Part 102: Episode XCVIII-2: Online Housing Crisis

Episode XCVIII-2: Online Housing Crisis




Music: Dependent Weakling



Why are you going after 9S, Eve? All he did was get kidnapped and his brain messed with by your weird creep of a brother. The whole murder part was all 2B. Granted, it was to save 9S, so I guess there’s partial fault there... But that’s basically victim blaming and that’s always a fucked up thing to do, guy.







The battle against Eve is 100% exactly the same as it was the first go around. At least in his first form. Eve is not immune to hacking in this stage. But it’s inefficient to go through the moderate difficulty configuration of the mini-games versus just concentrated fire and punching him a bunch while he has his tantrum. Once more, when we mostly drain his HP...



Is that bad?
The energy seems to be coming from a large number of linked machine lifeforms.
More machines is usually bad...
Mhm. He’s absorbing the lifeforce of whatever’s left on the network.
Shouldn’t it be like, I dunno, “energy”? Lifeforce seems, eh... weird.
Are you really stuck on this right now?



I’m going to try hacking into Eve and shutting him down! Or... at least stop him from doing all of this. Back me up, 2B!
On it. Just be quick about it. I’m not doing an escort mission while fighting a boss.



It’s time for the only new content in this battle. Originally, as 2B we had to hold Eve’s attention for a bit while 9S took forever to hack Eve and yank out his internet cable. This time around, the hack goes much more quickly and we’re brought to...




New Music: Dependent Weakling (Chiptune) (This is the only time this track ever plays.)



Well this is a different hacking space than we usually see. They aren’t often big on having more complex terrain than a rogue wall of blocks.



GRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!



But that’s not the only anomaly. Eve has also manifested himself in hacking space and boy, he’s pissed we’re mucking around inside his circuitry. 9S now gets an extra phase to this boss battle taking place entirely in digital space. For being the final boss, Digital Eve has just three fairly simple patterns. One is spamming a spiral of energy orbs in all directions like above.



The second is a wave of alternating lines of purple and orange orbs as shown here. The final attack phase is just spamming a mess of orange orbs in 9S’s direction. That’s it. That’s all of his patterns. He just cycles through all three of those attacks (usually he’ll do the wave or orange spam with the spiral pattern being every other turn.)





After taking an unspecified amount of damage, the Digital Eve attack barrier will vanish and with him the blocks leading northward. No one stops. Let’s press forward and see what else is ahead.



Oh, brother... Why...?



Adam was a weird creeper with an unhealthy obsession about humans. Just be thankful it seems all old porn caches from the 21st century didn’t survive to modern day or else those scenes at the dinner table would take a real turn for the awkward.





Once the second digital Eve is destroyed, another path opens to the north, where he immediately pops up again for another go at it. I bet Adam would be inconsolably bummed out to hear that humans had been extinct before his race even set foot on the planet. Dude would probably stuff himself in a rocket and launch himself to the moon to make doubly sure there weren’t any humans hiding up there.



Once the next Eve attack barrier is destroyed, the path continues a ways up north and the terrain starts getting a bit... dicey, let’s say. Also...



Alert: Disruption detected in YoRHa unit 9S’s self-consciousness data. Corruption potential critical. Evacuation recommended.
Can’t. Not when I’m this far in!



Eve isn’t around to attack here. In fact, that last bout was it for him putting up any active defense. It’s just a matter of getting around the corrupt portions of land and smashing through black blocks to advance. It’s a simple but effective visual that things are getting borked in Eve’s headspace land.



My life was contained in our moments...





Immediate evacuation and treatment recommended.
Just... a little more... If I can remove Eve’s object control function...



I guess telekinesis is just a function built into higher level machines. I guess Adam did briefly have the Cubemancy before settling on the death match with 2B. Seems like an odd function to have built in to your man-machine interface. Also odd to find here is...



Music: ENDS





I never disliked fighting. But I didn’t want you to be hurt. And I especially didn’t want to lose you. So let’s... go somewhere quiet. Together. My brother...






Music: Dependent Weakling





Back in the real world, 2B is having some difficulty containing Eve’s meltdown while 9S is busy blocking internet connections and shutting .exe programs in Eve’s head. But after that scene in Eve’s digital townhouse, I guess 9S’s work is done.



EEEEEEEEEEVVVVVEEEEEEEEE!!







I have no idea how we went from listening to Eve talking to a digital representation of his dead brother in a peaceful house they never had to 9S having duct taped a bunch of scrap metal to his fist to pull off the most shonen anime ass bullshit in the game. Indeed, I think I have even less idea how that panned out seeing 9S’s half of the battle.



AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!



<Loving this shit intensifies>





2B, I FRICKED IT! TAG IN!



Hot swap incoming! Here she comes with a sneaky surprise attack!





Music: ENDS



2B and 9S get semi-wrecked by that encounter. I’m really surprised 9S made it through that stunt with his arm intact considering it popped off like a cheap Chinese made action figure to much less force earlier on in the game.



The Xenosaga Albedo looking prick doesn’t come out quite as unscathed. But that’s OK. We know how this goes and it’s not in his favor.




Music: The Sound of the End







Unfortunately, the actual final phase against Eve is completely identical to the first time around. Only the hacking space was any different. 9S deactivated Eve’s ability to pull a Magneto. But he failed to disable the energy orb function. Nice work, 9S. You had one job!





Not that it’s necessary for this battle since it was already less than difficult. But here’s a fun fact: standing at rough this range and launching missiles will completely stunlock Eve in this phase. Eve can be briefly staggered from taking enough damage and the missile fire, even at Missile Pod Level 1, does just enough damage to do so. At this range, the volley of missile travel time and Eve’s hit recovery almost perfectly line up to prevent him from ever attacking. It’s kinda sad, really.





Of course Eve will eventually get pissed once he reaches 50% HP and unleash a shockwave that destroys 9S and 2B’s karate chop action.





That’s OK. The missile trick still works in this phase, even if 2B and 9S can only slowly limp around the battlefield. No further surprises. This fight is through.



Tune in next time for the conclusion to Route B of NieR: Automata! The blood moon of Route C looms on the horizon...






Video: Episode 98B Highlight Reel (It’s the final boss. You should probably watch it.)





Adam and Eve Release Lead-up Art – Just two robot bros hanging out. Nothing weird.

*****

Note: Ending B will be posted tonight. Try to get to a new page before then.