Part 5: Ninja - Update # 4 - Grinding and Looting
: A robot buddy! 
This is the best birthday ever!!! Do you want to go on an evil overlord slaying adventure with me? 
: 
: 
There are several ways out of the room, but most of them involve falling into one of the Trap Master's remaining traps. All of which involve long falls that land us in jail and bust up O-Robo. We don't want that, so we deposit one last Money in that slot to open the door.
: I'm going to teach you ninja tricks and get you some awesome robot gear (Ryoma, you'll need to hand your gear over to O-Robo in the meantime) 
: 
: and you will kick so much ass and do we even have lasers in this era and you're getting some anyway you count on it....
: I'm not really the princess! 
: Heh... don't matter. I'm afraid you can't live now that you've seen us.: Somebody help meeeeee!!!: Who's there!?: The heroes! And their robot buddy! Ready to rescue damsels-: Ninja-shut-up-and-fight-attack!
and his buddies Kongo, Fudo and Ashura allow us to demonstrate the one situation in which time delayed powerful area attacks are quite effective.
When you have a bunch of guys in one place and some buddies to distract them while you cast, of course.
: What a strong man... 
: This is totally like in the storybooks...She moves back to the bed...
: Then our marriage vow...: Umm, you guys should probably go... scout ahead, or something...
: Ode Iou doesn't have any daughters! : Hee... 
: If you fell for THAT, you must be REALLY thick! If only you had accepted my offer! 
Who didn't see this coming? Besides Obama, of course.
She uses her sexiness as a literal weapon.
I was actually waiting for her to use her charm spell, but she just kept hitting my guys instead. Ryoma was the only one left standing once she dropped.
: .......Umm... thanks. My bad there.
: Only paying you back, my friend. : You can keep your gear, by the way. : Eh, O-Robo needs it more than me.: : Get off, willya. 
Matsukaze runs around very fast (a common ninja problem), but since we're not trying to avoid him, he's not a problem.
Now, we could move on to the final section...
: But I have another idea. To the attics! 
: Why are we back here? We're going to fall, and I'm not good at falling 
: Wait, the traps are gone?
: We could have killed the trap guy and looted all the stuff here without any disappearing floors or creepy automatons? No offense. : 
We can even go all over the weird pathways and gears, since they don't move anymore.
: Well, that was a waste of time. I was sure I must have missed something with all the traps.: So your ninja skills managed to get everything despite all the obstacles in your way. What's bad about that? : Don't try to spin this into a good thing. All that messing around with the freaking levers, for nothing! : If a helpful ninja happens to refill all the chests you've previously looted, we'll be able to re-loot them much more easily?: Yes, but what are the chances of that happe-
: Heh heh... I'm losing my touch.
Hey, wasting time in that room makes a ninja show up. Who woulda thought?
O-Robo dings at level 3
Yes, some of his abilities are direct copies of Obama's moves.
The chest wealthy room the previously forced us out is now accessible. It also has two Fuma Shuriken. Fairly decent attack items... which you should remember for later.
Our next destination is the prison. Using the normal access rather than the "fall through a hole" path, because O-Robo is in the party.
: I hope you're right about this. I'm pretty tired of asshole prisoners attacking me.
: Are you the one that saved me? Thaaanks. I'll repay you somedaaaaay. 
He runs off to refill the items in several chests throughout the castle. Mostly he replaces the valuable gear (Genji armor and so forth) and Money. So if you need better equipment or somehow don't have enough Money to get O-Robo, you get a second chance.
"Goemon was here!". We explore all the attics again, getting some great armor for O-Robo, who is going to be our main damage dealer shortly.
Anyways, do you remember the little building by the side of the main locked gate? We can open it with the Basement key now and find:
Goemon has even replaced stuff we never touched. Basically we have a lot of one shot attack / healing items, but far more importantly...
This place has two respawning Lost Souls. As long as you don't touch the woman in the corner, you can go in an out and get 10 xp each time.
Time to get grinding.
A LOT of grinding
10 xp at a time.
Against totally non-threatening enemies...
wait, that's not right.
Against enemies that while non-threatening can only be easily taken out by Flame Arts due to their odd vulnerabilities.
That's better
Painful and boring though it may be
and though we could totally skip this is we were going for the "normal" ending
It's a sacrifice we have to make to take out the optional bosses
And the gradual improvement of our stats is so amazing it requires a montage
In fact, it takes so long I'm reduced to reusing training songs
(BTW, remember the Shuriken item? O-Robo has the equivalent of a powerful one-shot attack item as one of his basic attacks. Spamming this while keeping O-Robo alive / distracting the enemy is what's going to win us the optional boss fights. )
And I finally run out of proper training songs altogether
Just as Obama gains a new ability
Called the Top Spin.
:/. If I could find Seanbaby's mockery of the Megaman move, it would go here. But I can't.
It's a stupid move that comes at the end of a series of non-useful attacks, and since the game decides to mock me here, I just declare Victory and move on.
I killed mah last lost sooouuuuuuul.
Time to go...
Oh wait, we're forgetting something.
Once you've killed the ghost, the lost souls stop spawning, and you're forced to move on.
: Time to finally go after Ode.: No. Time for a certain fish... to become sushi.: ...: ...YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH