Part 53: LIII - Egoist

Note that the long timespan between vote closing and the actual update was in no way caused by AGDQ taking up many hours of my day just going through the runs I definitely want to watch on the Youtube uploads. Nope. Not at all. Totally not procrastinating the fuck out of this.



So, there has been quite a bit of voting, which I presume works like some sort of local Madness Network in Melissa's head. And the voices had quite a few things to say, and fairly different opinions. But in the end, one sentiment shone through, and it was one word in particular that ended up being the most prevalent...




...so that's what we'll be doing! One ride on the "FUCK ALL OF YOU ASSHOLES AND FUCK THAT BOX TOO" train coming up!

I'm having a hell of a night, let me tell you.
The night has not been kind to you?
Let's just say I wish it was the afternoon.
In your voice, there is desperation... certainly there is an exit out of your predicament?
Nope. That's why I'm getting the fuck outta Dodge.
You could run... but do you really think you could escape your reputation? I know little about you except the rumors that you've killed the anarch leader and betrayed your own kind.
That's all bullshit.
You have been accused. If you were to run, this reputation would travel with you until your final night. Your only recourse is to clear this charge... or to smite the conspirators working against your good name.
Smiting sounds good. Best suggestion I've heard yet.
This is the path of legends and pariahs. I have walked before with those who have tried to cast off Jyhad. Their reasons were many, but their paths always ended in the same place: emptiness.
Stay, run, fight... does it matter?
I'm just a driver... I can't take you anywhere unless you tell me where to go.
I've got to do this alone. There's no one I can trust.
If you must. Ming-Xiao and LaCroix: when they are destroyed, this city will become chaos. With no heads you can walk past this beast and into a legend. But... you may never know peace - the lives of legends are the prey of the ambitious.
Thanks for your concern, but I'll be just dandy.
Then... I will drop you off in Chinatown. Your legend can grow there.
Before I go, I need to make a few stops.
Where to?

We have a few options here. First off, we're going to pay a visit to our favorite arms dealer.



They tried to have me killed. Nothing personal against you. Now, I need guns.

Nothing new in Mercurio's stock, I just fill up on ammo. Not exactly interesting, but hey, I'm gonna need it.



We could also stop by Trip's place in case we sold out Mercurio, but he doesn't have anything interesting. We then return to Mercurio's, because he has one particularly interesting bit of info for us, concerning a certain group of people...



RPG house, not in LA; it's in Irvine, a little south. Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson are the major players. Workin' on a secret project, I don't know much about it. Camarilla's concerned they know too much.

Troika would then proceed to shut down shortly after the release of this game. Hmm...



We can also return to our haven, though there's nothing much to be doing here.



That is, except checking our e-mail.

quote:

<Subject> Some advice
<From> a friend

Don't open it.

God damn, they're really beating this over our heads, aren't they? Anyway, that's it for our haven, nothing else here.



Finally, we can drop by the blood bank for some extra packs. I pick some up because yeah, I'm probably going to need them. So, now it's time to head to Chinatown.



No time wasted, we're immediately dropped in the first courtyard of the temple. The Kuei-jin are already on high alert, and... is that who I think it is?



Before we jump into battle, I dump some points in Stamina for even more defense and some in Brawl for some better chances at feeding. Now, to battle!



Kind of a shame there's no such thing as a "fear" mechanic in this game. I'm pretty sure I'd shit myself if I attacked somebody with a katana several times and it just pinged off like I'm fighting a cyborg or something like that.



The enemies don't have that luxury, and they get carved up very easily. Now, was that who I thought it was over there?



It was!

What are you doing out here?
I, (what...), watch temple. I think hengey�kai kill my master for ghost people. There is more evil inside.
I'm going to kill the Kuei-jin. Want to help?
(Yes!) My sword is still angry. (Let's go) - let us kill ghost people together.
If you want to come, follow me.

And now we have a combat buddy for the next section! Not that Melissa really needed it, but somebody actually wanting to help is a rare thing, so let's treasure it.



We make our way through the antechamber where we met Ming-Xiao...



...and step outside into the forbidden area. The enemies here don't exactly take well to the Deagle. They're not very well protected in general, and their armament of swords and crossbows is also questionable.



About half the enemies rush into the antechamber where Yukie still is, while the other half stays outside and attempts to put a dent in Melissa's face, a move which doesn't go well.



The first half doesn't fare much better.



We move on to another interior, which has more ineffectual enemies and locked chests that all just have a crossbow. I really don't want to use that thing, stop trying to make me. I presume this is from when the crossbow was a rare weapon that you could basically only get here, but even if I only got it here, I still don't want to use it.



Then, another exterior area with more enemies. I remember all this fighting being a real pain in the ass with my first run, but now that Melissa is practically impervious to regular attacks, things are going very smoothly.



I keep switching between ranged weapons and the special sword to save a bit of ammo, and honestly, it doesn't matter what weapon I use. I could whip out the peashooter from the beginning of the game and still kill these guys, probably.



Finally, there's this temple-looking interior area, and of course more enemies.



And to finish it all off, sucking the last enemy in the room dry to refill what little health and blood we lost.



From here, we leave the first major area of this dungeon...



...and make it to the second. Yukie doesn't follow us here, which I guess kind of makes sense, given that there's traps around here and things are already bad enough when the enemy AI can trigger them.



Things down here aren't much different. More dudes with swords that think they can do something but surprise, they can't.



It occasionally gets a bit hairy when there's three or more of them at once, but even then, some concentrated firepower makes quick work of them.



Now, here comes the real threat of this level - the traps. See that square in the middle that looks a bit off? Let's see what happens when we step on it...



JESUS CHRIST. I'm pretty sure these traps negate defense or something like that, because I'm pretty sure that Melissa shouldn't have taken that much damage while on Fortitude. I mean, yeah, it's spikes jammed into your sides, but it's probably not as dangerous as a blade that can actually sever a limb, and those things just ping off most of the time.



They're annoying, too, because every time you set one off, you have to manually shove them back where they came from to be able to pass. There's no more danger, just tedium.



We make our way through a locked door and find the best room. Why is this room the best room?



Because there's a bunch of free ammo in pretty much every one of those crates, and there's like ten of them. Time to fire and forget!



Some more meandering around ensues. A lot of this place is just "Hey, a place!", then "Hey, people with intact necks! Let's fix that!" and repeat.



We end up in a room with this water-wheel looking thing...



...and find what looks to be some sort of special enemy. I think. I guess he's stronger or something, but, y'know, he has a melee weapon, I have a gun and higher ground. You do the math.



So things end about as well as you'd expect for that guy and whomever else is in the room as well that isn't Melissa.




This level, summed up in two pictures.



I end up going in circles, which is actually kind of handy, since it lets us stock up on ammo. Still, I'd much rather be moving on.



Eventually, I stumble over this barred door, which leads to the next area of this dungeon.



Hrm.



Hrmmm. This is going to take a bit.



So yeah, more traps...



...and more dudes. One of these is more of a threat than the other, and I'm not quite sure which one is which. They're both aggravating in their ineffectiveness at this point. Still, it's better than getting my ass kicked. There's also a trap later which is just a dude jumping out of the wall, which is just hilarious.



Long story short, we arrive at this room that has some pressure plates and some statues.



We put the statues on the pressure plates...



...and the staircase to the last area opens up! Puzzle solving!



This area's central gimmick are these four pedestals that need four things put on them in a certain way.



The basic idea is that there's two of these hallways on each side of the area with two guys with guns in front guarding a thing and two guys with guns in the back guarding another thing.



These guys used to kick my ass - as you can see, they have Steyrs as well, which is about as good as it gets. But since we're the tankiest tank that ever tanked, there's no problem at all. In fact, we can just jump in with a melee weapon and save some ammo.



Note the jade figure laying on the floor. That's actually one of the four things - the guards shot it off the pedestal it was standing on. How irresponsible. Also, note the slightly raised floor tiles. That's another trap, and we're jumping right over that mess.



I hear that a lot of people say that you need to prepare for this endgame section (and basically everything from the sewers on, honestly) by putting a good bit of points in combat stats, and while that's true, I feel like defense gets overlooked. Most of the situations in this game have been completely defanged with the wall that is Melissa, and we could be stabbing people with a butter knife and still win. It's great. So, we grab the jade dragon and elephant and lea-



SHIT. So that's what happens when you step on the trap - blades shoot out, instant death.



Oh well, one reload and better jump later, we're back on track and picking up the jade cat and crane.



Back at the central area, the object is to match the statues to the pedestals that look the same as the ones they were on originally. I bet like half of you didn't know that and either just fucked around with it until it worked or looked it up. I certainly didn't know it until I realized it while looking over the footage right now.



And that opens this teleporter! Time to take this cunt out and grab the key for ourselves because why the fuck not.



Yeah, that's a lair all right. Still, LaCroix's penthouse suite has more of that je ne sais quoi that makes it a proper villain's last stand place. It's the Ventrue flair that really makes it.



Don't give me that crap. You don't know any more than the rest of us.
You were never more than a pawn, Kindred; puppet of those who drew the boundaries on your horizon. It was I who sensed in you the power to right the balance of this city; it will give me no joy to bring you Final Death.
You won't need to do any mourning for me. You, on the other hand...
You will have time to ponder this folly as you are devoured by worms and disease in the hell of burrowing maggots. A thousand years shall you suffer.
Whatever...

Fucks given have reached negative numbers.



AND THEN SHE MORPHS INTO SOME WEIRD TENTACLE THING OH GOD I SUDDENLY GIVE A FUCK NOW.

Watch Boss Fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUCgd1Wcbs



So, let's talk about one of the final bosses, shall we? This bitch is tough. Really fucking tough. Right off the bat, I try the Dragon's Breath and the flamethrower. Results are negative, they don't deal a lot of damage. That's a problem, because the flamethrower is your "get the fuck out of jail right now before you get murdered" card, and if it doesn't work when you need it, you're in trouble.



Firearms aren't exactly proving well here, and that damage I just took was from one attack.



This continues for a while, as most weapons don't exactly work well...



...and in melee, she can deal aggravated damage. Just fucking brilliant. In the video, I do the actual smart thing and take out her tentacles with melee, which reduces her attack capabilities.



But in the original run, I just stuck with hammering her with the Steyr and sucking down blood packs.



I eventually manage to figure out what I've been doing wrong in the original run as well, but the damage was already done. Oh well, not like I'm going to need those blood packs anyway, right? Right?



Oh by the way, the tentacles turn into little mini-monsters, and one of them can turn into another big monster. It's not fun. Anyway, she goes down eventually, and I do mean eventually. We get some sweet XP (which goes into another point of Wits for more defense)...



...and the key!



After we grab it, a portal back outside opens up...



...and we find ourselves back in the cab. I do some more off-screen stocking up, nothing fancy, and then it's time to get going.

It's time to finish this.
We are here.
Here's ten bucks. Get yourself a new air freshener. Bye.
Remember, wherever we go, it is the blood of Caine which makes our fate. Farewell, vampire.
Blood? Yes, there's about to be a lot of it shed. Farewell.

Next time, it's the Venture Tower. Time for LaCroix to get some.