditz. These are the two strongest guys in the world, and it's up to them to stop Raditz.
Bulma goes off to get the Radar and Goku summons the Flying Nimbus.
: My strength is in a completely different class than your silly magic tricks.
And off they go, to track down Raditz and try not to get killed.
: I have to say, I never imagined this pair-up in my wildest dreams. I doubt there's been a stronger tag-team in the history of the world! We might just have a chance at this one after all! This is gonna be one heck of a bout, I'm sure of that! Bulma! You remember the spot your radar indicated? Let's all go check it out for ourselves!
Toriyama likes naming things after food. I'm not sure why. But it does remind me that I'm hungry.
Oh, by the way, on the map screen, new areas to visit are shiny, like this one.
And here we are in our next dungeon, the Spinach Wastes.
: That must mean Gohan's somewhere in there, too.
: So, what's our plan?
: We gotta go in and get Gohan back. That's the only way.
: ...Heh heh. I never thought I'd be fighting with you quite like this.
Alright, let's get going here.
Piccolo is a few levels under Goku. You'd think with him being billed as nearly as strong as Goku, his level would scale to Goku's.
And Goku is far stronger than Piccolo; part of it is the Fruits I fed him, but the three extra levels don't hurt.
The skill not shown here is called Regeneration, and it allows Piccolo to regenerate even more health during battle.
The first skill in his Ultimates is one we'll learn through story progression, but the second requires those two "????" skills in the first tab to both be at Level 2.
Fairly standard for his first half of the abilities list.
Two of these are new; Piccolo is the only one to obtain Auto-heal Up, as well as Resistance Up.
And I give him a bit more HP and some more Attack. He'll have plenty of chances later on to increase his other skills, but this is a good start.
And since this is a new dungeon, there are new enemies. We'll start off by beating up some stray dogs. As we're heroic, you see.
Not too much HP for these guys, but we won't one-shot them with regular physicals.
They have a few different attacks they can use, two of which aren't super effective. This one attempts to blind a character, but deals no damage.
So, uh, yeah, Krillin is hitting about as hard as Piccolo does.
This attack is pretty much just a waste of a turn, like a lot of enemies did in Earthbound.
But it has an effect; it raises a character's Rage Gauge, which could end badly for them (and does later, but I don't show it).
And, finally, an attack that does damage.
Ah, hell, it fits into a .gif, so here's that.
Let's show off what Piccolo can do. This is his physical combo skill.
Piccolo's race has the ability to stretch their limbs really far, as well as advanced regeneration capabilities.
Mm-hmm, lookit them pretty numbers.
Those rocks require the Level 2 Ki-Blast, so we're not breaking them today.
Down here is a chest with this in it; Large Beans restore 800 HP to a character. At this point, this is basically a full-restore for anyone who isn't Goku, and even for him, it's a 90% heal.
These guys are interesting. They have one annoying attack, a non-attack, a regular attack, and a surprising move.
Their first showing is to peck at some seed at the ground.
It heals a bit of health for them.
All of their other attacks start off with them approaching a character and doing some head bobbing.
They then stab into the character, which can either heal them, do some damage, or do damage and have the chance to inflict Stun on the character. It's a toss-up between which one of these will happen, and I've not seen any indication of which one will happen until it does.
They also have an ability to flee from the battle while damaging someone in the process; it removes them from the fight, but you also lose out on any EXP you would have gained.
Speaking of EXP, not a bad bit of it for beating these guys.
Let's move on.
The Spinach Wasteland has a good bit of real estate to cover, but I already see the bit to the north I didn't wander around. Dammit.
Oh, well. We'll get to it later.
Piccolo has a unique Ki-Blast, just as everyone else does.
He blasts off a big-ass purple sphere of doom to blow up obstacles.
Huzzah!
Aww, dammit.
The other guy is a Meadow Wizard, and he's not much to worry about.
One of the two attacks the Wizard has at his disposal, this one hits all party members.
By lighting them on goddamned fire. And these numbers are with increased Fire resistance. Nothing too scary, but don't get cocky.
Distrustful Men are kind of tough, as evidenced by them surviving this Meteor Combination.
They don't have much in their repertoire, but what they do have hurts.
They can also do a little pow-wow dance to raise their Attack, as well as just stab you in the chest with their spear.
These two have a unique S-Combo, but it'll be a while before I have the proper skills to unlock it. For now, let's just see how they can combine their skills with the generic S-Combo.
So, yeah, these two can combine pretty effectively. Not as much as the Kamehame Fever, but this is just two guys, and Piccolo's energy blast is a single hit.
Noice. Goku snags himself a level from obliterating that poor son of a bitch.
It might look like that Piccolo is jumping up to the little path up top, but he's not. We'll land just below it, and we can circle around to hop up those stairs to get that chest.
Which contains a Power Fruit. Goku will probably be get this, if I'm being honest.
Those two big rocks are currently unbreakable, so we're going to the right. That chest contains a Battle Sense, which raises Accuracy for a few turns. I'm not upset I didn't grab it while recording.
This next area has a bit of a gimmick.
You hit these rocks with a Ki-Blast and they go zooming across the ground.
Where they land and make a walkway for us to go up.
We go forward and blast this rock forward.
But we can't climb it from this side!
So let's scoot around and do some more of this dungeon.
That black rock requires a Level 3 Ki-Blast to break, so we won't be back to break it for quite a while.
Re-equipping the Gas Mask takes away any danger here.
This is a piece of equipment that gives you a chance to avoid all damage with an Active Guard. Not bad, but I don't know if I'll ever use it.
Not sure why this place has poisoned floors, but whatever. Not the weirdest thing we'll find in this game.
And another new enemy appears!
...Whoa, that is one big-ass pig.
These guys have 960 HP to their names and hit just as hard as you expect a gigantic pig would.
It's not a bad idea to blast them with all you got.
I missed the Guard on that one, and in addition to a ton of damage, Piccolo is also stunned. They can also hit all party members at once if they feel like it.
They drop a good bit of EXP, too, and they aren't too hard to kill. They have a fair bit of HP, sure, but nothing too dramatic.
Coming up here gets us around the bottom of the walkway rock.
I wasn't going to take a shot of Piccolo blasting this, but I thought that looked pretty cool.
But first!
This can poison an enemy in combat.
But that'll do us for this update.
Next time, maybe we'll actually reach Raditz. Stay tuned to find out!