Part 51: Episode 50: Darth Adorable

Previously on Parasite Eve 2, we conquered the world's worst theme park, solved the secrets of both the Egyptians AND the Aztecs, and dealt with a troublesome power situation by shooting stuff. Now, we are on our way to a PARTICULAR AREA, but first, I have some EXP to burn.


I have more than enough to max out but Metabolism and Healing. Healing now casts crazy fast, and Metabolism actually casts faster than Plasma. Another handy little thing about Metabolism that I forgot was that it actually protects you from any additional status effects for a few seconds after its cast. But the real reason we did that was for Lifedrain.


Lifedrain is the secret 3rd Water Spell. It deals damage to everything in a wide radius (at max level, the radius fills almost any room), and then transfers ALL that damage to Aya as HP. Given the fact that you will probably never get Aya's max HP higher than 200, any time you cast Lifedrain against two or more targets, you pretty much get a full heal. It's expensive, but it hits hard and did I mention it heals you? Cuz it does. Lifedrain is pretty great.


Anyway, let's go find out what we opened up by murdering those whale-men.


Oh yeah, turns out we've been here before! And if you haven't, a blinking red dot appears on Aya's map to handily point you in the right direction.


let's do thiiiiiisssss


Well, everything looks pretty much the same down here


Whoa


So, it turns out taking down the generators activated one last level of defense around this door. These "Derangement Speakers" belch out a dull groaning noise, and makes the air warp around them. They deal "Mental" damage, meaning instead of lowering your HP, they slowly drain your MP. Insert your own dubstep joke here.


Derangement Speakers can't actually kill you on their own, and they drain MP very slowly, so they're not really the big a threat. More than anything else, they just make the fighting kind of annoying. There's only like three rooms in the whole game with them anyway, so I dunno why they even bothered.


There's also turrets down here, but they're still deactivated, so fuck 'em.


Damn machines giving me no precious BPs




The elevator ride down is another one of those odd moving FMV backgrounds. It's kind of a neat effect to watch metal pass by the glass walls, but I'm not sure why its here.


Then again, given the music down here, it's probably just to build tension.




Exiting the elevator, we find a narrow corridor with Derangement Speakers AND an actual enemy! This might actually be dangerous if it wasn't just a pussy Mossback.


whoa what, who's that


The actual fighting prevents us from getting close to the mysterious girl, but we're still not in any real danger.


Although I did discover that Mossbacks can fart out inky clouds of blackness that inflict Blindness! Never seen one do that before!




After killing the Mossback and the Speakers, the mystery girls turns tail and runs. Interesting side note: this little sequence is dimmed because I got hit with Blindness before the fight ended, and the screen effect carried over. Neat!


We need to chase that girl and find out what's going on here!


Oh my goodness.

Boss Tunes!


Meet the Puppet Stinger, the biggest baddest Brain Stinger in the whole place. He's also one of the most troublesome bosses in the game thanks to his love of status effects.


First things first, take out those Derangement Speakers. You'll need as much MP as you can get for this fight, unless you loaded yourself down with status curing/preventing gear.


Once that's down, keep your eyes on the boss. The color of his charging animation telegraphs what attack he'll be sending at you.


Purple means EYE LASERS. He can fire these beams in multiple patterns, but early on, it's just one straight beam. Later, he'll fire multiple beams in a fixed fan shape or in dual waving lines. They can all be dodged with a little footwork, and you'll want to dodge them because they inflict Paralysis on top of damage.


Orange is trouble.


Orange means GIANT FUCK YOU EXPLOSION! You can't dodge this, or if you can, you have to be in a specific corner or something. But it's easy enough to deal with: when you see orange, hit him quickly with a grenade to knock him out the charge and cancel the attack. A high damage spell might work too, but can be tricky given his high magical defense.


A yellow charge just means he'll shoot these little energy balls at you. They have very limited homing, and can be easily dodged by just running from one side of the room to the other. It's probably his simplest attack to deal with, so of course it's the one he hardly every uses.


The annoying thing about this boss, aside from weird depth perception on some of the beams, is his little helper. That mysterious girl from earlier is actually controlling him, but you can't target her or disrupt her at all. What's annoying about her is that she can both heal the boss (rarely) and either buff or change his resistances. I'm not entirely sure which, but sometimes a fireball will hit him for a nice 200+ damage, when other times she'll do a little dance and the fireball will be lucky to break 30. I'm sure I could figure it out if I didn't just spam grenades the whole time, but hey, c'mon.

Grenades!


When Junior over there heals the Puppet Stinger, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Luckily, she can only heal him for 80 points a pop and only does so every few minutes. With grenades, you should really be hitting for 250-ish every shot, so it's not a big deal.


You know what is a big deal? The fucking 4000 HP you have to chip through to kill this fucker! The longer this fight drags out, the longer Puppet head has to wear you down. It's a tough fight, and since he just stands there shoot beams at you the whole time, it's a boring fight.


Oh yeah, and if you try to rush the kid, she'll force push you flat on your ass. It's a bit hard to see, because Aya just happened to land right behind the ammo counter, but at least it doesn't do any damage.


Your rude gestures will not best me, Stinger!


Christ, finally.


We score another free Ringer's Solution for our bonus item. At this rate, I'll run out of storage boxes for all my fat loot.


Aya begins to chase after the girl, but something interrupts her.


Where were you two seconds ago when I was fighting the boss, you jerk?!

: We finally found our mark. That little one is the pilot, I'm sure of it.

: Pilot is kind of a weird way to put it, but...





: Wait, are you gonna shoot the little kid? THAT's why we came here?

Click here to find out!



: Check my new swagger.









: Kyle, please do not shoot the prepubescent child in the space helmet.



: Uhhhh...



: Kay.







: But if it's an old white dude under there, I'm out.


Aya presses something on the helmet.


And it opens up!








Revealing a little babby Aya! Or is it Maya? Whatever, it's some kid.


I like how Kyle seems disappointed as he puts his gun away. Dude really wanted to shoot a child, I guess.




And then the kid lets out a friggin BANSHEE shriek, goddamn! All of the girl's lines are voice acted, and they are all piercing screams.



: She might look like a cute little girl, but you sure she's not...dangerous?



: This little girl...


For the love of God, keep her away from Flint

: It was written on the helmet.

Monologue music





: I saw something like it in an article a Japanese friend once showed me. The organization owning this shelter was using her as a medium to control the ANMCs.



: supplied her with basic emotions... It was mind control.

: Basic emotions?


That is one awkward looking hug. Oh, Playstation 1, you so crazy.

: Brainwashing to heighten her self-preservatory instincts.

: How could they... She's so young...



: Things got out of hand, it seems.

: They really thought they could just control neo-mitochondria. Even normal mitochondria are avid opportunists.

: For neo-mitochondria, this was the chance of a lifetime. They pretended to be tame, while they steadily multiplied with our help.







: They were saying "hello"... A little demonstration-- "We're baaaack."

: Yes... And Eve didn't want to be used by them, or by the humans. That's why she created the barrier... It was self-preservation.









Suddenly, the phone rings!


And Eve FLIPS THE FUCK OUT


The phone is ringing off the hook and scaring the shit out of an emotionally unstable psychic powder keg, so we should probably do something quick!


By which I mean it's obviously time to scope out the room for flavor text


Look like something welders would wear in space.


Yeah, the phone's still ringing, but don't think I haven't noticed that you didn't answer the question, mister.


Y'know, for a nursery several levels underground in an amoral biological research lab, this room is actually much nicer than I expected.




The MD Player can be handy, but I have enough shit on my armor at the moment, so this is getting dropped off in the nearest garbage box.



: Pictures of hacked, bleeding bodies. Drawings of charred corpses...



: I've never seen these subjects rendered in crayon. The images they forced on her... So twisted and evil...



?

: Did her mitochondria protect her? Defend her mortal soul? It seems unlikely, but...

: There's a scary Jack-in-the-box here, too. What a creepy face.



: There's still some left.


Well, Li'l Eve is Aya's clone or a clone of her twin, so this is probably sanitary, right?



: There's a movie where the main character is forced to watch images... The endless images brainwash him with subliminal suggestions. That must be why there are three monitors lined up here. Monitors designed to fill the entire visual field.




She said, standing directly on top of it. Okay, we should probably answer that phone before Eve strokes out on us.


Whoa, there, Pierce.


Hmmm, sounds like he got cut off...



: A friend.

: A friend? You look pale...

: We were cut off... Something's not right...

: Let's get out of here.













NEXT TIME ON PARASITE EVE 2...


















Supplemental! or More shit I missed!


So, yeah, we can use Eve's Sesame Street phone to save our game.


Yeah, it's weird, right?

: Whoa. Talk about unexpected! Well, I'm glad you're both okay. You'll have to fill me in later. For now, get back here with that girl. If you need a pickup, send me your coordinates when you get outside.


Someone...on the phone...being helpful?!? Did I dial the wrong number or something?


Anyway, there's also some flavor text I missed.

: She looks grown, but her heart is still that of a small child.




Okay, even Umbrella weren't THAT dickish. At a certain point you stop being evil and start just being an asshole, guys.

: Cruel building blocks. Come to think of it, the walls are plain and lifeless. This is a very odd kid's room.


"Hey, guys, I made this impressionable clone child and gave her psychic powers that control our army of flesh-eating monsters. Now what should we do?"

"Let's make her as confused and angry as we can!"

"YAAAAAY SCIENCE!"


Examining the active Derangement Speakers also get us some flavor text.

: My head... It's splitting... C-Can't think...



: T-The pain...


Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to Aya gaining power over bees, so let's just blow it up and see what happens.



: It's not ringing anymore.


Clearly, these things really fuck with anyone that has magical mitochondria. Let's check out the other one!



: N-Neurons firing like trigger-happy revolutionaries. I'm...I'm breaking up... The black light... I...


Jesus, apparently the effect of these speakers is way worse than ticking off 1 MP every few seconds. BETTER SHOOT 'EM



: It must be broken.


Finally, we have some flavor text for the fancy elevator.

: No... They're resonating... What's happening? Like someone rubbing the hair on the back of my neck...



: Something there... So close I can feel it breathing.


Unless you come packing a grenade launcher


And finally, a Loading Screen you only see if you load a game in the Nursery. Kinda neat.