Live A Live Part #9 - Just what we needed.

Part 9: Just what we needed.

Well, a weapon. They never learn, damn their hides…

The mood on board the Cogito Ergosum is understandably sour. Let’s go see if Kato and Huey found out what caused that explosion.

It doesn’t look like there’s anything unusual going on…

-------

You’d almost be better off trying to swim through space!

Given that the comms system is now doubly busted, I’m not sure I’d disagree.

Huey is a bit panicky, so…

I’m sure caffeine will help, right?

You’re right… I need to hang in there…

It’s awful! Kirk… Kirk is dead!

What, are you serious!? That’s… Quite unfortunate… Well. We can at least give him a proper burial. Make the preparations. I’m on my way.

Captain…

That’s one level-headed captain you’ve got. He lost one of his crew, and he didn’t flinch a bit.

... I’ll go over to Kirk’s room… Maybe there’s something he’d like buried with him.

Good idea.

...Perhaps we had better check on Huey.

It’s true, I didn’t really like Kirk, but I never wanted him to die…!

He’s doing about as well as can be expected.

Crew Member Kirk has unfortunately died
The lock has been disabled to allow cleaning
Entry granted
Enter name

Registration complete
Entry granted

”Will Warp Navigation Become A Reality?” Just like Kirk to read something like this… Heh… Whenever Kirk was in a hurry to get something done, he’d say… “What are you doing! Get that done, warp speed!”

We barely got to know him, but that does seem like the sort of thing to bury Kirk with.

At least we can lay him to rest…

Hmm…

The game doesn’t straight up spell this out, but it’s fairly obvious.

And here we have the precious Memory Card. If we had played Kirk’s videogame before now, losing at any point would have put us back at the beginning of it. But with this, we can start off retrying the same stage we lost.

Insert the memory card?

Oh boy, here we go.

…

Do I have to? We could play something else.

…

Oh, alright. If you insist.

Captain Square serves as a diversion from the events taking place on the ship, but it doesn’t accomplish much more than that. We have a series of nine battles to complete, and the last couple are serious pains. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Let us start at the beginning, with our easy introductory fight.

Captain Square has 240 HP and these eight techniques; he will not grow any stronger over the course of these battles. Half of these abilities need to be charged, but most of them are useful.

Tachyon Sword is the captain’s most basic attack, but it has the helpful property of draining health from whatever it hits. The Clicker Rocks have no real interesting qualities to speak of, so let’s move on.

Next Stage
Venus

Venus offers us a more interesting set of enemies, and ones that will teach a valuable lesson.

Namely, these pricks have a knockback attack. You have to be careful about positioning if you want to use any of the captain’s charging moves.

Plasma Ball is excellent. Infinite diagonal range, very short charge, good damage, creates an electric field. One of Captain Square’s best options.

Space Phage inflicts status ailments and comes out immediately, but has a minimum range. It’s kinda meh.

Knockback and a little more damage than Tachyon Sword.

Next Stage
Earth

Ah, our first slightly gimmicky fight. Water will go down from practically anything Captain Square throws at it, but Fire has obscenely high defense and a move that will instantly kill the captain if he hangs around in melee range too long.

But remember what damage fields do?

That’s right, a set amount of damage! Mopping up the Waters afterward is nice and easy.

Next Stage
Mars

Say hello to Mother Tail and her Happy Tail underlings. Can you guess the gimmick here?

If you attack any of the enemies, they will counter with a healing move. However, Mother Tail takes damage after using hers (while the Happy Tails do not). So just murder her with whatever.

This serves as good a time as any to show off Captain Square’s Quark Sword, which has a charge speed best described as ‘glacial’. Strong but largely impractical.

Once Mother Tail is gone, all her underlings keel over and die.

Next Stage
Jupiter

The Cosmo Stroller squad are entirely one-note.

They attack horizontally and cause electric fields that will hassle us.

Ergo, use attacks that can strike vertically or at an angle. Pi Meson Shot is an excellent choice, as is Plasma Ball.

Next Stage
Saturn

Pictured: The point where Captain Square starts to take the kid gloves off.

Gem Parapets can and will wreck you to the tune of about 150 damage if you attack them from any of these spaces. Their regular attack targets the same way, but for only about 60 damage.

Ergo, target them from panels where they can’t easily target you. Oh, and stay healed in case they move to a spot where they can trigger SIO2.

Next Stage
Uranus

In a special one-time-only occurrence, Live-A-Live experiments with layering enemies on top of each other. The Pimuri (fake electric fields) move around, duplicate themselves and create real electric fields all over the place. As a result, it’s quite difficult to find the Electric Mirage hiding amongst them.

Oh, and the Mirage hits reasonably hard. Not to mention he has crazy high defense as well, so I end up eating my first death in this game-within-a-game.

The key to slaying the Mirage once it appears is the same tactic we used against Fire. Just let the fire field kill it, and the Pimuri will all break down.

Next Stage
Neptune

And this is where things start getting really awful. All those La Lu have 1 HP and the same crazy defense, meaning attacks will do 0-1 damage. The La La is their leader and has more HP, but everything else dies when he does. (Good luck damaging him successfully still.)

...See the issue with this stage? All the enemies can do this. It takes off more than half of Captain Square’s HP.

So, uh… Four more deaths later…

Space Phage’s low damage doesn’t matter here, and it’s able to hit enemies even with other potential targets between you and them. But really, this one’s mostly a matter of luck.

Final Stage
Pluto

So, you remember how Tope Suicide knocks you back? Good luck killing any of these fuckers before they cancel any half-decent moves you have!

The winning run required copious amounts of Plasma Charge, the captain’s healing move.

The winning run also took OVER NINE MINUTES

And despite Tope Suicide not killing them, these enemies do have a suicide tech.

But whatever, it’s finally over!

Your prize for beating Captain Square?

- Fake credits
- Stardust Captain, which doesn’t play anywhere else in the game.
- Absolute jack shit that resembles any kind of gameplay benefit

Me, salty? I don’t know what you’re talking about.