Part 3: Emotions Are a Skill to Control

Update 3: Emotions Are a Skill to Control




LET'S GET TOGETHER NOW





Now that Boss is dealt with, and hide-and-seek is over... it's time to visit Basil's house.







Ummm... Omori... I think that mailbox is talking to us... Maybe we should go check it out...


When has a talking mailbox ever been good? Oh well, let's hope it's not too bloodthirsty.





Eh, I've seen worse venues.





Candy are your basic potions, apple juice are weak ethers. Most food items are going to be healing items and juices will recover MP (known in this game as Juice appropriately enough). Jacks and presents are battle items you can use to buff/debuff the party or enemies. I'm a fan of jacks later on, but right now they're too expensive. I get a couple pieces of candy and an apple juice then I move on.




TREES...





Finally, we are out of the park!





Basil is apparently an important enough guy that the street signs point directly to his house as well as other major landmarks like the train station and a forest made of wheels. Trying to visit locations that aren't Basil's house gets us yelled at so southwards it is!







That's how I want to be like... someone who always sees the bright side of things.


D'aaw that's sweet. I want to be like a potato - in the ground.





I guess that's why they remind me of Mari! I can always count on her to help me stay positive!


Basil is just too sweet...

He's gonna die, isn't he?





Whoa! What's that ugly plant creature?

Don't you know, Kel? That's a Sprout Mole.

Sprout Moles are highly intelligent creatures, but become dangerously vicious when they are lost.

Please, Mr. Sprout Mole! Stop that! You're stomping over all the flowers...











Ah! It looks like this Sprout Mole is Angry! Like us, Sprout Moles also feel emotions. Since this Sprout Mole is angry, it's attack is higher. But on the other hand, it lowers its defense!

So what you're saying is now is the perfect time to strike! Come on, Omori! Let's do this!


Finally, we get to the battle mechanics! Emotions are this games' twist on the standard JRPG/turn based battle style. Hero's going to explain emotions and then provide a helpful aid for me to summarize at the end. For now though, anger is... actually not a good emotion to have on your enemies. Having less defense on them is good... but dealing more damage in turn is very rarely worth it. Meanwhile, the opposite is usually true. Having anger on at least of your party members is a very solid idea. And by one of your party members, I mean Aubrey.





Hey, Omori! Now that we're getting the hang of battling... here's a journal where we can keep track of any neat foes we come across. There, now it's in your pocket. The journal is yours to record with, but we might pitch in sometimes too!


Hero gives us the Foe Facts Journal! It's just your basic beastiary with a little bit of extra LORE for those craving it. I'll try and remember to go over it at the end of every section.





They remind me of Hero! Did you guess correctly?


No, I thought it was Van.


Roses come in many different colors and have their own unique meanings.

Pink roses symbolize admiration... Orange roses symbolize passion... Yellow roses symbolize friendship... and the list goes on!

Hero doesn't remind me of any rose in particular. I think Hero is like all roses, because he's versatile and universally loved!


I like this flower section. Sure the game is kinda just telling you what the character attributes of everyone is supposed to be, but Basil is just so innocent and naive that it comes off incredibly charming. It helps that the characters will live up to their billings soon enough (if they haven't already).





The gladio-what?

Gladiolus! Also known as the "sword flower"!

As you might guess, they represent strength of character. Someone who is honest, with strong moral values... Someone who stands by their convictions...

The gladiolus reminds me of Aubrey, because she's always true to herself!

Oh, I see... so what you're saying is that Aubrey is really stubborn!

Hey! No, I'm not!

Haha... okay! Let's move on!


Basil trying to politely get us back on track before Aubrey spears Kel on the Gladiolus.




Oh no, not again! Please, Mr Sprout Mole! Stop twirling! You're destroying all of the flowers!









Oh! I see... this sprout mole is happy! In that case, it has a higher chance to hit our weak spots and do more damage. But this also means it has a higher chance of missing!


So Happy.... it's uh... the odd man out in terms of emotions. I remember thinking when I first played that I could see utilizing it in a niche way or potentially speccing a character to utilize higher crits to become a wrecking machine later on.... but this never came to fruition. I don't think I ever really used this emotion on enemies, though if an enemy comes with happy I don't really try to change it. Easily the emotion that needs to be tuned to be useful if the devs are planning any DLC to come out in 2024.





In case you didn't know, emotions can determine how strong or weak an attack is. Happy beats angry... angry beats sad... and sad beats happy! Here! I even drew up a guide on how they work! I'm not artist, but I think you'll get the point.





Here's that helpful aid I mentioned earlier. I thought it'd occur after the sad enemy tutorial (SPOILERS), but now's a good time to break everything down. Firstly, our characters.

OMORI

• Main character, if he dies it's game over.
• Jack of all trades, master of none.
• Can get skills to take advantage of emotional enemies. Goes great with sad.

AUBREY

• The Bruiser. Does heavy damage to foes with a decent defense stat to back her up.
• Slowish with an awful juice stat early though it gets better with a quest later.
• Your main damage dealer, keep her angry.

KEL

• The Speedster. Will likely always go first unless you're underleveled or debuffed.
• Really awful attack stat and health, but gets a skill to attack using his speed stat early on.
• Can utilize Happy boosts to speed, but is otherwise pretty meh with emotions.

HERO

• The healer. Will have an endless supply of juice to cast percentage based heals on people.
• Awful attack. Dude can't hurt a fly.
• Like Kel, doesn't really sync with an emotion.

Now, for the emotions:


ANGRY

• Causes attack to go up and defense to go down
• Does reduced damage against happy foes/takes more damage from happy foes
• Does increased damage against sad foes/takes less damage from sad foes.

HAPPY

• Causes speed and crit rate to go up and hit rate to go down.
• Does reduced damage against sad foes/takes more damage from sad foes.
• Does increased damage against angry foes/takes less damage from angry foes.

SAD

• Causes defense to go up and speed and attack to go down. Utilizes juice as armor to take some damage away from health.
• Does reduced damage against angry foes/takes more damage from angry foes.
• Does increased damage against happy foes/takes less damage from happy foes.

NEUTRAL

• 

Because of this breakdown, it's almost always the best strat to make a foe sad and then cast angry on aubrey to get her to quickly wipe the floor with them. You may point out that Sad causes defense to go up and the opponent gets to utlize their juice pool as an extra health bar, and yeah that can cause battles to slow down... which is always in your favor. Enemies will always have more health than you and a wrong move could see a party wipe with Omori at 1 hp. As well, the increased damage from the angry counter to sad more than negates the defense bonus gained from being sad. Some foes also lose their more deadly attacks when sad, while others want to be happy or angry and will waste precious turns recasting their emotion. I'd say its a little ridiculous, but it makes sense that making everyone sad and then beating them up with an angry woman with a stuffed animal works in an RPG.

It's also worth noting that all of your party can get to stage 2 emotions: Enraged, Esctatic, Depressed - which confers better buffs/steeper debuffs. Omori is the only one who can reach stage 3 emotions: Furious, Manic, Miserable. Some bosses can go to stage 3 emotions, though most enemies are locked at stage 1.

In summary, make Omori sad, make Aubrey enraged, kel happy I guess? Let's continue on...





Actually, Kel... This is a cactus! It's more of a plant than a flower... and it's funny that you ask, because they remind me of you!

Is it because... he's a prick?

Hey!

Well... That too, but mostly because cacti are very sturdy and resilient plants by nature. They dont need much care and can survive even in seemingly impossible conditions!

I guess what I'm saying... is that even you could take care of a cactus, Kel!

Whoa, neat! Cacti are awesome!


Kel owns, btw.





I don't know, I just think it's cute.


Not much to say there. No deep philosophical waxing on how this flower relates to Omori. Just a shrug of the shoulders with a "idk, its cute I guess."





It's all good, Basil! We got the hang of this by now!









That means it won't do as much damage as normal... but it'll also take less damage to heart and will lose juice instead.

How sad... let's put it out of its misery!


Not sure how I feel about Kel wanting to kill someone for being sad. Anyway, we've gone over the intricacies of emotions enough. Let's keep heading towards Basil's house.






...but not before going over skills super quick. Every character comes equiped with guard - which always acts first. Omori knows SAD POEM, which makes any friend or foe sad. Aubrey knows pep talk, which makes any friend or foe happy. Kel knows annoy, which makes any friend or foe... angry. Hero can cook - healing for 75% of health by giving someone a homemade cookie. And just learned massage - which makes any friend or foe go back to neutral emotion. Every character can have up to 4 skills equipped. It becomes super limiting later on, especially when you go into fights unsure of how the opponent will fight.





...Eh? How did you get ahead of us Mari? Also I thought you said you weren't going to join us!


Feel free to rest here! Everything is already all set up, and I even brought some fruit!


...Fruit you say?





Oh, it's nothing... I'm just trying to look out for all of you...

Aww, Mari... I wish I could be more like you! You always seem to have everything under control.

That's not true at all! It just seems that way from the outside!

Either way, you sure seem to make everything look easy.

Yes, I agree! Mari is so effortlessly graceful...

Don't you think so, Omori?


What kind of brother would we be to not agree to that?


Awwwww... I guess I have to believe it a little bit if all of you think so!





I'm ready when you are!

We'll catch you later, Mari!

Let me know if you need anything! See you soon!


Damn, I could go for some fruit. Or hell a picnic. I haven't had a picnic since I was a kid. With jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off





BANG BANG BANG.... BANG


We reach this clearing to get a few screen shaking events. Seems like there might be trouble ahead. Whoever they are, they aren't a match for a couple of grade schoolers who aren't in control of their emotions!







Hmm, okay this guy might be a bit bigger than us. But we can take him.









YE OLD SPROUT FIGHT





Okay, so this guy is still a glorified tutorial but there's some cool things to see in motion.





First things first, I'm going to show off our opening strat for a large majority of this game. Omori will use sad poem on Ye Old Sprout. Yes that's really his name. Also be careful with emotion casting because it defaults to the character you're using. Gotta switch sides before confirming.





Aubrey will be attacking, or using a skill when she gets one.





And Kel will be annoying Aubrey. Hero can do whatever, his turns are basically freebies.





This guy only uses party-wide attacks. Which suck. It is worth pointing out that Aubrey took less damage than Kel & Omori despite having the Anger debuff because the sad weakness to anger is greater than that debuff. Sad is just too good to put on bosses.


After a few turns of attacking, Hero ends the fight to talk to us.





It looks like I'm going to have to teach you all a little bit about teamwork! Let's try again, Omori! We'll get him this time!







You should see a new bar at the bottom of the screen with a number on the side. This is our collective Energy! By using our energy, we can defeat this foe together! Just attack and you'll see!


So what can you do with energy? Well, if you use a regular attack...





You get three options for that character. Pressing the direction of the option lets you use a follow-up attack! I'll break those down another time, but basically - they cost 3 energy and let you do a 2nd move. You gain energy by getting attacked by the foe. So a multi-hit attack? Grants you multiple energy. It's a nice way of giving you a "comeback" mechanic in a fight.





Going to Omori's turn, we use his trip ability. Which lets him attack again, while reducing the opponents speed. It's basically a free Jacks. Follow-up attacks will also increase in intensity as the game progresses. Some that are kinda useless right now become amazing later. Energy is also useful because some later accessories will scale their ability with more energy. So having higher energy in battle could be worth it to get better stats. There's some good strategy involved in it. Of course, you can get the bar to fill up - that's when it gets to 10 points. So what can you do with 10 points of energy?





I hope you're all ready! Come on, everyone... Let's show this big guy what we're made of!





Are you ready?





For





The





Power





Of





FRIENDSHIP!!?















This is your "fuck off" attack. It won't one-shot bosses, especially late game ones. But if you've dwindled them down enough, it's a good idea to use this to knock them out.





Stab is a really good ability, it's going to be on Omori for a long time. It always does a critical hit, but if Omori is sad, it also ignores defense when doing damage. The only issue is it's cost is pretty steep early on.





Wow, you guys! That was so amazing!

Ah, that was nothin'... Heh, heh. I've taken down way bigger guys than that! I should teach you some of my skills one of these days!

Basil... I know you're not the type that likes to fight... but it's good to know how to defend yourself too!

You know... I've actually been working on a book all about battles! Maybe we can all study together next time. I'll give it to Omori to hold onto for now.





Like the foe facts and emotion chart, these are items we can view at any time in our inventory. There's a bunch of tutorials for the gameplay which I guess is helpful in case someone who discovered this game has never played an RPG before... I'm sure that person exists!





This is the key point though, follow-ups get better as time goes on. We'll go over them probably around the same time as foe facts.







It's finally time to go to Basil's house! Hopefully he's got some cool plants to see.