Part 55: Mecha - Update # 1 - White Dragon is too lazy to name his updates
Okay yes I know this is a doublepost but I swear it's a high-content double-post that adds to the topic in a way that editing my previous post couldn't have.
His teenage years are troubled, and he gets into many fights.
And yet over his silently watches a sleeping giant, the robotic Buriki Daioh...
Aloha kakou, welcome everybody. I'm your host, The White Dragon, and I'm taking the time out of my obviously incredibly busy* schedule to bring you all a very special treat: the seventh and final Mecha Chapter of Live-A-Live.
NO
I'm liking this chapter already.
•••
Oh. Welp.
He'd already passed away.
As captain of the riot police,
he was involved in a skirmish with a violent gang known as the Crusaders...
"Please tell everyone your name!"
HEY GOONS
GUESS WHAT I NEED YOU TO DO
Nothing. This ain't a goddamn democracy. This is a despotism.
someone's been reading too many children's books lately
you're such a little bitch watanabe
"I've... well, I've started to acquire strange powers.
Like, I can read minds, and move objects without touching them...
Try pressing the Y button to read peoples' minds..."
This chapter employs a special speech bubble for when you press Y to read NPCs' minds.
to
uh
gosh, i dunno, it's not really the kind of skill you can rob a bank with
And so begins the story of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the... Fourth, I guess?
HAVING A SIESTA I SEE
There aren't a lot of NPCs in this chapter--actually, half of them are in this park alone--but this is a good example of how the mind-reading mechanic works.
We start at Level 4 with abysmal HP.
a picture of our hero enjoying himself way too much
Actually, in the original version of this game...
The sign wasn't changed until this finalized version of the translation, and the Japanese Taiyaki sign was still present in the earlier translation patch.
When we try to leave, we run into this fellow with an unfortunate sense of fashion.
Oh, and he has friends.
Well, when you put it in quotation marks, then OF COURSE their activities are gonna seem highly suspect.
Well, he's a "runt." Maybe it wasn't that bad of an idea to call him Hiccup after all.
I don't know. Would you buy food from someone who goes around in an open-chested biker jacket?
Hiccup starts with a number of spells, but unfortunately, none of them do any real damage.
That's Matsu's job, for now.
"Matsu: You oughta be more careful, Hiccup...
They been pullin' some weird stuff lately."
"Don't they know that I ain't 'xactly worth any ransom?"
"Kaori's gotten a little better, thanks."
someone should sing the words that go along with this song
if only so i can hear someone sing BABIRONIA
matsu wait
i want to be badass like you
Well, only one way to get there.
When you run into one of those guys...
... you fight dudes.
You kill them by giving them epileptic seizures.
That first encounter with Matsu gave us 5 EXP, I think, but you'll always get 40 EXP from each of these in-town encounters right up until you get to Level 13, at which point they abruptly stop giving you any EXP at all.
If you kill the Crusader, all his underlings will die.
Heaven Image, learned at Level 5, is supposed to Stun or someshit, but I don't know.
NEVER USING THIS SHITTY SPELL AGAIN
whatever you say, game
So the thing I like about these early encounters is that they aren't so much "kill everything really hard" as they are just tiny puzzles for you to figure out what needs to be done to take out the leader while taking minimal damage, if you're soloing.
Obviously whatever I just did isn't working out for me very well.
The RCs' only attack that I've seen is a self-destruct that does pretty good damage (which, of course, is bad for you).
Fortunately, all Crusaders in this chapter with this type of sprite, regardless of variant, will go down in one Elbow attack.
Every three encounters, you'll gain a level and the enemy groups will change.
This one is easy and pretty obvious as far as defeating the leader without taking damage goes.
When we reach Level 8, Hiccup learns the Holy Ghost counterattack. It's not terrible in that it's a counter. Otherwise, its damage output is pretty bleak.
This, too, is easy and apparent. Just walk right up to him; these robots probably won't even get a turn.
The next group SEEMS a bit more threatening, since you clearly have to kill something before you can reach the Crusader, but Hell Image, as shown here, will kill the RC and give you a clear path.
The next group just has a plain Crusader for a leader, so you can pretty much use any AoE attack other than Heaven Image and you'll easily get your victory. Even the super-low-damage Mother Image will work.
This one looks kind of like a pain in the ass, but basically you just push the wall with Hell Image, then chase and finish them off with another Hell Image, and take out the leader. You might take a hit from the concrete block enemies, but they do single-digit damage and Hiccup has around 200HP by now.
Well if that doesn't look dandy
Those giant blue robots use Psycho Alpha, which is no fun at all. It does substantial damage and has a chance to inflict Sleep. Ugh.
But, we reach Level 13 and learn Shadow Image.
Awright, let's test this shit out:
Hell yes
--wait what no
fuck damn aaaaaaaugh
The REAL solution is to cast Frost Image,
then sneak around. You're always out of the flying kick robot's range that way.
And now we're here at Level 13. This trivializes this chapter, but it also makes you really, really want to just say screw it and avoid all the encounters you possibly can, which is problematic in itself.
NEXT TIME
inconvenient onomatopoeic naming schemes
*Pfffft who am I kidding