Star Cruiser (Sharp X68000): Much Ado About Nothing

We're back a month later. Let's hope I haven't forgotten everything. I at least remember that I need to head to Pluto II. Space flight went well. Open the map, check the height, then fly there. Dodge the hostiles around the planet and don't get hit. Land in the dungeon, and now there's an encounter there. Ah. Turns out a month doesn't change much of anything...except that I get hit three times in my first fight. It's like I never left.

Right after that guy there's a gate and nothing else. Either I missed something or the game is throwing a lame hunt the secret thing at me. Even if it was Elvira II last month, I was expecting the change in game to provide some relief. I'm just back to finding this tedious again. I didn't want to come back to this and have everything feel the same, but it turns out when the game is focused on having every fight be against an enemy which constantly flies around if they don't get stuck on a wall, it's hard to feel otherwise.

It also doesn't help that this dungeon is focused on dozens of locked doors in close proximity to each other. Open a door to fight a group of the same enemies to open another door to fight another group of enemies and on and on and on. Sometimes the lever is in a secret passage. Then again, what tools do they have to make an interesting dungeon? You can't throw in a spinner, and tossing me between floors would be annoying.

I get deeper, past a long series of damage tiles, and find myself in a big circling hallway with many switches and doors. Including a central area blocked off by doors where the switch isn't obvious. Oh, there's a switch on the north and south sides, but they just open doors that make it that central passage, not the interior area. There are a pair of Star Cruisers off to the side, but I can't interact with them. So I search for secret passages. Oh, there's one with two locked doors. How nice.

Then there's one with a guy behind it. He has the same sprite as Gibson in shadow, but it obviously can't be him. Unless he's a clone. Guy calls himself Hawk, and wants to fight Gibson. He fights in a Star Cruiser too, and it looks to be a good fight...until he gets stuck on a wall. Great for me. He then flees, and Brian gets a call from Joshua. They're going to destroy the base, because they can't let Hawk escape. They're using D-missiles, which distort space and time. Brian says they'll destroy the planet, including any civilians there, but Joshua has decided that this is an acceptable loss. I have 500 seconds to get away. Unfortunately, the path back is one-way, this direction.

At the 450 second mark, Hawk calls Brian, and tells him that the key to the gate out is under the tree, then interact with a set of three switches. At first, I don't understand it, then I realize I have to use the move action on it. This opens a room with the three switches. It's a clunky interface, use the move action to activate it, then select on or off. All for the most basic switch puzzle. The right order reveals a key behind a secret wall which opens another door which leads to a secret passage which I can actually head out then. 

After a few moments running away from the hostiles around the planet, David Gede contacts me. The Federal Council is going to be ticked at this. Apparently, this Hawk isn't so big a threat that David thinks that's a good idea. Perhaps Joshua is a mole, like Daniel was. David can't contact Joshua now, but he tells me to meet him at Lucky's on Daydream. Where was that again? Right next to where I am, and conveniently, no enemies close, I can use the auto travel function safely.

At Lucky's, David tells me that he thinks Hawk is working with Joshua to put Brian out of the picture, and also to strain relations between the Hunters and Federal Patrol. Brian says he already figured that, and points out that even for that, Joshua has a pretty big information network. They mention Metal Dune, and how the other Hunters sent there were all killed. Until they find out more about Hawk, they're going to play things cautiously. David also brings up VOID, and suspects that Geist Nidoman is VOID's leader, which is pretty much what I would have figured at the start even if I didn't play the Genesis version before.

I head back to the ship and...what do I do now? Nobody gave me directions just now, and even as I travel out into space, there's no message. Just me going back and checking my notes to see what I have yet to do. I can sequence break, but I think I'll try Old New York again. Yay, more fun with one-way sections. Fortunately, the bar is near the entrance, wherein Brian asks the bartender about Sudo, a guy whose thread I've forgotten about but we'll need to get on sooner or later. He tells me to go to Seed, where Sudo might be. 

I head there on auto pilot, and when I come back to the sounds of the battle soundtrack, my ship is fine, but Seed has disappeared. A whole planet. I then flee from the hostiles and head for Daydream, expecting to either get back at a recharge station or get a new message. It's the latter, telling me to head to a place somewhat nearby. It automatically appears on my map, which is nice. There, another copy of Lorne Green tells me that VOID has a new weapon, the Demiser, which seems to have taken out Seed. He tells me it's on the VOID base on Gargantua, but first drop him off on Daydream. I also get a card, which just talks about the Amazons of VOID, who build their weapons. No location, unfortunately.

There are three buildings on Gargantua, two of which are recharge buildings, the other a shop. None of which can help me, but fortunately, there's a whole bunch of other random objects I may be able to interact with. Like someone blocking off a path to the ruins...who I can't get past. It's too dangerous, as if I haven't fought through worse by now. There are rocks I can move out of the way, but that just results in me getting blocked by another woman who just warns me that the area is dangerous.

This is unfortunate, because now I don't know where I'm supposed to go and as I discovered last session, wandering around might cause things to happen out of order. Exploration is supposed to be good, but when doing so puts you at risk of screwing up the game and there's only the lawn mowing approach, it very much isn't. Wait...what did I do on Egg? Randomly wander around until something happened. Since I've gone through this place at least three times, that means somewhere else. How many planets are there in the game? Fifty? This is worse than I imagined it could go. At least I can start in this system.

First off, Adam 3...upon which I immediately find ships and a figure. At no point during this session, or in any session that I can remember, did someone mention this place. Gaby is here, the one with the unwise business plan. Wasn't she kidnapped? She has something to tell Brian, and wants to tell him somewhere more comfortable. Oh, this is about to end very badly...

So she actually is here to tell Brian something. The person her brother was looking for is called Barnard's Hawk. Reminder, the system I'm in is called Barnard's Star. Brian mentions that he's had a run in, and then she says she wants revenge on VOID...then the conversation just ends and I can go do something else. There's not really anything else I can do here and I checked. There's a tall building, but I can't find the entrance even though I walked into all four sides. There's another Lorne Green who offers information in exchange for a Beam Booster 2...and promptly tells me that there's a Meister on Old New York. I didn't need it, but I reload all the same. Does this allow me to enter the dungeon in Gargantua? Hahaha. No. And not anywhere else in this star system either.

I head back to Rigel Kent, whereupon the lady at the service desk tells me that Joshua took off in his spaceship not too long ago. Which is of course, several hours and entries ago. The bar meanwhile, has a conversation about Brian going to Kai. Did I go to Kai? Yeah. So...my only option here is to attack someone who it seems like I'm attacking out of order, the guy near Dry Rock. I don't even know if this is the game's fault or the translation, but either way, there's no walkthrough for this version, so I have to do what I have to do. I also apologize, but for some reason when I got back to the game at this point, my emulator switched screen size on me and I could not figure out how to reverse it.

I head to the first planet from the sun, Dry Rock, only to not encounter the enemy that started the encounter. Huh? I can actually enter the planet...and it's a town. An almost ordinary town, bar, place to sell ore and buy ammo. Nothing special, until I spot some icons which I can't reach. A secret passage, leading to a dungeon. A dungeon I can't enter, because Brian thinks it would be bad to enter without permission. Fine, whatever, I just found this place out of order, let's deal with that guy.

The Gravity Catapult spits me back at Saturn. It's nice being back in Sol, going through all the old locations. Feels a lot more like there was actually something going on here as opposed to situational events. It's also nice taking out hostiles easily. Sure, they only give 400 a pop max, but they're like M&Ms. Unfortunately, all this stuff doesn't actually do anything for advancing the plot. I thought Mars had a dungeon I waited on, but I was wrong.

Since places I've been aren't cutting it, I decide I should check the outer part of the solar system, starting with Station 4. To remind you, had unkillable enemies back when I was confined to this system. I can take them now, but they were killable quite a while ago, judging by the 1000 payout. Sadly, this trip was entirely useless. But at least it's a good staging point before I go for Uranus. I've never seen it depicted in a video game before.

Why is there a ring around it? The inside is another one of those towns like Old New York, where you go on a series of one-way conveyors. Only there's nothing inside Uranus except trees and a fountain for some reason. No buildings whatsoever. Man, I went all the way out here for this? There was no point to this, not even a recharge station. Even the Comet Station, just a bit to the upper right, has a recharge station. Neptune, ditto. Pluto...

 

Is a town filled with hostiles? There's definitely some building at the end of this. I'm doing it out of order, but it isn't like the game's given me much of an option. These things are about par for me right now and give out 320 bucks a fight...which tells me absolutely nothing about anything. It's the usual stuff, secret walls, hidden goodies. I almost believe it's a dungeon when I spot a teleport, but I stick it out to find one building. A store, which sells a Gravity Gun 3 and a Converter 3. I buy the former.

To recap, I have just gone out of my way to explore the starting section and all I got for my trouble was what might be the best gun. It is useful, but I'm looking to advance the plot, not deal with enemies in a slightly less tedious manner for two planets before everything goes back to normal. That's a long trip back to the center of the system, and I do think I missed something back on Jupiter. The moon you can travel to via payment, rather than land on it. And I'm wrong, that's just another town.

And that's all we have this week. A whole lot of time spent accomplishing very little. Well, next week we'll see some dungeons on Sirius, so even if those are out of order I'm liable to find something of value to continue on.

This Session: 2 hours 50 minutes

Total Time: 24 hours 40 minutes