In Progress Lets Play: Shining in the Darkness

[Damned Registrations]

Update time! This one is a bit short, I still want people to have a bit of time to guess at the wall, so I stopped just before going past it.

Some parts of this trial have insanely long moss paths. Like, over 10+ tiles. And you generally need to backtrack out of them too.

Minotaurs reveal the reason they exist.

Of course, this isn't actually that much of a threat for us at this point.

Precious jewgolds!

Really buddy? You wanna dance?

Eat mindfuck!

Ugh.

Well it's not like he can hurt us this time around. Our armor is insane on everyone but Pyra, and Pyra gets ^ that from Quick.

Ok, he hurts a little bit. But this is still basically a joke compared to when we first encountered one of these.

Level 2 doesn't work any better than level 1, but Pyra had nothing better to do really.

New enemy, but doesn't do anything special.

Well, aside from hitting hard enough to break the 2 point milestone on Codex and Milo.

Another one? I guess they really wanted us to find one even if we didn't explore thoroughly. Or they wanted to give out special weapons but didn't bother to make any others this cheap.

At this point I realize I forgot to sell shit. Oops. Milo doesn't really need 2 unused helms in inventory.

More free money, but now our inventory is basically full.

We ditch a depoison and pick this up before warping out to sell. We were at a long deadend anyways.

Aside from the one you sold us and the one in your stock right now?

Yeah, you do that.

Not quite enough gold for that shield even. It was a short trip since I forgot to sell stuff.

Not taking chances this time around.

Eat magic fuckers!

Cool.

Also cool.

We'll explore a bit more first. I at least want to finish exploring this 'half' of the dungeon, accessed through the west bronze door. Though I don't think we'll bother coming back for the other half right away, we'll just finish mapping it out when we get the key for that gate thing.

Gah, more of this shit. And it just ends in a loop too.

This is what the ingame map gives me. It turns out the two 'halves' were actually connected. Because it only maps squares you've stepped on, it makes navigation using only this rather tricky, since a lot of landmarks like water basins or sidepaths you didn't poke your head into get left off. Also, spaces with chests will always be blank, we makes the length of some corridors misleading.

Well, we actually finished this place.

Gold is up there. We can get the thornwhip when we get back.

Cool, sleep effects every enemy, not just one group.

Or at least it tries to. Hit rate is still terrible.

Bleh.

Yes Ma'am!

The bloom! It is blinding!

Much better.

Gotta love Egress.

Hopefully he wasn't one of those skeleton things we killed. Or a minotaur.

We can only hope.

Not a very large attack boost for such a pricey weapon. Only 5 points above the staff.

XP requirements climbing pretty damned high. Well, we can fight new enemies soon, so that should help.

2+2 is indeed 4. Thank you for elucidating this point, court mage Melvyl. Your expertise is invaluable.

Why don't we just bring in like, a wrecking crew or something? All the monsters on the first floor are pussies anyways. Then we could get rid of those stupid walls and doors in the way.

Well, fortunately we already have that.

Why do you know it's general location? Whatever.

If you weren't a dick you might say 'alive' instead.

New whip hits a bit harder, but I don't see the point for-

Sweet jesus it hit them both! Apparently it targets whole groups at once. Will be extremely helpful. Though it also makes all those low level spells kinda extremely pointless.

Hmm, this wall is shaped oddly.

And it's the wrong colour.

And it's pulsing.

Nothing to see here, move along!

New and final CoC map:

Last chance for a cookie if anyone wants to guess where we found the wall.

 

[Gragt]

Time for Grimwall.

 

[Yeesh]

I ain't guessing. But I look forward to more visceral action sequences and wrenching drama.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Played a bit further. Next update going to be interesting. Game is starting to get all serious on me. No more of this waltzing through half a floor unscathed crap.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

With an IQ of 8, I suppose that explains why we can't speak and aren't trusted with enough money to buy a decent set of clothes, let alone armor and weapons.

IIRC, the IQ scale requires a minimum IQ of 11 to be able to breathe without assistance.

Translation: Codex was stillborn, yet somehow survived.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Update time!

Dun-dun-dun!

I remember being so freaked out by the bosses being animated back when I first played this.

Hmm, is he going to crawl out?

Nope.

Slow really does a number on him.

Well on his defense anyways. Holy fuck @ that attack power.

Ugh, this could be ugly.

Jesus.

Would have been nice if that had been cast BEFORE she got hit. Even after the slow landing, Milo is slower than the wall.

At least we can hit it pretty hard.

Heal 2 really does the trick well.

Wow, that was over fast. This thing has really low hp. Mind you, if our attack were a bit lower (Like if we had a normal shield + normal sword instead of longsword) that could have taken like, 3 times as long. Worse if we didn't use slow.

But now the way is clear!

Holy shit thats a lot of birds. Exactly what Sleep 2 is for, I think.

Nice payoffs from such battles though.

New enemies.

This counts as defending for them. Also, annoyingly, even if we attack before they move, their defense bonus is in affect from the start of the round anyways.

Minotaurs and Cockshrooms hitting ass and leg oh god it's actually doing small amounts of damage.

Cool. Now he can just cast it once at the begining of fights whre we want it.

We'll take more than one trip to finish the trial, so I don't bother backtracking for missed routes. We'll check them out on our next trek in.

It's go time!

That whip is really coming in handy. She can't kill any of the birds on the first round, but on the second they'll all be dead before they can move anyways.

New guys hit hard and don't die easily. Only Codex can one shot them.

Aw fuck. We run into an animated puddle almost right away, and it's a new enemy.

We aren't exactly in top shape either, I should have healed us up better.

Of course it's immune to slow.

This can't be good, considering how much those slugs did with firebreath.

Yeah this is definitely not good.

Even if the defense bonus isn't massive, it'll help, and having us all go faster will help us get turns earlier than this evil fucker.

Codex hits hard, thoguh this is definitely the toughest enemy so far.

Oh man thats so much better. I had Pyra heal Milo too.

Double turn after using that frost breath crap? Holy unfair shit batman!

Hopefully it has low hp. It's just a puddle monster after all, it can't be THAT strong. It must be like a bursty mage type monster.

Super effective!

Or, not.

Son of a fuck.

Well, it's now or never.

That is a lot of xp. Pity Milo didn't get any of it.

At least revival costs are trivial now. Though it sure sucks having to leave so shortly into our excursion, we hardly made any cash at all.

This fucker is back. We demolish it quickly.

Ugh, the side path turns out to be a pointless mess of moss. At least we know to just avoid it in the future.

Defense buffing the mushrooms... really? Douchebag cowmen.

New and improved trolls kick for double digit damage.

These guys don't even go down when Codex hits them if they're defending. So annoying. Oh, and the bats can poison us.

New map tile!

Stepping onto mysterious objects is my specialty.

:hurl:

Incredibly awesome graphics go!

Luckily, they always spin us around the same amount in the same direction. Though, since we always step off facing forwards, we can change where we get spit out by walking onto them backwards.

Milo needs an upgrade so he can one shot these fuckers.

Also an armor upgrade maybe.

New enemies are showing up in large numbers already too. Quite annoying.

Oh, and in case you figured we could just leave the stupid mushrooms for last since all they do is defend: Nope.

Nice cash bonus.

I think this was damage from a bolt spell. Fuckers are highly resistant. Whip does about as much, even if they're defending.

Gah, 3 enemies types, 2 of each, and they all do some kind of annoying shit. 10 damage may not seem like a lot, but it adds up after a few turns, and-

Crits speed that up a lot.

Another crit in the same fight. Fuckers are lucky I guess.

At least it isn't a game over, since sleep wears off during battle.

But they're sure making shit difficult.

Thank god for powerful healing.

5 at once? Time to break out the doomspells.

Cha-ching!

Best. Level up. EVER.

Rather expensive spell.

But oh man, the effect is nice. No random encounters for quite a while.

But it wears off eventually. We can't spam it too much, we don't want to fall too far behind in xp, or be out of magic and run into a boss or mimic or something.

Like one of these fuckers.

Eat fire!

Considering that that is probably at least a group target spell, thats not too shabby for 8 MP.

Fucker.

Things went much better this time. Though now our MP is really low.

Oh shit. We only have enoguh for 1 strong heal spell. Hopefully he doesn't start spamming ice breath.

I have Milo and Pyra defend.

Luckily, not only does he not use ice breath, he only attacks once per turn, mostly at Milo/Pyra.

We got through relatively unscathed.

But it's edefinitely time to bail, so low on MP.

Fuck, we made way more on our last trip through the trial of courage. The fights are so hard the extra gold isn't making up the difference at all.

Though we did make enough for one sweet upgrade.

This puts Pyra way ahead of the other two. They both have ~80 armor still. Of course, she has less HP to work with.
New Labyrinth map! No cookies for anyone!

And our new trial map, the Cave of Truth:

Fuck thats a lot of unexplored paths.

 

[Yeesh]

Ok, the fact that a sentient wall with arms and gaping mouths in its hands poses far less of a challenge than a fucking seahorse is a bit weak. And I don't know why the developers thought simple (and even wooden) weapons and armor should be worth three and four digits of gold; that would be kind of like if in Jagged Alliance your average Beretta cost 1.8 million dollars. For no reason.

But still I look forward to more.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, the wall being that easy was partly my experience knowing what the best shit to buy is, (I could have gone for more armor instead of more offense and been pretty fucked). Also, that was the earliest possible place to run into the seahorse thing. Kinda shitty luck there, normally we'd encounter it a bit later on in the cave after gaining some levels (and hopefully not while low on hp like a moron.)

The other thing is, the wall respawns, so making it super hard would be rather annoying. Though making it not respawn would be nicer, maybe it was just easier to program this way? I dunno.

As for item prices... I have no fucking idea. Translation error maybe? I hope? Though even then, the relative costs are insane. Why the fuck would a cloth hood cost more than a knife? Why is a bronze saber 300 gold while a bronze helm is 1200, even though a sabre would be way harder to forge properly?

Anyways, time to get back to dungeon crawling. Unfair bullshit awaits.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Seahorses are badass.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Update time!

5 of this bastards in a single row. All one group though, so it's time for some burninating.

Way more effective than Bolt was.

A blast finishes them off afterwards.

New enemies. They don't seem to do much though. Well, aside from look creepy.

Burn burn! Mwahahaha!

Holy shit that was effective. Spell is better than I though.

OMGWTFBBQ!

Well lets give it a shot. Though I wish Codex had been at full hp when we started this.

Of course slow doesn't work. /sigh

Quick 2 does though.

Well, thats not too terribly bad.

Neither is that.

Feel the wrath of ultimate arcane power!

Or not.

Maybe it's an elemental thing?

Gah.

Well, it never did much anyways, so yay for us.

Even one round of this shit is pretty expensive MP wise.

New enemies. They don't seem to do much though.

Except drop awesome rewards.

Gold piling up a little again, though our MP is suffering a lot.

Every last enemy down here gets past our armor. It's rather annoying. Also, these guys defend once in a while, like the mushrooms but less often.

Sometimes the whip attack deals no damage, even against enemies that don't have that trait otherwise. I guess it's to balance it out a bit.

Another new enemy that doesn't seem to do much.

Did I say doesn't seem to do much? They actually use paralysis powder.

You'd think that would be the least useful way to use them...

But apparently it works.

Oh fuck off.

Seriously.

We won the fight though, and cured paralysis after. But we're basically out of MP now. I just want to cruise a few more tiles under the Peace effect before we leave.

Ahhhh.

Wat. We haven't moved anywhere.

Probably a dumb idea, but we go some healing items anyways, and the last ghost wasn't a big problem.

Vision reveals:

Thats not actually a spell is it? You're a dick Milo.

All rested up, time to head back into the dungeon.

More of these fuckers. You know what I found out? Not only can they also put you to sleep by hitting you instead of using the powder, they can also paralyze you somehow, though they only do it rarely. Of course, thats still dangerous as fuck if we're all asleep. Gah. Large groups get spellbombed from now on.

These guys too.

Though we only need 1 spell for them.

Apparently these guys can do something special.

Enemy sprites normally flip back and forth while attacking.

These guys do that more slowly while also swaying around when they attack together.

Ow. At least it was only 2 of them.

A large group, so I try to Muddle them, hoping it breaks up their unity.

Not one affected.

Urk. 40 damage. Maybe it's 10 per enemy and ignores armor? We mop them up anyways.

Enemies down here are just such a pain in the ass it's not worth it to fight them all.

Oh shit. I guess they CAN cast something special.

3 guesses as to what that might have done if it connected.

I like me some silence. Though our MP is getting low now.

Cool, we actually needed that since I forgot to replace the ones I used.

That arrow is a bad arrow.

Fuckers!

This area is huge and open.

Like, seriously massive area.

Or at least it seems to be.

BAM!

I tried to screencap them as they come down from the ceiling.

But it's really fast.

Anyways, things aren't as open as they seem.

New enemies.

This seems like a fairly obvious precaution.

100% hit rate. I guess they're weak against it? Nice.

I guess they're also casting pussy spells to be kind. I imagine the next pallete swap of these guys won't be so easy on us.

Hehe.

Sweet jesus that level up is as ncie as Pyra's was.

Expensive as fuck, but damn that'll come in handy. Especially if shit is going to be casting 'Desoul'.

Oh wow.

Time to try this baby out.

No targetting required, just like the first level.

Damage is't amazing, but they got softened up by Pyra first. Nice for a screen wide attack anyways.

Oh fuck off. Almost out of MP after I DETOX that off Pyra.

New enemies!

These fuckers are tough.

And they cast Quick on themselves.

And they hit fucking hard.

Though Pyra has much better defense.

Bring it on fucker! I ain't afraid of no ghost!

Desoul this bitch!

Oh you asshole.

Ow.

Hah!

OW.

I heal up so I can explore just a few more steps to avoid backtracking on the next trip.

Seems like a Heal 2 effect. Not bad.

Time to bail.

May as well, we're fucking rich again and the armor upgrades don't seem that worthwhile.

I sell off the key to make room. We can buy it back later if we need it.

Armor upgrade for Milo.

Hell yes.

Also increases our AWESOME factor by 30. Looks way cooler than that shit he had before.

No shit.

:facepalm: Why don't we have a facepalm emoticon?

Well I hope so. I think this is supposed to be a hint that it can be used in battle.

Well that would suck.

Now we check out the hood.

New map: Getting close to finished here, unless there's another floor. But fuck it takes forever to get to that room. I'd kill for a teleport spell to hop through walls.

 

[lightbane]

So, the main character is utterly bad at magic and stays that way until the endgame? That's almost original for a jrpg, incredible. Also, cool update.

 

[Crooked Bee]

"Desoul", hah.

 

[spekkio]

Still monitoring.

BTW, I remember how surprised I was when I fired up 'Shining the Holy Ark' for Sega Saturn and instead of top-down jRPG, I got this:

 

[Brother None]

Whoah, so desoul really is an insta-kill if it connects? Seems a bit overpowered to give the enemy, unless it has a low hit rate I suppose.

PS: Sea horses are fucking pimps.

 

[Yeesh]

I prefer to call it de la soul.

 

[procrastinator]

Well, I've started reading this LP after all and I must say it's p. enjoyable.

 

[Gragt]

Played FF1 and now in FF2, and enemies have an arsenal of a few insta-death abilities, some of which target the whole party.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Update time!

Probably not the most ideal time to try a new item, but eh, whatever. Whatever magical property it has must be passive.

Pyra got paralyzed by... something here. I think it was a bird. Must be a pretty small chance.

Andyman nearly kicked our asses again.

But HEAL to the rescue.

We sent him back to work on his LP skills some more.

Oh noes! This only lasts until the end of the battle so we don't give a fuck.

All those falling walls are gone now.

Also, this works now. Must be related to how much MP Pyra has left when she casts it.

Annoying shit.

Nice!

Decent boost for Milo considering it's free.

These guys aren't quite as scary now, I had Milo cast a level 2 Quick so they can barely scratch us. I thought of having Pyra slow them too, but they can quick themselves out of it anyways.

Oh wow, this was early. But... theres still a chunk of dungeon left, and I didn't find any other paths...

Uh huh. This one is just a wall.

Or at least it wants to be just a wall.

LOL. Thats a lot of weaklings that drop a lot of loot.

Fuckers can cast damaging spells!

Well, Blast 1 isn't that strong anyways, and they only cast it a couple times.

Huh?

Our waifu!

It's me! The only guy in the kingdom that doesn't suck!

You are the princess right?

Errr... right.

And you know this how?

Why do we even know it's a false idol anyways? As opposed to what? An idol of an angel?

Doubles as X-Ray vision. She has frilly pink panties on.

Cool, a glory hole!

Oh wait, something about an idol right?

Yeah this seems like a totally good idea.

Fuck you sentient eggplant people!

Man we get a lot of XP these days.

So, you want to head back to the inn, or?

Oh no!

Damn Kaiserin is RIPPED.

Fortunately, I healed up to full and we still have a decent amount of MP left. I think I actually died here the first time I played.

Ah, the ridiculous OP Slow spell. Where would I be without you.

Hitting for about 30 less damage a turn and moving after the boss thats where.

More OP advantage for us.

Even with Slow cast this guy is damned tough. If I didn't cast it he'd probably only be getting hurt by spells.

Though he seems to get fucked up by spells pretty easily.

BAM! I wonder if muddle lowered his defense further. 27 > 46 damage is a pretty big jump. Wait, maybe he defended in that first round. I kinda forget.

Ow.

Well, at least he was harder than the sea horses. By a bit.

*Insert Zelda item GET theme here*

Milo is a boundless fountain of knowledge as ever.

Makes a great center piece for your dinner table too!

MOAR LOOT MUST HAVE.

Lets try this puppy out.

Well fuck. Should have asked for a demo first.

Armor is a good thing.

This effect actually lasts for the whole battle, though only for Pyra. I guess thats why it's a one shot deal- this could really turn a major fight around where spells are an issue.

Nice. Although.... Heal 2 was kind of good enough as is.

And that is a huge cost increase.

Nice!

Oh wow. Not for our puny arms apparently.

Specially attuned to fat balding ugly people. I gotcha.

Ah well.

Only a minor upgrade, but still, any upgrade at all is nice.

One trial left kiddies.

How the FUCK does he know this shit?

Ah, so it's a stone door and not an iron one.

Those were men? I thought they were little girly children pussy bitches. *Flex*

Why are we trying to rescue the princess anyways? This girl looks cuter anyways, if that doppelganger was any good at his job.

Royal magician continues to prove that he can, in fact, count. Hopefully he won't run out of fingers and have a mental breakdown.

I haven't checked the stats recently, but I think we're all Clevian ubermench when it comes to mental capacities now.

As opposed to the other 3 caves littered with traps?

That would be really helpful if we weren't making an insanely comprehensive map anyways.

Fuck you, we need a shortcut.

May as well since we're here. No dice though.

How is this a runic door anyways? It's just a pallete swap of the bronze door. And why is stone harder to open than bronze?

Ok ok MAGIC stone. Whatever.

Shocking! There wasn't exactly room for a winding path to get here.

The final cave.

Lets try this out. Still single target. /sigh

We'll need bigger injuries to test the limits of this spell. I'm sure we'll get a chance eventually.

Huh, we found this thing quickly.

Figures.

New enemies!

Flammable ones!

Hmm, if there are stairs down, then there's probably...

Well, now they're hidden pits. That's new. Though hardly unexpected.

New fuckers hit hard.

But so does Milo.

This guys spray us with their sticky goo.

Oh course Pyra can't help herself. It wears off after the fight though.

These guys are pretty stupid, healing uninjured teammates on a surprise round.

New maps!

Labyrinth:

Cave of Wisdom:

Finished Cave of Truth:

 

[Yeesh]

Remember: use your head!

 

[Brother None]

This game probably has the most useless identify spell in history. "Identify", more like "troll me now".

 

[Damned Registrations]

There's even a few items that didn't get programmed/translated properly and give you flat out wrong descriptions.

Played even more. Next update gonna be another big one. I'll need to trim my screenshots first. I took 220~ this session. A bunch of those are spamming to grab specific frames I'll need to cut out, but it was a really long and eventful session too.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Also, hidden pits.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Also, we really need a new page.

 

[Damned Registrations]

New page would definitely help.

Also, I should probably have marked the hidden pits differently than the normal ones, but eh, whatever.

Another thing I forgot to mention: The mirror is 'shattered' but it's still in our inventory. The shattered message means it'll be gone the next time you use it, I think. I'm pretty sure there's some way to repair the items when they're broken but not completely destroyed, but I forget.

 

[Kz3r0]

Also, we really need a new page.