Part 9: Your Mom's Convoluted
Seika's item shop also has Holy crystals, which give you the ability to dash. I'm doing this for the first time in a Suikoden playthrough, and putting this on Gremio because Miles' regular walking speed is slow. This is inferior, however, to a much better version of this Rune later on. For one, this Rune does not speed up your world map walking speed.
Meg: I'm busy looking for someone. His name is Juppo, and he's a trickster. Let me know if you find him!
Will do, m'lady.
Sergei:After much hard work, I came up with an invention that would impress even the dwarves. But none of the castle keepers understand what kind of invention it is. What is it, you ask? It's called an “elevator.”
I guess when we get a castle, we should come back and talk to this guy. Elevators are super handy.
You! I've got you now, you bum!
Suikoden Tunes – Theme of Perversion
”I'll collect from your grave” is the debt-collector's motto! You can't outrun “Camille the She-Devil!”
Viktor: What's all this about? Is she Gremio's friend?
Camille: Come on, gimme that money you owe me right now! In cash, I've been looking for you for two months!
Gremio: Goodness, of course not!
Camille: Trying to lie your way out of the situation, eh? But I've got proof. Look at this!
Gremio: Hmm... let me see. Oh, this is the bill for the banquet with Master Teo. I also owe something at the inn... what?! You want me to pay this right now?!
I love this exchange because it shows the passage of time, as we've been on the run for two months although it's only been about three hours of gameplay time. Pretty cool.
Viktor: Let me see... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Viktor: By the way, you seem to be acquainted with Tai Ho. Can you tell us where he is?
Camille: Sure, after you pay off. This is, after all, business.
Viktor: How about this, then. We have no money at the moment. But once we find Tai Ho, we might have a way of getting some. As soon as we get some money, we'll pay you back.
Camille is, thankfully, not one of the dumber characters in this game.
Camille: Damn these penniless bums.
She tells us Tai Ho is downstairs (we're currently at the bar), and joins our party.
Cleo: We sure have recruited an odd one.
Camille is an incredibly solid fighter. She carries a Medium range spear, and has a pretty decent magic stat. For the time being, I'm going to give her a Water Rune, and stick her in front with Gremio in back, because Gremio has an odd penchant for dying all the time from this point on so I'd rather keep him safe. If you notice, her weapons are named after Norse creatures, the first being Garm, a dog associated with Ragnarok; the next level up is Fenril, a mistranslation of Fenrir, a gigantic monster in the form of a wolf.
Gee, I dunno, he's a moody guy.
Tai Ho: That place is full of monsters. I'll be placing my life on the line to take you there. Tell you what. Since I'll be risking my life for this trip, you're going to have to make a correspondingly risky bet. You're going to bet all the money you have. Are you up to it??
OH hell NO.
Tai Ho: You're smart. Go home to mommy.
Fucking asshole.
Tai Ho: Here we go, then. Too late for regrets!
Welcome to Chinchirorin, the first game's most famous (or infamous) minigame. It's incredibly glitchy and can be exploited for shit tons of riches later in the game. Right now, though, we need to win a game against Tai Ho for this to work. This took me for, fucking, ever on the PlayStation. But thanks to emulation, I can game the system because fuck Chinchirorin.
There are, of course, legitimate ways to fuck with this game, and I'm sure TWD will go into it. Chinchirorin is based off of three dice. If two of them are the same, the third die is your number. Two of anything, except 1, as well as 4-5-6, are lucky numbers. But two 1's and 1-2-3 are very unlucky. Three of the same number is called a storm, but getting three 1's makes YOU pay triple, but if I get three 2's, or three 3's and so on Tai Ho will pay US triple. If you fail to throw a hand in three tries, or a dice goes out of bounds, you lose.
He ends up getting a five for this. We can either beat him with a 6, or get a storm and beat him that way.
The pendulum arrow swinging around will determine where the dice lands, as well as if the dice will actually land in the bowl. You can get really good at this and almost always fuck Tai Ho over.
So I go ahead and game the system so I get a storm of three 5's. Because of this win, and him paying us 3,000 bits, he agrees to take us to the castle.
These two aren't actual brothers, just really close friends.
Time to sail.
Only a few times in the game do we get a full look at Lake Toran castle, this is the first time.
Cleo: I don't know, Viktor said there was.
Tai Ho: Wow, what a place. Must be full of monsters. I'll get 'em!
Yam Koo: You're going, too? Please be careful.
Tai Ho also joins us. He's a pretty decent fighter. Not great, but he always does tons of damage with his spear, and that's all you need him for, really. We're going to go back to get him some better armor, and sharpen his Satsuki spear into the Akemi spear (Camille now has the Fenril).
Lake Toran Fortress is the first real dungeon in the game, I think. It always has the fog filter, so it looks like this the entire time. The enemies can range from easy to pretty strong, and the boss at the end is not a joke.
These guys are assholes. They can attack your whole front line with different body parts, doing lots of damage.
We find some Toe Shoes here. Their importance will not be recognized until much later in the game, but make sure you always have a pair around, or buy at least one later on, and put it on the main character.
These Oannes are the easiest enemies in the dungeon, and are pretty weak overall.
In here we find the first PWR stat raising item, and I tend to use this on the main character just because.
Like all Suikoden games, grinding is non-existent. If enemies outclass you in a particular area, and you defeat them, you'll gain levels very easily and characters who are lower in level than you will catch up.
We pick up a Hazy crystal here. The Haziness Rune boosts your evasion rate by 1.5x, making it harder for enemies to hit you. This Rune only appears in the first three Suikoden games.
sometimes the Oannes hit you in a way that makes a character's sprite flip around in a circle. I have no idea.
Soon enough we find ourselves in the actual castle, not just the caves.
Viktor: Looks like this one's the boss.
This is the Zombie Dragon, the game's first moderately tough boss. He has 2,800 HP and can hit our entire party at once. I always lose Gremio in this fight, but I've found ways to avert that. Note that bosses are immune to instant death, so the Soul Eater is totally useless right now.
Abuse Fire spells, because the Zombie Dragon is weak to them.
and the Clone Rune, because of its damage potential.
This attack will wreck your shit, particularly Gremio and Viktor's, due to their ridiculously low magic defense. Tai Ho has enough HP to make up for his lack of magic defense as well.
This is Kindness Drops, and its healing potential is really, really nice at this point in the game. Sometimes, the Zombie Dragon won't use his breath attack and will instead physically attack you by biting. This does a LOT more damage than the breath attack, but only to one character.
With enough constant assault, he'll go down. The Fire Rune will definitely save your ass more than anything else, especially if it's on Cleo.
Camille has tons of personality, but is then shunted away for the rest of the game.
Viktor: There. Now the castle's ours. How about giving it a name?
Tai Ho: Good idea. How about Dragon Castle?
Camille: How about White Castle?
Gremio: We should definitely call it Miles Castle.
in summation: Tai Ho is incredibly uncreative, Camille loves a mediocre fast-food restaurant (although the original line here is Orange Castle, a running joke throughout the entire series), and Gremio is once again in love with us to a creepy extent.
Your choice. DONGS will not be accepted.
Artwork:
Camille – Tenyu Star
Tai Ho – Tenhei Star