Part 20: Kika's Invitation

Where we left off, Kooluk had just attempted to invade Obel.



What's worse, they actually succeeded!



Even if they look silly with just a handful of dudes acting all high and mighty. Come on! There's only two named characters! You can take them! ...well, maybe not considering Flare's naked and the rest are just support characters at best. Sad.



Your Majesty... Please be safe...

"Safe" is probably best defined by "as far away from Lazlo as possible" at this point. He already used that rune twice, so who knows when he's just going to keel over and get someone else cursed?



Speaking of which, we cut to Lazlo, who is seemingly fascinated by one of the masts. Sure, it's big and all, but it's kinda rude to stare, you know?



Let's find him something more interesting to look at.

Let us put forth our best effort, Lazlo...

'course!



Look at that bird!

The actual bird. Not the ninja chick.

I'll help... but only until this war is over, all right?

I... will never forget the honor of being allowed aboard this ship with everyone.

Fascinating! Please find something useful to do while you're not forgetting.



We picked up a couple of people when we left, none of whom get a joining message or anything. Nico here is one of them. "Interesting" design, but pretty much useless.

I was personally ordered by His Majesty to stand guard over this ship! I look forward to working with you!

At least he's enthusiastic!

Also, he's the last person up here. Let's head below deck and



damn it would people just leave me alone for five minutes-



Wait, forget anything I just said!

Y-You think she's looking for a fight?

If it is Kika, I don't think she'd be looking for trouble...

She's not. In fact...



I was watching. I saw your battle.

It doesn't come across in text, but Lino laughs.

You call that a battle? It's more like we just ran away.

We are about to return home. You should come with us.

She walks off without waiting for an answer, because she knows damn well we're not about to turn down an invitation like that.



I doubt we have much choice. We have to follow her.

And we will!

...like, three updates from now.



First, we have the ship of Obel to explore. Just like any other ship, we can save anywhere and also run around the ship whenever we want, and in fact this is the first time that's actually really useful.

This is our new base, and we will be filling it with all sorts of misfits... as soon as we can find some.



But before any of that, we've had a lot of work lately, so let's take a nap. Oh, don't worry about the Kooluk occupation forces; they won't notice us sitting right outside the island's only harbour. What do you think they are, competent?


Would you please check it out? It frightens me a little...

Geez, what a thing to wake up to.



Check it: fifth deck corridor! That does indeed mean there are four more above. This boat is huge!

Who am I? Who are YOU?!

???: Mao's room... Come on in. Oh, please don't open the door too wide...



What.

You're growing mushrooms on this ship?

What? I... am on... a ship?

Where did you even come from?

Yes, you are...

Could I... stay?

Hmm, I always wanted to try keelhauling someone, but...



...we'll allow it, because

Telling him you want mushrooms causes him to ask you several questions about how they should be grown - humidity, temperature, lighting, ventilation and fertilizer. I'll spare you the gritty details.

Hehe... I can't wait...

The process works on a point-based system, but of course, if you're just playing the game, you don't know that. If you're anything like me, you'll talk to him here, give him some instructions, forget about him until endgame, rush to complete the procedure, and end up with something that poisons you when used.



Our crew has settled in nicely.



Even the derpmaid has her own little room! And if you peek over the counter, you see there's water on the other side. Gotta hand it to Tov, he's good at what he does!

Mr. Lazlo, how nice of you to join us! Please take your time looking around.

Atelier Derpmaid will craft accessories for you, based on materials you bring in.



However, it pays to think twice about what you want to make. Several of these things require rare ingredients, yet can be bought at normal stores relatively cheaply, leaving you to use the materials for things you actually have to craft.



Bowside, there's this big room. Pablo is another of those characters we picked up, and unlike Nico he's actually playable!




Pablo is... uh... Honestly, I have no idea. He's probably supposed to be a Real Magician, but his Magic is not that great for a supposed defining feature. Nice speed, skill and luck - he'll be crit-happy, but on the other hand that strength is pathetic, so he can go around critting all day and he still won't do much damage. Bad evade, shit defence, not even particularly good magic defence... To put it simply, Pablo is pretty bad.



Tov has his own little shop where he can upgrade the ship if we bring him ocean rune pieces. No one ever told me what an ocean rune actually is, but apparently they're useful. Spoiler: if I'm going to upgrade anything, it's going to be shooting distance, because anything that lets me kill things faster is better than anything that makes it harder for enemies who never hit me to sink me if they were to hit me.



Here's Reinhold's room. Pretty nice! Can't understand a word on the wall, but it sure looks cool.

All right, let's do it!

That's what I want to hear! If you brilliantly succeed in defeating me, I will give you something good...
Hmm... even so, there are not quite enough people for training...

The training hall lets you fight against other characters you've recruited. I'll probably show this off in more detail at some point, so let's not go into any great detail here; we still have a lot of ship to explore.



Third deck is where we'll keep all the stores. Right now, it's pretty empty, but Chadli has finally set up that shop he was talking about.



Chadli will sell everything from ordinary stores we've visited, and his rare finds section will randomly contain items from stores we have not visited (and will be empty once we've visited them all). This doesn't include their rare finds, but some of it is still pretty good at this stage.



But here's the main draw on this floor: Adrienne has set up shop, and I believe I have something she'll like!

Thank you... Wait a minute, okay?
Amazing! This hammer is amazing!!

Sure is! So let's talk forging.



You may remember how Adrienne was able to sharpen stuff to level 3 when we first met her. The game hands us the iron hammer automatically, so normally at this point, she'll be able to sharpen up to level 9, which is an improvement over our current limit (level 7).

Next comes the Copper Hammer which lets her sharpen to level 12, then the Silver Hammer which gets her up to 15. Finally, the Gold Hammer, which we've just handed over, raises the limit to 16, the highest possible.



And that is the story of how Lazlo spent a couple of hundred thousand potch in half a minute. Up from level 7, one name (and appearance) upgrade, and we've damn near doubled the power of his swords! It's certainly not cheap, however; as you can see, sharpening from level 14 to 15 costs 60000 bucks.



Adrienne has one more function - she can craft all non-accessory kinds of equipment from metals and other hard materials (we'll also pick up a tailor later who can work with cloth and other more delicate things). What she can make also depends on which hammer she's using - and once more, we've just unlocked everything from the word go.

Just like Lilin, she requires materials for them, and a good number of the craftables can be obtained in less annoying ways. The Diamond Helm up there is probably the best generic headgear in the game, but we'll be able to buy them later on (and can already pick them up from Chadli's rare finds if we care).



Continuing the round trip...


However, they finally surrendered to an all-out attack from the Kooluk Fleet. This led to the Kingdom of Obel being occupied by the Kooluk Army. Furthermore, while some residents fled aboard the ship, the safety of those who remained is still a concern. The king of Obel, Lino En Kuldes, swore to his citizens that he would take Obel back.

That's... decent enough, I suppose.


The Central Council of Kooluk has set a 100,000 Potch bounty on the fugitive Bartholomew, whom they are pursuing. There are reports of him being sighted on Nay, but it appears to be uncorroborated.

Hell of a big word for a guy with hair like a hedgehog!

And now, because I know you must all be waiting for it...


"Because it is just so depressing." This was Madam Depression's stock phrase for everything.
Madam Depression's husband was the best fisherman in the village. Everyone envied their marriage. But even with such a wonderful husband and a darling son that she bore with him, she was still depressed.
"Because it is just so depressing."

Certainly is depressing, but I suppose that's how you know it's Real Literature.



And wouldn't you know it, the Comment Box makes a return.





You know, I don't think telling me who it's from was entirely necessary here.



Tell her to write her own letters!



hurf durf because she's a ~~~girl~~~



She could learn a thing or two from Mitsuba. Hell, most of my crew could learn a thing or two from Mitsuba! Just make sure none of it is fashion related.



Holy shit man, I think you're addicted. We have like three of those things on each side of the ship! The most I've seen on any other vessel is two.



Desmond has upgraded himself. Now he can't just alter our party, he can also show us the roster!



It's depressingly empty. It does have a nice surprise, though!




Lino is tankier, faster and less awful at hitting things than Mitsuba. On the other hand, his strength doesn't rocket up as fast (though it likely will be higher by endgame) and he's a bit less resilient against non-physical attacks. Still shitty magic, though.



Here's something else that's new.



Talking to Desmond first is probably not how they imagined this, because he doesn't say much on the subject. Louise, however, has a few words to say about the new party formation.

From now on, I'll make sure that you have the ability to form up to 3 parties. You can switch them during combat. How convenient is that?

It's not.

Oh, but you can only switch while you're on the ship, okay? I can't look after what goes on outside.

If there were a way to set which party you start with, it might have been worth it, but you always start with Lazlo's group, so you have to first load the battle, then switch parties, then load in the new party, and by the time you're done a decently set up Lazlo-led party is going to have killed everything already. Sure, it lets you level up another character who is not Lazlo, but really, there's not much point.



It's time to get the party started. We picked up some ninjas in Obel, so let's put them to use!

Don't worry about me.

As for the final member, I just went with the lowest level character I had who was not Ornan.

I am at your service.

Sadly, it was Pablo.



Yu has also been added to the roster as a support character. Speaking of which:


Yu
Healing A - Restores 18% of Max HP after every battle.

Yu may be a bit of a prick, but he makes all other healers in the game obsolete. Let's drag him along. And, since we're about to see gameplay again, let's look at the new power we got after that last Runespace scene!



Oh, will you look at that, it's complete and utter shit, what a surprise! I know I'm making a habit out of going "Remember how the Soul Eater used to..." but seriously, look at this shit. Look at it. This is a third level spell, and it can fucking kill me!

(For those of you who don't remember, Soul Eater's first level spell was an instant kill as well, except it was 100% accurate against anything not immune to it, and of course, it did not also kill the user.)

There are some interesting things about this party, though.



Mizuki's Shrike Rune lets the user grab an enemy, jump ridiculously high in the air and...



FINAL ATOMIC BUSTAH!



But not all Runes can be that awesome, so let's try Lazlo's new spell. Instant death, right?



...oh boy, it's instant death, all right!



Let's give that another shot.



Ten percent my arse.

(By the way, I'd like to point out that I did not go out of my way to get these shots. I used the spell, and I died. I rested and used it again, and I died. I used it a third time and also died, but around that point my recording crashed and I lost the footage. I would be upset about this, but I actually find it rather fitting.)

Since we're talking about the Rune already, though, let me add something here. You know how I said the game feels rushed? I have a feeling the scene that got us this was supposed to be the first time we'd be forced to use it. It's big, dramatic and important to the story, and our companions have Things To Say about it. Compared to the crab before, this was a whole other level of everything. Really, my complaints about ocean travel aside, Obel as a whole is a really neat part of Suikoden IV.



But enough talk. Look at those ninjas! They just got even ninj-ier.



It's a new unite! Which causes Mizuki and Akaghi to swirl around the enemy with a bunch of leaves. Sure, why not?



AAA WHAT THE FUCK



anyway then they drop down from the sky and smack the enemy upside the head.

I have no further comment on this image.



Another interesting thing about the ninjas is that they bamf out and leave a log in their place when they avoid attacks.

Because that is what ninjas do.

Next, we're heading to Nay to pick up the best character in the game.