Part 55: Episode LIV: The Essence of Humanity

Episode LIV: The Essence of Humanity




New Music: Copied City (Quiet) (You should absolutely listen to this. It’s a really good track!)



Well... this is happening now. Welcome to the Copied City. I’m going to go ahead and assume 2B has a raised eyebrow under that blindfold right now.



What is this?
Analysis: This area is composed of crystallized silicon and carbon. Further details unknown.
Who built it?
Unknown.



The Copied City is not a very large area. In fact, it’s pretty much just a straight glorified corridor from here to the end of the area, with a few side-alley dead ends for flavor. There are some pretty nice goodies in this region as far as Chips go. Potentially, a Resilience and Overclock chip can be randomly found here.

Resilience makes 2B no-sell damage if her health is above a certain threshold. She’ll get hurt still, but not stunned. It’s the same ability Level 4 Iron Will grants, just with any weapon configuration. Overdrive, on the other hand, turns 2B’s Perfect Evade into straight up Witch Time from Bayonetta. Dodging attacks will cause time to slow down for everything except for 2B. It’s both near brokenly powerful and really fun. Sadly, I only found a Resilience +2 in my journey here this time. Raiden’s Parry from Metal Gear Rising is also a fun other Platinum games mechanic chip in this game as well.



Not everything in the Copied City is a stark white textureless bit of scenery. There is some set dressing in the form of YoRHa android corpses...



...A LOT of android corpses. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for them all being here.



What’s with the corpses?
It is unlikely the YoRHa units came this far on their own. Hypothesis: The enemy must have placed them here deliberately.



Look, you know how much work it is to drag over rusty girders, tear off an androids skin and then tie it up in a spooky pose? Just toss a bunch of ragdolled bodies around and it has the same effect. That’s just efficient!





There’s only one path through the Copied City and it leads to a half-constructed church looking structure and a large, definitely not a boss-arena courtyard in front of it. Said courtyard is decorated by dozens of player corpses and a bunch of tiny cubes slowly rolling towards the church. Welp. May as well see what this is all about...





The baby cubes begin merging together into who knows what. Sorry, it’s not going to be a crazy cube monster like Shahriyar in NieR 1’s Barren Temple. Or even history’s greatest block related monster: The S-Piece.



Also a ton of larger blocks fill in the exit to the boss arena. Wouldn’t want to go out of bounds, now would we? Ring outs are the coward’s victory.



So what is in the cube pile, you ask? Well it’s very simple...





Why it’s Adam, of course. And he’s evolved to his third form: Wearing a shirt and glasses. He’s still got a ways to go. Everyone knows you cannot be a true fighting game end boss unless you go at it in a full 3-piece suit, huge flowing robes or in full plate-armor with a cape. But at least he’s making progress to that lofty goal.



Adam has a monologue to make and there’s little we can do to stop him. We’ll be given control back to 2B shortly. But any attempts to attack Adam just results in him teleporting away until he’s done yammering. So no sense in that. Let’s just hear him out.



Love. Family. Religion. War. The more human records I unearth, the more charmed I am by their complexity. This city is one of many areas I created out of a desire to understand—to know—humans. It’s grand, don’t you think? Almost... spiritual. And yet it’s currently nothing more than an android graveyard!



Now we are actually battling Adam. Kinda... Well, not really. Adam will attack 2B in this fight and 2B can damage him a bit. But this is another conflict that is scripted to end as soon as Adam is done with his ramblings.



Some desired love! Others family!





Adam has an all unique move set for this first phase of the fight. He’s become a Cubemancer using only the darkest in cube based wizardry. For instance, Adam can summon a dozen or so cubes around himself and detonate them as bombs. You see? He can unleash the power of a Tetris without even making a line.





The newly shirt wearing man-machine also form a giant a massive cube and just toss that sonuvabitch in 2B’s direction. If 2B lingers at close range when the cube is summoned, he’ll instead spike it into the ground instead of tossing it.



The core of humanity... is conflict. They fight. Steal. Kill. THIS is humanity in its purest form!
You know nothing about humanity!
Hehehe... Have I offended you, little android? Did I speak ill of your beloved humans? The truth can be so painful. I strive to attain nothing less than the essence of humanity itself. We machines exist in a connected network. We are immortal. Invincible. And yet, within all those infinite bits of data, there exists not even the merest flicker of being. Of life. Death—even the concept of death—has no meaning to us.



Rounding out Adam’s newfound abilities, instead of detonating a dozen cubes around himself, he can instead use them as projectiles to lob in 2B’s general direction.





Finally, if under fire from the Pod or 2B keeping pressure in one direction for too long, Adam can summon a wall of blocks to protect himself and then slam it forth in 2B’s direction. Kinda rude...



Finally, Adam can still just teleport. It’s the only old ability he retains for this portion of the boss battle.



After Adam is done with the monologue, there’s a bit of downtime where the battle continues. But it’s not necessary to deplete his HP to a certain point. The next phase will automatically progress shortly...







Adam has rejected the dark arts of Cubemancy.





Alright. This is now a death match... for Adam looking for some thrill seeking. I don’t think he knows that the androids kinda have the same quasi-immortality deal and even if he slays 2B, another one could get 3D Printed out and march back down here to try again. I suppose in a way this is like being a final boss in a fighting game. You can kick Player 1’s ass a hundred times. But as long as they keep continuing, it only takes one victory on their part to make the end credits roll.


New Music: Copied City (Dynamic) (You should listen to this too. It’s the vocals version.)



Now it’s time for a real battle against Adam. Kinda... There’s no artificial time limit associated with this phase of the fight. But we only need to drop him to 75-66% health to move on and he’s using a limited move set for this bout.



Instead of the deadly Cube Arts from earlier, Adam is using evolutions of moves similar to the first fight against him and the one from the alien mothership against Eve. For instance, he can use his crazy energy wisps to form a giant hand and just pimp-slap 2B. Rude as heck.



He also possesses a superman dive punch. This has extremely far range, as he teleports to get close to 2B’s position. But it’s hugely telegraphed.





Use Pod’s primary fire functions is largely useless here. Adam will outright defect Gatling fire back at 2B. He’ll block Laser and use its energy to do a similar deflection. And missile is just too damn slow to hit an exceedingly mobile/frequently teleporting small target like Adam.



Keeping with the fighting game boss theme, Adam still remembers how to do his rapid-fire Hadokens from the first match against him. He hasn’t gotten faster or accurate with those and just keeping mobile is enough to avoid the fireball volley.





Also back from the older battles with the manbots is the parry shield. Adam is way more on the ball about using this when under attack. However, he takes a bit until he can throw up another shield if the first one is broken. So it’s usually the best tactic to just wail on it until Adam parries, Perfect Evade the parry, and then punish him with a follow-up attack.





All of Eve’s axe and dive kicks are also available to his brother. I mean technically, he was using those moves fighting 9S in the background during that fight. But who was paying attention to that? A lot of Adam’s kicks have a very brief tell and are among the harder attacks to avoid at close range. Which is wise to stay more mid-range when attacking with Large Swords or Spears. Or not. It’s really satisfying to fight Adam with Combat Bracers too.



I need... to find 9S!
Ah, 9S... Hehehe... HAHAHAHA!



As soon as Adam is done kinda creepy laughing about 9S, he’ll go down in the very next hit. Hey, weirdo. 9S is a dingus. But he’s our dingus. You better not be doing any weird manbot stuff with him here...





Adam please don’t teach the machine lifeforms about masochism. Next thing you know they’ll be getting into whips and leather or 100% LPing Drakengard and nobody wants to see those little dork robots doing that.



Adam decides to float off. He can fly now. It’s fine. All Sephiroths can fly. Everyone knows that! That’s just basic scientific fact. Open up a book sometime and educate yourself.





Oh boy... This is gonna get creepy, isn’t it? And if it doesn’t get creepy, this is gonna inspire a massive amount of creepy fan art.






OUCH! Somehow thick blunt rods being impaled through someone seems way worse than spiked ones. Dammit... now we can’t even yell at 9S for nearly blowing us up after this...







Should have seen Adam turning out to be the creepy brother. I mean just look at that outfit. He researched all of human history and went with that. He knew fully well what he was doing and setting out to become.





*angry growl*


Music: End of the Unknown (Dynamic)



YEEEEEES! That’s it! That’s the feeling! PURE HATE!



AHAHAHAHAHAAA!





Come, 2BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Tune in next time for Fucking PISSED 2B vs. Creeper Sephiroth Adam in a final death match in the Copied City. Place your bets now! ...Keeping in mind we’re only like 75% of the way through the first ending route...






Video: Episode 54 Highlight Reel (You should watch this.)





Copied City Concept Art – This is the only piece of concept art for this region. Unlike the Flooded City, I’m pretty sure this was just intended to be an unsettling boss arena area. No idea why 9S is in it. At no point is he wandering around this location.