Part 29: Flame on!

Wait, Dark chips?! Before the second tournament?! That completely ruins the plot of this ---- there is no plot. Let's hope this game is retconned in BN5.

Anyways, Duo was a very, very difficult fight. To understand why, consider that Duo is about equal in power to Alpha from BN3. Why, then, is Duo harder? Well, it's simple. A single playthrough of BN4 is much shorter than a single run of BN3. Assuming you're diligent in HP Memory collection, you should have a decent life bar by the time you get to Alpha, escpecially when the customizer gets involved. But BN4? Due to the length of that first playthrough, you'll only have around 500 HP when you get to Duo, even WITH customizer parts unless you put in the lotto numbers for the two customizer pieces I've shown off. Even then, you're in for a rough fight, because due to the way BN4 works, you'll only have access to weak-ass chips since Level 2 viruses don't appear frequently until the second playthrough.

The end result is a poorly-designed final boss to end a poorly-designed game. And tonight's scenario is going to make your brain melt if Search Man didn't already. In fact, before you read on, grab yourself a bottle of whiskey, preferably by rapping to a drunk guy on a plane. That's right, ladies and gentlegoons, it's time for the

GRAMMAR NAZI DRINKING GAME!

The rules:
-Take a sip every time Capcom makes a grammar fuckup.
-Take TWO sips every time Capcom uses the incorrect form of the word "virus" (singular vs. plural)
-Rap the whiskey rap every time Capcom screws up horribly (example: The Wood Man glitch)

Tonight's contestant:



Fire Man!...Fire Man. Ew. Oh, they mean LITERAL fire, not...fire hoses...GAH!



And Fire Man's operator is none other than Mr. Match. Given that there's a good chance of someone playing the Burner Man scenario by this point, this really shouldn't surprise anybody.



Lan suspects Match is going to do something bad at the match (derp) and who wouldn't, after Battle Network 3 nearly caused Lan to turn into Geo Stelar?



Fortunately, Lan is still Lan, and Lan gets hungry...less often than usual in this game. Whatever, let's go for a hotdog.



That...is the creepiest hotdog stand I've ever seen.



Mr. Match shows up to break the oven. I'm kidding. In a great example of irony, Match actually FIXED this oven.



What I want to know is why Match decided to use an old navi this game instead of sticking with the usual gag of having a new navi every game. I guess they ran out of fire bosses...wait, what about Crash Man?! Or Gemini Man?! Or-



Lady, you have no idea.



Two thugs walk up to the lady and tell her to "pay up". Match tells them to fuck off. Wait, "protection money"...?



Ruh roh. Does that sound good to you?



I was just starting to enjoy this scenario, too, but as you all know, nothing in BN4 ever stays good. My hotdog burns, and the oven breaks. Well, time to fix it AGAIN.



Oh crap here it comes. *sips* In other news, a virus other than Mettaur got an overworld sprite! A first for this game, but not the series.



What. They made the same mistake two times in a row. This sucks. *sips* I'm not kidding, either. Both text boxes are one after the other, in the same damn scene.



Oddly enough, killing the virus doesn't fix it. For once.



Ugh...*sips*...uhhhhh......no sir, you can't arrest me...I have a Whiskey anti-law card...



So we need to find that scottish hack...get him to fix oven...only thing is, you can't find him no matter where you go. This next scene is so poorly written that it makes Chickobo Emperor Rasputin's Pro Menu Navigator XIII look almost normal.



So you talk to this guy and he tells you Match left his Trainer card here and tells you to give it to him...what's he...oh my god this guy has FLAREON on his team, what a LOSER!



So at this point you wonder where the hell Match is. He's not in the real world. You take the card to the 44th floor of the Tera Domain...or wait......



Anyways...there's no fucking clue this is where you're supposed to go unless you go into the fucking key items menu. Who the fuck does that in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, let alone ANY game?!



So we see Slogra and Gaibon conspiring with Galamoth to take over the castle. I knew that guy was up to no good again!



Galamoth loves hotdogs apparently, but those stinking Meal Tickets only give GUM.



I dunno what he's talking about, I got the fucking CRISSAEGRIM off the first Schmoo I killed. *sips*



Hey, you know what this game needs?...A level based off Kid Dracula. Make is so, Konami! Don't let Microsoft hold you back! *sips*



Hey, did you fix my F-Zero machine yet?! I can't race without it!



Well, a virus in your hotdog is kind of a bad thing. *sips*



So they give me a speech about how viruses can be useful little PILES OF SHIT even though the last game featured breedable virus Digimon and a dungeon only virus-types can enter.



I spent the past hour drawing hundreds of Blizzard spells and converted them into Blizzagas.



You're an NPC. You can't even be killed. Of course I didn't expect you to play fair!



Just in case you forgot the name of a fucking CRIME SYNDICATE!



Bombs? You want it? It's YOURS my friend.



Why bother blowing this place up anyways, especially if your GF is gonna get blown with it?! Then you'd never be able to junction her to anything.



Crapcom wouldn't pay us if we did!



*sips* Hey...I'm all out of whiskey...chickey chickey baby...make me go.........*KABOOM*










Ugh...my head hurts so bad...what happened?...How did I get here? Oh well, time to take a sip...I'm out of whiskey...?

...Oh CRAP. Uh, maybe trying to LP a game while drunk wasn't such a good idea after all.



So, um, after...that...we find a sixth bomb planted in the Netbattle machine, meaning that Match's cronies were going to turn on him anyways. May I ask why he was bombing here in the first place?



Bad grammar aside, the last detonator contains the arbitrary minigame.



What happens is, big and small bombs pop up, and you have to destroy them by walking over to one and pushing A. If a bomb explodes, you take damage equivalent to scratching a car's paint job. The game tells you eliminating 20 big bombs will finish the job, but the game ended when I blew up a small bomb, so I dunno. It's not that bad a minigame either way. Well...except...



THE FUCKING RANDOM ENCOUNTERS ARE STILL ON. Oh hey Life Sword on the first draw.



Then you have to fight security viruses afterward, of course.



Match offers to turn himself in, but Lan decides against it for whatever reason other than to actually fight Fire Man.

It didn't last.



Whatever that means. We get the rather bland Fire Soul.

Fire Soul is attained by sacrificing a Fire chip (duh). When this soul activates, it generates grass panels that you can use to inflict extra damage against your enemies. While this soul is in effect, Lava panels heal you, your charge shot becomes a 50-damage, 3 panels long flamethrower, and you can turn any fire chip into a flamethrower with an attack power of 50 + the power of the chip used.

It's an interesting soul, but I think I prefer Aqua Soul and Number Soul over this. While Fire Soul can turn any fire chip into a flamethrower and add 50 extra points to it, Aqua Soul can straight-up double Wide Shot's attack power, and that's awesome.



Anyways, the scenario (and the tournament) ends with the chick trying to score big with Match.



REJECTED!

Now that just leaves the second and third most hellish scenarios Red Sun has to offer. God help us all.

Also, I wasn't really drunk. But I wasn't kidding about the Crissaegrim.