Part 22

Update 1



Our run through this time features a human female as the main character. Considering the homicidal tendencies of RPG leads in general, part of me likes to think that Dad got a bit banged up for startling her.



And yet looks exactly the same. Maybe she had already hit her growth spurt? Probably more believable with a girl than a boy.



Yeah, Rune's mom is definitely a fox. Actually, now that I think about it...that appears to be a sprite they could have used for a monster but didn't. Or did I miss that somehow?



These comments are funnier with robots as the "children." Does Demi have to come back for dinner even though as a robot she presumably doesn't eat?



As requested, our new team.



We shed our training wheels and prepare to get started.



First off, robots with their armor and HP go up front. Squishies in the back.



Shortly afterward we receive one of the keys to our domination of the game in the humble Punch. I haven't spoken about these before...



Initially Punches and other martial arts are extremely unimpressive. If you just use them once or twice, you'll probably discount them as useless.



The trick is that their damage is based on a multiplier of the number of uses remaining versus the number of uses that the item started with. After 30 uses, a Punch can one-shot just about any ordinary monster in the starting world.



After 60 uses, nothing around here can stand up to one.



This is the second to last use of a punch. It's worth noting that the last use of martial art normally does 2-3 times as much damage as the penultimate use. All that from an item that you can get for 25 gold. In addition they train agility like mad.



I didn't use the final use on my human because of another weird bug. First we transfer it off to a robot...



It should be noted that Robots don't get the same benefit from using a martial art at later uses that humans do. Also, martial arts don't have their uses halved when equipped on a robot and don't get repaired when you rest at an inn.



This might be part of what you're seeing here. Going into the Abilities menu and moving the punch causes it to vanish, but Demi's agility and HP are still treated as though the punch is there. The potential for this should be pretty obvious. Later martial arts can provide as much as +32 to agility this way. Further, 99 once again only a visible cap. You can raise robot's agility as high as 255 with this trick, although a certain amount of pre-planning is necessary. If you have a robot with 255 agility and equip even one item that will raise their agility, it'll roll back over to a low value.



After a bit of grinding it's time to keep moving. After playing through a bit more, I somehow wonder what would happen if I'd gone to the south without talking to her. There's rather more use of triggers in this game than I'd have thought.



Interestingly, if you look off to the left you can see the outline of the men at the treasure chests through the tiles. They used a surprising amount of partial transparency.



After checking later sprites those are definitely Guardian uniforms. This dialogue here also spells it out rather more clearly. I do wonder how I missed that.



For instance, you can't enter this place without an NPC in tow. Interestingly enough, this doesn't necessarily have to be Ki. If you were to do something like hack the game or use some other bugs, you could enter this with anybody.



Most of the potions end up going to Rune, as Alys has better stat growth. Mutants really suffer from this, so they require extra work.



6 jaguars is an unusually large group for this area, so I decided to take a note of it.




Our robots have at this point gotten one or two permanent boosts, but are otherwise unremarkable. It's probably a good idea to have your humanoids always working on a martial art at this point, especially since you'll get so many from fighting gangs. You'll notice that at the moment Alys is the fastest person in the group...



I like to imagine he keeps laughing as the fight starts.



Yes, Alys just knocked a rhino on its ass with once punch. That was nice and short.



Or was it never there to begin with?



Yeah, screw Desert Town. Nothing of use here.



Playing with my sound off I ended up overshooting a bit. In the Desert World if you get really lost there's a clear space around the edge of the map so you can find your way back to the start. A nice touch.



I ended up accidently sending this sabre with Mask, as you can't un-equip items from NPCs.



He takes less time to die than he probably took to say this.



This time around Mask is getting to use the Battle sword here. I'm focusing on Agility for this run through. Some people have mentioned that the combat system is heavily weighted toward agility, and I can't deny it. Not to mention all the martial arts I'm using tend to train it up anyway.



These will be going to Rune throughout. For quite a while the agility of the humanoids will outpace that of the robots, so I won't need to have the robots standing around doing nothing.



It's noteworthy that he doesn't mention kicks and bullets here...



I'm imagining a monster boulder being thrown at some unsuspecting chickens here.




My robots have moved to identical equipment setups now. Their gold gauntlets are down at the bottom to keep the screen clearer. Alys has started to get really rampant HP growth at this point. Her HP has increased by 300 since the last boss battle with only 7 increases in Agility. Rune is much more modest, but he's still coming along pretty well.



Mask goes first and puts that battle sword to its one and only use. I think Demi going first was a fluke in the RNG personally, but the SMG isn't a bad weapon to use against Ashura.



These weapons pale, however, in comparison to what I like to imagine as a pair of perfectly choreographed kicks. You'll note that Rune did more damage than Alys despite having 10 less agility. Damage on these isn't so much based on agility, and each weapon has a fairly wide range of damage.



The battle ends with Wren still standing in the back ready to start shooting. I love it.



You know, if he'd just stayed a goblin.... he probably would have died anyway. You just can't win sometimes.



And with that we get rushed off again.

Next time: ripping through Ki's body and finding some interesting evidence of Apollo's conspiracy at work.