RPG Progress Report

[alienjesus]

New Vegas came out "back in the day"???

I was still at uni when it came out, it's 'back in the day' enough for me.

[pierrot]

I've finished Scenario B of Linda Cube, and started on Scenario C. I don't know if I'm just unphased by the narrative after Scenario A, or if it was simply not in the same stratosphere of weird and messed up. After Ken volunteers to be the male crew member for the ark, Linda's family has him over to celebrate, I guess. During the night, the town is attacked by some robots, and everyone is killed (including Linda's parents) aside from Ken and Linda. Ken escapes with only minor injuries, but Linda was left in a pool of her own blood, with no arms or legs. She's put back together by one of Dr. Emory's medical inventions, but her left arm (the one with the hand she used to register herself with the ark) was taken from the scene of the crime. Instead, Emory attaches her father's (Hume's) arm to her.

Once Linda has recovered, she runs off. Ken goes out to find her, but not before Dr. Emory pushes his daughter, Sachiko, on him. Emory gives Sachiko permission to go to first base with Ken, but no further. (Or something like that. The terms are given letters in Japanese, and don't really correlate one to one.) Sachiko is a little weird, and often asks if someone we just talked to is a good person, or a bad person. I answered her somewhat arbitrarily, and it didn't appear to change anything.

A good portion of this scenario was spent chasing Linda around, trying to find clues that may lead to the person(s) responsible for the attack on Linda's home. Accounts of three incidents of people throwing themselves from the bell tower of the church, committing 'suicide,' keep coming up in the process. Eventually, Linda is tracked down to Junk Palace, where she is gathering intel from a group of hunters who don't operate entirely above board.

Linda is putting on a brave face, but secretly torn apart inside by the fate of her parents. Ken and Linda figure out the culprit, and confront him. The mystery unravels, and an underground shelter is blown up after fighting a mutated form of the culprit. There's a mystery person waiting at Hospico, who sheds some light on a few other loose threads, and then it's time to leave the planet, but not before one last scare, as Linda and Ken are about to enter the control room of the ark.

This scenario tried to play a few tricks on me in the process. At one point Ken's mother adopts a Sachiko, and awakens her to her ability to change any man's answer to her requests to a "yes." So, when she asked Ken to help her, I had a window full of 12 options that were all, "Yes."

There's also a receptionist on a satellite above Neo Kenya, that's being used as a way-point for the exodus of the planet's population, who periodically receives messages for Ken from passersby. I happened to check on it to find a fairly elaborate algorithm for winning the jackpot in the lottery mini-game. It said to write it down, which I obliged, since I wasn't sure how well I would remember it otherwise. It went in steps as, Step 1: Take the last four digits of your current EXP, and divide by the same number backwards; Step 2: Add your current level to the result of step 1, and divide by eight; Step 3: Take the remainder of the result from step 2, and add the last four digits of current EXP, one more time; Step 4: Remember not to be fooled by things like this, that sound too good to be true. (Son of a bitch!)

It just happened to be a season where I could purchase a lottery ticket, so I tried the algorithm anyway, and--I won! 5th prize. it was enough to cover the original cost of buying the lottery ticket--.

So, now I'm in Scenario C, which I believe is very light on story, but the game recommends finishing Scenarios A and B first, for maximum enjoyment. Basically this scenario does a lot of parodying the other two. Ken slipped on a banana peal and put himself in a vegetative state for a year. Apparently, during this time, he and Linda had a wedding ceremony that he was unconscious for. She's a sweat lass. The manual seems to indicate that she's 14-years-old at the start of the game, which is kind of creeping me out. I got a camp scene where she tells Ken that their first child will almost assuredly be a girl, and comes up with a name for her, which I agreed was a fine name. She gets really excited, and propositions Ken to make a baby with her. --I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Linda Cube, on the PC Engine, was apparently the first console game to have a suggested age range of 18+, in Japan, for purchase. Strangely, the Saturn version does not have a suggested age for consumption anywhere on its packaging, which is entirely uncommon for the console.

Anyway, I've so far registered 18 of a target 100 species, after only two seasons. I'm trying to manage my level in conjunction with the mobs I need to collect, and it has worked out all right so far. I should be making much greater strides in the next few hours I put into the game. There are a ton of secrets in this scenario, also. I was able to find Namazu (one of the rarest, and most difficult species) in a hidden entrance under a church in Koshikata (a town that was in ruins, in Scenario A) along with a key to a door to a storeroom behind a deli counter in another town, which in turn contained a chest with a beast necklace that I can use to put on a statue in some of the many small ruins, which opens up a teleportation device to some other location. I also found Tigers in a crate, that I was expecting to contain an item. They're terrifyingly strong, but that just means they can be used to make, what I believe is probably, one of the strongest weapons in the game. Needless to say, I was wiped out in a flash. Fun times ahead.

[Exhuminator]

So does this image make sense to you yet?:

[pierrot]

Yeah, it's a scene from Scenario A. The scenarios technically occur in concurrent, parallel, realities, so I'm not sure of all the details of who the dead dude is, or if they are true for other scenarios. He's not talked about in great detail to begin with.

[Exhuminator]

Is there any version of Linda Cube in English?

[pierrot]

Looks like there's something in progress here for Linda Cube Again on the PS1, but I really don't know anything about fan translations. All three versions of Linda Cube were JP exclusive, if that's what you were asking.

[ElkinFencer10]

I just finished Book 1 in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. I'll start Book 2 tomorrow. Fuck, that game is hard. My tender anus was not prepared for this....I managed to finish it only losing one character (and had I not gotten hit with a fucking 4% chance critical hit, I'd have managed it without losing anyone), though, through stubborn perseverance and not small amount of luck.

[pierrot]

This was me exploring Eden in Linda Cube:

"A whole new wo~~rld!"

Anyway, that's the three main scenarios down. I'll work on a review, over the weekend.

[Betagam7]

I've reached the point where I can attack Dhaos final Castle in Tales of Phantasia. I'm wondering, should I bother exiting to do all of the side quests or just finish it of. I haven't found it that entertaining a game so my preference is for the latter but will it be a super hard slog without first doing more levelling via the remaining sidequests that open up at this point?

[Sarge]

Finish it. If it's not doing it for you, then you'll likely tap out and start playing something else unless you beat it now. I have to do the same thing for some games... especially Final Fantasy IX back in the day. And even though I loved VIII, all the side questing was really sapping my enjoyment, so around the end of disc 3, I made the push to the end.

I don't know how tough the encounters are there, but I'm guessing you can grind a little bit in the last area. I don't remember it being too bad, but I was playing the GBA version.