Rejection: There and Back Again

It's weird getting back into a game after leaving it since last entry. Oh, yeah, I have four weapons I wouldn't logically think would be together. I really feel like I'm min-maxing despite that not technically being true. It doesn't help that now enemies leading to Nagano and the Keep Off Area mostly don't hurt me.

Reaching the war college first, since that's simpler and that had a locked door, it's a straight shot to the door. Which has nothing inside, no enemies...and it turns out it was simply just the boss fight against the dude who had clones of himself. So I wasted my time. To the east. I've looked in here before and I've been dreading it.

Because it's a sewer section. Technically this isn't as bad as a regular FPS sewer section, because mapping something yourself helps you remember it, but psychologically it feels worse. I have to map the sewer myself? YEUGH. We got eels, or...inters? What does that mean? They're odd, because they're far easier than previous enemies, probably due to my advanced level, but their hitbox is the shadow on the ground.

I wonder what happened here.

There's also body. Which doesn't attack you and just has a lot of health. These two are the first real encounter, with a ton of eels in a big area. I think they have a high spawn rate, its like cutting through a jungle and shooting them is wasteful, since I don't know when I'm getting back. But it might be IF I'm getting back. This forces me into an awkward position where I force myself through, but end up with the eels behind me and a mouse in front of me.

This leads a small room full of enemies from the first sewers. Not stronger ones, just the same ones. This goes on for a very long hallway, until I finally drop my guard expecting nothing new.

Floats, ranged water enemies. They don't seem to hit too bad though. But the problem with these water areas is that it's easy to get bogged down in an unending number of enemies. Doubly so here, because they do respawn too fast for me to kill them, and they're just strong enough to be trouble. The minigun continues to be useless as it can't damage anything. But the door I'm looking for is just here, so I can rush in.

Inside, we have another suspiciously empty area. Outside of the spider thing that doesn't attack me but moves. Like the last few special places, this area is straightforward. Go through until you find a door to a small room, and then the enemies show up.

The enemies in this area are SWAT in black ops clothing and various space marines. Feels really unimpressive after the last section, nothing about them seems special. The Minigun can even hurt them, though it runs through bullets far too rapidly for my taste.

I get another option soon, the FAMAS, the weird French assault rifle, which uses a 25 round magazine and only 3 shot burst fire. Well, originally, anyway. It's a curious choice that I assume only came about because of the French being the French. There's nothing special about it here. It seems basically useless because every enemy takes no damage from it. It also just fires automatically. The game drops two of them, so they really want you to have it and ammo for it.

Deep inside the area is a path leading to a desk. It's a video call with a government official, asking for a Major Takagi, and he's surprised when K-Ko answers. He wants to hear the status report on the operation to purify Tokyo. K-Ko says that isn't true, he's the person who ordered the slaughter of refugees and the medical tests involving Kusomoanfitamin, the zombie virus. He then figures out that K-Ko isn't a member of the purification squad. K-Ko goes on a rant calling this guy a horrible person...

...And he doesn't know what she's talking about. This is a genuine shock to him, because he thought they were making a cure. K-Ko doesn't believe him because people like him sell out his own country and love war. He's genuinely confused. He thanks her for clearing up what the military have been doing. K-Ko then says that it was awful that they deceived him, and for that she'll kill them. Glad to see K-Ko is being her usual self. The conversation ends here.

I go out the way I came...and there's this guy, dubbed monster. The second thing he says is an insult, so we're off to a good start. He recognizes K-Ko as Kirihara and refers to himself as Major Takagi and gives the usual badguy speech. (This puts some holes in the official's story) K-Ko calls him an idiot robot. He just laughs it off and mocks her old battle suit, saying he's more powerful.

I believe him. This guy is a pain, he hits hard, but the problem is that he's just so fast. I can't hit him with the grenade launcher and everything else isn't cutting down his massive amount of health. This presents a considerable problem. Because I don't really have a good way of grinding in this area. If I grind here, it's going to be insanely risky. I can grind elsewhere, but that's going to take hours. So, I decide to just tough it out.

Trying again, the grenade launcher does zero damage. Yippee. Guns, all deal single digit damage; Knife, same deal. Well, there's one last solution. What if I try to lose this fight? No, normal death, I.E., the game crashes. As I've said before, I dislike the practice of forcing you to fight your own level by making enemies slightly higher than you basically invulnerable, but a boss is slightly more tolerable than a regular enemy. So I need to figure out how to grind effectively here. I'm going to gamble that the MG-42 respawns, and just hope I don't have to rush out to get more ammo from the camp. Enemies drop ampules, which should be enough.

This does present an interesting problem. Are the FAMAS and the MG42 what I think they are, or is it a level issue? I can't see any reason why I would get rid of any of my other weapons for it right now. Making the matter more interesting is that enemies sometimes, as in, not a guaranteed drop, the M60 in here. I'm wondering if this is the developers rewarding a careful player or if there's more to it than I think. Since I don't have anything better to do, I'll compare them.

The MG42 is an improvement, since it takes out regular enemies here in 2-3 bursts...and on the other hand, the M60 also takes out regular enemies in 1-3 bursts. It's kind of an outlier, but not that much of one. There's not really a noticeable difference. Which means you only carry around two at the same time because the developers understand that you need the additional firepower. This is the sort of thing I think about when I have to get two levels. Better than talking about the effort they had to have put in to make these pixel art grey walls.

The problem is I'm examining this on a small sample size since in the heat of getting somewhere I only vaguely care. It's when I first get one that my curiosity gets going. I know that the M11 was stronger than previous rapid-fire weapons because it was so bizarre. More importantly, do more enemies with guns drop guns, and I've only noticed now because my previous grinding attempts were against other targets? As annoying as the mechanic is, I understand why from a balancing position. You can't just give players defacto unlimited ammo if you intended it to be limited. But...respawning guns in places like these are clearly intended as a way to avoid annoying the player with constant back and forth trips.

Two more level ups, is it enough? Not, I'm just sort of where I was. Maybe a little better. Man, how many levels was I supposed to get last time and this time? In theory, I could grab a rocket launcher from the war college, but that would take as long as going for another level. I'm going to try once more, this time, with the FAMAS. I don't really have a better choice, since the Minigun isn't really working out, even if the FAMAS has already proven itself to be ineffective. Nah, not even hiding it, it does nothing against the blue guy.

The game was rigged from the start.

So I backtrack, I need to pick back up the Minigun, since it's better than the FAMAS and they serve the same role anyway. Then, get a rocket launcher. The grenade launcher helped me, sure, but maybe it, like the Deringer, is supposed to be against that one boss. All the way back to both previous areas, then back here. There's a lot to complain about in the Far Cry series, for instance, there'd never even be a situation where you'd need to consider your loadout this much, but I sure could use that game's quick weapon change at base. Heck, I'd be happy just to get a single sniper rifle.

This gives me a good opportunity to see if the FAMAS is as bad as I really think. Well, yes and no. Yes, because it does have less shots that deal less damage than the LMGs. No, in that it moves around faster, which because I'm used to the heavy weapons means I struggle to hit things as accurately. But, because there's little advantage to this, fast or slow, turning around to shoot something is a pain, I might as well replace it with the Minigun again. Which is actually better than the LMGs, in certain situations, namely, clearing out weak enemies. If the only thing you need to do is spray bullets, more is better.

Now, level 17, 1 rocket and 4200 bullets. The rocket doesn't hurt him, and the Minigun does nothing. It's down to the LMGs. I run out of ammo, but I track my average damage against his total health. He has over 900, and I do an average of 7 damage per 12 bullet burst. I have 1200 LMG bullets, so I'll be out when he has 200 health. Assuming I hit every time. Right, another level-up to 18 seems to be 6000 or so XP, two guys drop over 200, so 30 more times before I get to 18. I suppose it's my own fault for rushing through the sub and here. I do learn something interesting which will help me though.

Where you hit matters. Headshots work really well against general soldiers, but not against the boss. So, how do I take him out? Answer, his left shoulder, the one with all the weapons. Like a Tyrant. This is the edge I need to take him out. The rocket still doesn't do anything. I take all my ammo and knife him for the last 40 points, but I do it. I take him out.

Now, how does the plot advance? Why, I get another ID card. I...wasn't expecting that, because I was expecting to say that the game teleports me somewhere. Also, a suit upgrade, this increases my damage, which will be useful for knifing the enemies I need to kill to get out of here. Wait, data disk? I better check the computer again.

This allows me to check the Major's e-mail. It's from the department of defense, or presumably whatever the Japanese one is called.  The Kusomoanfitamin experiment is going smoothly. The Osaka provisional government is opposed to their work, without success or disguise. The Minister of Home Affairs announced their purification campaign. They should quickly go to the next stage and eliminate any traces that could be reached. However, their rescue operation is working, albeit lukewarmly. A special division of the air force is being sent, the commander is Colonel Kirihara. The big factor is apparently the leaking of official secrets. They'll crush every obstacle in their way. That's the end of it, K-Ko then says that the mastermind has been exposed, but where is the division?

Before I end this, I head back to camp. Knowing last time, I'm worried. I get another level on the way there, and as luck would have it, they survived. I get a full refill. K-Ko explains the events that happened in the base. There's nothing really interesting there, just "my father isn't a hindrance" and "protect and show". Nothing about where I should be going at this point.

This is where I'm going to stop off for now. I nearly ended up not advancing past the Major this week. I'm not actually any better off now than I was before, since while I know I have to do something, I don't know where. It could be anywhere, from somewhere on that base I missed, to the war college, to the submarine to a long trip back to the place I first encountered the soldiers. Where ever I go, I don't know what I'm doing. You'd think they would offer a little more direction than this...

This Session: 7 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 26 hours 00 minutes