Part 24

Update 3

Continuing, we'd just chopped Venus into approximately three or four cauterized pieces. Considering that i can't imagine the laser sword being anything other than a light sabre, this image only gets more awesome.



The next world, as you might remember, is Giant's world. Naturally we'll just ignore the pre-talk with Apollo and move into the race directly. To hell with that guy.



Just for the sake of curiosity, let's see what happens if you take a slightly slower dragon.



Logically enough, you pass by one miniboss and find a passed out competitor in front of a tortoise. After that, the race proceeds as normal, with you fighting each one of the mini-battles in sequence.



I love the weird names of some of the monsters, like the Corpuscl. I don't think I'd seen one of those before.



In this case, the game takes the name of whomever your first character in line is and makes them the team's leader.

The Dragon Warp

One of the glitches I really wanted to exploit in this game but couldn't manage was the Dragon Warp glitch, which is native to this world. Essentially, if you have a door or teleport ability available, you can teleport off the race track and into some other town. The game doesn't know how to handle this, as little things like clipping weren't exactly programmed into the dragon sprites at large. You can walk through walls, cross empty space, and find all kinds of neat things all over the place, among them:

*If you have an NPC in your party like Hana, Taro, Dad, or Isis, you can find Ashura's Base in the first world and go back through it, collecting the MAGI again and restarting the whole Ashura chain of events up to going back into Ki's body.

*Going to the later worlds and bypassing Odin, possibly grabbing some of the best stuff in the game way before you're supposed to have it and smashing any boss you want's face in.

*Getting top level meat for multiple monsters by repeatedly fighting Fenrir and Tianlung

*Returning to your home town

*Turning off all random encounters by walking into Arsenal's section and then back out.

If you should be lucky enough to get Teleport, you can do this at will as many times as you like as long as you don't finish the race. Care should be taken not to enter anywhere like the base of the final pillar where Apollo is, as that will result in all your MAGI being taken away. This will also cause all kinds of graphical glitching, but that's not a big deal.

There's about 5 places you can get Teleport before finishing the race: Dunatis, Venus, the Adamants, Lamia, and the Gazers. Alternatively you can hack it into your save file, but I wasn't able to do that successfully and actually show this off.



Laugh all you want, we're on to you chessmaster.



Continuing on, I really paid some attention to the cables coming from the side. Altogether it gives the celestial world up here the appearance of a spider web suspension or something like that. I wonder if they'd explain these as space elevators now?



Proceeding to Edo, there's really nothing we have that much of an interest in buying at Echigoyas, considering how much of it is freely available in a few moments.



The Hatamoto actually put up a bit more of a struggle than Venus did, simply by the fact that there's 8 of them. I mentioned before that agility is better suited to single target damage, which shows here a bit. Alys doesnt yet have any abilities or attacks that will take down more than 1 enemy here, so everybody else has to carry the load.




Luckily, our other 3 characters have the means.



This makes the post fight trash-talking even more ridiculous.



If you talk to Hana after her info dump and before interrogating the clerk at Echigoya's, she wistfully expresses a desire to get onboard the ship we haven't been told about yet.



Which boat, by the way, isn't there until we go talk to the Clerk. Foiled by plot triggers again!



Make the boat appear, damn you!



This goes to Wren, since I have plans for the rest of the treasure...



Demi is going to be my heavy weapons platform, just for the fun of it.



And naturally Rune gets the kicking boots.



Knowing what we know about these two now, this comes off much more shy and "aw, shucks"



I didn't check this before, but while Hana's in your party this time she keeps nagging you to head to the court.



That doesn't go very well, so it's time to head out to Echigoya's again.



Interestingly enough, some of these guys appear to be Gazers instead of Knights. I'm not sure if it's a random thing each time, or if each one is a separate monster type. How does nobody notice that the local thugs are in fact floating eyeballs in gangster clothing?


Echigoyas.

She said, as we were standing in the basement.



Wren pretty much butchers Echigoya, while Demi casually obliterates 8 men. Presumably the squishy humans stay outside to avoid the carnage and shrapnel.



And then collect the loot. Anything to boost magic is welcome at this point.



Having decimated the local general store, it's time to move on to regicide. However, you can walk away at this point and not pick up Taro for a bit...this is helpful if you want to do a bit of grinding but don't want to use up his equipment.



Speaking of which, Rune learns self-destruct!



Its a great trick, but you can only use it once. Once again, a bit of values dissonance there. At least he apparently exploded in a shower of coins.



I don't care if all Blitz does is lower the enemy's agility a few points. I'm glad for the trade.



Going up to the castle without Taro results in the guards unceremoniously telling you to shove off. Let's go get Taro and murder them for their rudeness.



Taro, rather helpfully, gives directions as to where the Shogun is. I think that might be one of his longest continuous speeches.



Hooray, more defense for Rune!




I suppose I could have gotten Rune a catclaw for this fight, but it didn't really seem necessary. At this point our robots are starting to become a bit more specialized. They both have 169/209 base/modified agility, but Wren has the armor piercing capabilities while Demi is our group killer. Alys is just here to slice some throats.



That never gets old.



Alys strikes first since the robot's agility is breaking the turn ordering mechanism, but Taro's Muramasa makes him the stand out for damage so far.



Rune is making fairly pitiful contributions right now. I really need to fix that.



The Shogun uses his last few seconds on earth to ask us a riddle. I wonder if they used the word Koan in the original? At any rate, all it does is confuse Alys.



Demi puts a stop to the farce by putting an arrow in his brainpan.



Not content with just murdering the Shogun, we head up to the roof to murder his pet dolphin.



It puts puts up a bit of a fight, and is rewarded with electro-shock therapy.



Taro doesn't look as impressive fighting an enemy who the Muramasa isn't useful against.



I think at the time, this was the highest damage I'd ever seen in this game.



There's no money in Dolphins, but I've heard suggestions that they actually have a chance of teaching high level magics.

At any rate, moving on...



One of the downsides of most of the more conventional weapons is that against later bosses they tend to have their damage cut in half. It's not enough that they have tons of HP and powerful attacks.



At least some of the later ones are actually vulnerable to elemental attacks.



He somehow seems a bit less impressive at this point.





I think they're pretty much murderbots at this point.



Things go pretty much the same way again, with Magnate making another feeble attack at Wren...



Before Demi brings the hammer down.

Next time: Dumpster diving and our first meeting with Odin.