Part 43: Forbidden: Assassins Recommended: Sense.

Let's look at what Nebula actually has. A seemingly infinite squadron of completely worthless HeelNavis, supplanting the old, even more worthless squadron of HealNavis, and 4 DarkLoids.

BlizzardMan is so pathetic that, and this is a minor spoiler but fuck it, he appears in the postgame as a miniboss.

ShadeMan's only merit is not staying dead.

CloudMan's difficulty is imposed by the limitations of the Liberation Missions. In a battle with a 3-round time limit, he constantly spams attacks that paralyze, can chain-paralyze, clutter the field and require clearing, and that giant thundercloud attack that has little hope of ever actually hurting the player and only serves to waste valuable time. Combine with that insanely annoying auto-paralysis field attack, and CloudMan isn't so much "legitimately difficult" as he is a giant middle finger to the player.

Our soon-to-be-revealed 4th one. Take a wild guess, does he live up to the legacy of his predecessors?

What little threat, and really it's mostly just a timesink of an obstacle, that Nebula can wield is created by the "never specifying what something is or what it can do means we can do whatever we fucking want with it" writing style oft employed by the series. The DarkPower corrupts! It's like the Dark Side of The Force mixed with a Green Lantern ring in terms of plot, but in terms of execution...not so much.



Hey, a picture! I hope my ranting tendencies don't become too recurring, GargComp was practically a text LP.

And gosh, wouldn't it be nice if we could warp around like our teammates do, or at least teleport freely while we control them? Pssht.



Three fucking updates later, we've finally gotten back to this stupid door we could have opened in the first place and avoided literally everything in those updates if it wasn't for Ms. Mari's Navi deciding she wanted to take a stroll in a dangerous area. Yeah, whenever I go for a walk, my first destination of choice is always the dimly-lit urban alleyway.



Finally, geeze. Still, with all 6 members of Team Colonel assembled, we can liberate the final main internet area!



"Yeah, you're one of the most useful members of the team, but you know what, you get a time-out for that whole Yumland genocide thing."



Forbidden: Assassins. Recommended: Sense.

God DAMN it, Capcom! The justification is that someone needs to stand guard just in case Nebula tries something funny. This is the last stronghold Nebula has on the internet period, that's ridiculous.



The more one tries to rationalize this strategic blunder, the worse it gets. Gosh, I sure love how readily the game itself even points out how this is a dumb idea. Doing so takes less effort than actually justifying the action.



ShadowMan is the fucking speed member of the team! Remember back in the update devoted to his scenario, there was repeated emphasis on how fast ShadowMan was, how useful his speed would be, how the team was too slow? Gotta love in-game continuity apathy. Colonel's usually the voice of reason, no less. And wouldn't a better guard be fucking KnightMan? The, you know, DEFENSE MEMBER OF THE TEAM? ShadowMan is fragile as heck.



And look at this layout! ShadowMan's presence would be a serious advantage here! But nooo...

Anyway, time for the once-a-mission new element to add to the Liberation Missions. Introducing an insanely annoying new obstacle that's going to be really crammed into them now:

: Trapssss

Disguised as normal item panels, they come in two flavors: Damage and Paralysis. That should be self-explanatory. Simple enough, it's the application of these things that grates on the nerves.



Much like LaserMan, CosmoMan is both a fan-created Navi as well as the head of Nebula under Regal. Somehow, he manages to be even more generically villainous than LaserMan, wait until you see the majority of his dialogue later.



Yup, there's 3 keys to find here. In the giant clusterfuck of item panels, most of which being traps. The keys start being much more well hidden from here on out. Note: start. One of them is in an obvious location, and another is in a slightly less noticeable location, but thinking like a game designer makes it obvious where it is. Only one of the keys is actually hidden in a difficult to guess place.

This marks the point in the Liberation Missions where prior knowledge of key placement becomes vital for a good time, that or heavy abuse of of the once-per-phase save you get to save-scum everything through trial and error.

WHEEEEE.



Making this process marginally less painful is NumberMan's Order Point action, which searches a 2x6 area in front of him. Any item panels are harvested, those with traps are harmlessly defused. Unlike other Order Point actions, however, this can be done without actually having a battle. Team ProtoMan's SearchMan has a similar action that I forget the details of, but much like the relationship between TomahawkMan and NapalmMan, it's linear rather than in a square. It also does require a battle, unlike NumberMan's action.

I dislike NumberMan's action because the ItemPanels are all over the damned place, a 2x3 square really isn't as helpful as you'd think. Situationally useful, but compare that to the awesomeness of the rest of the team.



A consolation is that this is a very dense, tightly-packed Liberation Mission.



EndArea5 is pretty tiny, actually.



These three screenshots show about 70% of the entire map. There's a square area to the north, but aside from that, yeah. Small.



First order of business is to swap NapalmMan in, because Napalm is easily one of the most useful actions in either version. That said, I hope I find another TP Chip soon, because NumberMan's action just...sucks. NumberMan may be a bit of a load for the team, but his soul easily makes up for that.



Let's finally get started and blow our way to a DarkHole and provide ourselves with a handy BonusPanel at the same time. Yeah, I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.



NumberMan grabs the Bonus, which provides invincibility. Damn, I was hoping for Order Points, those are at a premium more than ever with some many fucking ItemPanels to root through.



KnightMan lacks anything better to do this phase, so he's sent in to do what he does best in surrounded situations:



Tear shit up with 1-turn liberations! This also allows NumberMan a better shot at the DarkHole. He's fragile, his charge shot is the DiceBomb, and his chip attack is the NumberTrap, thus requiring it to be stepped on. NumberMan is kind of gimped offensively.



In a stroke of good fortune, one of the ItemPanels KnightMan cleared had free Order Points!



There was also a damage trap, but KnightMan laughs in the face of those.



NumberMan then manages the DarkHole. Oddly, every other character says "Liberate Panels", whereas NumberMan prefers "Panel Liberation". Well, every team of asskicking powerhouses has the member that doesn't do much and sort of doesn't fit in. Poor NumberMan is basically Aquaman. Or SpoutMan, rather. And sadly, while he could have been Brave and the Bold Aquaman, he's instead Superfriends Aquaman.



MegaMan's lack of a good Order Point command really kind of bites. Then again, MegaMan has always been nigh-useless outside of actual battle. Kind of a shame there's no "upgrade" for it though.



As I said before, one of the keys is in a really obvious place, and there it is in the middle of that outcropping there.



It's almost comedic how frequent the 1-turn liberations are. Battles tend to be over in a matter of seconds due to either drawing a shitload of S or P-coded chips that rip the enemy apart like AirHoc, MarkCannon, SuperVulcan, TankCannon, etc., just drawing LeaderRaid on the first turn (7 chips appear at the start of battle, 30 chips in the folder, this isn't uncommon), or using helpful teammate charge shots or ChaosUnisons.

I said it before, but yeah, my current setup could handle pretty much the entire game. The postgame would be slow but possible, and only the very last bosses in the game would be too strong. I am a digital meatgrinder.



Poor NumberMan. He wants to be awesome too, he really does, but even his 1-Turn liberations backfire a bit on him.



BLOW UP FUCKING EVERYTHING.



Yeah, NapalmMan in a nutshell.



Fucking hell. The most annoying part of traps is that the wide-scale liberation commands for NapalmMan and TomahawkMan will destroy any beneficial items, but traps get set off anyway. Why? Fuckery's sake, that's why! And with the main path-carver out of commission for a turn, things slow down.



I think by now my 1-turn liberation results are a given. Seriously, I'm actively planning my routes through these things under the assumption that any fight not at an extensive disadvantage is going to be a 1-turn liberation.



Stupid paralysis trap...well, NapalmMan isn't available next turn to blast a path open through this segment, so time to get creative.



This is the first normal liberation KnightMan's had in a long time, and it was deliberate. 1-turning this would spoil my plan.



Moving Colonel into the way, here's why. If there wasn't a panel there, I wouldn't have been able to use ScreenDivide. See how the second open panel is placed? KnightMan's going in there next turn, and a 1-turn liberation there will clear a way to both DarkHoles. This is speedrun shit right here, all hail my brilliant strategic genius! Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and-



Aw fuck!



FUCK!



FUCK!



Well, that Bladia that moved up during the DarkLoid phase utterly ruined my entire plan, only permitting access to the single DarkHole rather than both.



And this other asshole decided it'd be utterly hilarious to box NumberMan and NapalmMan in, requiring a wasted turn from NumberMan just to open the way back up with zero actual progress.



At any rate, might as well take out this DarkHole with MegaMan. The usual routine ensues. And what do you know, DarkLance on the first turn!



NO! NO! FINGER SLIP! THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT USE OF CHAOSUNISON!



Whatever, I won anyway! Those wondering about my weird HP with MegaMan are probably confused. After all, all damage in the games is rounded to the nearest 10. MegaMan's weirdly fluctuating HP is caused by TomahawkChaos, which is wood element and causes a GrassStage effect upon ChaosUnison. So a bit of HP regeneration is the reason for odd HP numbers.



Next phase, Colonel and NapalmMan are unfrozen, but we can't progress until I find the second key. Just look at the screenshots, fuck! ItemPanels everywhere. NumberMan is at least able to find something helpful during a search of a particular cluster.



Sir Cockbutter right here happens to be on top of an ItemPanel. Well, who wants to bet that the stupid key is under him?



RRRRRGH!



At least Colonel can take out the DarkPanel. Man, my HP drops like a stone in Liberation Missions. I just do not care about saving health at all. Speed trumps all!



Spotting this crafty little niche right in front of CosmoMan, NapalmMan is, as usual, sent in to blow everything up.



There we go. We're still not doing bad time-wise.



Only Phase 4 of 9. But ugh, look at this big square. Where the hell is the 3rd key!?



Well, KnightMan is the only one who can do something left this phase, so might as well crack open a random spot. What do you know, an actual non-1-turn liberate that wasn't intentional!



Wait, aw crap, NapalmMan is left in CosmoMan's attack range! Given that he's the last of the DarkLoids, this is going to be nasty. CloudMan had paralyzing fog, DarkMega had a whopping 150 HP buster to all targets...



Okay, so that was 25% of his HP at the time, but come the hell on. That's just disappointing.



Whatever, let's grab that BonusPanel. Ooh, invincibility again. Invincibility is very fun with NapalmMan, due to his glass cannon nature, you get to just blow everything in your way to smithereens!



Alright, speaking of things blowing up...



Huh. Well. That was...unexpected. Pure blind luck leads me to the last key! I was just trying to blow a way over to the Bladia and the DarkHoles, whaddaya know.



The nature of traps not being defused by Napalm means that the damage traps add up. Just look at NapalmMan's meager 70 remaining HP. Inversely, "Invincible KnightMan" is kind of redundant.



KNIGHTMAN SMASH. And that opened both the DarkHoles and another BonusPanel!



NumberMan's results are completely useless, as this is the same phase as the previous invincibility bonus. Oh NumberMan, you poor bastard, that's just luck hating you right now.



Well, go take out that DarkHole. You can do that, right?



But of course. And to boot, those Order Points are basically freebies you're almost guaranteed to get, as DarkHoles auto-liberate all the panels around them when cleared. This is ominous, however. How much do you want to bet later ones are going to have traps that will be set off by DarkHoles being liberated?

And, uh, NumberMan, what kind of pose is that?



MegaMan mops up the last DarkHole.



This will put Colonel in range for the CosmoPlanet attack, but christ, that's not something to worry about period.



Mad Libs Dialogue makes a triumphant return! Seriously, every goddamned word out of CosmoMan's mouth is some kind of stock cliche.



And his mugshot looks so damned smug and condescending to boot.



The final DarkLoid! The freedom of the internet! Peace! All of it comes to a climax here!



CosmoMan is literally so pathetic I cherry-tap him by accident. The turn managed to end a frame or two before the game realized "Wait, right, he's fucked", and I just sat back and watched.



You may be a boring cliche fountain, CosmoMan, but at least you provided an amusing death.



6 phases nets us the CosmoManSP chip. This can be used in a P.A. much later, but come to think of it, CosmoMan didn't even get a chance to use his desperation attack.



Victory!