: He's a decent fighter, anti-magic tank, super-versatile spellcaster
and he dispenses semi-relevant bits of information? How come these other losers can't be this useful?
: Sorry, not everyone can be as fabulous as I am.
: Honey, you wanna see
fabulous...
: ...does the guild have a "send very far away" command to complement the "call" command?
: Whoops. Nevermind Orion, a six-year-old just outdid you.
: You're preaching to the choir, buddy.
: I'm probably going to regret asking, but who exactly constitute your "key companions" here?
: Well, duh. My key companions are the very reverend Jack Daniels and my trusted associate Saint Pimpstick. Oh, and Billy Jr., naturally.
: Billy! You never told me you had a son. I wanna meet him!
: Baby, I thought you'd never ask.
: Oh please no.
: Dammit. Why does the royalty keep saddling me with farm animals?
: ...oh! "Saddling"! I get it!
: Okay, I kinda walked into that one.
Backtrack time! We're loaded with cash after squishing all those bats and roaches, so we head back to one of the earlier towns to get Billy the kickass Force spell.
: Force spell? Please tell me I can go all Darth Vader and choke stuff with my mind now!
: Actually, the Force spell is a potent enhancement or "buff" spell which greatly improves the strength of the party's physical attacks for its duration. Notice the sparkling star above Billy's head? This appears whenever any non-instantaneous spell is running. Only one such spell can be active, so you're limited to casting instant spells for the time being. Note that multi-target attack spells take a second or so to fully resolve and invoke the twinkling star too, so you can't cast them while a buff spell is in effect or vice versa!
:
Thank you, Miss Tutorial Pants. I don't recall you being part of this adventuring party right now.
: Sorry! I just wanted to be useful.
: Yeah, well, we all want things. Me, I just want a piece of Princess Meldi.
: Hey, me too!
: ...yyyyyeaaahh. I'm just going to pretend you mean that in the same carnal chauvinistic sense I did and not in your own creepy stalker way. Screw that, I'm just going to pretend you're someone that doesn't suck.
Incidentally, here's the AI setting options that you can open up at the beginning of combat. Now that Billy has something other than a healing spell (which on pretty much any setting will be cast as needed) this starts to become relevant. AI settings are kind of trial and error since the autopilot behavior varies from character to character (even between male and female versions of the same class) and different positions in the party order.
After some fiddling, it looks like by leaving Billy in the back half of the party (where he probably should be anyway; as a male bishop Billy's showing impressively well-rounded stat growth but defense is not his strong suit), I can toggle between "Assault" and "Attack" to determine whether or not he should bother using Force (which will utterly demolish a lot of fights, but drains a fair chunk of MP and is super-overkill against pretty much anything the party is seeing.)
After that detour, the party heads through the checkpoint and on to the next town.
: Hey, I think I like where this is going!
: I'm gonna admit it: this is pretty much the weirdest come-on ever.
: Okay, this is going in kind of an odd direction now... wait, that's it? Oh well, free weapon. Catch, Leon!
: Uh, I don't think this is a real sword.
: What, it's not just a crappy plot item is it? Gyp! Oh well, let's see what this place has to offer.
: Hey, a guild!
: Denied! Man, what's so great about this place anyhow?
: Well, the closest city
is Ruval. She probably just needs a better frame of reference.
: Woah, these look like some pretty heavy spells. I wonder what this one does.
: The spell "Mind" is one of the game's numerous crowd control spells. The game has a number of functionally identical spells which all serve to stun enemies for a time when cast, varying only by MP cost and class usability; in this case, Mind is one of the more efficient examples of such spells, being unique to priest-type...
: Ahem.
: Oh come on!
: You'll be relevant again when we get access to better mage spells. Now shoo.
Stun spells are pretty great; the good ones are dirt cheap to cast and can make many fights a breeze, although they don't work 100% and tough enemies might actually outlast the spell's duration. I'm tempted to buy this for Orion, but for now we have to sink money into Para-C. Paralysis does
not wear off naturally in this game, so once paralyzing enemies show up (which happens
right now) you're pretty much screwed if you don't have means to cure it.
Luckily the ubiquitous drive-thru weapons shop offers ample consolation.
: I dub thee Saint Pimpstick II! Boom, mother****er!
The crystal here is a shaman-only weapon; not only does it have ludicrous attack power for this point in the game, it has good bonuses to magic and intelligence (most mage-type weapons boost these some amount, but it'll be a while before we see any staves that can match the shaman's crystals on this count)
and defense. The bad news is there's not another shaman weapon upgrade for a loooooong time, but yeah. Shamans are freaking kickass.
Between the silver staff, the crystal, and Leon's natural strength growth, Midi's once-uber bow is starting to look pretty shabby. Other than a few paralyzing enemies the monsters around here are mostly retreads from before, so this part flies by pretty quickly.
: I'm glad to hear that no one's dumb enough to
swim across the ocean.
: Ooooh! I love swimming! Can we try it?
: Looks like you've met your match, old man.
: Wait, is this where we were heading?
: Weren't you paying attention to the NPCs in that town?
: I don't pay attention to you NPCs
in my party, what makes you think I'm going to start listening to the townies?
As mentioned, the enemies are mostly a joke around here and the cave proves to be pretty straightforward. New town!
: What, you want it? It doesn't do anything, you can take--
: Oh god dammit. Now I guess we'll have to cut a path through a bunch of innocent townsfolk.
:
Bullshit! Do you know how many hundred giant cockroaches we had to kill just to make it this far? There's no way that three random schmucks could take us.
No way.
: I'm too fabulous for jail! Midi, make yourself useful and pick the lock.
: But that would be wrong! We're supposed to be under arrest.
: Please oh please tell me this town has a guild, assuming we get out of here. Or at least a cheap daycare program or something. I'm not picky.
: Wait, you're sure it wasn't a mysterious man in black? Or maybe a whiny zit-faced prince? I mean, I'm sure you're under a lot of stress. Your memory might be playing tricks on you.
: The system works!
: Yeah, yeah. Hey, speaking of work.
: Don't worry, I'll do a good job! I'll guard that floodgate day and night and make sure nobody steals it!
: Yeah, you do that.
: Er... boss, you sure this is a good idea? I mean, we're kinda without a tank now, I still have that back problem...
: I'm simply too fabulous to take hits like a common grunt.
: Yeah. I mean, it's not like the best defensive warrior in the world coincidentally lives in this town or anything.
: Oh. Well, nevermind then.
(Yes, the female fighter is probably about the best all-round tank class in the game. Thieves of either gender will often have better physical defense, but Liza gets way better magic defense and HP, and Midi actually had way more defense than necessary--most enemies around here can't do squat even against the lower-defense characters in the party.)
: Sail a boat? Like a sucker? Please.
(I must have snapped this while the cursor was blinking. The pegasus wings let us warp to any guild we've visited before, which is damn handy. We've already accumulated a few from dungeons, but this is the first town where they can be bought--and dirt cheap, too!)
: Yes, I KNOW. Try to keep up here.
: Why are we here, anyhow? We already saw Michenu on her way out of this town like a week ago.
: What?! Why didn't you say so?
:
You were there!: Yeah, but that doesn't mean I was paying attention.
: What? This place is Super Vaguely-Christian-Religion Town, remember? How different can it be?
: Okay, so this is different.
: Really? Still sounds a lot like Christianity to me.
: Oh, sweet! Now this is my kind of religion!
: How is that any different from how you already act?
: Oh yeah. Forget you Ideia, I'ma go back to dismantling your ancient conspiracy now. Let's go report back to the mayor of the boat town place. Even though we missed Michenu I bet he'll probably have a lead for us that doesn't involve an irrelevant fetch quest!
: Oh son of a bitch.
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Topic: Let's play Chaos World (obscure yet awesome NES JRPG) (Read 6372 times)