Elm Knight: Won

Loading up this session, I get a conversation with Nero talking about how he has a bad premonition...wait...that's a bad feeling about this, isn't it? Then again, I have a bad feeling about this. Nero is floating in the game world. That means either he helps me or this is an escort mission...nevermind he's just floating there. Time to go to my next destination.

I spot a floating robot in the distance, so I line up to take a screenshot and another sneaks up from behind and teleports me...back to the start. Is this seriously going to be a mechanic in this game? It was clever the first time, now it's just tedious. Once I finally spot one, it turns out that they're the same robot as Nero, only evil. You can tell because their eyes are different. The funny thing is, this is entirely annoying, not difficult. You don't even take damage, it's just a question of shooting them before they can reach you and you get unlimited tries. Basically no consequences.

The mech is that ancient? Wait, does that mean the mech's name is Randomuba? I get it, this is a joke I wasn't getting because I'm having trouble figuring out what the game's made-up terms are supposed to be referring to. Anyway, the mech Rick was piloting was the Elm Knight of the title. Elf is explaining this, I'm guessing it is just translating something rather than deliberately withholding information. I chose to believe that. There's something about someone carrying unhappiness, unsure if that's Elf or the Elm Knight.

I'm back in the desert now. Kiruno is talking to...Roy? I'm playing as Roy now? Yeah, this game is going to have character reunion without making a big production of it. Kiruno's mocking Roy, probably because he hasn't driven a mech in a while, but Roy's taking it in stride. Something I do find amusing, Serena wants to talk to Roy, but they're sure to have a bit of a conversation before letting Serena in. Apparently even in-game people find her annoying. Time to find Rick. Judging by later conversation, Roy is in Rick's mech, having repaired it.

The desert stage was never very good to begin with, but having to navigate through a stage where you're required to use the map to navigate with looking at the actual viewport being secondary is wearing on me. And...I went to the place this area starts instead of trying to find Rick. Whelp. Perhaps it's just that the game isn't tracking the actual locations of things for once.

Back with Rick, there's more talking over the stone mech relief. Something (Probably the mech) was born from a particular dimension, in which it had a form of energy, but here it had a body...once it did so, it could believe and think. Elf seems to be saying that Randomaba is the Elm Knight which is the mech that Rick was using and now Roy probably is.

And now Rick is in another mech. One which has a much less helpful GUI if this screen is any indication. Elf says something about this being born and moving. I'm not clear on what that exactly means since the words are very strange the way they're put together. It gets very beyond me. Something about protection and the power to be born again. Something strange approaches.

Now Roy is talking to Rondo. Roy apparently knows that there's going to be a surprise attack tomorrow. Apparently, Rick memorized them before disappearing. I thought this sounded like a fake answer, and so does Rondo. Roy has had correspondence with Rick. Yeah, sure. Roy then says that only a spy in the imperial army would be suspicious of this information.

Outside in the desert. It's Rick, guess his fancy new mech is real. He's looking for something. Whatever it is, he's in a hurry. Apparently he's concerned about getting it before the rebel army arrives. Back to Roy, he's conversing with Sofia. Sofia thinks the end is near and Rick agrees. I hope so. I hope so. They're headed towards some kind of meeting point and...oh, Rondo is in a mech (?) and he's wishing Roy good luck. Rondo's gonna die soon, I can feel it. (This is wrong, this is his last major contribution to the story, apparently he was legit)

It's another forest stage, and I have to say, this is INCREDIBLY easy. There are barely any enemies and they're the kind that goes down quickly. I don't have any regular machine gun ammo, but that's hardly a problem. The level is bizarrely designed but that's it. This section ends when Roy reaches the target point, but there's no enemy there immediately. A cutscene starts with a strange eye and we see Rondo back at base.

Oh, no, the enemy is out in force now. Rondo says...he'll go out to try to fight them as escape is impossible. Wait...was him being a spy a red herring? If so, that's pretty clever for this game. Except, Serena already went out. We see a mysterious and crazy goblin-looking man named Data before we see Serena get on her bike again.

OH CRAP. Now I get to play as my least liked member of the cast...on a hoverbike. Yes, it is a rail shooter section and yes it is terrible, but at least it's easy. The next cutscene is Serena in the hand of the mecha controlled by Data. That sounds about right. Data does the usual villain monologuing, nothing worth translating. And then a mysterious thing crashes onto his mech, destroying his arm but keeping Serena safe. If you guessed it's Rick in the super mech, you'd be right.

Now I get to use the super mech. If you thought it would be more powerful, you would be wrong. Maybe. This is like the fight against the mech you couldn't outright, except I'm just fast enough to do so. Only I have one attack, weird sword slash. It's slow and it doesn't seem powerful since you need to hit him a lot, my final count was 53 ammo left from 100. The real boon this mech has is that it regenerates. But it's a slow regeneration, not a good regeneration.

Cutscene, everyone is shocked that Rick is in the weird super mech. Their surprise is ruined by what seems to be some giant city. Rick and Serena stare at each other, before Rick has her join him on his mech. Okay. Now we're treated to a in-game view of the mech going up to the sky...and then flying forward. It's not another rail shooter section, it's just a cutscene. They talk, Serena seems to be thinking that Rick isn't quite who he was. Perhaps she's right.

There's another pterodactyl. I guess I'm glad the game isn't trying to build up these villains anymore, because this would have been really annoying with warning. Oh, wait, it's the same one, I guess it didn't die. They talk and he eventually goes off. I guess he's on our side now.

Now we're inside the floating city. Looks a lot like Corridor 7. Despite the fact that I'm not exactly a fan of this game, kudos for realizing this look isn't going to be very good for long, that game looked hideous. At first, this section is fun, enemies go down in a few hits, I can now actually enjoy the regeneration of the mech, and despite the door shooting at you, they're not too troublesome. Then this level turns into a complete maze. Oh, running out of ammo doesn't prevent you from attacking, you just don't shoot a sword slash.

Two area transitions later and I'm in a red hallway. I have ammo again. This must be a boss arena. Funny, the area doesn't look any different as far as the map is concerned. Long hallway to start or not. Then there's another mech. This must be the boss, because the game is trying to tell me this guy is big trouble by having a non-verbal introduce to him. That or the design is supposed to be familiar to me. (This game's mech designs all blend together) It's...Neku Sapento, the Sarian's Emperor's aide. So this is a very big deal.

The dialog implies that Neku is the leader of the imperial forces in this sector and that Elf has been protecting Rick from something Neku can do. Then Katsu reappears because why not? Now, we fight. Wait, I can't attack? I can't say that's too surprising, whatever, more dialog. I don't know what the details of this is, because I don't really care, but the cutscene shows Katsu getting teleported to some woman named Riru who looks like Sofia and I don't care either way.

This fight is, frankly, absolutely terrible. This guy only ever gets off you if you move around the columns in such a way that prevents him from hitting you, in a straight line he's way faster than you. 50 shots is no where near enough ammo to take him out, which means more dodging him waiting for the power of friendship to grant you the super gun.

This goes extremely poorly the first time. In a shocking bit of poor game design, constantly stopping the player to have paragraphs of dialog is a bad idea in a fight, it ruins my momentum and I didn't have much momentum the first time. I die. I have to do the whole thing over again, including the cutscenes. This is extremely annoying because it wasn't fun the first time around. The super gun is just a case of holding down the Z button to unleash a more powerful attack.

The second time is even worse than the first time. In the past the game was generous enough to bypass cutscenes, but because they're important to the flow of the battle, we gotta have them. So I do what any rational human being would do and cheat, because the game isn't being difficult, it's being a pain to control. Remember, you can't really turn and move at the same time very well. And this fight is awful anyway. Because it's doing what a 2000s game would do, but as a stopped text cutscene instead of having it be voiced in the middle of battle.

I take a video when I think I have invulnerability, but it turns out I didn't I manage to protect myself, but I manage to survive the encounter somehow. I get a new cutscene, and it seems like I won...only for me to get hit by more missiles. Is it the base exploding? No, he's invisible now. It's a two-phase boss and the second phase is invisible. This game is rapidly turning from a decent idea that didn't have the technology to execute it properly, to sheer WTF is wrong with you. (Side note, in the first video I took, there was about 3-4 minutes of gameplay in an 11 and a half minute video, it's worse in the second, this is about the gameplay ratio the whole game has)

Rather than talk about the end to the story, I'll just show you the video I took. (This cutscene is way to long for me to want to summarize, seriously) You can get the gist of it even if you don't speak the language. It's not that complex a story. I'll note my issues. I wasn't paying that much attention, but I think that the emperor's aide was implying that Elf lied to Rick, but the rest of it shows that's not true. Secondly, holy crap that final boss is cruel. Outside of bosses enemies in this game are a joke, and even the previous bosses don't prepare you for this one. It would have been bad if the game tried to prepare you for it, but out of nowhere it's just awful design.

Still, I'm the first English speaker I know of who has said he beat Elm Knight. I'm sure others have, especially Japanese players, but I'm the first one who seems to have documented it. I really wouldn't wish this upon someone else, this was a terrible experience.

This Session: 2 hours 55 minutes

Final Time: 11 hours