Part 6: Big game hunting.
Alright, let’s nip this Gori harem nonsense right in the bud.
I mean really… Some lady apes have no taste. Oh, and here’s Ayla’s while I’m showing off concept art.
The ladies will follow us around the room and get in the way, so let’s continue onward.
The room on the left has a Big Stick and a Bone inside for the completionists. And the door on the right…
Leads to a whole bunch of encounter with single Ku tribe members. You know, the ones with 40 HP and no attack power.
There are ten of them in total. They’re complete time-wasters.
But as soon as they’re all defeated, something special happens. Aside from the music changing, that is.
You see, that door there leads to the final confrontation. The chapter is almost at its end already. (My claims about it being long may have been based on things explained in about nineteen screenshots’ time.)
However! There is side stuff to do, and it literally just became available when those ten cavemen died.
So it’s out of the cave we go, and back toward where Zaki set his trap.
By the way, there are more mammoths on this path. They have more HP, but behave like the earlier versions.
Ayla reaches level 12 along the way, learning his second-last tech. Zdogeradein has a somewhat lengthy charge time, but it does about double Bash Bash’s damage to a target up to two spaces away from Ayla. It’s pretty decent.
Our first bit of side content is just here. Let’s observe.
Well, that certainly is one way to cross that gap.
(Music stops.)Though, uh… Perhaps not the best way. RIP that dude.
Remember the other guy’s reaction.
Okay, side thing number two! Remember this stone face? Well, now we can do something with it. Here’s what you do:
Step One: Stand where Ayla is, facing the statue.
Step Two: Press A exactly 100 times. No more, no less. You will hear a sound like a door opening. Any extra button presses will close it again.
Step Three: Come over to the western end of this area, where a cave has now opened up.
Step Four: Enjoy the chapter’s theme for the first time since the opening.
Step Five: Touch the monolith.
Step Six: Give it a Bone. Do not give it anything else, or you will screw yourself out of the reward.
Step Seven: Enjoy your new pet rock.
No, I don’t have any clue how you would know to do any of that without a guide.
The Basic Rock is worth a whopping +50 IQ as an accessory, or you can use it repeatedly to scan an enemy’s HP. It will also attempt to lower their IQ and inflict two status effects; one stops the use of any techs which require hands, while the other prevents both movement and techs that require feet.
The Basic Rock is awesome, is what I’m getting at here.
Fffffffffffffffffffffffff-
Okay, the third and final bit of side content is this motherfucker. There is a mammoth running around this area, invisible like any of the other encounters. He has in fact been here since we escaped Zaki’s trap, unlike the other stuff which just became available.
The catch? He’s very, very fast. And unlike anything else which you just need to touch, you actually have to interact with this mammoth to start a fight with him. So good luck even getting to the fight.
Some time running around mashing A later…
There he is, King Mammoth! A couple of chapters have special bonus bosses to be fought, and this guy is our first. As such, he gets the proper boss music.
Ladies and gents, this is:
When AlphaKretin mentioned a song from this game making it into Theatrhythm as DLC, this is the one. MEGALOMANIA is pretty great boss music. Listen to it.
As for King Mammoth, he’s easily one of the most hated enemies in this game.
He has four moves:- Flamethrower, which he is only likely to use if you’re diagonal to him. Hits a 3x3 area, but doesn’t do much damage at all.
- Trunk Whip, a standard mammoth move. Single-target, does about the same as Flamethrower.
- Huge Explosion, hits a 5x5 area centred on himself. Creates fire fields that King Mammoth heals from. Does more than half Ayla’s HP at level 12, over 300 damage.
- Great Eruption, hits the entire battlefield and turns it all into fire fields.
Does 150-200 damage at this level.Needless to say, the difficulty of King Mammoth hinges on how often he’s able to use those latter two moves. He’s also reasonably evasive, because fuck you. And his defense is crazy.
He is however vulnerable to status effects. Ayla can inflict poison, sleep and stun with his various moves; keeping this asshole stunned or asleep for most of the fight tends to be key to actually winning.
My first attempt did not go quite as I would have liked, I will admit. Level 12 is not a great time to be trying to take King Mammoth on.
Incidentally, this is what a game over looks like in this chapter.
Sooooo… Here’s a problem. The highest EXP value that encounters have in this chapter, other than that jerkface mammoth’s 15… is 12. And more common encounters before the Ku tribe’s home are 11. So that is six or seven experience gained per fight if you want to go above level 12.
Alternatively:
Action Replay posted:
7E2A1E64: 100 EXP for all characters, will level up after next fight. (You have to look at their equip screen between each battle to make this take effect.)
For those of you who might be playing along, you be the judge. Fight sixty encounters, or four. I did it legit for my first playthrough, which would probably be why I thought this chapter was longer than it really should be.
You see, Ayla learns his last tech at level 16. Dodegesden has wildly random damage, ranging from 300-700 when you first get it. Using it also attempts to absolutely tank all of Ayla’s stats, including his level.
Makes an excellent finisher though. Strategy for this fight: Place Ayla and Gori on the diagonal, have Gori use the Venus Figurine constantly. Ayla spams PushPush to stun (which does about 100 damage at level 16 instead of 50 at 12), finishes with Dodegesden. Use Giant Meaty Bones as needed.
If you can manage to beat King Mammoth, the King’s Fang is your reward. Gives +20 Pw.
However.
King Mammoth also has a random drop. Yes, you do have to reload, hunt him and beat him again for another shot at it if you miss it the first time.
The Cola Bottle gives +30 Sp as an accessory, which is definitely pretty nice. It also does… this.
Eat your heart out, Zaki. We have the true murder lizards.
Lizards for everybody!
Ahhh… Cathartic. And appropriate, as EclecticTastes explains:
EclecticTastes posted:
Well, I have no idea how you're supposed to know about the stone face other than it being mildly suspicious and 100 being a nice, round number, but from that point, the rest of the secret, like much of Live A Live, is an extended film reference, in this case, to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. You're a protohuman looking at a monolith, pretty clear reference. So, naturally, you throw a bone in the air. Given its power to enhance intelligence and perform an unusual effect on-use, one can assume that the Basic Rock is, in fact, a piece of the Monolith (EDIT: In fact, if you watch carefully, you'll see that the Basic Rock's coloration is the same as the monolith).
Additionally, the Cola Bottle is another movie reference, this time to The Gods Must be Crazy, the most commercially successful film ever made in South Africa (this is literally true). It's a comedy about some guys from an isolated tribe of people in Botswana, who find a glass Coke bottle that's been thrown from an airplane and landed unbroken (those bottles were pretty thick). They immediately find it has a million and one uses for them, from starting fires to making music, and decide it was a gift from the gods. But, there's only the one, so it causes a lot of internal strife over who gets to use it, and ultimately they decide the gods must not have been thinking clearly when they sent the gift, and so the village leader heads off on an epic journey to dispose of the bottle off the edge of the world, having failed to get rid of it a few other ways. And that's just, like, the first twenty minutes, the rest is just watching the poor guy deal with western civilization in more or less all the ways you'd expect of a film made in South Africa in 1980. So, to summarize, that's why the Cola Bottle is some sort of nigh-omnipotent superweapon.
Okay, let’s finish this.
For REASONS™, I will be equipping all of my best stuff on Ayla. Sadly, this means I can’t murder the final boss of the chapter with LIZARDS.
The rest of the update is also available in video form.
The Ku tribe seem to be ready to do… whatever it is they want to do with Bel.
...That music track has a rather worrying title.
[Music stops.]Hey, is this a private party, or can anybody join?
Alright, one more time! Let’s do this!
...Sadly, despite doing well over double his health in damage, it turns out Zaki is invulnerable here. Just attack him four times, and then…
Oh. That… That’s not good.
Well, that could have gone better. Not quite the daring rescue Ayla had in mind, I’m sure.
And that sure doesn’t inspire confidence.
...Come to think of it, what exactly were they sacrificing Bel to?
Something big and stompy.
Something that roars.
Something that just ate Zaki’s chief.
Something that Gori just pissed off.
Something that we will MURDER THE SHIT OUT OF! CHAAAARGE!
This is it, the final boss of Ayla’s chapter! And it’s a goddamn T-Rex!
...And Zaki’s here to help?
Good on him, I guess.
Eat Dodegesden, dino breath. (O-D-O has 992 HP. Preparing for any bonus bosses will make that chapter’s final boss a joke.)
Also, remember what Bel learnt before she got captured?
And thus, the powerful T-Rex was slain with the power of song.
The beast stumbles back… and falls.
The party stands triumphant as a new day dawns.
And a much more pleasant landscape lies before Ayla and his friends.
Gori is his usual stupid self.
What remains of the Ku tribe approaches Zaki, now without their chief or the dinosaur they worshipped.
The elder of Ayla’s tribe appears to confront him.
But lest we forget that this chapter is now, and always was, all about slapstick.
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And so Zaki became the new chieftain of the Ku tribe, and the two tribes were at peace.
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And that, ladies and gents, is how language was invented.
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After being prompted to save our game, we return to the chapter select screen. Chronological order seems to be the popular vote presently, so I suspect we will be taking a look at “ancient China” in the Kungfu chapter next. If you still want to try and get something other than the default name for the Master and his style (Xin Shan Quan), now’s the time to vote.
Bonus video: A fairer fight with O-D-O.
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Notable Quotables
idonotlikepeas posted:
Oh, speaking of movies, there are probably two more that bear mentioning before we leave the Caveman chapter behind us entirely. The first is, in fact, called Caveman. It's a slapstick comedy from 1981 about a caveman outcast from his tribe and his love life featuring poop, lots of people getting smacked with rocks, and a dinosaur super high on pot, starring one Ringo Starr. Yeah, that Ringo Starr, did you really think there were two?
It's notable insofar as the movie contains almost no English whatsoever; there's one character who speaks it as part of a brief gag, but for the most part they're communicating in a conlang with a very small vocabulary. The basic plot involves Starr assembling a Fellowship-of-the-ring style group of misfits blah blah taking his place blah blah romantic comedy stuff. As in the game, most of the action has to be sold via very broad physical comedy; that's part of why a dialogue-free section is bound to be slapstick, since pratfalls and poop-flinging require no explanation. It is absolutely terrible and I remember it fondly.
The second is called Clan of the Cave Bear, and is where the name Ayla originated. (The name in Chrono Trigger is a reference to that character.) Clan of the Cave Bear was originally a book, part of a series of novels which I can only describe as historical caveman romances, starring a woman named Ayla who is the only Cro-Magnon in a Neanderthal tribe. This version of Ayla looked like this, though:
Clan also didn't use spoken dialogue; for the most part, the characters speak in sign language and we get subtitles. It wasn't so much a comedy, and while it did feature an arrogant douchebag as the primary antagonist, he didn't use a lizard as a loincloth.
Unoriginal One posted:
Rather late, but there are a fair number of official remixes for Live A Live scattered around Square's compilation albums, both from the assorted SQs and the Yoko Shimomura collections.
Seeing as Caveman's out of the way...
KISS OF JEALOUSY - MEMÓRIA!
KISS OF JEALOUSY (Karaoke) - MEMÓRIA! For those who would rather go without vocals.
And, while I'm at it, a few samples of MEGALOMANIA, also from the same album.
MEGALOMANIA - MEMÓRIA!
MEGALOMANIA (Karaoke) - MEMÓRIA!