Last time, Rick and Serena were in a mysterious village, asleep, but a strange noise woke them up. Uh...what am I looking at here? This is a cave? Eh? Serena says something about a light as I get the dialog on reloading. This, I note, is the first ground combat section I can actually use my weapons.
So my first foes are...floating black Buddhists? Eh? Why? Why is this game suddenly turning into one of those games with a weird enemy selection? We had shades of it last time with the giant frogs, but at least those were presumably the local wildlife. Are these the giant men? They don't take a lot of shots, but they shoot off homing shots themselves, which is just lovely. So another section of just running past things.
At the end of a semi-decent level is this altar. That random flippant remark wasn't too far off I see. I either missed taking some screenshots or that really is all they say and now I have to go back. Sigh. On their way out Serena wonders what that was all about, which is the first time I've felt like Serena as a character has had a reason to exist.
Outside, and more dialog, they talk about going back and then of enemies approaching. Then my mecha automatically moves and enemies appear. This isn't a rail shooting section, is it? Thankfully, no, instead I just can't turn, so I move sideways dodging enemy fire while shooting at two random mechs which popped up.
Rodia shows up, same mech as the last boss fight. She says that they won't be happy to see her...until it Serena makes her upset by wondering why they're still using an auntie like her as a pilot. Because Rodia is a vain character whose only character traits are evil and vain, this offends offends her worse than some political stances on social media. By internet rules of argument, she is as some might say, extremely butthurt. I die once, but I note after respawning that the game doesn't make me go through the dialog again. Blessed relief.
They go back in the caves again for some reason. Maybe I did miss some dialog at the end of the first time. The second time is exactly the same as the first time, except I didn't miss any dialog and they just said it's the same. My radar hasn't changed, either I need to shoot this or just walk around and hope something happens. My character seems to fall into a hole only for a cutscene to start.
They found something strange in the ground, they tripped over it. Rick wakes his foot over it and a strange sound that doesn't sound that strange to me happens.
It's a flying robot. Why this is in the weird Buddhist caves is probably not worth thinking about. Rick thinks that it didn't belong to the imperial army. Considering the cutesy design the thing has, I bet that's likely. It doesn't talk, which is good, so they just wonder about it before taking it back with them.
Teleporting back to the mech, we get a black screen and more dialog. I assume some glitch happened while taking screenshots, but it turns out this is how it's supposed to look. The conversation is Rick telling Sami that the machine they found will be riding with them as they head back to Roy and the others.
Now we get a pure black screen with nothing...and Roy sneezes. Roy and Sofia are wondering about Rick and Serena. The point it seems, is to make a joke about Roy and Rick sneezing at the same time, before switching over to the leader of the subjugation force. This leads to a scene where the evil leader is getting annoyed by a cute cat. I get the joke, but since you have to fight against the story to play the game, it's not funny enough to have to spend the time on.
Rick is in a desert now, and Sofia calls them up. You know, checking that they're still alive and all that, before informing them that there are more enemies. This area has some nice music, but it's just a big open area where it's not even clear that you can go past it for a moment. When it is, it's by far the easiest area yet.
This leads into an area that appears to be a boss arena at first, until it turns out to be a village. The village we're looking for or another one? Then three new mechs pop up. They're lead by someone named Kiruno, and because we can have violence without a conversation, he asks what Rick is doing here. Rick gives him the short version of the rebel army's history, which I hope is a joke. Kiruno is more concerned that Rick is in an imperial mech. Didn't realize that was important, but fair enough. Rick is knocked unconscious somehow.
Apparently Kiruno is debating over which of the two forces to support, as they seem to have already been working with the imperials. Because he was woken up to discuss this, with more dialog involving the whole thing, then sent back to sleep. Only for Sami to wake him up because a girl is in front of him. This seems to have ticked off Kiruno, who gets on Rick and Sami's case. Before the conversation ends, Rick notices that the girl, whose name is Mina, I guess, might have some kind of powers that would result in her getting killed by the empire.
Boss fight, the imperial guy who is at this base. There's a joke about them staring each other down, and him being dead silent. Then he was just dead. My comment about this battle is that it takes place in an open arena and so long as I sidestep and shoot bullets at him, he won't survive.
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Kiruno is in front, Mina on the right, no idea who is on the left and in back.
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As I approach the way out, Sami helpfully informs me that there's something interesting to the south. It's the same name that keeps popping up in this game. Rando Maba. I say name, but I've been ignoring it on the simple grounds that it seems like it's some mechanical thing I don't understand. Better go down there.
After changing a few areas, Sami helpfully informs me that my radar is useless down here. I advance a little bit further and suddenly Rick says they should use silent mode. I'm guessing this is supposed to work, but I guess there are mines so the whole thing seems completely pointless. You walk a few steps, get hurt, Sami screams, I walk again, repeat until I finally make it through to a town. Which still has a mine there.
This is the leader of the subjugation force, whose name is Katsu apparently. He does the usual villain talk, I'll kill you and similar sentiments. Only, he has a flying platform, which is what the "town" I saw earlier was. Why this was needed is beyond me.
This fight is boring, he just charges at you and stabs you. I don't even know if I won it or not, but you just run backwards and shoot at him. He's so fast there's not that much point to running away, and turning at the moment is garbage, it isn't registering half my turn commands, which is just great. Eventually, explosions happen and I'm not sure who died.
The story indicates this might not mean much. Because Rick's mech is pretty badly damaged and Katsu's isn't. (I guess Serena got off the mech, not that I care what happens to her one way or another) Suddenly, something explodes on Rick's mech, and the reaction both have mean this wasn't supposed to happen. Sami is apparently going to activate the self-destruct to destroy Katsu's mech too now that he's disabled it, and the platform is going back down to the ground.
I'm wondering how this will advance. Elf says something about a magic user in the valley...and then suddenly the little droid they picked up earlier activates. It calls itself Nero. It's a very cheerful robot, responding with blissful ignorance to all of Rick's confusion and seeming distaste for the machine. I get this is supposed to add in comic relief, but it's just annoying me. It offers to fly Rick there, which isn't shown, but it is implied it's scary.
Another cave. This one is filled with baby ghosts. They aren't hurting me. Rather than reading into this, since I highly doubt a Japanese game would have this kind of symbolism, I'm just going to take advantage of this niceness. Oh, they have me trapped. Oh, crap. I guess I'll have to knife...and I'm dead.
Now I'm in another forest. Sami is still alive? What is going on here? They're all the same as Katsu, and they don't seem to die. So this is just what the game is going with? Fair enough, it's not like the game ever cared about being a game and I wasn't expecting it.
The screen has a weird effect going on, showing the console like when you point a camera at the screen it's recording to. Then a hand pops in...and it resets to the start of the cave. Okay, don't fight the baby ghosts. I feel like if this were supposed to be anti-abortion imagery it wouldn't be like this. Anyway, just avoid them, hardly unusual for this game.
And now things shift to Sofia, Serena and Roy. Kiruno has told them that Rick saved them and is now dead/missing thanks to Katsu's trap. At least in this area, it seems that the imperial power is failing. So, they're going to go after Rick since he's missing. The game makes a big deal about how Serena wants to go, as if there was ever any doubt of that.
After a longer time than I would have liked, I reach the other side, a forest in the valley. Basically the same as previous levels, only this time the enemy are trees. Some which have no leaves and can be killed, and others with leaves that can't be killed, but you have to knife to get to move. It's really lame. Eventually, I reach a building and another cutscene starts.
It's a really old building according to the cutscene, I think there's a joke I don't get, which is true of the entire game, really, but it seems more obvious here. The cutscene continues with Roy and Kiruno finding Rick's damaged mech. They wonder what could do such a thing until Sami speaks. Yes, Sami isn't dead, in as much as robots can be dead. Also, he introduces himself as still being alive by saying "excuse me", which I find hilarious. Sami sort of explains where Rick went, and the three are going to go after him, but not before telling Serena that Rick is alive.
Will next time be the end? I hope so. Parts of this were actually clever, but I wouldn't read too much into that. Gameplay is getting quite predictable. In the rare event I need to fight, it just involves sidestepping and holding the fire button down. Story is less predictable, but not worth going into depth on. How this has been just 8 hours is beyond me.
This Session: 2 hours 00 minutes
Total Time: 8 hours 05 minutes
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