Part 2: Episode 2 - Meeting your kind

(Note: I'll use X-Y as shorthand of a card with X attack and Y defense.)

Let's start again

Some untranslated text with the patch... Maybe they can't get a emulator to save and used save state instead? By the way, every time we load the game, we restart back at the story screen.


Our first stop is to the round house to the south.




This is the inn and it is free to use. It is best to use this area for training and build our characters to level 2 before moving off.



Since we are training, let's have a look at the enemies that we will face, starting with those we met in the last episode:

Kaiware - The blue alien is the weakest of all with 35HP and 200BP.



Cucumber - The orange alien that we saw in the last episode has 45HP and 350BP.



Pumpkin - The Saiyan has 55HP and 400BP.

Here are new ones:

Brock - This Saiyan comes with 2 Cucumbers when we see them in random encounters and this group is very rare. He has 65HP and 500BP, the strongest of the bunch.


This is the most deadly group of this map. This is certain death if you meet them early on in the game and can't run away.

Onion - The Saiyan has 55HP and 450BP. He also has a big surprise...




Oh dear...


Can you see Piccolo in this screen shot? In this form, his BP is boosted to 1800 and gives 90BP when defeated.





His special attack fires a large beam from his month. And I mean LARGE.


By the way, have a look at this:

Notice how we have pairs of the same card? Actually the game does not randomly generate the cards for us to use, but instead randomly draw cards from a predefined deck. The enemies have their own deck too and I think some enemies have a deck unique to them.

So how does this affect the game? In this game the special attack cards we get are usually 7-1 or has better defense but very low attack. So we take a risk of being attacked if we use the 7-1 card. On the other hand the enemies usually use special attack card with 5 attack and sometimes Z-Z as seen in the last episode.

Between the styles, Demon style has better selection of cards than other styles. So it is easy to accumulate cards of the Demon style when we keep using cards with low attack to move around the map.

If you watch the animated gif in the last episode, you will see all of them attacked Goku. In this game, enemies usually stick to one target during the fight. So if you know which one is their target, you can give him a card with high defense and this makes the fight a little bit easier.



Once we are up to level 2, it is time to explore the map. By choosing a card with high number of stars and we can move the cursor around to see more of the map without moving our characters.

To the east, we see a square with the training symbol. Inside we play a mini game which give BP when completed successfully. There are 3 types of training mini game which are common to all characters and the type is fixed for each training symbol.

We play this game the same way as we play other JRPGs - by not going where we are supposed to go.



Training time! The dragon will play a card. Then you match the same symbol or number of stars on it! The more you clear the more BP you get!

If you think you'll fail press the B button. Doing so stops the training! However, if you fail, you'll lose 2 BE!

Pick a card!


Actually, you can match number too. Usually we can get to 3 times without using save state.



The game changes what it says every five cards...



Until the translation patch gives up at 20.



All that hard work for a mere 25BP, definitely not worth the effort. Although I think it gives you more if your level is higher. Fighting random encounters are far better for training as they give full BP to all characters who joined the battle. And sometimes they also drop item cards for our trouble.



Further east, we see two cloud icon. We can jump between the two if we have a Flight item card, but we don't have one yet.



Far up to the north, we have another training game and a Z symbol. Z symbol contains another set of mini games which gives items.




Training time! Play a card that's better than the one at the top of the screen! If you fail you'll lose 5 BE! Choose the one that you want!



The instruction is misleading. The card we pick only needs to be as good as the one picked by the computer to win. Also 1 beats 7 and 2 beats Z. In this case we choose stars since we have a 7 and a Z.



And unlike the other one, we must beat all five cards to get our reward.



Once again, not worth the effort.





Match 3 to win! Win and you get to keep the cards!

Let's try the item mini game. We don't actually see the cards spinning, so it is difficult to win even with an emulator.



What we get in this mini game is pretty random.



We go further east and spot a space pod.



We fight a single Saiyan. Easier than random encounters.





We follow the path into the mountains and fight another Saiyan. The path is blocked by a boulder, we have to return later.



We leave the path and head south to find a house.



Scouter is a very useful item. In battle, it lets us see the HP, BP of every enemy in that fight; and if the enemy is not a boss character, we can also see what card he will use. On the map, it shows which square has enemies on it.






At the south east section of the map, there is a ring of training spot. One of them is the last type of training mini game.





The HP, BP and BE are halved...



...and the character can't use special attacks or item cards.



The reward is pretty good but cost HP. And it won't let the character to start if his HP is too low. If the character is not doing too well during the fight, we can choose to stop it instead of game over, but then the character won't get any reward.


The item mini game here is one that we haven't seen.

The number of chances is equivalent to the number of stars!

How many times will you challenge? Pick a card!













This game is really go for getting items. I think the number of item combinations are few, so if we don't want to use save state, we can write them all down and clear this mini game every time. However, the item space is limited, so make sure there are enough item space before playing.

The last screen is a list of all normal item cards in the game. I'll talk about this later.

Now we have done everything we can on this side of the map, we can finally return to our original objective.

See you in the next episode of Dragon Ball Z LP!