Shadow Hearts: Covenant Part #104 - Episode XCVIII: Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Part 104: Episode XCVIII: Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Episode XCVIII: Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Back at it again at the ~~Krispy Cream~~ shitty Shadow Hearts 2 dungeons! Now, we'll get into the meat and potatoes of this most filler of filler dungeons in a moment. But there is one thing I want to point out. Remember how Astaroth was mostly coaxed out of Nicolai's subconscious by shocking his balls before the science rays were applied?

Well, you can re-enter the test chamber area and the only item of note is a Loin Guard right under the testicular fortitude trial by electricity device. Maybe it's a coincidence. Just saying... it's here. And nothing else in this room.

Anyhow, the large double doors we passed while in disguise have been unlocked. You may recognize this room... Possibly. OK, probably not since it's a non-descript steel barrel filled warehouse. This is the room where the Mutant Ape team fought Armored Fighter. You know, that completely forgettable, extremely easy robot in the weird Ouka-centric dungeon. Hey, kids! Guess what this dungeon entails?!

If you guessed going through the Ouka Hojo Labs dungeon but in reverse, you'd be absolutely correct! But with two key differences this time around!

Those random dead-end corners of the dungeon there to waste your time in the timed segment that had no point or barring on anything significant now have loot in them. Completely forgettable loot to the point they didn't even bother putting chests to place them in half the time. There are just random corners with a prompt to pick up the forgettable trash. 95% of it is Judgment Ring augments of the 1% larger Hit Area type variety type of crap.

The only significant loot is a couple of Lottery Tickets (one is in a random ass corner right at the start and the other is at the shooting range area with Ouka) and this -- The Step Tripler which lets you cheat even harder at the step mechanic sidequest. Blanca has had the Pedometer equipped for every dungeon and hell if I know where we're at right now on that front. I'll grind that out later. I'm not particularly concerned at the moment.

Music: Deep in Coma ~ Battle in Japan

And other than renegotiating endless repeating blank corridors in a dungeon we already did, they added random battles this time around. And not just any random battles, at that... Hey, remember all the boring mechs and generic soldiers from Battleship Mikasa...?

...What if we just gave literally that exact same enemy roster palette swaps and a few extra do-dads affixed to them and did that again but now they all have too much HP and hit annoyingly hard on top of everything. To the point, Lucia actually had a use just healing everyone at the end of each encounter in the menu screen as one character lost at least 200 HP per encounter. And what if they also made the encounter rate absurdly high to boot? This dungeon had zero encounters outside of near impossible to lose fights against the other Mutant Apes and a couple of gimmicks where Ouka had to shoot stuff in a QTE thing. It took about fifteen minutes that time. Yeah, this thing in reverse with random battles took me 53 minutes not counting the boss fight looking at my footage time...

Enemy wise we have Steel Soldiers. 160 HP. Dark Element. Will set up combos if other enemies are on the field and will dump their guns on a target three times for a good nearly 200 HP of damage. Kill these guys first. They suck but they also can usually be killed in a single physical attack string or a couple of magic spells.

Beetle Walker or "Walking Cavalry: Blue Sun" in the World War 2 Japanese battleship theme they dropped doing in the localization. 256 HP, Light Elemental upgrade to the Spider Walker from Battleship Mikasa. It shoots a cannon at targets. It's an AOE attack so it'll hit multiple clustered characters. The least threatening of the enemy stable.

And finally, there is Flying Drone X or "Flying Drone: Shigure/Rain Fall" which has way too much health for a common enemy with 650 HP and is of the Wind element. This thing is a pain in the ass as on top of its beefy for a common enemy health pool, its default attack can inflict Petrify which essentially kills a character if it connects. On top of doing a good 200-250 damage. These dickhead mechs are the closest I've come to wiping since The Lucia Incident. As they can come in a pool of three and no other enemies. And I managed to get surrounded for perhaps the third time the entire LP playthrough and all three petrified different characters at the onset of a battle. That's some right bullshit right there! I turned it around but... this dungeon sucks!

Music: Strain ~ Assault

In any event, we run through the exact same boring corridors as we did with Ouka. Stopping to have a 3-5 minute random battle every ten steps it felt like. Until we reach the room where she awakened and later Kato did his performative man-angst to gain her favor.

It turns out there is a back door to Ouka's Frankenstein's titty monster chamber which leads to the only new area of this dungeon experience. Hey, who wants to climb six flights of stairs? With the random battles still, of course.

Of course that is exactly what you want to do to cap off this shitty dungeon! No dialogue. No plot. Just silently go up six stories of stairs and stopping nearly every floor to fight an assortment of the same three enemies we already fought in a previous crappy dungeon. I like this game but, oh boy, the dungeons leave something to be desired...

We eventually emerge back at the save point in the lobby of the Hojo Research Lab. As you can guess by the usual breakdown of dungeons in JRPGs, we're not getting out of here without a boss fight. And it's another one of those obnoxious ones where we need the foresight to equip Leonardo's Bears as it is a boss with an Instant Death attribute on one of its attacks.

Music: Flame of Strain to Blaze ~ Tension

Hmph! What a waste of time!

Just a little further.

<nods>

Did any of you all get a weird sense of déjà vu like we already ran through that place once even though I know that this is the first time we've been here?
Yeah, now that you mention it...
Huh? You too?
Hmph... weird.

A mech stomps into the lobby.

Eeep!

Jumping Jehoshaphat!

<laughs> You're not going anywhere!

My Master Cylinder is more than enough to take care of the likes of you!

Now I will show you the true unbridled power of SCIENCE!

Oh, jeez, not again...

...Who is this guy?
I am the great genius, Dr. Hojo!
...The guy that tried to breed a fire lion and a flower girl?
NO! That's another Dr. Hojo!
Oh... Yeah, OK. Again WHO are you...? Ugh, whatever. Let's get this done.

Music: Hardcore to the Brain ~ Mid Boss in Japan

I guess we're fighting this angry scientist in his Dr. Robotnik ass end of a Sonic the Hedgehog stage robot. Hojo, the party literally didn't do anything here. They were just hanging out in a room and watched you completely fuck up an experiment and get a guy possessed by a dark god. They don't even know your name or what your deal is. And for that matter, you only know one of their names is Yuri. You don't know who though. But, you're mad about your experiments failing and this is just what evil scientists do. Just flip out because science failed at the nearest person available to flip out at. If he had Twitter he'd be yelling at a random woman right now to vent his frustrations.

All that said, this is Master Cylinder or "Fugaku" in Japanese which is shorthand for Mount Fuji. The Nakajima G10N Fugaku was a planned Japanese long range bomber plane for hitting industrial targets in the United States if the war went that direction for Imperial Japan. It did not and it never got past the planning stage. But that's what this stupid ass thing is named after originally.

The Master Cylinder is an Earth elemental enemy with a fairly hardy 5040 HP health pool.

The usual buff agenda is in play but with a bullet point, the first thing we need to do is apply Barrier to the entire party. Master Cylinder is almost entirely physical attacks and they are not playing around with 'em.

We are also going to go with Libertis, our top rank Wind Fusion to counter this Earth elemental enemy. We need to get as much damage in on this jerk as possible in the shortest time frame and Yuri going full beast on elemental damage is advantageous.

Master Cylinder's one, technically, magic attack is Cannon. Where it shoots a cannon. It's an AOE attack with a fairly wide range and hurts a heck of a lot. Indeed, all of Master Cylinder's attacks do in the range of 200-250 HP of damage and we need to heal up if any one character suffers a blow since two attacks in a row is about enough to take anyone out at our current HP levels.

Dr. Hojo's mecha also has Super Rotation which is a physical attack AOE where it lands on a character and spins around in place damaging anyone nearby. But particularly doing upward of 300-350 of damage to the targeted character. This battle is made much easier if we can nail Master Cylinder with a Physical Attack down Ring Effect, of which I have the third level equipped on both Karin and Yuri. But the initial hit of Super Rotation counts as Magic for... some reason and is a guaranteed almost 200 HP of damage on contact. So that's kind of bullshit.

Finally, Master Cylinder has Dissolve which is another attack that does around 200-250 HP of damage and is the reason we equipped everyone with Leonardo's Bears because it also has a chance to inflict Instant Death. What with the whirlwind of drills and buzz saws stabbing its target in the face.

All that said, as long as we take a turn to heal up damage occasionally, between Blanca and Yuri's Fusion spells and Joachim alongside Karin getting in there with Physical Attacks, it isn't very long until Hojo gives up the ghost.

Music: Result ~ Victory

We killed him by the way. Dr. Hojo is fucking dead. He's not a Lenny or a Garan reoccurring villain that will live to fight another day. He burned to death in the explosion when his derpy robot vehicle exploded. The end.

But hey, we can now prevent the devil from entering our ears from the bounty we received from the late Dr. Hojo. Only at the cost of a very strange dash segmentation of the word villag-er. Resident Evil VILLAG-
E coming this May! To old consoles and PC. Why do I need a PS5...?

Music: ENDS

The party literally has no comment on anything that took place here and just shrugs and leaves. As you do when I random scientist in a cartoon robot attacks you and immediately gets owned and dies.

Music: Serious Mood ~ Unrest

So the lab has been destroyed, Hojo has been killed and Kato has gone missing, chasing after a monster...

Y-yes.

And Hojo spent the last of the department budget deploying a robot armed with buzzsaws and drills after he created the monster Kato vanished pursuing? Which immediately failed and killed him. Am I reading this report correctly?
Y-Yes, as well...

<slams hand on knee> Hojo, that miserable failure!!

<wipes forehead nervously> Y-yes, Master...

Fools! All of them!

Minister?! Are you all right?

<hacks up a lung> Yes!

Please! You must relax! Think of your health!

<coughs and breaths heavily> Quiet! This is nothing! Oh...

It doesn't sound like nothing, Minister.
<hacks up and spits out a spray of blood and phlegm> I said it is fine!

Please, Minister. You must relax!

Garan!

Yes?

This young thug, Yuri... Who is he, anyway...?

I believe he's the man who stopped Rasputin's plan to conquer Russia. After that, he came to Japan, chasing after Nicolai.

This is also something about him slaying a god in Europe. And possibly being the man behind the destruction of Shanghai. But the details of that are sketchy at best. There is some document uncovered called a Let's Play of his exploits but it is far too long and wordy for my agents to uncover the secrets of yet.

Special Agent Kato tells me he is the son of Hyuga from the Secret Service.

Yes.

His name does seem to be "Yuri Hyuga" so it does stand to reason this is the case.

This man is the son of a patriot, so why? I do not understand, why does he insist on causing me pain like this?

Ooooooh...

......

<looks at his again hand> Even though I only have a short time left in this body of mine...

Minister, you mustn't say such things!

I'm at the ripe age of 100 and I still have life left in me. Why you are only, what... in your sixties, minister?
I'm 46.
...Oh, really? You look like shi—ergh! A shining example of virility, minister.

Garan, destroy this Yuri. I cannot allow anyone to stand in the way of my plans for a new empire.

Trust me, my lord. I, Garan, shall [will] put forth my best effort.

Just go.

<bows>

And thus Garan resigns himself to a fate of teleporting away to completely botch this shit and dying in a future boss fight. C'mon. Lenny was more of a contender than this muppet.