Part 19: 18. "Jeez, those things don't go down easy."

The trials and tribulations of my new hosting are almost complete, but you guys don't care. You want an update. You want me to stop playing Devil May Cry 4 and No More Heroes, don't you? Don't you? You fucks! Wasn't I always nice to you?

Fine. Without further ado...

Let's play some more SD Snatcher!

18. "Jeez, those things don't go down easy."



When we last saw Gilian Seed, he'd cast off his Solid Snake mantle in an attempt to prove his... uh... innocence?... well, get his job back after shooting that priest, at any rate.

Now it's time to see a new character, the Mayor!



Hey LP readers, I hope you like your bullshit by the shovelful, because here it comes!





Gilian: Well, that was easy. I didn't even need to provide any evidence or... well, even speak!







This is bullshit. The whole point of Snatchers is to stealthily infiltrate society, not just take shit over with robots! I mean, really, at that point, why even bother snatching? Why not just skip a step and take shit over with the robots?





I'm admittedly not quite sure what KSDF is... I can guess it's Kobe Special Defense Force, but you know, you're more than welcome to come up with better ideas. Killer Super Diagonal Flags? I dunno.





Yes! Gilian got his job back! And no pesky things like "manslaughter charges" because... uh... because fuck it! That's why! Who are we to complain about plot holes in the game about the giant head people?







Pleasure to be back working with you, too, sir.



A big mistake? ...Harry, he killed a guy! KILLED a guy! Really, losing his job for like what? An hour? I mean, he got off pretty fucking easy. I think firing him- why am I bothering?





Metal: It's good to be working with you again!
Gilian: Get on board... partner!







Fuck you, throwaway new character! I know I can't hear your voice, but I can sense the bad acting there!

God... I hate you, Geoff... so much.

Metal: Calm down!
Gilian: Yeah, really! He's not so bad!

You two aren't supposed to talk to me!





If you've actually played this far into the game, remember to re-equip your weapons. And also, why are you playing this? I wrote this LP so you wouldn't have to suffer. And... the next section... heh. Heh heh...

Anyway, stock the fuck up on Junkers and ammo before hitting the church - which you've probably guessed is now a dungeon. And stop by Mika on the way for good advice.



Yeah, Mika, we'll ah... try not to FUCKING KILL AN INNOCENT PERSON again. Am I the only one who feels like everyone's undermining this?

Maybe the chief...



Well, okay, but first...



Alright, enough. Off to North Downtown!



Which is now infested with robots.



And full of narrow alleyways making dodging them next to impossible.

If you don't mind, I'd like an intermission. There's a thing in every good Let's Play that I like to call "The Point of No Return." See, a lot of times, an LP celebrates - for good or bad - a game that people may have been interested in but couldn't complete for some reason or another. Examples?

Well, the Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads. This is sort of the point most people throw the controller against the wall and say, "Fuck it. I'm downloading porn."

Or the Medusa heads in Prince of Persia 2. You start fighting them and go... "Yeah, I... I really need to watch that movie to advance my Netflix queue..."

The uh... well... a lot of La Mulana. There's just a point where you start and go, "Yeah... I... I... I don't even have a good excuse, I just don't wanna play this."

Well, if the fact that the lack of User Disk (which lets you save) on The Underdogs didn't deter you from finishing SD Snatcher, this will. Welcome to a goddamned nightmare.

Welcome to Church.

The Skull Spider Dungeon is obscenely annoying because every enemy is very difficult to kill, and they give SHIT experience. This is basically an uphill battle that never ends. Even worse, saving takes so effin' long in SD Snatcher, that you'll be tempted not to do it often, an enemy kills you and boom. Back to Square One.

This is the Point of No Return. If you can beat this, the rest of the game - save for the end - is fucking cake by comparison. (Please check all Portal references at the door.)

Anyway...



Problem one is just fucking getting there. As you can see, North Downtown is absolutely loaded with older enemies who give shit XP. It ends up just being a giant pain in the ass.



God forbid you hope to reset the enemy's positions by entering a house, because the game makes you switch disks if you do.





Gilian: Oh sure, once your section of town gets run over, NOW you help the Junker.
Metal: Let's get going Gilian...
Gilian: This section sank, just like the rest of this city's gonna-
Metal: Gilian!







Finally here. Welcome to Hell.



Well, I guess first, we better fight that blue robot at the top of the screen... except we can't because we run into our first new enemy...

(I liked "King of Codpieces," but you guys actually opted for "NAME HIM DONGS!" which is an LP cliche I never really encountered before.)



Meet Dongbot! Here are the actual notes that I kept while playing for Dongbot.


What else can I really say? Hitting Dongbot's weapons - unlike every other fucking enemy in the game - doesn't weaken them.

And if you can get the topmost center of Dongbot with the M. Maxim, that's the fastest way I found to kill him.

If you really do wanna finish SD Snatcher on your own, this is where I really, really, really recommend you break the game by using the C.Killer option (which will paralyze a robot for four turns, effectively making you the default winner) because playing fairly is just a nightmare.

Sadly, I didn't know about that exploit...

...damn it.





Dongbot's actually going to be the least annoying guy in here, which sucks because while you're going to face him over and over again, and the other two are so effin' hard and terrible that you'll be like, "Holy shit! It's only Dongbot. Thank God!" when you see him.







Gilian: Sorry to hear it soldier. Why not join up with me and we can clear out this church!





Gilian: You're, ah... you're just going to be staying here, then? ... ...Why aren't you speak- Okay, let's go, Metal!



I'm going to spare you a lot of this, becuase the first floor is just fighting Dongbot over and over and over again, and blowing out the 24 candles that were mentioned earlier.

Here's the problem. Do you remember the room where Mass is held? If you enter the door there from the first floor, the candles reset themselves for no reason at all. So if you spent your time fighting Dongbots for like an hour just to blow out 8 of the 24 candles you need, and accidentally enter that door...

Well friend, I hope you like tedium, cause now you have to start blowing out candles from Square One. This is not the only reason I hate this dungeon.



Gilian: Thanks, soldier! I could really use some backup...
KSDF: Sorry, sir! I've been ordered to keep this narrow hallway clear!
Metal: I think he's afraid to join us, Gilian...
Gilian: (Sheesh, how does he think I feel?)



Who wants to meet a new enemy?



It's Mr. Peepers!

I, uh... I love Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I think it's really well written, and has a lot of cool concepts. It has its flaws, sure, but it made me respect Hideo Kojima as a game designer.

This one enemy erased all my respect for Hideo in one shot.

Why? Well, Mr. Peepers has an attack called "Propanaon Gas." It comes from his right eye. It looks like a regular attack, only...



It makes Gilian dizzy! What does this entail?



Stupidly, it makes Gilian's cursor move rapidly left one gridspace, then right one gridspace. Ultimately, not a real problem.

It also makes Gilian see double. One robot is real, the other is false. This means that all the really long battles in the game? Well, Mr. Peepers takes doubly as long because now you only have a 50-50 shot of actually hurting the thing.

Oh, what's that you say? "Gee, slowbeef, once you miss once, can't you figure out which Mr. Peepers is the real one?" No, because after every turn, they recombine and split again. So it's not just like, "Oh the one on the left is fake, done." Next turn, he can change it up.

Fuck Mr. Peepers. Fuck him right in his damn ports.



Also, before you ask, no, Newtriz and Jyro do not work on Propanon Gas. There is no cure for that status ailment. You just gotta sit there and take it.



Unfortunately, when you're done blowing out candles from Floor One and move onto the second, this soldier speaks the truth. Floor two is full of...



Mr. Peepers! Again!

I don't know if I mentioned it, but again, these guys - for being such pains - dole out next to no experience. The really nitpicky among you will notice, I actually do gain levels, but that is sorely out of volume of enemies. The cave full of El Molestadores is only a few screens big and I gained six levels without even trying.

I want you to keep in mind that I only gain three levels before meeting the boss. You might be shrugging right now, but remember... so far, this dungeon is much larger than the cave per floor and has two floors... so far...

Just keep that in mind...



I'd also like to remind you our object in this dungeon is blowing out candles. I don't know why that unlocks the next area. Also, I don't know why this solider lies to you.

There are more candles on the third floor.



Go through the "Christ's Statue" puzzle again and this soldier gives you more nonsense information.







Aha! A new enemy on Floor 2! This is Metaru Giia! (Took a little liberty on that name.) He's a usual tough as nails robot with one annoying effect. Check this out...



He has paralyzing gas! Now, normally what happens here is that Metal automatically injects you with Jyro and no problems. Except that for no reason at all, the game puts your cursor on "DRUG" instead of the usual "ATTACK" which means if you're bored as fuck like I was, you'll come close to - and sometimes actually - accidentally use a Junker because you just absentmindedly wanted to attack again, but didn't realize you had "DRUG" highlighted.

Motherfucker, I hate this game! I really wanna like it! It's Snatcher, but fucking shit! I just hate this crap so much!

Sorry.







Thank you, God.

Also, he gives shit experience as well.

Now I'm gonna cut out the battles I went through, but those three enemies? Heh. Imagine doing that shit for like two hours straight.



All the while, blowing out candles.



And fighting robots. If you do play through this, save frequently... it sucks so bad - so bad - to die midway through and just lose that progress...

...so bad...



Well, Gilian Seed ain't a man to be pitied, so on to Floor 3!





Which, as luck would have it, is loaded with enemies.







This soldier actually keeps track of how many candles you've blown out. Remember, there's 24 total, but by the time you reach here, you should have gotten 22. Get ready...

BECAUSE NOW YOU HAVE TO BACKTRACK THROUGH THE WHOLE FUCKING DUNGEON AGAIN.

Fucking kill me.





Yeah, fuck you, buddy.





And here's why.

Inexplicably, entering the Mass room (or the pulpit room as I call it) from the southern entrance on the first floor of the Church proper, resets all the candles. Strangely, leaving the dungeon back into North Downtown doesn't. So you have to leave and enter through the secret passage that Lisa showed you earlier to get the remaining candles.

Amazingly...







THIS LEADS YOU TO THE FUCKING PULPIT ROOM!

I mean, if you enter this room through the south entrance, you reset the whole motherfuckin' puzzle! And, as you can see, entering from the right is completely fine!!! What the fuck, man!







You're doing all this for two more candles here. This amazingly means...

Oh God...



You're going to have to RETRACK to the 3rd floor of the dungeon you just fought your way to get back out of!!!

The-

Argh!



Go all the way back through Metaru Giia and Mr. Peepers for this message. This is the same guy who kept tally of the candles you blew out. Get this many done and he tells you this, meaning you're ready for the boss.

Because blowing out 24 candles magically opens this doo-

Can I just sob now?



Gilian gets the name wrong and calls him Rob Clapton.





Gilian also fucks up this potentially cool line and says "bussiness"... the last place you want a typo is right before your revenge, FYI.





Welcome to another boss, Rob and Lisa!

Wow. This is really hard. Rob and Lisa both hit INCREDIBLY hard. See my 97 HP here?





Yeah. All gone in one shot.

I've been ignoring the options for awhile, but I'll say here, shit like the grenades and uh... "Ranchers" do help here - they hit both enemies and lower all their stats. It's a slight decrease but it's enough to maybe keep you alive. If you can manage surviving a hit...



Then here's the trick. Hit Rob in the mouth to lower his STR. Hit Lisa directly in the face to lower her STR and ACC. They won't self destruct, so your best hope here is to destroy their mouth blasters. This will let you dismantle them without worrying about being hit.























Dag.



Gilian: That's right! I wonder if we can use that on the Skull Spider downstairs...
Metal: Let's check out that back room, first...









Gilian: <<pant pant>> Man, I am really winded.
Metal: Suck it up Gilian, there may be more Snatchers about!
Gilian: (Easy for you to tell me to suck it up!)





Gilian: What the? The locked door led back down here?
Metal: Gilian! Try inserting the rings into the Skull Spider's eyes! We may get another clue!





The staircase slides back to reveal your reward for surviving this horrible fucking dungeon...









Another fucking dungeon! We fought through all that just for another goddamned...

Motherfucker, I hate this game.

Tune in next time for... ah, who cares.