BoneSnapDeez wrote:Damn son this is some phenomenal chronicling.
Thanks, Bone!
I wasn't too sure if I was just doing this for myself, and maybe some future peoples, or if there were actually others getting some mild entertainment out of my floundering. I've been doing a bit more playing than updating over the past couple weeks, but I am also here for another update:
Captain's Log
Day 7, Game 2 - Sol Bianca
In terms of progress, out of the seven chapters in the game, I've finished the first three "main" chapters--"Hunting," "Astro Race," and "Sigmund"--as well as one of the side chapters--"Terrorists"--and am now somewhere in the middle of the fourth main chapter, called, "Chojin Heiki W." After finishing the chapter I'm on, there's only one more side chapter, and the final chapter, which is basically just an adaptation of the OVA that was produced somewhat in tandem with the game (although the OVA was released first, as the luxury space cruise passengers in "Terrorists," who are actually viewing the OVA, point out).
Part of the reason I haven't been updating as regularly is that I don't really have much more to say about the game beyond what I've already written. Anwyay, let's sort of look at the chapters so far. Astro Race does indeed present a gameplay style that's very different in tone from the first chapter (mercifully so), but more in line with the other main chapters, as well. The general story for the chapter begins with the group hearing about a yearly space race, that happens to be going on around a nearby planet. They decide to check it out, in hopes that they might score some nice loot ('imperial treasures') from participating. After (somehow) getting their visas, and documentation in order, they make their way onto the planet, and start scoping things out. In the first town, the townspeople are all ranting and raving about "Space Harry," the perennial winner of the Astro Race. Everyone expects him to win it again this year, but there's a rumor circulating that Harry might not be in top shape at the moment. I'm not sure what the expectation was for the player in this chapter, because the people in the first town are basically pointing the girls toward a place to the east, where the event is taking place, but the object is really to go to Space Harry's (I still kind of wonder if "Space" is supposed to be a nickname, or if it was meant to be his honest to goodness last name) home to the north of the first town. I just tend to wander around the maps all the time, and there weren't any random encounters in the chapter, aside from in some very specific patches of land, so Harry's place was basically where I went immediately. Anyway, the girls show up to Harry's place, but it's a mansion, with guards posted outside, who won't let anyone in. There happens to be a journalist snooping around outside who mentions a girl behind the premises with some shady looking dudes. The girls wander around back to save Harry's daughter from a bunch of "guild" thugs. After which, Margarita (Harry's daughter) let's them into the mansion. There's a bunch of people around, and I'm not really sure what it was all about (it played out in a cutscene, and I couldn't catch much of what was being said, due to the audio), but generally there were some introductions, and some of the people there happened to be assassins after Harry's life. The girls dispatched of them, and Harry rewards them by loaning them one of his racing crafts. They form a racing team (I don't recall exactly what their team name was, though; something like "Space Cats") with Margarita, who nags the girls into letting her tag along, because she's always wanted to race against her father in the Astro Race.
So the big race comes, and unfortunately for just about everyone, someone tampered with almost all of the crafts just before the race, and team Space Cats (we'll just say that was right), end up crashing on a very Dezolis-esque planet, with plenty of monsters around. A lot of the other racers also crashed on this planet, so after some wandering about, they end up back on the other planet. At this point, the girls of Sol Bianca go after the people responsible for rigging the race, still with Margarita in toe. After ending a couple mobster bosses' lives, the chapter basically ends. They get evidence of the collusion between the mobsters, and a particular high ranking official, and relay the info to one of Harry's researchers. He tells the girls where they can find the official, that he'll send in police reinforcements right behind them, and to not rough the guy up too much. So, the Space Harry family is thankful to the girls, but they slip out empty handed, because they're outlaws, and can't really be accepting rewards from imperial allied governments. It seems to be a trend that they do a whole lot of work for little to no reward.
"Sigmund" is the chapter that follows, and it's at this point that I feel like some rando' with a head full of ideas was allowed to vomit them out into a chapter of the game. I really don't feel like spending a whole lot of time on this chapter, but I will say that this particular chapter (as well as the one I'm playing right now) is called out specifically as a chapter that is extremely difficult to follow because of the story elements coupled with the borderline impossible to hear dialogue. I've gotten fairly good at saving before cutscenes, cranking up the audio during the cutscenes, and resetting if I feel like I really need to, but there's a lot going on in "Sigmund." Partly, the writer(s) seemed to want to use a lot of Freudian ideas in a sci-fi space. The marriage is not pretty. It was really difficult to tell what was even happening at first. For some reason, a large space craft jumps out if its transit right in front of the Sol Bianca, causing a very less than gentle collision, and sending the girls (along with parts of the offending craft) to the surface of a nearby planet. After the impact, someone in a turban appears on their monitors, and basically gives them an ultimatum to go to a nearby town in order to meet with a man named "Sigmund," or be destroyed by the people surrounding their ship with explosives. April (or maybe Feb, I don't recall which) futilely tries to appeal to their sense of self preservation by reminding them that the blast radius from something that could destroy their ship would kill all of them too. (Probably worth mentioning that this game is from 1990, so the potential similarities to 2001 are coincidental. Maybe influenced by Sarajevo, though?) So, they end up accepting the terms and meeting Sigmund, who's sort of a blithe gentleman, with a bit of an undisclosed vendetta against the current government. He kind of yanks the girls around for a while, and very little makes any sense. There's this "Object Forest" that one can randomly stumble upon. It's said to be a famous location in this particular star system, and one is greeted with a cutscene upon entering, where a young woman starts explaining exhibits ("objects") in the forest, most of which she named herself: A giraffe made out of mannequins ("Kirikin"--kirin (giraffe) - mannequin; quite clever), a tree with a human face in it, a tower of bones, some weird time-jester statue, etc. It's strange because there are a couple NPCs who really get excited about this forest, but it doesn't seem to play a part in the story, directly.
There's a lot of things that play out, including the girls killing the king, who has relatively recently implemented these personality test machines to test for bad people, and eliminating them, instead of dealing with normal legal procedures. Turns out the king was a robot. Human law enforcement was also replaced with robots. Earlier in the story, when there's a showdown between the robot police, and the desert peoples surrounding the Sol Bianca, the desert people just sort of vanish when they die. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on in this chapter, and making sense of it is a little arduous. Things kind of culminate with this showdown between an elderly man ("Sigmund-66") and Sigmund-67. For whatever reason Sigmund-66 was trying to kill Sigmund-67 by sending out all the robots and crap against him (it's really unclear what the exact motive was, because it doesn't really seem like he holds any ill will toward "himself"). This researcher they met earlier shows up after tailing them, and threatens to destroy this core of the planet if they try anything, and starts talking about "Mist X" again. Then Sigmund-67 (apparently) shoots himself through the heart, and the girls decide to fight the researcher. After the fight there's more talk about Mist X being some kind of organism that split the planet into two forms, with the "true" planet being sent off into some distant corner of the galaxy. Look, I don't know. I started pretty much laughing hysterically at the point that Sigmund-67 shot himself to death, and then started expositing extremely saliently after the fight. I'm sure I missed plenty due to the audio, but I also think this chapter's scenario is just a tangled web of half-baked ideas, loosely tied into Freud's work for an added dimension of WTF. If it were heavily analyzed, there might be something interesting to it, but I'm not about to subject myself to that level of insanity. It was very comical for me, though.
"Terrorist" is sort of a mini chapter, that takes place in space. I guess there are two of these mini chapters that appear randomly in between the main chapters. This one begins with the Sol Bianca crashing into a cruise ship, in space. (Are these girls drunk, or something? Probabilistically speaking, I would think the chances of them running into two ships like this should really be approaching zero.) The captain of the cruise ship explains that some terrorists are on board, and rerouted their course while also planting a bomb on the ship. So, it's up the the Sol Bianca crew to sniff out the terrorists, and defuse the bomb. What's kind of weird to me is that the code to disarm the bomb is a three digit code, but I only found two terrorists on board, and received one digit of the code from each of them. After finding the bomb, I just (very easily) brute forced the code. The only "penalty" for getting it wrong was having to fight this guard robot that I could kill in only one or two attacks. Anyway, after disarming the bomb, I was "treated" to a cutscene of the girls in swimsuits, lounging and such by the pool on the cruise ship.
I'll likely get more into "Chojin Heiki W" in the next update, but right now I'm basically just looking for (as the title of the chapter suggests) some super-human weapon code named "W" (apparently for "Watt"). I'm mostly searching a frozen, ice planet for this thing, and have encountered a very peculiar enemy: Some lassy-like dog called "Uso-pyon." It's a little difficult to translate, but it's basically a sort of 'girly'/cutesy way of saying, "Just kidding!" I don't know. Some things about this game are just weird--.