Part 11: Blues Isn't My Forte

Game this is the first textbox, do not typo at me.


Before you, a great calamity lies... There are two paths from which to choose... Should you not obtain the power to defeat it, the vortex of chaos will swallow all. However, if you open your heart, you will find the power to defeat the darkness that will inevitably arrive.

...and which will not. We are always watching you...


I'm sure that it's perfectly fine. Geo just ate something bad before going to sleep.
Maybe his mind is just running wild from getting 2 S-ranks on bosses in a row.


*ding dong!*

Man, talk about lazy... But yeah, I get it. Having to answer the door is the worst.


Shit, we lost our alien.
Should have got him a collar. Damn it, Geo!




*ding dong!*
*ding dong!*

Whoever it is, they're impatient!

But they'll have to wait for me to read this very important piece of news.


I'll be honest - I tend to forget that Ken is a 'rad surfer dude'. It always slips my mind, even though I know the shop is called Big Wave.
They never DO anything with it, in your defense (for once). That's just a theme that's begging to be expanded upon. But we never got a Starforce 4, so.


Anyway, I guess we'll deal with the insistent person pounding on the door.

Suddenly a house intruder!


You can't really see it in the one screenshot here, but this weird guy is just looking around the entire time he's talking to himself.
You're supposed to show your badge and ask for permission before entering, moron.


Wait, again?! Do you do this often?
Fire this man.


Somehow, that would fail to reassure a 5-grade me if some guy in a trenchcoat busted in out of nowhere and then assured me "I'm definitely not a thief!"





Oh god, he says Yeppers. This 2000's-ass reading dialogue.
Fucking translation.

Still probably not the best way to get someone to calm down.











That's probably not great news for Mega.
Right now, ArmNavi is singlehandedly the best character we have. We can't let him die.




Stranger danger! He's been stalking you, Geo.



It's probably fine. Nothing to worry about, I bet.






Good job lying to the cops, Geo. Lan would definitely just blurt everything out, but you're faking it like a champ.
Well on his way to being a delinquent in Starforce 4...shit.




Don't worry, I'm sure your life will go back to normal very soon.


Great! We'll go check it out right away.


Turns out that after the USWNT won their tenth gold cup, they became too powerful and couldn't be stopped from taking over all sports forever.

That aside! I'm glad that we finally have access to Big Wave. There will be plenty of trips here in the future.


Things are pretty expensive here (I pick up two HPMem20 and the final one costs 16k zenny) but they're pretty good. Recover80 isn't worth it, but the rest of the chips are definitely good enough to earn their prices. Especially StunNukle for 5000 zenny.

Yeti, are you kidding me? I told you to get ChainBubble1 earlier. With that StunKnuckle that would be a super high damaging combo this early, as well as the Crowd Control!

You buy HP. When you don't need it right now because you get S-ranks on bosses.
Petition Yeti to be smart with his in-game currency.


Also! Our first Giga card, BreakTimeBomb. The Giga cards are all unique for each game; in Leo this chip is instead Darkness Hole, and in Dragon it's Destroy Missile.
I'll go over this card in more detail once we actually have enough zenny to purchase it, since... well, 50000 zenny is a LOT. Especially since I'm always buying the HPMem20s when they're available.

These are for storing your card collection. You can also put little trinkets inside.
I never understood the appeal of deck boxes. And then I found out my coworkers are avid Magic: The Gathering fans.
I have learned all about deck boxes.


This is the other reason I'm excited Big Wave is open! Card Trader! We'll get to that in a few screenshots.

50% off, nice. Sadly , there's nothing else interesting going on in this store, so let's talk to the only other person here.




Damn it, he found the stash of illegal cards.

Or that, too.


In Battle Network, there were evil navis that you fought at the end of each chapter; but, there were a few friendly navis that you could fight whenever by talking to their operator. Dex and Gutsman are the most famous example, naturally.


This kid is the same. Now that we've talked to him, if we go to the AMAKEN Wave Road we'll find a repeatable fight on our hands.
But more about that once we get there.

Card Trader!


It's exactly like the chip traders of old.

Put three cards in...

...Get a card back out.
This does not make you save.
Remember how abusable the Battle Network 1 chip trader was? This one's not quite there (you won't be getting Mega or Giga chips, or cards from the end of the game) but it's the exact same thing. Save in front of it, drop three cards, and if you don't like your result then reload.
Due to the absence of codes you are far more free to dump extra copies into the trader and gamble away. This also means there's less reason to rely on a trader as well.

And who's this, sitting on top of the Card Trader?



It's a nice little touch. Of course a Navi is in charge of this whole thing!
It is, but is there a reason to use the Navi over the trader? Never figured that one out.

He also gets irritated if you back out without trading some cards.




Seems like Bob has been causing some trouble for the other inhabitants here too.
He needs to get sued.


And the other talk of the town is some concert.

Like usual, our only other option is to head up to Vista Point. (The buses to AMAKEN aren't running right now, conveniently.)




The background music is actually different here. It's a nice touch.


A unique sprite appears.
Could it be? An important character?



Geo is just listening to her music but thanks to the blink animation he looks so fed up with this. Not that I can blame him, the girl strums her instrument for a good minute or so.



It's not Wonderwall, at least.





Girl there's nobody there, you're talking to the lamp.
Talk about imprinting.


Pink Hoodie Girl wanders off.

While Geo stares like a creep.









Well, that's good. No boss fight immediately for me, thank you. I have a different boss fight to get to.












The game doesn't really bring it up here, but Mega still hasn't told Geo about his father. Which would have been a much better reason for Geo to give instead of the generic "No it's not like I like you, idiot" response.

Also something to remember for the future.

Anyway, let's get going to explore the new stuff -


Welp.






Oh, it's the funny joke where the idiot friend says everything.
Bud could very well be Tweedle A, but he comes onto his own as a better character. Zack, however, is most definitely Tweedle B.



On one hand, it's easy to make jokes about why she's so humiliated. On the other, imagine some random cop just walked up to you and demanded that you show him everything you have on your phone, including saved images, texts, and browser history.

Either way, Luna walks off without them. It's strange for her to do that sort of thing.





That's neat and all, but he really didn't answer Geo's question. The gist is pretty easy to pick up thanks to the other NPCs.
Sure sucks for them that Luna's in a bad mood.
I...missed what the issue is? Luna is in a bad mood now. The concert is tomorrow, and dessert is tonight. It's probably late morning. Would she be in that bad a mood all day to skip dessert and tomorrow's concert...?


It is a concert, and clearly Bud and Zack have things planned. Being a friend (or even a subordinate) does not mean being a slave.



Honestly, I'm glad they made this decision. It's a good sign that Bud's not exactly slavishly dependent on her opinion any more. Especially since he clearly knows that she's going to be mad.




Oh yeah, that's probably not good.


Geo, master of stealth.
Jesus. This is worse than Regal missing Lan at the start of BN5!



Copper walks down the path. Good job hiding, Geo.











Yeah, yeah, whatever. First things first! Exploring all the new things open now that we've got Mega back.

First up, we can get into Big Wave's access point from here.

This one's a pretty small Wave Road, but it acts the same as Geo's house's Wave Road.

Including new encounters! We've already seen these thanks to one of the requests, but this is the place where DoomCounts appear in the wild.

They'll sit still for a second and grab a bomb from their mouth, then plant it on the field on the row in front of you. It's a three second countdown before it explodes in a spreader-size explosion - so where I'm standing is safe from the bomb at 0 but not the one at 3. The explosion is blockable, though; and you can blow up the bombs by dealing enough damage (about 10 HP worth).
The counter timing for them is right as they're pulling the bomb out of their mouth.
Being able to block an explosion that takes 3 seconds to pull off for free just...neutralizes their threat level. Elemental weakness, slow attack, blockable explosion. Yes, it was blockable in BN, too, but in those games you had to invest in Shield/particular form.

The chip reward is TimeBomb1.

Aside from the new encounter, we have new people to investigate.


An interesting collection of cards, though we've only seen one of them.
Two. Petition for Yeti to finally buy ChainBubble1
Who keeps screaming at me from outside my house to buy ChainBubble, show yourself coward I will never buy ChainBubble



Also interesting cards. Though, WideWave1 makes plenty of sense.


What is your accent supposed to be. "Knowada" get out of here with that shit.


Radical.
Giver and Yeti's Excellent LP




Very crabby.


If your last name is Pincer, then you deserve to get punched.

Now that I regret everything about talking to these NPCs, the Wave Road itself is split into three main parts connected with these arrow panels.

This goodie is in the second segment. Excellent.

The third part has an exit. Those who paid attention to the screenshots might have noticed the Wave Hole in here.

And now we're behind the counter.

Huh? Something is lying on the ground.


It's a strict upgrade to what I was using, so why not? Not like I use the buster for more than wasting time waiting for the Custom Gauge to fill back up on the rare occasion that I didn't erase all the viruses on the first round.

I'm sure it's fine.

See? No problem.


There are also two more Wave Roads available to us now that we've reached the third episode of the game.

Duty before pleasure, so let's get the more annoying one out of the way.

Useless! Worthless garbage! "Call the viruses to you" what does that even do?! Who knows, because I've never used it!
This is Copy Damage all over again.
Whistle will stop all enemy momentum, force them into a hitstun state and drag them all the way to you. If memory serves, this move removes the mercy invisible status. That may have changed game to game, or only in Starforce 3 at high noise. Worth checking on your own if you want. Speaking of, in Starforce 3, with high noise, this move had the opposite effect, pushing you back. Which means, if you were smart, you could do combos that moved the enemy back and forth, preventing the enemy from doing anything in multiplayer.
Cygnus Noise: Whistle --> -->Close range move that deals good damage, or good effects (DestroyUpper, anyone?) ---> MadVulcanX -->any move that relies on distance.
You can start a combo with it simply because the enemy is immediately forced into hitstun! Or, fuck it, you just want to interrupt someone? Whistle. Combo start and useful on its own. Whistle has actually caused me some issues due to the potential with it.
However if an enemy has SuperArmor they can still be pulled, but I don't believe they're in the hitstun animation. But if you can, say, use it on Taurus fire, you might be able to pull him into when you're not in the same row, ChainBubble, then StunKnuckle. It can be more reliable than a Lock-On, because a Lock-On can still miss if the enemy moves. Whistle guarantees they won't move for a bit.
Your only defense is the inability to select more than 2 cards without someone else's White Cards in this game. No excuse for SF2 and 3, though.
Interesting. My counter-argument is, using Whistle means I don't get to have a Counter, which means I don't get an extra attack card for free.


I'm glad that everyone in Zack's house thinks he's a loser too.

This Mega weapon gives 2/2/2 stats...
Look at this! Useless! The weapon in his house is weaker than something you can get at literally the exact same time.
We are in agreement.





Hey, there's something lying here...

Hm. Acceptable.

Look at this room. He's so short he needs an elevator to get up to bed. He somehow managed to get a basketball stuck in the hoop. He has three pairs of the same glasses. And steps so he can reach his glasses.
Fuck you, Zack.

Finally, a good character's room.


Bud, don't make your Mr. Hertz worry! It's very rude.

Don't buy standard chips from the shop, you can find almost all of them in GMW somewhere else and you have better things to spend zenny on.

If only we spent our money better.


This is up here in the left side of the horns, since naturally Bud's room's Wave Road makes the approximate shape of a bull. Neat upgrade if you're still using Cannon, but honestly you should be using something else by now.

That's it for Bud's room. No neat encounters here, either.



Hey, pizza is always related.
brb, ordering thru DoorDash.


That's it for the new stuff in Echo Ridge. Sure, Luna's up at Vista Point, but her Transer hasn't changed at all. Plus, she just rants about Zack and Bud ditching her, so the dialogue isn't that interesting. What we CAN do is take the bus, so let's go take care of things over at AMAKEN.

First stop, our new friend(?).





Geo we don't need to know every NPC's sad backstory. Let's just fight already.



Straight for the jugular, huh Mega? Well, if it gets me to the fight faster.
Screw you, I want more of this.




Fiiiiiight.



CancerBubble is our first optional boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf6M0Epj5DE
Your fucking video description.
He's honestly not that rough once you realize he has very set patterns. Hitting him is just a matter of waiting for him to stop moving for a second and then punching him with long-range attacks. His first move will always be moving to one of the columns, where he will sweep back and forth across that row, and then go to either the back row or one from the back (whichever one he's not on) and sweep across that row with Bubble Pop. After that, he has two options and will alternate them: Boomerang Cutter and Tidal Wave. Then he hops around in the following pattern: Up or Back a row, Left or Right, Left or Right. Then he goes to back to the start of his pattern.


Pictured: Bubble Pop. As he sweeps across the columns, he'll launch a bubble down each one. They can be destroyed by a single Buster shot but can't be blocked or dodged. If they connect, it deals 30 damage and Geo gets stuck in a bubble (second image). Because he sweeps back and forth, you'll probably get hit by a second bubble. Worst case scenario, you end up getting hit by the last wave and are stuck in the bubble while he does his big attack. The counter timing for this is right at the start of the move, before he launches his first bubble but as he's starting to float left or right.
This is the only counter timing I've been able to find for CancerBubble, too. It's not very consistent and I can only get it to work at the very beginning of the fight when he's guaranteed to go to the front right spot.

Pictured: Boomerang Cutter. He stands in the back and creates unbreakable claws that he launches down the rows. There's only two so stand in the empty row; they can't be destroyed or blocked. If they connect, it's 30 damage.

Pictured: Tidal Wave. He waits in the center, two rows away from you, then unleashes the Tidal Wave. It has to be blocked, and if you don't stun him with a card before he attacks or fail to block Geo takes 50 HP worth of damage and is stuck in Bubble again.

The Bubble status wastes time but just keep hitting him when you have a chance. Cancer Bubble's 700 HP goes down pretty easily.
CancerBubble (the Mega Card) uses a 3x2 (three column, two row) Tidal Wave right in front of the closest enemy. If they survive, they get stuck in a Bubble. (Neat interaction: Bubble status plus electric attack means double damage.)
And the electric chips in this game are honestly pretty damn strong, soooo. Hint, hint.


We can refight him any time we want; if you lose, you just get kicked back to right in front of him with full HP.

Our next and last stop in AMAKEN is in Boreal's lab, on the part of the wave road after the teleporter. You might be able to guess what's about to go down.

CygnusWingEX. Honestly, just a faster version of the boss with more HP and does a little more damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFDSa-UunCc
Now THAT's good gameplay.

He still goes down like a chump. His Mega card uses the Swan Dance around the ring of the arena, so the left column, right column, and back row are all in its target.

Our field trip is done, so back to the plot. Bob Copper is snooping around and we need to know what he learned about Geo and Mega.




...Sigh. Flicker effects.

Basically Copper is surrounded by a flickering purple bubble.
Oh shit, he slotted in a Barr200 chip.











Don't be such a wiener, Geo. You've beaten up who knows how many viruses and at least two aliens.
Use a Wind chip!

Remember that pitching machine I pointed out earlier? Guess what we have to use.



Well, we already know where to find Joe. He was complaining about baseball already.



Like always, if they don't want to tell us, we can always invade their privacy.


Wonderful. Thank you, Joe.
Never really understood why people vent their secrets on a diary. Yes, no one is supposed to read your secret diary/journal, but if they do, your secret's out. Best place is honestly in your brain.





Geo used the "Pitching Card"!




We can reach this new wave hole back where we originally jumped into the Train's wave hole during the tutorial.

First things first, the new encounter:

BellGong is the new virus present in fights. In this case, the UFO just flies around for a bit before ringing the gong. ...I'm not really sure what it does? It's not an attack. A few movements later and then BellGong will pop up in front of you with a right hook. The counter timing is as the virus swings at Megaman.

They drop SyncHook.


The new drops. Firebomb is pretty good for multiple kills at once, and if the encounter is a bunch of the same, SyncHook is a great card. Too bad that a lot of encounter design have multiple viruses. It's still 120 damage, though.
SyncHook is new-age CopyDamage. Meaning it's basically less flexible, in exchange for more immediate damage. Still a good slot early on, I guess. It's quickly outmoded, though. CopyDamage was always good; it was just misunderstood.


You go, Mr. Hertz. I bet you could pitch a perfect game.

At least it's something.




Not bad, not bad. Though it's just a version of the regular virus encounters. (Hello, CancerBubble and AirSpread for a ten-second kill.)





Yeah. We'll do that, right away.
---
Yeti's Astronomy Corner
Cancer is another of the Zodiac constellations, representing the Crab and people born between June 21 and July 22. They're usually considered to be very emotional people, which sometimes manifests as quick mood swings.
As for the mythology behind Cancer? In ancient greek mythology, Cancer was a crab that appeared while Hercules fought with the Hydra. He pinched Hercules on the foot and then immediately got crushed. Hera, since she hated Hercules, decided to put the crab up in the sky out of spite? Yeah, it's a weird one.
You might also have heard of the Tropic of Cancer, so named because that's the point at which the Sun is directly overhead during the summer solstice. The name for the tropic comes from the fact that the sun was located in the Cancer constellation. Thanks to precession of the equinoxes (look it up, but short answer is that they happen a little bit earlier in the Earth's orbit every year. It's not much earlier, about maybe 20 minutes?) the sun is now located in Taurus during the solsitce. ...Tropic of Bull?

Other fun facts about Cancer in this game include the fact that originally, the skin of the Wave Changed Cancer Bubble was going to be black to reference the fact that it was often called the 'Dark Sign' since it has very few stars that aren't very bright; and that while we never see Cancer the FM-ian, early concept art shows the FM-ian as female.
Oh no, it's adorable. Quick, hide it from the Internet.