Live-a-Live #17 - Stabbing Eastward

The next character I go after is Kino, hiding in some bushes. Going to get the three characters I'm missing, and their weapons, then it's off to the final battle.

Of course, I have to duel Kino before he'll join, so Oboro proceeds to administer a brutal beat-down.

He echoes the word that his ape buddy said right before having a five-some with a bunch of lady-apes. The first word, I guess.

I need to send someone to the reserves to make room for Kino, and I choose Akira. He's the second-best healer, but he's a ways behind Cube in that department.

At this point I go after the most tedious character to get: Sunset. He hides all over the place, and you need to talk to him at each of his hidden locations. In order, too, since he only appears in one place at a time.

Some of them are in plain sight, but without a guide you wouldn't know where to look. It's a PITA.

Finally, he stops running and ends up joining us. Yeah, definitely choose this guy as the hero to begin with. I doubt Oboro is anywhere near this tedious to get.

Yun is much friendlier. He's found atop the mountain where Hash was once "buried". That should be all seven characters, by my count.

Hash's sword is here too. No one can use it, but it might have some other purpose...

Yun SHATTERS A BOULDER~! to reveal the Technique Dungeon, which is his.

Inside this dungeon, techniques are locked. It isn't too big of a deal, because it's another short dungeon.

At the end... the greatest nunchucks in all the land.

Yun is already a formidable fighter, and this only adds to it. A rare weapon that increases stats across the board.

Kino says his one word as he sniffs out the Instinct Dungeon. This is really close to the Technique Dungeon, and looks more or less identical to it.

Kino's final weapon. This one isn't quite up to the usual greatness of these weapons, because it actually lowers one stat and the increases elsewhere aren't huge. It's still an upgrade.

If you run away 100 times in this chapter, you encounter an optional uberboss.

Is this like the Reaper in Persona 3?

...not exactly. It's a big cat. This thing is on the same top-tier difficulty level as Yuraux.

His primary strategy is to use Petrify repeatedly, which can doom your party in a hurry. In my case, he continually petrified Oboro while I continually cured him. The battle is fast and furious.

Winning that fight gets me my second Ariel item. In retrospect I probably should have divided the Ariel items among my chosen final four, since putting them all on Oboro (who has similarly-strong Genji armor) was a waste of a lot of defense points. Though it did make Oboro impervious to everything spell-wise.

Next up is the Time Dungeon, found in the woods. You have a set amount of time to get through it before being attacked by an uberboss. Then again, since I WANT to get attacked by an uberboss, I intentionally run down the timer.

There's four of it, and it's supremely cocky.

This is another very difficult fight. Kino was my MVP here since he just learned his ultimate attack. It does heavy damage to one foe, at the cost of lowering his stats a bit for that battle. Winning gets me the third of the four Ariel armors, yada yada, moving on...

At the end of the Time Dungeon is Sunset's ultimate weapon. After you take down the uberboss, you can run around the dungeon freely with no time limit.

It's a fairly weak one upgrade-wise, but it's the best weapon for him. Had I chosen him as my main I would have probably gone to this dungeon first.

At this point, I need to figure out who my final four are. Akira and Masaru are probably the worst characters at this point due to the overall weakness of their attacks, so they're out. Oboro is well-rounded, while Yun/Sunset/Kino all have great damage output. Cube has the best heals, but his HP is pathetic... ultimately, I end up going with the party you see here. If I run into a wall and need heals desperately, I might drag Cube out of the mothballs.

Sunset has the highest damage-output of any character in the game, despite his lame ultimate weapon. At level 16 he gets his best attack (like all of the characters), and it's a random die-roll type attack. It can do anywhere from 1 to 999 damage, but the odds are NOT even across the board. It very rarely does low damage, usually hovering around 500 or higher. If you're lucky, it'll hit for 999 fairly often. Oboro/Yun/Kino all have strongest attacks that do around 300-400 damage consistently. The moral of this story is that you definitely want to get everyone to level 16 ASAP in this chapter.

The fourth and final Ariel item is in the possession of a giant fish... and for some reason, he wants a Golden Topknot. What does it all mean?

Luckily I've got one collecting dust with my copy of Tekken, my weed bowl, and the notorious GenjiSocks. If you're wondering why I have a Bloody Dress... the answer is the Huge Meatbone. It's all that's left of Alicia.

Once the giant fish realizes what a psychopath I am, he demands my soul.
-YEAH
-HELL NO

Wow, this fish has a foul mouth.

Uberboss fight! I guess this guy is the palette-swapped upgrade to the silver fish in Oboro's chapter.

Yun dishes out his ultimate attack, and I win without too much trouble. The real question is, what did a giant fish need with a hat to begin with?

Now I've got all four Ariel items, and Oboro is officially overpowered defensively.

The giant fish gets to keep his hat.

Wait, what the hell? Where'd that come from? The giant fish is a deity?

Oh, so he's more like Gollum. Lurking down here in a murky cave until the end of time. Since he's a giant fish, does he catch and eat Gollums instead?

FINALLY, I've gotten every character, every weapon, every armor, and every level 16 attack. Time to go back to the Demon King's Lair, where our heroes see the statue room for the first time.

NEXT TIME ON LIVE-A-LIVE: The grand finale. This is one long game! Wonder where it would have fit in with the other Super NES RPGs of the mid-90's had it been released in the States.

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