Part 20: Day Unknown - 9 Character Pick Up
Day Unknown – 9 Character Pick UpWhere we last left off, we killed Jawarro while rescuing Loreille from the Sol Tower. But then Xelpherpolis showed up, powered up to maximum, and whisked everyone away with a tornado.
Now let us see what has become of Mouse and Co….
Now Playing – Ruins
“We must be at Ano’s Ruins. Why are we here?”
“You seem to be all right.” “I can’t believe you’re still alive! It’s so hard to believe…it’s a miracle.” “I just failed to die, that’s all. Nothing embarrassing. Just maybe one should reconsider having a body that’s too strong. But, you still might find some use with my body. You could consider it a curiosity of sorts…..”
That’s right, the power of true love brought Grantus back from the dead. Mouse x Grantus is the actual OTP of this game.
“I want to help you.” “Ha. Ha. What do you think, Mouse!? Here’s tremendous power, power beyond your wildest imagination. It might even be too much for us.”
”I mean I kicked his ass pretty easily, but sure, dude can be useful fighting Xelpherpolis. Welcome aboard, Grantus!”
Finding Gallhint is how this scene would start if you didn’t give Grantus flowers.
“Hey, is that you Mouse? I’ll be OK on my own. Go check on the women and make sure they’re OK.”
Rather than “women” as in plural, it’s just Claire here.
“He won’t die that easily. He’s probably been sent off to some other corner of the island.”I assume Gallhint means “the others” rather than a specific person.
“But it’s strange that the three of us ended up here by chance.” “No, it’s no accident.”
“Huh!?”
“We’re descendants of KANON!” “Take a look at that.”
“We’re not in Ano’s Ruin!” “We’re in the KANON Ruins.”As it happens, the track playing is actually called “KANON Ruins”, and you can find this out from Zakkio before this reveal.
“Any KANON descendant who didn’t have evil in their heart was rescued.”With Gallhint the Domestic Abuser Bandit and Grantus the until-now Villain?
“I wonder what’s happened to the islanders?” “I can feel it! Something awful is happening!”The game then shows us some random scenes of devastation.
And just how did you see anything, Gallhint? What, did Claire give everyone a psychic glimpse?
“Those friends of ours who aren’t related to the KANON have probably ended up just like all the other islanders.”If it wasn’t clear, the people in the above image are frozen in place.
“We’ve got to go save them now!” “All right! Let’s go find them! And this time we’re going to defeat Xelpherpolis once and for all!”Everyone nods.
Claire leans in and whispers something in Gallhint’s ear.
“The fact that he’s here on the sacred land is proof itself that he has no ill intent in his heart. All the conflict of the past will be hereby forgotten entirely.”
“Or should I say you’ve grown.” “Well, sort of. It just kind of happens when you hang out with this guy.” ”People always say that. It’s like the world revolves around me or something.” “OK, Let’s go! My KANON comrades!!”We are prompted to pick between Gallhint and Grantus. As Gallhint sucks as a person and a fighter, I’m picking Grantus.
“Time to go find our fellow mates. How about meeting back at the tower. Don’t go on ahead until we get there!”And that’s a wrap.
Let’s take a moment to talk about Grantus: he is both literally a beast and a beast of a fighter. Initially he won’t be all that useful, as he just has a basic attack and not much in the way of stats. But once you build him up, he can hit as hard if not harder than Beak. To make things even better, Grantus gets an all-hitting (not area hitting, ALL-hitting) attack called “Brandish” that unlike Rage Wave doesn’t hurt you to use. Once you’ve given him some love and care, Grantus will dominate late game enemies (time demons in particular fall easily to his attacks).
Anyway, on with the game. Normally, there would be a way to leave the forest around
The day is “?” like before, but now the time is permanently frozen at…I want to say 4:45? There’s no day/night cycle anymore either.
EDIT: As others in the thread pointed out, the time is likely 4:44 as reference to the Chinese (and by extension Japanese) number of death.
Now Playing – “Convulsion”
(This track shares a name with the theme that played when Xel achieved his final form, at least in the English version of Zakkio’s song list. This theme plays everywhere except for the final dungeon and KANON Ruins from now on)
Upon reaching the Woodcutter’s Village, the Celestial Leader descends from the sky. I believe this happens even if you haven’t completed Kyte’s quest or otherwise found their village, so it’s possible you could be completely surprised by their appearance.
Celestial Leader: “But this time, we are troubled as well….We never imagined that man would go this far….We did not regard him as such a threat. The only reason our village is in the sky is because it uses the power of the spirits from this island. And to find the island in such a state….well…”
“The Celestials in trouble? I guess anything can happen….”
Understand that Ano’s dock scene is entirely missable, for even if you recruit him, if you recruited anyone else, they might show up instead. Hence, you may have no idea why this guy is suddenly calling Pattimo “Rommel”. Although it is actually mentioned in the manual, but go figure how many people bothered to read and remember bits of lore from those.
Celestial Leader: “We came all this way to help you.”
“So, what? Are going (sic) to turn the island back to the way it was?”Celestial Leader: “Regretfully, that is beyond our capabilities. About the only thing we can do is help get your friends out of trouble. Fortunately or unfortunately, due to the nature of this closed dimension, it seems he hasn’t been sent off that far.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Celestial Leader: “We use this to synchronize our souls and communicate with those far away. Even if you all had some kind of hidden power, it’s unlikely that an earthling could learn how to use it. But if you touch the stone directly, I bet you’d at least be able have (sic) a soul connection without even speaking. Well, that’s if you trust each other. And if the souls meld together, the bodies will most likely be released. So take this with you.”
Celestial Leader: “A few other Celestials have also come with me. We will assist you.”
The Celestial Geezer teleports out.
As Claire put it, the Celestials are basically not helpful at all here. Just like last time we met them, all they do is sell you shit. Douchebags won’t even give you a discount when a threat to their way of life is on the table. They will also provide blacksmithing services, including one for Grantus. He only has one weapon level to gain, but it’s enough. The most important thing is to level him up, and he’ll do swimmingly.
Incidentally, Gallhint has a line or two here if you had him rather than Grantus. Nothing special.
Even if you never touched the quest to fix the lift, it will be functional when you get here.
After exiting the village, it’s a linear path to Pandule city, but with some small deviations to nab our frozen party members.
Lloyd is not far from the lift, laying in the middle of the Pandule farmlands.
Despite not having a soul, this funky rock still does its thing with Lloyd. Once he’s up, we can add him to our party or not. I accidentally replaced Claire with him, especially annoying as we’ll have to go all the way back to Sol Tower to pick her up again.
All recruitment scenes play out like this, so I won’t bother detailing them all.
Rinna is found in her special place.
“…What….? Mouse! What happened??”All party members will express some confusion, but we don’t actually seem to explain anything to them. Any that you don’t take with you shuffle on to the Sol Tower.
At the entrance to the city, we find the bloke that blacksmiths for Grantus. Also Rummy, Bagoth and Fang, funnily enough. These people did not share a blacksmith before this, so it seems to be an arbitrary decision to lump them together. There’s another Celestial that does it for the other characters.
Kyte is discovered here, to the south of the entrance.
“What!? What the heck is this…?”
The enemies encountered in the city are largely the same as those encountered in the Sol Tower: Ramiars, Harpies, Centaurs, as well as Gold Walls and Dons. New ones show up if you level up enough, but on my first run, it was the same old same old.
Most frozen NPCs aren’t capable of being interacted with, but some like this bloke have items you can nab.
Near the restaurant where we dated her, we find Rummy.
“Mouse…I’m….What is….?”I replace Lloyd with her, but not for long.
This Celestial (referred to as the Leader, but doesn’t have the same pure white sheen) sells berries of all kinds. They’re much less useful at this point in the game, but they’re at least useful for maintaining HP while grinding.
Beak is found just past the “Leader”. Notice the Time Vault is also here, in case you had anything in it you wanted to nab.
“….Whoa?!....What happened?”Naturally, I ditch Rummy and put Beak in my party.
Bagoth is found near a pile of rubble that can be climbed to get into the palace, which is our ending destination.
“….Mouse…..What happened to me?”
Fang is found just prior to the Bird Park where he showed up and fought Twinboom.
“I’m so sorry Mouse. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
Plosi is found on the dirt path to his house. He deserves to be left here, but anyway…
“Hey, hey, hey?! Was I dreaming or what?!”
Next to Plosi’s porn studio is a Celestial that sells Phoenix Potions. These were previously only obtainable by beating Claire at the drinking game, and only one at a time. Now we can stock up on them, and boy how they’ll carry me in the fight to come.
Ano is found outside the entrance to the demon reactor.
“….Huh?! How did I get here? ….Where am I?”With Ano in tow, we’ve got all our allies back. Now all we have to do is proceed.
There’s some goodies to be found in the palace. In Loreille’s room, we can find a “Loreille Flower” under her bed (previously obtained by serenading her from below), and a party reviving flower is far more useful now. We can also get into Xelpherpolis’ room, which was blocked off for the whole game. Xel has an accessory called the “Mystical Ring” that boosts magic power under his bed, which is excellent for Claire or another good magic user.
The Death Hiyoko Geezer has set up shop in a previously abandoned room in the palace. Guess he’s a super special magical person himself.
I believe some of the DH Eggs cannot be found until this end game state, so this is your first opportunity to have them all naturally and get your reward. Rather than punish myself by playing this game for far longer than anyone should, I just used a Gameshark to add them all to my game.
Click here to witness the greatest treasure in this game.
Hiyoko Geezer: “A very impressive feat indeed, and lucky at that.”
Now Playing – Death Hiyoko’s Theme
“I think he wants us to follow. Do you want to go?”We don’t get a say in the matter, despite Pattimo phrasing it as a question.
King Death Hiyoko: “It’s unfortunate for the Death Hiyoko that guys like you are lurking about. *tweet* Let me give you a gift commending your efforts. *tweet*”
King Death Hiyoko: “How you use it is up to you. *tweet* You should consider your talk with me today as the most valuable treasure of your life. *tweet*”
And we are sent back to the palace and the scene is over.
So. The Death Hiyoko Manju. What does it do?
If we use it from our inventory, we get that message, and….that’s it.
As far as I know, nobody knows what, if anything, the Manju does. None of the walkthroughs suggest it has a purpose, nor could I discover anything personally. It might be something hard to notice like a buff to stat gains per level or what have you, but I can’t say for sure. Given how this game has padded out thus far, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover the Manju genuinely has no effect and the devs either forgot to give it one or did this as a deliberate joke.
Either way, bugger getting all those eggs just for this. They’re scattered all over the place, including the Forest of Illusion, Ghoul Island, and the Quarry Ruins. All that misery and all those encounters for bugger all reward!
EDIT: Polsy informs me that the Manju doubles experience gain for the whole party. It's better than nothing, but it's not terribly helpful at this point in the game. I assure you that the final boss does not require a particularly large amount of grinding to beat, at least no more than what you probably went through to get all those DH Eggs.
Anyway, our destination is the Sol Tower. What do you think Xelpherpolis has done with the place since we were last there? Turned it into a hellscape dungeon? Infested it with the most horrible enemies known to man?
Now Playing – Shrine
He hasn’t changed it at all. This is literally the same dungeon we went through before, only we start at the top and travel down a different winding, mazelike path to get to the bottom (although personally I managed to get to the bottom rather easily, didn’t even need instructions).
The encounters have not changed either. They’re the same as we encountered outside, Ramiars and shit. There is not a single meaningful change to this boring, dull grey maze of a dungeon. What an utter disappointment.
As you can see, our allies have gathered in this one room prior to the proper entrance to the dungeon. I decide my final party will be Grants and Claire. Beak’s great, but with Grantus doing much the same things he does, I figure it’s better to have Claire on hand for healing and high power magic. However, with Phoenix Potions aplenty, I probably could have gotten away with using Beak instead.
This is where we found Jawarro’s dragons the last time we were here. There is no indication that we need to go here specifically other than the fact that if you pot around in the dungeon long enough, you might discover this place, recognise it, and figure it’s the only noteworthy location in this dull grey maze.
We won’t be proceeding with the final boss today. But I have one last thing to detail before I end this update.
We already knew Mouse could learn skills from our allies. It’s never explained by the game, but it’s easy enough to discover just by using any character in the game enough. But what if I told you there was a second tier of skills we could learn?
These skills can only be learned by learning a specific pair of skills from other characters and then using them both in the same battle. It’s an unbelievably specific situation that you’re unlikely to discover by pure chance. Fortunately, they are some of the best attacks in the game, and the best of them will help trivialise the final boss.
What is the best attack for Mouse to learn? It’s called “Grand Cross”. To learn it, you need to learn “Wild Cross” from Beak’s Catharsis, and “Silent Cross” from Fang’s “Vacuum Spear”. However, this alone is not all: you must also level up Mouse’s generic “Slash” art to level 10. Most of his super skills don’t have a similar requirement.
Grand Cross costs 700 HP to use every time, but it deals 4000+ damage with every swing. Ray Slash was enough to trivialise most encounters up till now, and that only dealt about 1500 at most. Grand Cross is every bit the overpowered end game ability it is supposed to be.
On that note, we shall end.
Join me next time, where we confront Xelpherpolis for the last time.