Part 2: Summer 1991

Last time, we covered the initial story of the planed Neo-Kenya where our adventure is set and met our main characters, Ken and his girlfriend Linda. It, however, became quickly obvious that she is not going to want to talk to Ken until he reaches level 3, but he's currently only level 1. Well, since we do have animals to gather for the ark (and potentially our own purposes), then I suppose, let's get out into the world and try to find some. This should allow us to reach level 3, and then hopefully we can finally have an actual conversation with Linda.
Back to the overworld it is!


Here is Ken, just after leaving Minago at Q-14, after his unsuccesful attempt to talk to Linda.
(By the way, that overworld theme above is pretty awesome so definitely give it a listen!)
As far as animal gathering is concerned...

...here in the general area of the ark, we can already see some pigs. As mentioned, there are no random battles in this game, all "enemies" are visible on the overworld like this, so you know what you're getting into (sort of). Pigs are pretty harmless, so let's approach. Incidentally, approaching an animal from the back does give you the preemtive strike!


So, how does this work?
The battles are mostly presented in a Dragon Quest-like style. On top you can see the enemies and their HP, in the middle is your party, and at the bottom all the actions/results are displayed as plain text. It's also where the menu appears for our party members to choose their action.
Our party can consist of up to two humans plus up to two dogs. One of the humans will always be Ken, but for now we have there one empty spot next to him. The other two spots are reserved for dogs (if you put them in your party). Here like this at the beginning it's useful to have both dogs present as both of those we have already start at level 5 and are therefore stronger and sturdier than Ken and will help out if we are fighting a lot of enemies.
Speaking of which, I'm sure you've noticed the cross in the bottom right corner. This shows you the battlefield configuration. Our party's position is in the middle and the enemies can be on any (or all) of the four sides. In this example, there are 3 enemies in front, and 2 to the right (it might be a bit hard to see). So in addition to standard functions, you can also change the direction you face during the battle, to attack a particular enemy. This arrangement is one slight difference from a typical JRPG of this period. There is one other quirk here, which I will cover shortly.
In any case, the disadvantage of dogs is that... you cannot control them--they will act on their own in the battle. It's not a huge problem, but something to be aware of. For our situation, since dogs are higher level than Ken, they will generally act first.

Eventually, Ken will get his chance to choose from a menu, as you can see above. The game helpfully displays you also his stats, so here we can see that there are actually only three different kinds of stats! From left to right, they are: attack power (100), defense (91) and speed (76). So you won't have to worry about a complicated mess of numbers like in some other games.
The options available in the menu are:
+--------+-------------+
| Attack | Transform |
| Item | Spec. skill |
| Defend | Escape |
+--------+-------------+
All of these options are pretty standard, except probably "Transform". We'll talk about it more another time, but for now I can mention that it allows you to temporarily transform into a "beast" and be able to use more powerful abilities to fight enemies. The drawback is, of course, that these abilities consume BP (Beast Points) to use. But Ken has currently 0 BP, so this is a no go for us at the moment. And so are the skills, since he has none of those yet either.

Anyway, Ken attacks, and deals 54 damage to the female Pig B. Pigs are pretty basic enemies (the most basic there is in this game), so this battle goes smoothly and we end up with the following transferred to our TransCargo backpack:
Pig♀ 3
Pig♂ 1
So, this doesn't quite fit the number of enemies that were on the field, what gives? Ah, well, here is the tricky part. The goal is not to kill the animals! Therefore you must ensure that you don't deal too much damage--i.e. you must not "overkill" them! If you deal too much damage/overkill them, then the animal is considered not usable, and is lost. This also means that you mostly have to be careful in which order you fight different species, because e.g. leaving these pigs until you are much higher level would make it more difficult to capture. But, luckily, they're just around the opening area so we can deal with them right now!
No money is received from battles (for that you will have to rely on your salary and whatever you can sell/trade), but Ken does get a fair chunk of experience (and so do the dogs--they also level up as the gain experience!).
Here is a small info card with some basic detail about the pigs...

...but in the meantime I will go and capture a few more. For the ark we only need one of each gender, so the rest is up to us what we do with them.
After the second battle with the pigs, Ken gets enough experience to become level 2!
The next animal on our list for today are squirrels!

There are some here nearby, but they are a bit annoying as they will try to run away from you, so you might have to chase them for a bit. But, eventually:

There is again nothing to even remotely to worry about here, they are just as easy as pigs. The only annoying ability they have is that they can change position on the battlefield, but considering that the battle system is strictly turn based with no real time elements, it's not a big deal.
However, again I want to draw your attention to the cross in the right corner which, as I've mentioned, shows the configuration of the battlefield. Now we can see that it also shows the terrain configuration! This is important for one simple reason, each animal (including humans) has a favourable terrain type, which is usually its natural habitat. This means that if you manage to fight it on a terrain that is disadvantageous to it, it will be weaker and not be able to deal as much damage. In case of squirrels, their natural habitat is, as you can imagine, forest, therefore here they have their full abilities. Which is still not much, so you don't need to worry about this when squirrels are concerned. But this can be really imporant if you manage to get an aquatic animal near the coast and fight it like that. It does also apply to our party, e.g. if we end up fighting in water, our abilities may be slightly decreased because of that.

Anyway, fighting a few more squirrels finally gets Ken to level 3!
In theory, we could go and see how Linda is doing now, but... since we're already here, let's just capture a few more species! Next on our list is... ostrich! Here are some:

So, let's get into battle!


Again, nothing of particular note happens here, so we end up with a few of them in our backpack.

I will mention though, that some of these abilities Ken and/or Linda will certainly be able to learn later on!
Soon, as Ken is walking...

...he receives a notification that there is a message waiting for him at the phone answering service! Hm. Wonder what that could be about? Well, since we do have to find a phone anyway to listen to our message, let's then first stop at the ark and hand in these animals we've captured!

This time, we'll go through this door here...

...which leads to...

...the chamber where we can register our animals. If we walk all the way to the front...

...here is a device which allows us to do it. We get a screen like this:

...which shows us all animals we currently have in our TransCargo. There are a few of both male and female pigs, squirrels and ostriches. To repeat, only one of each needs to go into the ark, the rest are left to us to sell or use in any way we need.

Every time we hand in a male animal, Ken gets a small increase in all his stats (HP, BP, attack power, defense, speed). Here you can see +1 in each of those. When we hand in a female animal, it's Linda who gets the stat bonuses (even when she's not in our party, like now). In some cases you might also get an ability from the animal you handed in, but that will come later.
After handing all 6 animals in, you can check them out sitting in their pods in the ark:

From left to right: pig, ostrich, squirrel. I'm not generally going to bother showing this screen since the animals look exactly the same as on the battle screen, so there's not really any point.

If you talk to this robot here, then he will show you how many animals/species you've captured and how many are still remaining to capture in this scenario. Here you can see that the total we need is, as we already know, 30 species/60 animals, out of which we already have 3 species (and 6 animals in total). The maximum in the game is 120/240, but that's not even theoretically possible in this scenario, so we don't need to worry about that.
The other robots standing around here will explain you about the stat gains and abilities you may get upon registering an animal, so we can skip them and go see about that message now!

For this, we can use any of the phones found in all towns. Here, Ken is using the one in the Hardia entrance, but actually you might remember that there was also one in that little shack by the ark, so we could have used that one too.
In any case, it turns out that the message is from Ben, the Ranger commander.

Uh, so has something happened to Linda? I mean, he kind of missed to say the most important part there...
You know what, let's just go quickly and check in with Ken's mom, she might tell us something more?



Uh, sure. But at least that explains the message--it seems that Linda has somehow lost her memory? But how?
Well, we'll head over to Hospico soon enough, but for now let's head out and do a little bit more hunting.
So, anyway, back outside...

...if we head out a bit north of the ark...

...there is a bunch of weird shaped peninsulas or whatever they are. Here we can usually find...

...some rats for us to collect!
In any case, this goes pretty easily and we end up with a few of them in our backpack!

Rats are a bit annoying on the map because (a) they will keep trying to run away from you when on land, and (b) their tiny sprite looks a bit similar to a squirrel (which are much more plentiful around the area). I will go ahead and try to catch some more rats.
I should mention that level and HP are just approximate/average and it can vary a bit between encounters. Also, some abilities are only used by higher level versions. Apologies if sometimes the ability descriptions are not detailed enough, that just means I wasn't able to find the information!
By the way, when walking around this area...

...try to be careful not to run into a pack of wild dogs! If they see you, they will chase you around the map and you will probably have to use the sprint function to escape. The only problem... in this game, sprinting costs HP! It's not actually so bad because the main character's default moving speed is already pretty fast so this only really needs to be used to escape from an unwanted encounter with a stronger enemy.

You, know, something like this.
The dogs are indeed a bit too strong for us right now, so we'll try to avoid them!

This is the last species we're looking for, for today: the dragonfly! They can also be a little harder to find and take a bit of walking around to get them to spawn.

Here we go!

Here you can already see a bit of an issue. They are relatively rare in the Summer, but it's still better to catch them now while Ken is at a very low level! Also, even though they're weak, you should be a bit careful of their fire attacks, especially since they also have the ability to reduce your fire defense!
So that's about it for hunting for this time, but I just wanted to show you something. The animal designs in the original PC Engine version are sometimes slightly different. For example, here is what the pigs used to look like:

So that looks pretty different (and cool)! But on the other hand, rats seem to have stayed mostly the same between platforms (well apart from the fact that PCE doesn't support as many colours on the screen as PS1 does!):

Ok, now we can head to Hospico. It's located a bit further to the east from the ark...

...but there's this mountain range in the way!

Luckily, there are tunnels which go under the mountains, and here you can see the entrance to one of these.

They literally go under a mountain, and allow you to quickly cross to the other side!

Here we are, on the other side! Now a just a little little further to the east...

...and, here is Hospico at coordinates V-13!

Let's head inside!

The entrance hallway is pretty much the same as always...

Passing through, we get to the reception building.


Inside, we can talk to this friendly nurse at the reception desk.

Oh, we learn Linda's full name! Also, neonatal unit? I guess when so many of your patients are pregnant women...
Well, if we head straight through that doorway on the north...

...we go through a courtyard, giving a nice view to the actual hospital building. This place does have many of the normal town facilities and services. For example, right inside the hospital building is a pharmacy:


I haven't talked about it yet, but if you process the caught animals into meat, eating that meat could give you various positive or negative effects. This shop, however, mostly sells recovery potions, this time in the form of medical capsules:

Like for example the capsules which recover around 50 or 100 HP, or even stuff which cures status effects like an antidote capsule or a neutralising spray.
The pharmacists has a bit more to say...

These are indeed some slightly higher level enemies in the game!
Well, we're here to see Linda, so we'll just head up those stairs right behind Ken, to the second floor.
We might as well ask for directions at the nurses' station!



Heading down the hallway, past the newborns, there is a ranger here we can talk to:

Hold up! The entire population of Minago disappeared and only Linda was left, but without her memory? And commander never thought to mention any of this in his phone message? Really?
We can also talk to the doctor-looking fellow standing at the door there!

Sounds like a plan. Let's talk to Linda and see what she has to say.


(Ken fills Linda in about their shared past starting from the time they were children.)






Even if it makes no difference in the game, no need to be a jerk, right? Anyway, that's all we can talk to Linda about for now, so let's go back and talk again to the hospital director outside.


So this is a little bit of a hint. The crabs are level 7, so basically we can go on with our other tasks and should expect to hear from him around the time we're level 7, in order to then proceed with obtaining the memory loss treatment for Linda. Since the gameplay is kind of bounded by actual time passage of 8 years, but the game also has a proper plot, then it kind of "gates" your plot progression in this manner so that you also have time to do animal collection and other stuff in between the "plot moments".
Anyway, since we're done with this, why not check out the room for the newborns, too?

Cute, but let's talk to the nurse for a second.


You have a dialogue portrait! Why do you have a portrait? I guess we'll find out? Maybe? Interesting.
Well, since we're done with our main task, visiting Linda, let's take this opportunity to do our usual tour of the town and see what people have to say about stuff! If we walk over to the nurses on the other side of the floor...




Ah, yeah we read about the satellite crash on that news bulletin!
The other nurse, over by the stairs...

Well, that doesn't sound too good! Hopefully she recovers soon.
If we go up the stairs, there is an entrance to the roof and also a person standing there:



That sounds interesting. Perhaps at some point we should try to find out more about this.
Anyway, there's nothing else here, so if we go back down and then again down to the ground floor, there's more people we can talk to...

...like this pregnant lady here!


Over here in the corner, is the staircase leading to the basement, so let's check it out.

Well, that definitely looks like a morgue, complete with a corpse. Uh, well, let's talk to the guy here.

Uh, moving swiftly onwards, or rather leftwards to that room next to the morgue!

Well, turns out, despite being somewhat unconventional in many of its mechanics, still this game does have plain old treasure chests, and in fact there are two of them right here!

The one on the left has a "Recovery Tablet 100", and the one on the right "Antidote Capsule", both of which you could also buy at the pharmacy earlier. But it's nice to get some for free!
If we exit the basement, and go all the way around to the other side of the ground floor...

...we find another one of those power stations.

So, this is just another of the last few bits of tutorial! But I kept it because it's phrased in a funny way. If we go through that door...

...we pass another of those electric catfish pens, confirming that this was indeed the power station for this town!



And I guess this is that building where the Mayor is kept? Let's find out!



Let's go back around...

Oh, cool, a place for dogs to exercise!
Anyway, on the other side are some nice houses.

Let's go in!

Oh, I guess those are the "scientists' labs", mentioned in the town description. Let's see...

So I guess he also got killed by the fallout from the fallen satellite?

There's another pregnant woman standing in front of the next house down...

Cheery.
Going into the house, it's another lab.

What's with the Christmas tree over on the left? Isn't it Summer? And what kind of experiments are even being done here? It looks a bit weird...

We've learned about quite a number of new places today... we'll should probably go and pay them a visit at some point!

And the third and final house... I guess another lab?

What.
Well, there is actually a person to talk to here.


Speaking of flowers...

...as long as it's weather, right?
Yeah. You can talk to the blue flower.
All right, let's leave... but as we try, we get stopped.


Yes, indeed, you really get all those choices on the screen:

Check out that box on top with all the fruit names to choose from! Anyway, Ken chooses "apple".

If you do choose the banana, then she's happy with you!
Anyway, let's try to leave... again.



She kisses him anyway. Ok, we need to get out of here.

There's another pregnant lady sitting here on the bench by the fountain...

That's not bad... I guess?
With this, we've kid of made a loop of the whole hospital complex, so let's go back inside as there are a few more people to talk to.


Like these people here in the waiting area. First the one on the left...

And the other person.


There's also this person here. Not sure why this office also has a whole bedroom included?

We kind of already found him, but thanks for the info anyway!
As mentioned, the hospital does also contain some other facilities normally found in towns.

Like the bank!

Possibly, I should mention at this point that collecting all the animals is not simply a matter of going around the world to the places where they appear on the overworld. You can do that for quite a few of them, but the rest require other, more or less complicated methods in order to obtain. We'll obviously have a chance to see that over the course of the game. But we have still another place name to add to our list of places to visit.

As we did before, we can check again Ken's bank book, which shows the total currently at zero, after our withdrawal last time. Well, it makes sense, it's still Summer so our next salary hasn't been paid yet, since in this world they are paid quarterly.

Next to the bank is this gentleman here...



We can also stop by the butcher shop, as usual. We don't have anything to do here, but a bit of chat is always nice.

Nice hint. If we process an animal into meat, we can only carry that meat with us for a limited time, typically one season, otherwise it will go bad, so we should use it one way or another before that time! This also applies to other kinds of organic matter we can have in our possession.

Here is our old friend, the animal trader!

Hm, well, I guess we can think about that if and when we even have any "protected" animals in our backpack.
I take the opportunity to sell some of our extra pigs, squirrels and ostriches for a bit of extra cash, although despite what he says, his prices really really aren't good at all.
After this, we can go to his neighbour, the equipment shop.


Well that makes sense, the clothes and equipment will take on the properties of the animal it was made from.
We can do a bit of shopping here also.

We'll get a "Rabbit Knife" for Ken, which gives +24 to his attack power. We're a bit short on money, so that's what we can afford for now.

I remember to also equip it, which raises Ken's attack from 107 to 131 as you can see there on the top right. Neat. Ken's previous weapon, in case you're interested, was "Squirrel Needle", and his clothes are also all "Squirrel" level (waistcoat, goggles and slippers).
The smaller numbers you can see there on the right (2, 4) are various resistances to things like physical attack, fire, electricity etc, which are the effects of some animal attacks.
By the way, if we check quickly the party menu screen:

The right side is empty of course because we don't have a second person, but for Ken we can see that even our three stats the game is assigning a "level" based on different animals, so our attack and defense are "mole-level" while our speed is "squirrel-level". This game does have a bunch of such whimsical touches, I like it a lot.
For one last thing for today, let's head back outside...

There we find the typical dog shop/veterinarian combo, with a nurse standing outside.

North of this building is actualy that dog pen we saw earlier.

We can also go inside, although mostly here we get some gameplay hints about managing the dogs in your party etc., so we can skip those.

Although, we can talk to this person for a bit.

Ok, that's funny. But for real, we do need to be careful with our dogs since we don't really have control over them in battle.

In any case, that's all we wanted to do here for now, so we'll head back out. Next time, we'll do some more hunting and then we'll see what else is around! There certainly seems to be a lot going on in this world! And we have learned already of a fair few places that are potentially interesting, however, we might find something on our own too!

THE ECOSYSTEM OF NEO-KENYA There are a number of strange features to be found in the animals of Neo-Kenya. Sometimes they seem to have the characteristics of an animal that should have evolved in a completely different environment on another planet. There are also obvious sings of genetic tampering, such as the presence of extra organs from another species, and sometimes also various biological defects, such as explosions caused by chemical reactions of unknown substances in the body. It is therefore necessary to be careful of things like sudden fire and ice attacks from animals.

For today, first we have some storyboards used for the cutscenes we saw last time:

It seems that part which is in the middle column didn't actually end up filmed.
And, to conclude, here is a silly one from the PC Engine era, with the slightly different look for the characters:

Please don't ask me to explain it!