Part 7: Why I Use a Mac

Chapter 6: Why I Use a Mac

So basically now that we have Tallgeese in our party permanently (more or less), we have some custodial shit to take care of.

I am not going to control Billy in battle. Fuck no.

I guess this is some kind of clever tactics setup screen, but honestly, I've never used it beyond choosing my go-to-control character. If you're playing along, don't waste your time; it's just a superficial thing because if you get ambushed by the enemies then you get ambushed, and if you're trying to run away from enemies that will kick your ass, being in a certain place won't help shit because the only enemies you need to worry about in this game are casters, who can hit you from anywhere anyway. Trust me, I beat Limiter-Off Indeleceo, which is about as useful as having a double PhD in philosophy and women's studies right there, and makes you about as credible.


Anyway, since we switched the Leader to Tallgeese, we control him at the start of every battle. This here is his KILLER MOVE, Air Slash, which is okay at long range, but kind of useless otherwise.

Offensive Killer Moves (they're not as badass as they sound and are basically "attacks that consume MP") generally have two variations: a Long Range and a Short Range. The usefulness depends on the attack. Air Slash shoots a line straight at the enemy at LR, but does some pansy super-close-range spiral shit at SR (and it does half the damage of the LR variation).


But on to the meat of this chapter.

When you're outside of a town, you can press Square to initiate a Private Action.


Your party splits up and they go do their own thing in town. This makes it impossible to stay at the inn while you're in PA mode, and a pain in the ass to do shopping because the game LITERALLY considers your party separated and they don't show up on the equipment comparison window while buying equipment.

But why would you do this if it's that useless?


Because you get to see shit like this, that's why.




"feet firmly on the ground. On the Calnus, the only nature is generated by holography..."

Also, according to Microsoft Word, holography is a real word. I didn't think we were at the level of technology that it could go into a dictionary, but well.


Billy is, of course, confused out of her mind.


Yes, we should be living like the people on this planet. No bathing, eating entire ducks for dinner, rape churches, and crystal meth. It's like if a Youtube lifestyle had a filthy bastard child with a gangsta lifestyle, and anime was its godfather.


This translation is just so darling.


"yeah, we got bitches to fuck and crackrocks to shoot and baconators to eat and we can't get there if we just hang around in here"

Interesting point: if I'm remembering correctly, were we playing as Tallgeese Billy would be the one to say this line instead.


The first problem of this update surfaced here and my computer ate the screenshots of the private action in Salva.

But to make a long story short, it goes kinda like this:
"Tallgeese what are you thinking of, your head is always in the clouds"
"Oh, I'm looking for spaceships."
"What the fuck is a spaceship"
"I, uh"

So we pass through Salva on our adventure, see a huge fucking castle right in front of us, and then go all like, "haha wouldn't it be cool if we didn't actually go there?", so we didn't.


We went here instead.

This mountain has a name, but I can't really remember it. It's related to a sidequest that most people do at around Level 20.


Tallgeese is Level 4. Billy is actually Level 6, if you can believe that.

There are a lot of mean mothers on this mountain, but they also shit gold and piss EXP. However, if you run into these witches, you are pretty much screwed because their spells will oneshot you 100% of the time right up until you reach Level 18 or so.




THIS LP IS OVER























No, don't be silly.

There are a few encounter groups in this area, but the one you want to look for at all times is similar to the one pictured above, just with more ninja head things.

Why? Because they don't actually attack you; their "attack" consists of sucking your MP out of you. And because Enix hadn't thought of that FUCKING PISS HORRIBLE MECHANIC of MP death yet, this doesn't mean shit--even for your casters--because you can just walk right back to Arlia and get your HP/MP refilled for free.


Also, these things specifically give massive


fucking


EXP.

Anyway, at this point, I noticed I was doing pretty crappy damage, so it's time to remedy that.


Leave the mountain pass, go past this city...


And you end up here which, incidentally, kinda looks a lot like the other city.


yeah okay cancer girl don't really care


The girl with incurable disease is actually related to a special ending you can get for Ashton, and only if you're playing as Rena, but we'll bother with that when--if--we get to that. What we want is in this mansion.

Thanks to my computer, I lost the picture where I showed off the interior of this mansion, got the sword, and compared Tallgeese's old stats to some new ones. Computer problems plagued this update and basically ate a quarter of it between putting it together and going between OSX and Windows XP to batch upload images in Rightload (the latter operating system of which is what ate the update), and I am so fucking sorry.

Since we're in this city, we may as well stop by the Skill Guild and do some custodial stuff.

To obtain skills in this game, you have to buy them from a guild. Certain guilds have certain skills, but in total, it shouldn't run you more than 20,000 gold, which, if you're a little lucky, you can make in like twenty minutes even at the beginning of the game.


SKILLS. Oh. My. God. This game.

Skills are used for item creation and all the fun shit in this game. They also increase your stats or give you free stuff, but as always, we'll get there when we get there. Right now, all we care about is putting a level into Poker Face so I can show you something:

Now that we have a level in a related skill, Pickpocketing appears on our list of specialties. We can't use it yet because we don't have the other skill, but we'll get that right now.

We run halfway across the continent to a city in ANOTHER screenshot that got fucking eaten. Long story short, it's far, far away, we'll be going back there later, and it has a Skill Guild that sells different skills than the ones we find in the last city.


Basically we just buy everything.


Copying will be important later, so let's get Tallgeese started on it now because it is EXPENSIVE.


... Oh, god dammit, Enix. Can't you just call two things Copying?


Anyway, we need Billy to grow some balls before she can pick pockets, so...


... we learn Courage and get Pickpocketing. It's a really fun mechanic, but that's all the time we have for today, so I guess barring any horrible computer fuck-ups, we'll pick up where we left off next time in another exciting episode of LET'S PLAY STAR OCEAN 2!