Part 23

Update 2

Alright, we'd just kicked Ashura's head in and gotten a free trip back to Ki's place when we left off.



You know, how did Ki get this thing out of her body, anyway? Or did she have one lying around? Also, how did the prism miss the ones in her body?



Thinking about this, having the main character be a girl makes Dad seem like so much more of a deadbeat. He's lucky that Alys didn't become a stripper or something.



Extort some information out of Johnny...



It took a little bit for me to notice, but if you don't have the main character at the front of your party the game will reorder your party to make sure you do when you talk to Dad.



Handily enough, the human enemies in this area drop the Kick technique on a regular basis. This has obvious implications to our strategy of robo-boosting.



While using up some of those kicks, Alys's HP gain went through the roof. It's pretty bad when she's got literally 3 times as much HP as Rune.



Rune is probably going to end up as our designated Tank since he's got a Parasuit as well as natural defense in his future.



Just a bit too eager there for my comfort.



Nothing much to talk about inside of Ki, but I don't think I took any shots of the entrances to her various organs. It almost looks like an ulcer or something.



Pressing on...yeah, fuck that Apollo guy. Not visiting him.



Much to my surprise, this halts forward progress. Lynn's sick mother isn't lying in bed...



Lynn isn't waiting in Dunatis cave...



And Dunatis isn't even waiting in the cave. Despite the fact that various people in town will talk about him.



It's also impossible to walk into the sea, meaning that you can't get the True Eye and enter the White Dungeon.

It's almost enough to make it seem like the entire "riddle" is an elaborate trap set up by Apollo. How far back did Apollo plan all this?



Good luck indeed. Does he pretend that there aren't any MAGI in the world when talking with people who aren't us?



You're a horrible actress ma'am. I'm on to you.



As a note, don't mess around with with the medusa in here.



Could this be a replacement Lynn? How deep does the rabbit hole go here?



And Dunatis has gotten into place. As a note, Dunatis has the potential to teach Teleport to a mutant. As a matter of fact, he can teach ANY mutant ability in the game. Naturally, that makes actually getting the ability a needle in a haystack. There's several different RNGs involved in getting an ability from an enemy, and getting them all to line up in one place through trial and error is nearly impossible. Long story short, I couldn't get Teleport from him.



One of the problems with this all agility set-up is what do to with power potions. I just hand them off to Alys because eh, why not?



Pressing on to the Guardian's base with little or no delay, I'm struck again by the size of the buildings here.



The jukebox is a rather nice feature throughout the game. Triggering the right tune (which doesn't require any particular conversations to start) brings out these guys, who now that I look at them are exact twins of the guys from the ruins. Note to self: Guardian cloning problem?



Huh. Early encounter with mechanistic monsters.



Knowing what we know know, it's pretty obvious that Apollo is the one behind this. Venus is only concerned with herself, and Odin's a neutral player. Heck, there's no indication that Venus even HAS minions.



The last minion in the guardian base goes down without a fight.




The robots are really starting to take the lead in agility, and getting some very respectable HP. Rune's being boosted by Hermes boots so he's sucking pretty bad right now. I think I'll need to do something about that. Alys, on the other hand, is nearly as fast as the robots. You'll notice that both her and Rune have a headbutt prepped and ready to go against the Ninja.



As a result, Dad hasn't had to do anything this entire time. He's still got all the charges on his equipment.



Seriously, Rune is just coming off pretty bad in the auto-dialogue.



That's...that's just evil.



I think the robots are stealing the show.



You lying wench.



On the way to Venus's world you can just catch a glimpse of the tower top from the Celestial Palace.



X-Kicks and Psi swords are handy things to have here. Each X-Kick will give your robots +18 agility.



I think someone might have pointed this out, but Venus actually appears to have stained glass images or murals of herself in every room in her palace. Creepy.



Starting to explore the sewers results in this much needed boost for Rune, even though it should be evident that he's improved.



These robots are really getting out of control.



You're not fooling me this time!



I might have missed this previously, but there's a semi-hidden recovery spring in the volcano.



Even mana potions are probably best given to mutants. I'm stymied by the fact that a human with a spellbook will gain mana more quickly than a mutant using their natural abilities.



There's actually a lot of strength based weaponry scattered around dungeons in this game, which are a nice source of money in an all-agility game.



Same old, same old. We have a wedding to crash! It's kind of interesting, though, that you get there before Leon.




This is even true if you just stay right outside the gates and grind a bit before going in. There's really no urgency. Rune has improved substantially, and now has the best defense and HP of anyone so he goes up front. Wren and Demi don't actually have 99 AGI right now, it's more like 139 with what they're using. And yes, this was directly before dealing with Venus... the low weapon use counts are accurate.



It's a bit odd when the dialogue assignment in a game like this gives all the emotional type of lines to a robot.



That's a nice start.



Rune's damage is related to him having the Speed Magi more than anything else. You might wonder how it could be that two people with less than 70 to 50 agility could go before a robot with 139, but the game sometimes gets a bit confused when it comes to agility scores over 99. I've read some speculation that the game simply truncates the number at two digits, meaning it might be treating the robots as having 13 agility. However, this doesn't seem quite right...



Venus, by the way, didn't get a single attack off.



Just to show off the difference, if you don't talk to Leon before the fight the game takes over and talks to him afterward to ensure that you get that MAGI back. It's a bit humorous, as it makes it seems like Leon is trying to let the fact that he's got a MAGI be forgotten.



As a final note on this world, all the participants from the wedding are gone from the city when you leave the chapel, and aren't in the chapel. I can only imagine they're out in the village having one hell of a party.

Next time: A bit of experimentation and another difficulty-breaking bug.