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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 6, 2016 9:04:23 GMT -5
It's episode 17, baybeh! Yin was out exploring all sorts of places yesterday, and it'll be more of the same today. Caught a bunch of new puppets, and there will probably more in this episode as well. Hopefully the other areas won't take as much time to explore so Yin can progress with the story next episode instead of exploring some more (though the latter is fun as well). Let's Play Touhoumon episode 17: In which Yin wanders around some more/hey, this thread has reached page 2! Yin needs to go back to Marisa's house to heal, or perhaps even the Scarlet Devil Mansion to switch up some teams. Flandre and Eirin are already super strong, so it's probably for the best to replace them for now and try out new puppets. ...so why is Yin at the human village, you ask? What else, of course, but to sell items and get MORE COSTUMES! YEAH! First things first, though: the team. Eirin and Flan, and perhaps Patchouli will take a break from the lineup. So I removed Flan, Eirin, and Patchy from the team. Replacing the little sister is the elder one, Remilia. Trained this one a bit, but not enough for a style change. The two new recruits for the team is Eiki and Yukari - Yukari I might not use too much as she's apparently has the highest stats near the end when you add all the stats up. Also, most of the puppets based on human characters - such as Akyuu, Kosuzu, Renko, etc, have the lowest total stats out there. Even style change would give them barely any boosts in stats. One day I may try playing a game with low-power puppets only for a challenge, probably not an LP though. Also, the puppet Orange, despite being a youkai, caught quite a while ago, has atrocious focus attack and defense, and barely mediocre spread attack. Anyways, costume time. A fancy dress for Iku. Komachi trades her scythe for an oar and some sort of boat hat. She's a ferryman for the sanzu river, and generally a scythe or an oar suits her. Canon-wise she has a scythe with a weird curvy blade. Some fancier robes for Eiki to befit her status as a judge of the afterlife. Kinda prefer her original clothes though. Yukari gets her costume from the fighting games. She has her whole body out in the expansion pack of this game, I recall. Bought several more healing items after unloading some more goods to sell. After that, it's time to go back the the Forest of Magic via the Genbu Ravine. Avoiding the stuff that can probably be accessible by boat in and around the human village. That's for later. Best to explore the entirety (so far) of the forest since that seems to be the largest area to tackle. So entering the forest via the side in the ravine, and heading all the way down southeast will lead to this area. Following the path by water or by foot will lead to a trainer, and past her in the mud is skill card 31. It gives the move poisoned arrow, poison type, focus power, and a damage of 80. Has a good chance of scoring crits and has a 10% chance of poisoning the opponent. None of the puppets in my team are able to learn it. Continuing by boat, Yin soon finds out that the way is blocked by rocks in the river. Hm, this area is shorter than expected. Going back to the previous area and heading west from there will lead to a bridge down to another area. On those bridges with high railings or raised bridges, Yin can't use the boat to get in or out of the water. Ghost NPCs have their tongue sticking out. Such is the nature of Japanese ghosts, I guess... though when two of them are facing each other it looks kind of... naughty. Out of curiosity, I used up all of Iku's PP for her to add thunder in her moveset. It's pretty much a first priority move, and using it on an opponent... causes them to flinch. That's all. Like, no damage or anything. Since it only has 1 SP, it can only be used once and it can't be used again unless Yin goes to a rest house. Man, what a rip off! Also, the two ghosts with their tongue sticking out are female. HOW OBSCENE (let me go get a video camera...)! From those two ghosts, the path west leads back to the forest that leads to the ravine, and there's two paths available for Yin to go: south via using the boat, and east by going by foot/bike. Going east, Yin finds some mushroom powder hidden in a log. It's just another item to sell, I think. One fairy talks about throwing away a strange book that they found... could be interesting. Anyways, new puppets in the area and it's time to catch 'em all! The seal thread still works fine even on rare puppets, though it often fails to do so recently. Still, if you can KO the puppet in one hit after sealing them, it's as good as any seal. Going west from the two fairies will lead to the other side of the pool where the two ghosts are across on the other side. So that puppet Mai has a skill called water dance (Kokoro has it as well) which turns the foe into water type. Doesn't seem like a good move for a lone puppet who only has water moves. Normal Komachi has the ability to be healed by water moves, but loses it in power-style. Anyway, after the fight, Yukari reaches level 30. Power or defense style for Yukari, and both offer some rather solid choices. Power increases spread attack by a lot, around or equal to Flan level, while defense style gives her a big boost in both focus and spread defense. Defense changes her void type to dark though, making her more vulnerable to more types. For that reason, I go with power style for her. That's when I realize with horror that her ability changed into something troublesome... cutting both speed and her spread attack in half for five turns... that's gonna be tricky to use, and there's no alternate ability for Yukari to choose. I guess this is why the total stats of power Yukari is the highest in the game. She learns gravity blast; illusion type, spread power, damage of 120, and damage increases the higher the opponent's hp is. So does that mean if hit points are closer to full, or if their hit points are higher than Yukari? Also, a slight correction on Mamizou's ability. Hobgoblin makes her look like the puppet in the position above her, not the puppet previously used during the battle. Like, I have Yukari in front, while Komachi is in the fifth position and Mamizou as sixth; if I switch out Yukari with Mamizou, Mamizou will come out looking like Komachi, not Yukari. Anyway, more mushroom powder to sell in the future. Yukari's ability kicks in the moment she enters the field... though gravity blast still does a lot of damage. Take note that the move wasn't very effective on Komachi to begin with, despite taking out a decent amount of hit points. It'll do lower damage the less hp Komachi has, most likely due to the effect of the move, but still, it's probably a lot more powerful once Yukari's ability stops with its effects. That trainer fight dropped three magic crystals - 10k each. More items! It's also enough to make Remilia level 30, and a few fights in the tall grass later Eiki is also ready for style change. (Komachi learns a new move upon reaching level 36. Cruciform, void type, focus power, 50 damage, and it will attack twice in one turn. Void type if a bit iffy as no one is weak against void while some are even strong or immune to it, but at the same time will do decent damage as Komachi's ability will increase the attack power of moves below 60 damage by 1.5.) Went with power style for Eiki. Defense could be nice, but her HP stat potential is rock bottom low, so she's not gonna function well as a tank, so might as well make her focus on stronger attacks instead. This is probably the reason why my puppets easily get KOed sometimes, with me not caring for defense too much. At the moment, with all my puppets considered, assist style Eirin is the most tank-like thanks to okay defense and the highest hit points in the group. She learns several moves from style changing. Exploding knuckle, fighting type, focus power, 100 damage, which confuses the opponent but not very accurate. Atomic energy, light type, focus power, 75 damage and drains hp by half the damage it does. Strike shot, fighting type, focus power, 40 damage and hits first, and panic call which Flan has. She also learns reflection mirror which returns damage x 1.5. Remilia can choose between power and speed. Going with speed style for her. Power boosts both focus and spread attack, while speed style boosts spread attack only while giving her a bigger speed boost. Both her spread and focus attack isn't as impressive as her little sister, though speed style somewhat makes Remilia more resilient. She changes type from dark and wind to dark and fighting, and she keeps the same abilities which isn't very impressive. Her current ability raises her evasion during fog weather, and the other increases dark type attacks when she's less than 1/3rd health. The move she learns is concussion; fighting type, spread move, 80 damage with a 20% chance for an opponent to flinch. Can be useful due to her high speed. Back to wandering in the forest, Yin finds repetitive arts. It's a book (perhaps the one that fairy was talking about) that if held will increase the damage of a move as it gets repeated in battle. Yin also comes across a big tree in the forest where she finds yet another mushroom powder. In canon, this was the tree that the three fairies of light lived in (one of the fairies nearby mentions it as well), though they later moved into another tree close to the Hakurei shrine. Heading southeast from the big tree ends in a pool of water with skill card 68 in the area. Water type status effect which inflicts weakness on the opponent. South of there has a curing charm which heals 20 hp if held... tried it but it doesn't seem to work. Anyhoo, from where the charm is found Yin takes the boat out for a ride. Going north is a dead end, so she heads east. Still no puppet encounters in the water, which is quite peaceful. The stream continues east, but there's a way south on foot around the middle of the pool, so I stop there and check it out. The path leads south, then east, then north until Yin reaches a fork in the road. Northeast leads to the item vat of poison, which heals puppets if they're poison type, otherwise it damages them. North has a dead end with skill card 47, which has mist fog; nature type, spread power, 95 damage and has a 10% chance to lower the opponent's special attack. Eiki is able to learn the move, and I remove exploding knuckle as the low accuracy doesn't make it too handy (though her spread attack is 30 points lower than her focus attack despite having the same potential for it). Back to the boat, Yin heads east and finds... another dead end. Seems like the end of the line. Also, from where the stream starts you can see some tall grass up in the top-right corner. I suspect that that's the the side of the forest in the area south of the forest area where Alice's house is located, found early on the game. That said, the forest from the Genbu Ravine is more or less complete! Hooray for that, and there's probably no reason to visit this place for a long time until the story makes us pay a visit here. All that's left is to check the Forest of Magic on Alice's side... though I reckon I'll do that later. For now, it's time to explore other areas! Of course, the Forest of Magic (Marisa's side) has puppets that were caught. Alice, and the three fairies of light can be encountered in the place, and last episode I mentioned catching Ellen, but there's a few more I caught in this episode. Marisa Kirisame. The other main character of the series, second only to Reimu. Started off in the second game as a boss, and afterwards she became one of the other player characters since then. Some games will feature other characters as playable but Reimu and Marisa are almost always the two you can choose to play as - not counting some of the side games which center around one character (Cirno, Aya, Seija). Her somewhat tomboyish personality often ends up with her pairing with lots of people fandom-wise; Alice, Patchouli, Reimu to name a few. Light/electric type. Rikako Asakura. Playable/opponent in Touhou 3. The lab coat and glasses is a thumbs up for me! Water and electric type. Yuki. One of the Stage 4 bosses in Touhou 5. Yuki kinda looks like Marisa; back in the PC-98 era Marisa's appearance is completely different from her Windows era incarnation. Yuki's PC-98 portrait really looks like Marisa of the Windows era. Fire type. Mai. The other stage 4 boss in Touhou 5. Friend of Yuki. Water type. Well, with that section of the forest explored, Yin shall then go to the human village and explore the areas surrounding it until there's nothing left. Exiting the forest and into the ravine, then heading to the Misty Lake (which has to be explored later), and into Route 5. There's a stream of water near the entrance/exit of this route that leads nowhere except close the human village. A handy shortcut. Once at the human village Yin will heal the team up, but the main purpose of the next step of exploring is going all the way to the start at the Hakurei shrine. Suika the oni in the backwoods of the shrine is still big and asleep, but there's one thing I wanted to check out in this shrine. At the left side there's a small pool of water with a large turtle is there just chillin out. He's Genji, Reimu's pet flying turtle. He's the one Reimu uses to fly around in during the PC-98 era, while in the Windows era Reimu can fly on her own (plus Genji hasn't made an apperance yet). Talking to him... does nothing. He's asleep, so going here is a bust. Sanae is no longer in the shrine, and she's probably back in the Moriya shrine up on the Youkai Mountain. The journey here isn't a complete bust, as there's a pond near the route 1 rest house. Going by boat reveals some areas of land with tall grass (with the same low-level puppets in the area), and some items. A bandage (held item which increases healing amount of drain attacks)... and that's about it. There's a waterfall in the area that can't be passed through by the boat, so probably something for later. Another area in route 1 accessed via boat has skill card 62 - ultra high tone, sound type, spread power, 100 damage and 10% chance of raising all stats. No one in the team is able to learn it - in general sound types are the only ones who can learn sound moves so far. All the other types have moves that can be learned by puppets who don't have that certain type. No one in the team can learn it. Next stop - Eientei. On the way there is Route 3, the Myouren temple, and Route 4. Route 3 has two pools of water to boat through, one has a non-trainer NPC, and the other has a sturdy rope (increases length of binding moves when held). Across the pool of the Myouren temple is skill card 32: vacuum rupture fist, fighting type, focus power, damage 150 but user won't be able to move on the next turn. Route 4 has skill card 49, chrome ray, accessed by boat. Steel type, spread type, damage 90 and is unaffected by stat changes of foe. Komachi can learn it... but she's focus attack oriented, and her spread attack is rather low. Skill card 15, tumble plant, can also be found in the map. Nature type, focus move, damage depends on the cost of the enemy puppet. Similar to clearing mist, except that skill's damage is dependent of the opponent's cost compared to the one using it. Mamizou can learn it. Could be handy in boss battles if the boss uses high-cost puppets and is weak against nature type moves. Yin also buys several items from the peddler in the route 4 rest house. Checking Eientei and the area in the bamboo forest where the Yorihime, Toyohime, and Reisen II puppets can be found... is nothing. Well, that's it for that section of the map! All that's left is Route 5, the Forest of Magic on Alice's side, and the Misty Lake. After that, the next episode will be Yin continuing her journey to the top of the Youkai Mountain where the Moriya Shrine is. I vaguely remember finding this place super early on in the game. Can't be accessed yet, so it'll be something for another time. Exploring the boat-accessible areas of Route 5 Yin finds a fate thread and a fourth prismatic candy. Nothing to really say at this point as this is basically just an item hunt. Now, on the Forest of Magic on Alice's side, I make Yin go immediately in the south area to confirm something. So yeah, this one is one of the last areas Yin explored in Marisa's side of the forest, but can't be used as a shortcut to go from one side to the other because of the rocks in the way. Back on the central area, there's a new trainer to fight by using the boat and skill card 58, poison bomb. Poison type, spread power, damage 95 with a 10% chance to poison opponent. Eiki can learn the skill. Alice has nothing new to say, and that's it for her side of the forest. Finally, all that's left is the Misty Lake. As it turns out, the lake is just one big body of water with nothing to find. Oh well. ...or so I thought, as wandering around the lake Yin finds a cave somewhere around the middle. Man, it's been a rather long episode, but I'm gonna finish this. Want Yin to continue on with her rather aimless journey to the main storyline than make a short next episode about aimless wandering in other areas. Well, the ice floor causes puppet encoun- aw, crap, one of those ice block puzzles. After some trial and error, I manage to reach the other side with the item, another skill card lying there. Skill card 76 is behind you! A nether type status attack that causes the fear status effect on the opponent. There's a large piece of ice in the way, and Yin can't pass through it. Most of the puppets here have been caught already; Cirno, Yuki, and Mai. Only one is new. Letty Whiterock. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 7. Fanon often depicts her as a big-sis type to Cirno, though canon-wise that's not quite the case. With the lower levels of the ice cavern level inaccessible, I think it's safe to say that this episode is done... Well, whew, it is. Everything so far that can be accessed by boat, has been explored. Puppets were caught, puppets were found and trained, and a decent amount of puppet-warding talismans have been used near the end. Been a long ride, and all that's left for Yin looms on top of the mountain: the Moriya Shrine. Next episode we set foot in new ground! Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 7, 2016 8:45:05 GMT -5
Aw, yeah! Time for the next episode! Episode 18 - Onwards! During the past two episodes, Yin has finished exploring all the previously visited areas and using the boat to access places that she couldn't have accessed before. Now, it's time for her to continue on with the story. Nitori the kappa advised her to visit the Moriya Shrine on top of the Youkai Mountain to pray for some luck on her journey. Now, before we get that done, it's time to switch two puppets and replace them with some new additions! At the same time, Yin went to the human village to get new costumes for the new team members. First, replacing Komachi, is Rikako. She trades away her lab coat for something more business suit like. I still dig it. Mamizou gets back in the box with Marisa taking her place. Her alt color looks very un-Marisa-like. So pink. Her alt costume is a lot more like her PC-98 incarnation. Marisa's level 25 and Rikako is level 27, so they'll get some training on the way to the Moriya Shrine. Again, I might end up shooting myself on the foot if I keep switching out puppets like this. Last time Remi's strongest puppet was a level 40 power-style Remilia, and next time the boss may send out a level 50... ah well, so far Yin has managed to eke out a win anyway! Off to the mountains! And we're off to the mountains! At the entrance of the Genbu Ravine Yin can take the boat across the water to get the recovery item Sun Fruit Jam. Further the river is skill card 9, furious recitation. Void type, focus power, damage 100, and no special effects. A plain attack; damaging, but due to being void type it's not gonna be super effective against anything - though some abilities do change void-type into a different type. Seems like the entire team can learn it. There's three caves Yin can access. The one at the left is the way to the kappa hideout, which is the one Yin will check out first. Where the kappa that will take Yin to the hideout is, there's a pool of water that could lead to somewhere else. Also, before the two caves are reached, the third cave can be found south of said two caves in an area that can only be accessed by boat. Taking the boat in the underground river and ending up in a path on the other side. Some trainers around and puppets that Yin has already caught. My general guess is that this path will eventually lead to the other entrance of the cave, which would be nice as there would be less exploring to do. Soon enough my guess is confirmed as there's a ladder that leads upwards, and heading south from there leads to the exit of the cave. Heading north leads to a dead end. There's some area to explore past the second cave, but Yin will be exploring the third one first. Iku learns a new move; geyser, water type, spread power, 60 damage, and will always crit. I use it to replace her generally useless thunder move. Rikako is doing somewhat fine, though she's kinda squishy on the hit points and defense. Even attacks not effective against her can take down a third of her hit points. So many items used... The third cave seems fairly large, and the puppets in the area are the same ones found in the caves of the ravine. A couple of trainers so far, and a jade hairpin found. There's two types of held items, also; the first type are the charms which can be sold for a pretty good price, and the other are stuff like the hairpins which can't be sold. Anyways, a few wild puppets later Rikako levels up enough for style change. Power and speed can be chosen. While I often end up choosing power style most of the time recently... well, it's the same case for Rikako. She's pretty much squishy on both choices, so might as well pick the harder-hitting one. Power style's speed boost is pretty decent as well. She learns chrome ray from style change to power style. Anyway, she doesn't get a new ability, but I do choose her alternate ability instead: from sparking-spirit which boosts electric move at less than one-third hit points to insight which makes it easier to score crits, which seems more practical. The cave is just one big room. Aside from the two trainers, and a jade hairpin, Yin finds a red ring which increases focus attacks when held. This to me seems more practical than the hairpins, since the hairpins raise power for a specific type, while the ring has a broader range of moves being increased. Of course, it doesn't show any numerical value on how much is increased, so the hairpins might provide more power, but still. Anyway, there's nothing else in cave number three. Time to move past the area in cave two and hopefully find out way to the Youkai Mountain. From cave two, heading north will eventually lead to the entrance of the Youkai Mountain - we've made it! How foreboding. East from the sign is the entrance of the mountain, and further east leads to a trainer and a pool of water leading to nowhere. New puppets in the area, of course, and some new battle music as well for wild puppet encounters. Running around for a bit helps Marisa gain enough levels for style change. Either speed or power style for Marisa. Speed style obviously gives a speed boost, while power style for her switches from spread attack to focus attack (and makes her light and dark type from light and electric). Both her speed and focus attack potential is really quite poor. Still, I suppose the lesser of two evils is speed style, as it gives a boost in spread attack. She learns foresee, which does the move of the opponent for that turn for 1.5 times the damage, but will only work if Marisa acts first. Seems handy. She keeps the same abilities: kleptomaniac which has a chance of stealing the held item of a puppet if Marisa is holding it, or collectomaniac which prevents items held by Marisa from being stolen. She can learn some more skill cards, one of which is the sound type ultra high tone - so I was wrong on that one. The ascent begins. Soon the path is split between east and west. West has another hairpin item, and probably a path further north while going east has a trainer, and the path also continues north. Decisions, decisions... Anyways, in-canon there's at least two types of tengu; the crows and the wolves. Aya is a crow tengu, while that Momiji puppet is a wolf tengu. I was careless and didn't realize that the trainer's second Momiji is style changed, causing two KOs in my team. Looks like the trainers are stepping up on the challenge scale. Eiki learns life burst from leveling up to 36. It's fighting type, focus attack, 80 damage and will always hit. Well, it would be more prudent to go to the kappa hideout and heal there. And, since revive items are still not sold in stores, there's no choice but to go back to heal. In before a few steps further into the mountains I find a rest house... After healing, I decide to take the west route first where the topaz hairpin was found. Good thing, I suppose, as all it leads to is skill card 56, ghost wave. Nether type, spread attack, damage 80 with a thirty percent chance to inflict the fear status on the opponent. Yukari can learn the move. Anyways, after going through the tall grass, I've come across all the new puppets to catch. Shizuha Aki. Stage 1 mid-boss of Touhou 10. Goddess of... well, making the leaves go red during the autumn. Nature type. Older sister of Minoriko. Minoriko Aki. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 10. Goddess of autumn harvest, as I recall, which is certainly more impressive than her older sister. Nature type. Momiji Inubashiri. Stage 4 mid-boss of Touhou 10. One of the guards of the waterfall in the youkai mountain. Aya and her are co-workers, or to be more exact Aya is her superior. At first, fandom portrays the two as a pair, with Momiji as somewhat a naive puppy to Aya. Later works note that the relationship between the two is less cordial, so they made Momiji a tsundere instead. Steel type. Aya Shameimaru. \SYAMEIMARU/ Stage 4 boss of Touhou 10, but debuted earlier in Touhou 9 as playable/opponent. Main character in two side games, playable on the second fighting game, and one of Reimu's possible partners in Touhou 11. Several of the in-universe articles in some print works are written by her, and made several appearances in other side works. Fairly popular due to that, though she hasn't become playable in the main shoot em up games yet. Fandom often makes her seem very paparazzi-like with her newspaper writing. Wind type. Hatate Himekaidou. Debuted as playable in Touhou 12.5, which is second of the two side-games that had Aya as a main character. Those games are brutal... Anyway, also a journalist like Aya. Wind type. The climb to the top continues. So far, there are no maze-like areas for Yin to get lost in. The mountain path is relatively linear after the fork, just going up, and up, and up. Soon Yin reaches a bridge heading east with another path going south, which leads to a dead end. No items, but I guess that dead end was made to just flavor up the scenery of the place. It's got a nice view of the waterfalls and all. Yin heads east.- Ohhh, this won't end well. She doesn't waste time with idle chitchat like "let's see if you're stronger" or stuff like that. Fight time! Been a while since Yin has encountered Reimu, like all the way back outside the human village after beating the PLF for the first time. Like Marisa, Reimu gets her own boss theme. She still has a three puppet team like last time... but that level on Aya. No doubt that Reimu's last puppet will be much stronger than that, and Iku's the highest level puppet on the Yin's team. Well, it's somewhat fortunate that Iku's on the front, as Aya (at least the normal style one) is pure wind-type. Electric is the way to go! Aya hits first, using a move that hits 2-5 times, and in this case she hits for the full five times. Yeesh, the move is not very effective on Iku, but that damage... Anyway, Iku's attack is super effective, and KOs Aya in one hit. Defense Suika up next. I figure it's best to be prudent, and heal Iku instead. No good, as Suika's attack deals way too much damage. So it's either attack Suika and hope Iku hits first (doubtful, considering that Suika's several levels higher and is probably faster than Iku who's not too fast), or switch out and hope the next puppet can take the hit. I choose the former, and as I expected, Suika hits first. Damn. I'm not even sure on what defense Suika is weak to, but I choose Yukari to try to deal some damage. Yukari has her ability which cuts her spread attack and speed down by half for five turns. Probably not the best choice, but no point in switching now. Still, using Yukari's strongest attack... doesn't do a lot of damage. Not a good choice at all. I try to buy some time, healing Yukari up with steamed buns that heal 100 hit points for the following turns, hoping that once Yukari's ability times out damage would be at least somewhat better. Suika's attack deals almost 100 damage, and during the first exchange she hit first. Hopefully, when Yukari's ability runs out, her speed will be enough to act first, since right now the only possible scenario is Yukari getting KOed if she's not healed. After five turns, Yukari finally gets serious... and it doesn't do much. Welp. Urgh. This is getting bad. Defense style Suika is a tank, and Reimu still has one puppet. I go with speed Remilia, and her attack deals low damage, and then Remi gets KOed in one hit. 3 puppets left, I send out Marisa who wears Suika down further (with a super effective attack, mind you) and Suika continues with her KO streak. 2 puppets left. Well, damn. Finally, the accumulated damage on Suika takes her down with Eiki, but Suika gets the first hit and Eiki herself is close to KO as Reimu's last puppet is sent out. Well, I always talked about wanting to keep things challenging, so here we are! Hahahaha... blargh. Okay, cool down, me. First, heal Eiki. That proves useless, as Reimu has a super effective attack on Eiki, KOing her at full health. Rikako is left... time for my trump card! One Hakurei shinsu, able to revive a KOed puppet to full health. I choose... (upon using the item, Rikako gets KOed in one hit) ...Yukari! Iku is one level higher, but Yukari has higher hp, and due to her types, she has the least amount of type weaknesses. But damn it, Yukari uses her ability again! However, a ray of hope! Reimu's attack is not effective, while Yukari's illusion attacks are! Joy of joys! After a couple of exchanges (due to Yukari's ability interfering, or power Reimu's overall stats), both are in critical condition. From the looks of it, Yukari will be able to survive and KO Reimu as long as Reimu keeps using the same attack. On the other hand, I and Yin is a coward who wants to preserve the win streak, so I use a steamed bun to heal up Yukari. Aaaand Yukari takes the win! (P.S. Gravity blast didn't finish Reimu off; I find out that the damage of the move gets much lower if the opponent is at low health) Whew! That was a close one. Without a doubt, if Reimu had a full team, or at least one more puppet in her side, the battle would have ended in her favor. Yin's team gets a ton of XP. Puppets who faint during battle will still get XP (but not get double XP from participating), but following battles they won't get any if they're still KO. Anyways, that defense style Suika was tough, and she was pretty much responsible for KOing half the team, though Reimu KOed three puppets as well. Reimu doesn't comment on the battle afterward and she makes her leave. She does give us one item to use, though. Ecstasy set? Uhmmm. Eh? Are you sure that's what they call it, translators? Huh. Anyway, she mentions that the cave ahead is very long, and Yin will be sorry if Yin isn't careful. With that, she exits the scene, her theme music playing in the background. P.S. The Ecstasy Set is just a healing item that fully heals HP and cures all status effects. It's an assortment of peaches, not some shady drug or something from Eientei. Yukari learns the move attack replacement. Using the move will switch the focus and spread attack of the opponent with each other. Seems like a handy move against some puppets. Anyway, the team is rather battered. Some have been revived due to leveling up, but two are still KOed, and that warrants a trip back to a rest house, and due to what Reimu said about the cave, I think this is the perfect time to end the episode. So until next time, then. See ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 8, 2016 11:35:24 GMT -5
What time is it? Why, it's time for the next episode! Episode 19: To the Moriya Shrine! Previously, our heroine Yin had encountered Reimu Hakurei during her trek to the top of the Youkai Mountain. A puppet battle ensued between the two, and without a doubt Reimu's 3-puppet team more or less kicked the puppet asses of Yin's 6-puppet team. On one hand, if I had known I could have set up a better team using the highest level puppets available in the puppet box, but I suppose that's a moot point. Yin's team won via a rather tiny margin, and all is well in the world. The road to the Moriya Shrine would probably be long, and what awaits in the end may even be more challenging than Reimu herself. Well, whatever the case is, since Yin and the team are healing up in the Kappa Hideout's rest house, might as well switch teams again. The smart move is to pick the highest leveled ones, like Flan, or Eirin... but where's the fun in that? Rikako and Marisa stay on the lineup, while Meiling, Yoshika, and Tenshi make a return. New to the team is Momiji, who I trained a little so she can reach style change. It's either speed or defense style for her. Both styles offer more or less the same boosts in attack, and I end up choosing defense style for her. Why? Well, the Momiji I caught has way better potential in focus defense (S, the highest), while her speed potential is low (D-), so with that in mind I reckon it's better to choose the one most suited to her potential. The stat changes will make her very tank-y against focus attack oriented puppets, though her spread defense is very poor (making her similar to Yoshika)... Also, become earth and steel type makes her super weak against fighting types. Her new ability will make sure she gets one hit in, at the very least. She learns killing bite from the style change; steel type, focus attack, 70 damage and will always be a critical attack. Also, she has a handy move that could possibly work well with her ability: restitution. It makes the opponents hit points match with Momiji's. So if the enemy puppet is fighter and deals a move that will one hit KO her, or do massive damage, she'll return the favor. Yin makes her back to the Youkai Mountain, to the bridge where Reimu was encountered. Well, I think changing teams should be good at this point. I'd consider Reimu as a boss fight, and I reckon it'll be a while before the next one. The team should receive sufficient training before we reach the next big fight. I say that, and just past the bridge is an encounter with the real Momiji. Hahaha, my mouth. Ah well. It's just a standard trainer battle, more or less. The music being used is the one for Touhou characters. Momiji is steel type, while Hina is poison and one other type I can't remember. What I do remember is that steel is immune to poison, so there's that. Momiji uses vacuum rupture fist (learned from a skill card), and it does no damage to Hina, so I find out that Hina's other type I can't remember is nether. Worse, the secondary effect of vacuum rupture fist is that the user won't be able to act the next turn, so whoops. Lesson learned. Hina's attacks don't do a lot of damage, so Momiji gets the upper hand and KOs Hina after a couple of turns. Normal style Nitori is up next. Switching out to Rikako proves to be a decent choice. Rikako gets hit twice, but all she needs is one attack to KO Nitori. Speed Momiji is sent out and I send out Tenshi to deal with her. Like defense Momiji, earth type attacks work well on speed style Momiji, and we get a relatively easy win. Well, after fighting Reimu, everything feels relatively easy right now. Tenshi's HP is like that due to that Momiji using restitution. While Momiji goes to tell her higher ups, Yin goes past and continues on her merry way. Past Momiji is a way up and a pool of water. Nothing on the other side, but going down on the waterfall will bring her to an area of the mountain that can only be accessed by going down on the waterfall with the boat. By following the tall grass, Yin finds skill card 18, stone spike. Earth type, focus attack, 60 damage, and will slow down the opponent when hit. Momiji, Tenshi, and Meiling can learn the skill. Anyway, since the inflatable boat can't climb up waterfalls, the only way to get back is down. Momiji is proving quite quick in leveling up. Since her puppet cost is 90, it won't take a lot of battles for her to level up compared to a puppet like Flandre or Yukari who has a cost of 120. By the way, the lowest puppet cost is 80. The climb continues. There are stairs up past Momiji, and a short distance away is the entrance to the cave. There's a peddler there that sells healing items and threads, but there's no need for it since Yin already spent all her money in the Kappa Hideout. Into the cave we go! Those wild Momiji puppets are frustrating. They're doing more or less the thing I mentioned earlier: Yin's Momiji will be faster and delivers an attack that will KO the wild Momiji in one hit, but due to their ability they're left with 1 HP, and because they're slower, the wild Momiji uses restitution which makes the hp of Yin's Momiji match. Anyway, the cave looks rather large. No items found yet, and a couple of trainers are fought while so far the puppets in the area have been seen and caught before. The encounter rate for the cave seems rather low... which really makes the crazy encounter rate in the SDM more crazy. I already mentioned that before, but it really was crazy. While exploring the cave, Yin finds another red ring. I really should start making my puppets hold items, though it would be rather annoying giving and taking items since I tend to switch out puppets on the team on a once-per-episode basis, it seems. Rikako learns a new move upon reaching level 36: purple lightning. Electric type, spread power, 50 damage, and has a 70% chance to increase spread attack. Seems better than her current electric move, which has a small 10% chance to paralyze the opponent. Most trainers still seem to keep their puppets at normal style despite the puppet being level 30 already. It would make the game more challenging if they were style changed... it will probably make them give a lot more XP, I suppose. Anyway, past that trainer is the fifth prismatic candy Yin has found. North past another trainer is skill card 79, upbeat. When used, the opponent can only use damaging attacks for the next three turns. Marisa also learns charge stealing, and electric type spread power move with 75 damage that drains hp from half the damage inflicted. After some exploring, Yin finds a ladder leading down. South of the ladder is an NPC and another ladder leading up. There's still some places to explore in this floor, though, so Yin leaves that one alone. Well, the area is more or less pretty big. Aside from the ladder back up Yin found, there's also a ladder leading further below the cave, and that floor hasn't been fully explored yet. Nonetheless, the rock floor's encounter rate isn't bad at all, and since Yin can move around with the bike a lot of ground is covered in a short amount of time. Momiji learns a new move at level 36, which greatly increases her focus defense, while Yoshika learns a move that heals an amount equal to her max HP, which seems more handier than continue. Yet another ladder leading upwards is found. This floor has been explored, and since this second ladder going up is the one furthest from the one Yin came down on, this will probably lead to somewhere that will lead to the exit. I'll go by the first other ladder first, explore that, then to the ladder on this floor that leads down. Going up~ Like seriously, the encounter rate. Only encountered one wild puppet before reaching the ladder up... tall grass has a higher encounter rate than this. Meiling learns cheer which greatly increases spread defense. There's one trainer to fight, and south from there... is the way out. Er, haha, looks like I was wrong. Back to the cave for now to keep exploring. Down the ladder, and now two floors below the level where the cave entrance (and possible exit) is. It's just a fairly big room that leads to nowhere. There's one trainer, and a chirei bun to find and the thorn charm. Puppets using focus attacks attacking the one holding the charm will take damage. Sounds handy. Aside from that, there's nothing else to find in that area. Meiling can't fight against those Hina puppets. Meiling has three fighting moves, and one earth type attack. Hina is immune to fighting types due to being nether type, and she's immune to earth type moves as well due to her ability. Yin goes up the last ladder which leads upwards to the ground floor of the cave. There's a couple of trainers, and a healing item. Heading south will soon lead to... another exit? And huh, a male tengu. So far, that and the kappas are the only youkai to have a male NPC trainer. The fairies and generic youkai don't have male NPCs. Checking the area outside out, Yin finds a lone house. The item just lying there is the cursebreak charm. If a puppet holding it has a disabled skill, the charm will dispel the effect once. Inside, Yin meets Hina. Accessing the puppet box will heal all the puppets in the team, so it functions as a rest house. Anyway, Hina offers to break the seal of my puppets, which means more or less releasing them. I might take her up on her offer - caught several copies of a few puppets here and there. Or not. Hina's trying to slightly guilt me into not doing it, and it works. Yin bikes all the way to the exit to the cave she found. The water leads to nowhere, though taking the waterfall is more or less a shortcut down to a spot near the entrance of the mountain. No point in going there for now. There's some stairs leading upward, though heading to the left for a bit will lead to a corner holding food rations, a held item that will occasionally heal the puppet in battle. Heading up and then a little to the east and Yin finds the Aki sisters. Talking to them initiates a battle. Touhou trainer music is playing. Shizuha has two puppets, one normal Minoriko and one speed style Shizuha. It's not a hard fight, but Momiji probably wasn't the best choice as she's weak to nature and earth - though in turn both Akis were weak to steel, and killing bite will always crit so it's a one hit KO for the two puppets. Minoriko can also be fought, and it's more or less the same battle, though the order of puppets is reversed: this time it's a normal Shizuha and a power Minoriko. Another easy win. I'm making all my puppets participate, as I'm guessing the next boss fight won't have puppets below level 40. Yin can continue the climb by going north, but instead she checks out what lies east. There's a house there where Yin can slack off with a tengu, which heals the team. South of the house is a trainer to fight, and following the stream east of the trainer leads to nothing, so it's time to go climb up some more. Whether it's power or speed style, Aya puppets are really quite troublesome unless there's a puppet with electric attacks to use on them. Due to their speed (canon-wise Aya is more or less the fastest in Gensokyo), they'll usually get the first hit in. In this case though, Marisa got to hit first due to the difference in level and being speed style. Amusingly, I realize I have 2 of each of the 3 styles (aside from assist) in my current team. Yin climbs, and climbs, and climbs. It is a mountain, after all. Tenshi learns a new move upon reaching level 42: cover ground, which greatly boosts speed. Past one trainer is a Moriya shinshu lying in some tall grass. Not as great as the Hakurei ones, but still nice to have as revive items are rare. Anyway, the road heads east, and soon Yin finds a new area. Trainer battles now have more style changed puppets, so eventually Yin will soon encounter teams where all the foes are style changed. Following the road will soon lead to an intersection, and trying to go east will lead to a path blocked off by smashable rocks. I'm guessing we'll soon get an item that can smash these things. Heading north in that road leads to... finally, the Moriya shrine! Whew, it's been a long trek in the mountain, and Yin has finally reached the top. Just a little bit more, I reckon. By the time Yin reaches the stairs I figure it would be prudent to arrange my team's lineup. Yoshika is up first, as she has the highest amount of hit points in the group. I'm proven right just as Yin reaches the top of the stairs. Boss... senses... tingling, as Sanae comes and meets Yin. Aside from Sanae, Kanako also shows up, who's the god/parental figure of Sanae. It's complicated. The two (plus one other god) is from the outside world, and the plot of Touhou 10 was the three of them trying to usurp Reimu's position, more or less and sort of. Anyway, Sanae challenges us to a puppet fight! Like Reimu, she has a three puppet team as well. Unlike Reimu (and Marisa), she doesn't get her own theme and the battle uses the theme used for Touhou character trainer battles. Alas, Sanae, despite being a regular character since 12, you don't get a theme of your own... A level 40 defense Reimu... the one we fought earlier was a power Reimu, and that one was weak to illusion attacks. Don't know if that's the case here, but seeing as my current team doesn't have any moves that are illusion type, there's no point in trying to figure out a weakness without attacking. Reimu uses guided missile, which deals a chunk of damage to Yoshika, while the lil' zombie counters with poison bomb. Neither are super effective, but it's an even match. Yoshika works well thanks to her hit points being near the 200 mark. I had to heal Yoshika on the third exchange though, since Reimu hits faster. On the next turn after that, a third poison bomb downs Reimu. Power Marisa is up next. Marisa does more damage, but Yoshika can still survive. Unfortunately before Yoshika could attack she gets hit with a critical and gets KOed. I send out speed Meiling to test the waters out. It works great. Marisa hits first, but the damage is undone. Power Marisa is apparently weak to fighting, and Meiling has aura drain, a fighting type move that KOs Marisa in one hit - and due to its secondary effect of draining hp from half the damage inflicted, Meiling is back to full health. Last up is a level 44 speed style Sanae. She's a little higher leveled than anyone on my team, but since I got a five puppets left this shouldn't be too hard. Don't know what Sanaes are weak too though. In the games, Sanae is a wind priestess... so maybe she's wind type? Is wind strong against fighting? Well, it seems to be as Sanae takes down Meiling in one hit before the gate guard can attack. Ahh, well, she's speed style after all, and since she's higher leveled she'll probably act first against all my puppets. I smell trouble. Well, I reckon its time to use my trump card for this round: Momiji. Wanted to test it out, so here we go. As expected, Sanae acts first, and KOs Momiji in one hit... not! Remember Momiji's ability? Indomitable: any attack that would KO her in one hit will leave her with 1 HP, and it does? And remember one move of Momiji I mentioned? Restitution, which makes the foe have the same amount of remaining hit points as Momiji? Combine the two and you get payback! Sanae's own speed has been reflected back on to her! It works! If only Momiji has a "quick attack" type move like many of my other puppets she'd have gotten payback and defeated Sanae. Alas, she doesn't and Sanae takes her down in the following turn. Tenshi ends the battle after this. Relatively easy win this time. Got three of my puppets KOed, but in the end I won with three surviving (which is generally a lot considering that Yin's team often ends up in worse situations than that). Plus, I did come into a fight with something that resembles a strategy, at least if you look at it from far away and squint a little, and it all worked out in the end. Momiji's combo of indomitable and restitution works super well I'd have to say, and it could be something to take down someone far higher in levels than her. Three puppets reach level 42 and learn new moves from doing so. After fighting, Sanae gives Yin the superhuman glove as a token of appreciation. It's the tool that will allow Yin to break rocks blocking the road, and she suggests trying it out in the area before the shrine (the one I mentioned earlier). Aside from that, she or Kanako doesn't have any advice on where to go next - just go out and explore, they say, more or less. Such an aimless journey, I say. My boss senses are still tingling, as boss music wasn't playing during the Sanae fight. I reckon its Kanako, and so I also reckon that I should check the shrine out first before approaching her. Yoshika learns negative mist, which is poison type, focus power, 60 damage and makes opponent's stat changes go back to normal. Rikako learns stealth trap, and Momiji learns battle preparation which boost focus attack and defense as well as accuracy. Also, random fun fact: the creator of this game is the same one who did the Touhoumon romhack. Anyways, one of the starters you can choose there was Sanae (the other two were Reisen and Youmu), and if I recall, starting Sanae was somewhat tough, as the Nazrins (the ratatas outside Pallet town) already had attacks that were super effective against her. Kanako is up ahead in the shrine, so Yin avoids her and heads right to the house. Inside, there's a second Moriya shinsu hidden in a pot, and the room further in is a bedroom to rest in and a puppet box. Nice. On one hand, I can rearrange my team, maybe set things up for the possible fight against Kanako. On the other hand, my current team is the highest leveled puppets I have now. Switching will be a slight risk. Eh, I figure, what the hell, and switch out Marisa, Rikako, and Meiling with Eirin, Komachi, and Mamizou. All the NPCs in the shrine premises so far have been non-trainers. There's a road leading into the back area of the shrine, towards a lake. There's some tall grass in the area... but I reckon we should leave that for later. Yin goes back to the shrine to talk to Kanako. In before Kanako's just a non-trainer NPC, heh... As it turns out, it's a battle after all... and the standard boss music is playing. Fight time! Level 40 power style Sanae. I goofed up a bit here when I set Komachi on the first position, having her start the fight. That's what I thought of at first, but it seems that power Sanae has a completely different type compared to speed Sanae, or she has a different moveset at least. Anyway, Sanae's attack isn't effective, while Komachi deals normal damage against Sanae. An even fight that favors Komachi, as all the attacks Sanae uses are not effective on the boatlady. Sanae's attacks do cause Komachi to flinch sometimes, but all in all it's just a matter of keeping Komachi healed up. Komachi eventually wins, and speed Suwako is sent up next. The other god of the Moriya shrine. Using the official games as a reference, Suwako is probably water type, mixed in with either earth/steel/nature. I doubt that Komachi will survive the next attack, so I make her use aqua cutter since it makes her hit first, doing some damage to Suwako. It does normal damage, and takes out an okay chunk of life, but Suwako pays back with a KO hit. Suwako has a somewhat annoying ability which raises a random stat by 2 stages, and decreases one other stat by one stage, every turn. I use Tenshi, and as it turns out Suwako is a water type (probably earth as well since water does normal damage to her). Suwako's slime shot would have KOed Tenshi... but Tenshi has the same ability of Momiji, so she survives. Suwako most likely being water and earth type is confirmed, as Tenshi's fighting type move is super effective and KOs froggy in one hit. One puppet left, and it's a level 48 power Kanako. Dunno what she's weak against. Either way, I try to heal Tenshi, but that's fruitless as Kanako's attack almost KOs Tenshi anyway, almost because Tenshi's ability kicks in. So... Tenshi looks like she's gonna get KOed if she tries to attack, so I go with a different tactic instead. I use one certain item and let Tenshi get KOed. Assist Eirin is sent out, and it's more of the same. Kanako's move that she used in Tenshi is nature type, probably, and the move she used on Eirin is most likely wind-type. Hrmmm. I have my doubts on Mamizou's survival, and Yoshika has more or less similar weaknesses as Eirin. All I got is Momiji, and while it's super cheap, I go and do the same tactic I went with against the previous Sanae trainer fight. The indomitable ability and restitution, baybeh! It works, but that's only one half of the plan I had. When Tenshi got KOed, on that turn I used the Moriya shinsu to revive Komachi, and despite the level difference Komachi's aqua cutter always hits first (unless Kanako has a quick attack of her own, and for that I used Momiji's turn after using restitution to heal Komachi to full health), and even though it's not very effective, 1 hp is still 1 hp and Komachi knocks the god puppet down. All in all, Momiji's ability plus restitution, plus a quick attack move is a pretty cheap tactic to KO puppets way stronger than they are. Still, strategy wouldn't have worked if I couldn't have defeated Sanae and Suwako. Suwako would have been a problem if not for the fact that Tenshi had a super effective move against her, since being speed style Suwako would have trashed every other puppet I had. After the battle, Kanako doesn't have any leads or means to get Yin to solve the incident or find a way back to the outside world, but she does give Yin the combat handbook. When held, it increases the XP gain of the puppet holding it. Well, it's been a long episode. The back area of the Moriya shrine has to be explored, but that's for next time. Time to end this episode, but before that I did catch one new puppet in the youkai mountain caves. Hinas, Momijis, and Nitoris can be found in the caves, and there's only one new puppet inside. Yamame Kurodani. First stage boss of Touhou 11. Aside from Kisume, we haven't caught the other puppets originating from that game yet. Yamame's a spider. Earth and poison type. And that, is that. Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 9, 2016 14:25:18 GMT -5
Right now, I'm kind of pondering about the stats of the puppets of the enemy trainers that Yin has been facing. Some of the puppets are holding items, since I remember Flandre stealing one due to the effect of a move, but I am curious on what the stat potentials of the puppets Yin has fought. I mean, for the wild puppets, the stat potentials are randomized, but what about the trainers? Like, are the puppets of boss battles all rank S in stat potential? I have no idea, but sometimes I wonder. Anyway, we've had 19 episodes so far, and it's time to make it 20! Yeah! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 20 After beating Sanae, Yin receives the superhuman glove, capable of breaking down rocks that block roads. Aside from that, Yin has no idea on where to go next, so I guess it's time for a little bit of aimless exploring. Kanako did mention to test out the glove in an area near the shrine. There's a path there that could lead to somewhere interesting, I guess. First things first, though. There's an lake at the back of the shrine, and there's some tall grass in the area. Seems like a good idea to explore the place and see if there's anything worthwhile to catch and/or find. I shuffle the team lineup as well. Yin has more or less fought a boss battle on the previous episode (and the episode before that) so I reckon there won't be any more soon so it's the perfect opportunity to use a different combination of puppets. Rikako returns to duty, and Shou, Flandre and Sekibanki makes a return. No doubt the team would be shuffled around some more if there are new puppets in the back area of the Moriya Shrine catches my interest. Tried out the combat handbook that Yin got after beating Kanako. Gave it to Shou, and having her hold gave her more or less a 50% boost in XP gain, even if she wasn't participating in the battle. Having her participate on the battle gives her roughly a triple XP boost instead of just double. Seems like it'd be handy in training low leveled puppets up. The tall grass in the shrine's lake proves to be quite the lucrative area to train. All the puppets there are pretty high cost, shelling out a decent amount of XP, especially to the puppet holding the combat handbook. The shrine in the middle lake has nothing. North of the lake is some tall grass with the massage charm (cures paralysis when held), and in the west there's an allmighty spstone, which lengthens weather effects used by the puppet holding it. On the southwest is a waterfall leading somewhere, but I'll hold off on going there. Currently training some puppets who could potentially be new recruits in the lineup of puppets I use. One of which, Hatate, is already ready for style change after a few battles. She either has power style or assist style. Power style is tempting because of salvo. With an ability like that she'll most likely be able to learn one move that hits for 2-5 times, and get the full five times each time. On the other hand, assist style seems to be a little more versatile in ability, and her potential in speed and spread defense is quite nice, so with the addition of the ability of that style can make her suited to block against spread attack using puppets. Assist style it is. She learns unknown flare. Illusion type, spread attack, 80 damage and 30% chance to confuse opponents. Going assist style adds the illusion type alongside the wind type normal style starts off with. Also forgot to take a screenshot. Still searching for the area for the rare puppet lurking around this place. I'll be a bit annoyed if I'm in actually the wrong area... Anyway, Sakuya reached level 30 for style change. Speed or power for her. Somewhat a tricky choice for me. Sakuya's focus attack and speed are both above average, so either choice works well. In the end, power style wins. The strategist ability can make use of her ability at least, though her speed dropping is making me somewhat wary, and switching her illusion type to fighting makes Sakuya lose out on being immune to void type attacks. After quite a few fights, I finally complete the catching of the new puppets in the area: Sanae Kochiya. The Luigi to Reimu's Mario. I keed. Debuted in Touhou 10 as the fifth stage boss. Became playable on the expansion pack of the second fighting game, and shortly after (or more or less around the same time) became playable from the 12th game onwards. Early on it really felt like Sanae was just being Luigi, but later games has her show a lot more... enthusiasm when it comes to fighting youkai. One of the two human characters, more or less, that came from the outside world. Wind and water type. Kanako Yasaka. The god of the Moriya Shrine, final/sixth stage boss of Touhou 10. Sanae is the priestess of the shrine, though Kanako kind of acts as a parental figure as well. One of the forbidden templates of Touhou fanstuff is "it's a Moriya Shrine conspiracy" as some of her actions that started at the 11th game kicked off incidents of the following games afterwards. Wind and earth type. Suwako Moriya. The other god of the Moriya Shrine. Great-great-great-(repeat multiple times)-greatgrandmother of Sanae. EX boss of Touhou 10, and showed up as a playable character in the expansion pack of the fighting game as well. She was difficult to use, too: her just standing there is a crouched position, crouching actually raised her position in the ground, and her walk was her slowly hopping like a frog and her dash crouched her further. Hard to use, but pretty dang damaging if you can actually figure out how to use her effectively. Earth and water type. Took a real loooooong time to catch a puppet of her - and luckily it has decent stats. With the Moriya trio complete, it's time to get down from the mountain! ...though we have to check a number of things out first, I remember. So here's the new team I set up. Probably unwise to have a really massive revamp of the lineup, but eh. It seems manageable enough. Kokoro makes a return, and so does Seiga. Hatate and Sakuya already got some decent training thanks to the search for a Suwako puppet, and Yatsuhashi I used very briefly but was never really considered to be part of the lineup until now. Went with Suwako since she's my favorite in the Moriya Shrine trio; though the Sanae and Kanako I got has some pretty good stat potential. Going down the waterfall in the Moriya Shrine's lake leads Yin to the pinpoint charm (increases accuracy when puppet holding it is in a pinch), and the wooden sword (increases PP gain in battle for the holder). The former might be something to sell (as charms can be sold), since I'm wary of stuff that only takes effect when a puppet is close to death, while the latter isn't too desirable as PP builds up anyway. 2 PP after every battle, and I don't use reinforce stat anyway so yeah. Also, the game messes with me with two Suwako encounters back to back after all the time it took to find just one. Well, everything the Moriya Shrine is checked out. Haven't seen Suwako (not the puppet) yet, and I'm guessing that she'll show up later on in the game. Outside the shrine, following the road heading west will take Yin back to the mountain path down. On the other hand, there are some rocks in the east side that seem to be blocking a path - the perfect time to test out the superhuman glove and see what lies beyond. As it turns out, the road ahead seems fairly large, with some trainers and wild puppets to fight. More trainers are showing up with style-changed puppets, so for most part defeating them quickly isn't as easy anymore. This could be problematic since the current team isn't at the same level as the teams I used against Sanae and Kanako - and even then I only won due to relying on Momiji's abilities and moves to turn the tides. Well, this current team should shape up a little once they all reach the level for style change. Suwako has reached it already, since she was level 29 when she got caught. Speed or defense change. Judging from the boosts, defense boosts both focus and spread attack, and while it's tempting to do so with her focus and spread defense being rated A, her focus attack is rated D which could fare poorly with moves she learns when leveling up. Speed seems more handy with the stats of the Suwako I have. Her spread attack is good unlike focus attack, and speed style offers a bigger boost in spread attack than defense style. Her speed potential is great so it should work well with the style. She learns local downpour from style change; water type, spread attack, 20 damage and it'll do more attacks at the end of the turn for 4-5 turns. Also, the other ability she can select is moody - every turn a random stat will be raised by two stages while one other random stat gets lowered by one stage. Seems handier than confusion immunity, but this seems like a skill that could bite her in the ass as well. Speaking of trainers and style changed puppets, this was the first NPC trainer who had a team of more than one style-changed puppet, I think (though the entire team was the same puppet; all level 31, power-style Mystias). Hatate learns honest person's lie from reaching level 36. If Hatate has status effects, it transfers to the opponent curing her in the process. Next trainer also has a three-puppet team of style changed puppets. Amazingly, that trainer actually switched puppets out during the fight. First time of it happening in the game, and maybe soon the enemy trainers will use items as well. Sakuya learns dancing sword on level 36, fighting type, focus attack, 80 damage and has a high chance of getting crits. Its damage means it won't get the boost from the strategist ability, but it's high crit chance should prove more than enough to compensate. Also, due to placing Yatsuhashi first in the team, and switching her out + holding the combat manual, she gets 3x XP from the trainer battles, quickly making her reach level 30 in no time. It's speed or defense for her... and both seem more or less the same. Yatsuhashi uses spread attack moves, and both styles offer the exact same increase to spread attack. The other stat boosts pretty much do as advertised; defense for defense, speed for speed. Her speed stat has better potential, while on defense her focus defense isn't too good while her spread defense is as good as her speed, and the latter doesn't get a good boost from style change, so going with speed. She also gets the strategist ability from it - always handy, I feel. She gets sorrowful tune from the style change; sound type, spread attack, 55 damage and lowers the opponents spread attack - perfect with her ability as any attack with 60 or below damage gets the attack boost. She can learn unfettered soul from the skill card, which has a damage of 55 - again, the strategist ability kicks in, and then the attack damage doubles because she's not holding an item anymore. The path that was blocked by rocks seem to be a way down the mountain. So far it's basically a road leading down with some tall grass in the sides and some trainers to fight. I'm checking out the tall grass and so far it's the same puppets I've already encountered and caught. And, thanks again to the combat handbook. Seiga can style change now. Speed or power, and going with the latter since it provides a decent speed boost as well. Adding poison type to her sole nether type as well. On one hand, she becomes stronger/immune to more types, and on the other hand it adds more weaknesses. Ah well. She gets love or pain as a move from the style; think I already mentioned this skill before, though she can access some pretty good skill cards now after style change. Oooh, my starter! No point in catching one though, unless its stat potential are all rated S - as the starter puppet gets an A+ to all stat potentials. Tenshi isn't the rare puppet in the area though. Like what that trainer said, there's a Kasen in the area... and it took a damn long time to find one. The entire team is at least level 36 when I finally found her. At the entrance of the Moriya Shrine, and the probably alternate path down, Momijis, Ayas, Hatates and Tenshis can be found. It's the first time a wild Tenshi puppet is encountered as well. Kasen Ibaraki. Main character of one of the ongoing manga, Wild and Horned Hermit. A hermit who likes to visit the Hakurei Shrine and nag Reimu. The manga hints that she may be an oni... though, at this point it would be a twist if she was not an oni. One of my favorites. Also debuted as playable in the fourth fighting game. Illusion and fighting type. Anyways, Yin heads down the mountain path and encounters a cave. 90% sure that this will just lead back to the mountain entrance, and 10% sure that it will be a dead end/optional area. As for other odds, my gut is telling me that there might be a boss fight in the cave, but at the same time it's doubtful since Reimu and Kanako were already bosses in the mountain, and I guess Sanae counts as well. Also, I realized that I caught Kasen that's level 31, so she's already ready for style change from the get go. Quite a lot of style changing this episode, thanks to the hard search for Suwako and Kasen. Well, it's either power or assist style for her, and I'll be going with power style for Kasen. Usually assist gives a respectable boost to focus or spread attack, but both stats are a little too low for assist change - and focus attack is lowered for assist. I dunno, maybe assist Kasen has better moves to learn on assist style, but I'll go with raw stats and go power style. She learns aura drain, which Meiling also has. Damaging drain moves are nice, especially when they go super effective and recover pretty much all hit points. The other ability she could choose, Charge! is interesting as well. It boosts all attack damage by 30% which is quite a bit, but all secondary effects (such as hit point drain from aura drain) will never occur. Lots and lots of XP for all, by switching puppets in battle. So many healing items used... Ah well. I want the entire team to be around level 40. Maybe level 45. Kanako's strongest is level 48, and by the next boss fight no doubt that the puppets will be at least equal or higher than that. Trainers are getting a lot more stronger. Normal style puppets with trainers have become rather rare, and even with the level difference I'd run into trouble when type weakness comes into play. This is getting to be a big drain on items, though I'll probably make up for it as I'm getting decent amounts of items to sell later on. Dude, gross. Really, really gross. As I have mentioned before, shirikodama are more or less balls taken out of the human ass. Gross, Kappa guy, gross. There's only one ladder down on the first floor of this cave, and I think I already found all the trainers to find and some items (one healing and one Moriya shinsu). Trainer puppets are really taking advantage of their moves and type effectiveness to ruin the day of some of my puppets. Also keeping Kasen poisoned to get the attack boost from her ability. Any poison damage is taken care of by aura drain. Anyways, rather than nearing the exit, it feels like Yin is going deeper inside the mountain. Found the art of combat in a little corner of the cave. When held, attacks that go through the barrier/super effective deals more damage. Momijis continue to be rather annoying, as aside from their ability that prevents one hit KOs (Momijis with their alternate abilities seem to be rarer), they also like using a move that more or less does the same thing, sometimes being successful twice, which is a time waster. Or they use restitution which makes Yin waste healing items. Hm, new type of NPC trainer. Past that spirit Yin can go north or south. North leads to a bronze mirror. It's in the same category as charms which can be sold. Anyway, it'll copy the stat changes of the opponent. Doesn't seem useful since that'd mean debuffs will be reflected as well. Definitely for sale. Quite a number of trainers in this floor. At this point, using them for XP gain while using the talisman to ward off wild puppets, who were already found in the other cave in the mountain. They're slightly higher in level though, and they're not style changed even when they're past level 30. South of the second spirit is another hairpin item, while going north leads to a ladder up. Climbing the ladder, there's one lone PLF member to fight before finding the exit past her. Hrmmm, I save just in case there's a boss battle. Current team probably isn't the ideal lineup, but I think it should work well enough if there is a boss fight. No boss fight, but some trainers to fight. Wandering around the area, and it seems like Yin ain't out of the mountain yet. She catches sight of a somewhat familiar face; of course it would be familiar, as it's the favorite character she selected as her favorite character at the start of the game: Tenshi! Most likely a trainer battle, and before I go looking for the path that'll lead to her, I head back near the cave entrance and head west. Giant toad's pond, huh? Seems like an optional area. I know that Cirno sometimes hang around this place/a place like this in official sources, so maybe we'll see her. Exploring the place turns out to be a bust. Heading west will return you to the same place, over and over again. Heading west returns Yin to the mountain area. Probably something for the future, and hopefully it won't be a maze. Back to the mountain area. Puppets seem to be the same as the puppets found on the way here, before the cave. A few more PLF members are fought, until Yin finds the way that leads to where one certain celestial is waiting. Hmm. Not a boss battle. Aside from the music, the boss fights usually have a title beside their name during the pre-match screen. Well, Iku is no problem. I switch to Sakuya and finish Iku off. One down, two to go- Huh. Well, one of the things Suika can do is change her size in the game. It's one of her special attacks in the fighting games. Still, that's a huge puppet. Power Suika, I recall, has the highest total stats in the game. However, like Yukari, it seems like she has a weakness to go along with it: namely, not being able to act every other turn. Yatsuhashi KOs Suika in one shot, partially due to the level difference, and partly due to type effectiveness. Would have been funny to have brought along Yin's Tenshi for this fight. Anyway, it's another easy win. Alas, since I'm training puppets to be somewhat sufficient against boss fight, every other trainer feels lacking challenge-wise. I'd still get in some trouble sometimes (Iku and Tenshi managed to do some damage to some of my puppets, and other trainers can still easily KO several puppets - had to run back to the Moriya Shrine once or twice) but all in all the level gap between normal trainers (and wild puppets) and bosses is fairly large. It's no boss battle, but the trek down the mountain took quite a bit of time... and the time it took to find Suwako and Kasen, especially Kasen, took a TON of time. Due to that, this ends the episode for now. Next time Yin will most likely find her way out of the mountain, and maybe explore some areas with the superhuman glove while searching for the next new area where the story will progress. Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 10, 2016 14:20:30 GMT -5
It's a bit early, but I'm kind of thinking on what I want to LP next after this game. Maybe a year from now, if they have translations, I'll definitely LP the expansion pack of this game. As for other games, maybe roguelikes could work well. Touhou-wise, I might LP the Super Robot Wars-styled fangame, though it seems dialogue heavy. Anyway, that's for the future, and the present presents itself with yet another episode! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 21 Yin's still trying to find a way out of the mountains. A few new puppets were caught in a previous episode, and several trainers were fought and a lot of level ups were had. I really want to find a puppet box now and reshuffle the teams again. Like I dunno, the entire current team is already quite strong, and I like some difficulty going on. On Pokemon games I used to just level grind pokemon by large amounts, making the entire game feel too easy, and I wanted to change that with this game. The Genbu Ravine and the entrance to the Youkai Mountain is probably southwest of the area, so if I wander that direction I'll probably find the way out. Wandering in directions other than that leads to a rest house - just what I needed. Lots of supplies to sell and puppets to switch out. So many items to sell~ The search for Kasen and Suwako really paid off money-wise~ Still no revive items sold (which does add a slight challenge to things). Also, the peddler here is selling oath threads now, the next step after contract threads. Fate threads are the top-tier threads, though they probably can't be sold since the sell price for them is a measly 5. I spent so much on healing items, though, that when I got to the peddler I found out that he was selling special charms which reduce the damage from super effective attacks. New lineup again. For now, I'll remove puppets from the team if they exceed level 42. Seems like just the right level for the next few areas Yin will have to explore. Maybe. I dunno. Kanako was caught at level 30, so she can style change now. Defense or power style for her. Well, I think I'll go with defense for her. Hit points, focus power, and focus defense are high on Kanako, stat potential wise, so I think that style would be a great fit for her. She gets wintry wind and shock stamp for the new moves. Shock stamp is one of those attacks that force the enemy to switch out/ends battles with wild puppets. Both are wind type and focus attack; wintry wind has 55 damage and has a high chance for crits. Out of the rest house, Yin follows the road east, and soon finds herself in a new area. Mayohiga... if I recall, Yukari lives her alongside her two servants. Chen is one of the servants here, and Yin can catch Chen puppets in the tall grass surrounding this place, and since Chen is a cat... well, there's a lot of cats here, it seems. Come to think of it, this is the first time that Yin has encountered animals in her journey. Anyway, the storage room contains a Hakurei shinsu hidden in one pot, and there's also a prismatic candy lying inside. There's another Hakurei shinsu lurking in the tall grass. Anyway, this place seems to become a playhouse/branch of the PLF. The buildings in the area seem pretty dilapidated, and aside from the cats and the fairies, there's no one else here. I'm pretty definitely sure that this is where Yukari resides, but I suppose this will be another mystery that'll be solved later in the game. The fairy seems to be telling the truth. Aside from the three of them and all the cats ambling around, there's no one else in this place to talk to, just a lot of old houses and lots and lots of Chen puppets. There were some items, though. The rosary which makes the one holding it less likely to get hit with the opponent's skill, and skill card 35; charging stun, fighting type, focus attack, damage 55 and after using the puppet who did the move will be switched out. Due to being low priority, it will hit last. At the very edge of this place, inside the last house, Yin finally encounters someone in the village who's not a fairy or a cat. Well, Chen is a cat, but she's a youkai, so not a normal cat. Chen seems to know Yin already, and she has a present for us. The gap map! It functions like a map (there's no map item in the game aside from this), and it can function like fly - meaning that Yin would no longer need to travel long distances just to get to a rest house or the costume store. Hooray! Seems like Yin can only travel in the areas marked with the red dots. Some of the areas marked with gray dots have already been explored, but she can't use the map to go there. Oh well. Glancing at the map there are a few areas that Yin can go to, there's one in the Misty Lake and another in route 1 - and the latter leads to a cave to the underground, which is the setting for Touhou 11. With that in mind, I reckon that'd be the next place Yin has to go to, but we'll leave it for later. Mayohiga is more or less complete, but the Youkai Mountain isn't. Better explore do that now to more or less clear the area. There's only two puppets in Mayohiga, but the second one took a long time because she was rare and high cost, while the other puppet isn't rare and low cost. Chen. Second stage boss of Touhou 7 and mid-boss of the EX stage of the same game. A cat. Ran's familiar. Wind type. Ran Yakumo. EX boss of Touhou 7, and mid-boss of the Phantasm stage of the same game. Yukari's familiar. Yukari uses both Ran and Chen as projectiles in the fighting games, and the former was more or less Yukari's projectile in Touhou 8. A homing, spinning fox. Illusion and fire type. I dunno if there's a Yukari puppet in Mayohiga, but considering the many Chen encounters I had to run away from to encounter one Ran, and the fact that I already caught a Yukari puppet, I'm not inclined to find out. Removed Kasen and Keine from the team and replaced them with Chen and Ran. Ran still needs on more level to style change, but her shikigami is ready to. Speed or assist style for Chen. Speed seems to be the better choice since it does provide better spread attack and speed than assist. Going with that, though assist is somewhat tempting since adding earth to her wind type removes her weakness to electric type attacks. Forgot to mention this minor detail, but style changing doesn't take any PP to do, and doing it gives the puppet free 20 PP. Chen learns lightning speed from speed style; electric type, spread attack, 70 damage and using it will switch Chen out. If used in a wild puppet fight the battle with end. Back at Youkai Mountain, Yin is just wandering around trying to explore everything there is to explore. Following a path south of where she fought Tenshi, she comes across a house. No one's home, but skill card 13 is just lying there so Yin just takes it like it's hers. The skill for this one is waterfall drop; water type, focus attack, 100 damage and no secondary effects. Also found out that the restitution move that Momiji uses, the one I used to win the Sanae and Kanako fights, does not work on illusion types because they're immune to void type moves. Anyway, the path out(?) of the mountain on this side branches out to multiple different routes, most of them ending in dead ends. There's enough wild puppet encounters at this point for Ran to reach style change. Power or defense for Ran. Thinking about it, I wonder what would be the best choice. Ran's attacks are all focus oriented, and both styles generally increase that, though the Ran I caught has spread attack as having the most potential. Power would be the obvious choice since that gives the biggest boost to focus attack, but I'm wondering if defense style can be used instead to compensate for her really poor health. Ah well. Going with power style. If things don't look great for Ran, maybe I'll finally use reinforce stats to boost her hit points. Ran learns rising sun from power style. Fire type, focus attack, 50 damage and increases her speed per use. I spy a Touhou character. Yin makes her way to she is, and it's another battle. Also, a little past Hatate is skill card 40. Angelic assistance, void type, spread attack, 50 damage and effects change depending on terrain and weather effects. Speed style puppets seem to always give me trouble. Unless I got a speed type of my own who's faster, Yin's team ends up getting damaged quite badly from these battles. Oh well. Anyway, Hatate's just a regular trainer. Like many of the Touhou trainers, optional to fight for the XP. After the battle I head back to the rest house to revive Waggysaggy, and continue wandering around the mountain. This area is huge, and a lot less straightforward than the first side of the mountain that Yin started in. Skill card 11 is found on the way there. It's rising sun, already mentioned it as Ran got the skill from power style. After healing, Yin finds herself here. I still have no idea if this is anywhere near the exit, but might as well check, poison gas be damned. Checking the gap map, I finally realize that I won't end up back in the Genbu Ravine. Yin's where the blue arrow is on the map, which is still the Youkai Mountain. The topmost red dot is the Moriya Shrine, and the red dot southwest of the shrine is the Kappa Hideout, and going south from where Yin is will take her to the SDM. South of the sign, there's a small gauntlet of PLF members to fight. Nothing too hard. Skill card 54 is just lying there, and it contains the move star flare. Light type, spread attack, 80 damage with a 20% chance of reducing enemy accuracy. Anyways, speed type Aya puppets continue to be rather difficult to handle. Without Yorihime who's resistant to wind attacks, Aya's twister attack can deal a ton of damage. They don't have the salvo ability of power Aya, but more often than not it can hit 4-5 times regularly compared to it hitting 2-3 times, and the damage stacks up. South of the three fairy guards, there's one non-trainer blocking the way to a pit. Basically Yin runs into another temporary dead-end, so it's back to getting lost in the mountain. Still, Yin's probably in the foot of the mountains, so she's probably near the exit. Following the stream west, Yin soon finds a road that leads her to some familiar territory. The SDM should be nearby, though there probably isn't anything new there. On the other hand, on the east side of the lake there's a path blocked by rocks, and if I recall, an abandoned mansion. (I do end up checking the SDM first. Nothing new there.) The path past the breakable rocks is a short one and Yin soon comes across the abandoned mansion. The tall grass surrounding the area has new puppets to catch, but before I try to catch them all I check the house first. There doesn't seem to be any puppet encounters inside. The house definitely looks abandoned, and the mist outside is all over the place and the BGM is being all melancholy all over the place. In one of the rooms Yin hears some knocking sounds come from somewhere. Whatever it is, it's not inside the room, but there is a prismatic candy in the pot. Yin enters another room and sees a chair float in mid-air, so basically this place seems to be a haunted house (and there's another prismatic candy in a pot). Upstairs there's yet another prismatic candy lying around. Also, the corridor on the second floor has skill card 38, dancing rain. Sound type, focus attack, 75 damage with a 50% chance to reduce foe's accuracy. One last room to check. This time a plate or some other item made of glass breaks after falling on the floor. Aside from that, nothing else. That pretty much covers the entire mansion, and it seems like a bust, but just to be sure, I re-check all the rooms Yin went to before. Well, looks like some ghosts have been playing pranks on Yin and her team. Battle time! Hmm, Merlin's team seem stronger than Hatate and Tenshi. At least in level. Type-wise, they more or less have one type in common, and all three puppets on team Merlin is weak to wind. Sending out Kanako and using twister was more than enough to finish them all off. It's not over yet. Merlin has two other sisters, and on the second room Yin visited she encounters the eldest, Lunasa. Alas, she more or less has the same team as her sister, though Lunasa's Lunasa puppet is the higher leveled one instead of puppet Merlin. Again, wind type attacks KOs them all easily. Last room, last sister, the youngest one Lyrica. No surprise that she has the same puppets as her sisters. Oh well. Kanako or Chen is the best way to deal with them. If they had different puppets, or if they were higher in level this could have been more of a challenge. Admittedly, I could have made it more challenging by not using wind-type attacks, but too late for that. And that's that. A picture drops in the piano room, but aside from examining it, nothing else happens. There's actually four sisters, though only three show up in official works. It's somewhat complicated; like the fourth sister created those three using some sort of thing and made them to look like her three sisters who left her. Something like that. Hmmm, this Touhou PV should probably explain things better than me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS6IT9UMC8UNo, no, not that one. This one. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmG5Sk5dyaIThat said, I think this episode is done for today. After this area, there's really only one new area that Yin can access, and that one would take quite a lot of time, I reckon. So that's for next episode. So until then, see ya all later!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 11, 2016 13:47:39 GMT -5
HELLOEVERYONETIMEFORANOTHEREPISODE!!!!! I may have tried drinking too much coffee while being a person who rarely drinks them. This episode might be even sloppier than usual. That said, last time Yin found a way out of the Youkai Mountain, finding herself on the Misty Lake. Using the superhuman glove, she uses it to break open a path in a lake that led to an abandoned mansion. There she finds the three sisters haunting/hanging around the place, and after defeating them Yin has no other task left except to explore the area in route 1 blocked off by rocks. Looking at the gap map, going through route 1 via that road will lead her to the caves toward the underground city of Gensokyo. Before that, on the previous episode Yin was wandering outside the abandoned mansion and caught some new puppets. The Prismriver sisters. Lunasa is the eldest, Merlin is the one in the middle, and Lyrica is the youngest. A trio of poltergeists who play music. They're the stage 4 bosses of Touhou 7. Lunasa and Lyrica were playable/opponents in Touhou 9 as well, but Merlin isn't. All three, at least in normal style, is sound and nether type. Kana Anaberal. Playable/opponent in Touhou 3. Another poltergeist like the sisters, but not related to them. Official game info states that she haunts a mansion, so that's probably why she can be found in the abandoned mansion here in the Misty Lake. They're the only puppets that can be caught in that area of the lake. The puppet book is almost done as well. We may be close to the end of the game! Let's start this episode and find out! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 22 Yin takes the gap map to the human village. Route 1 is in the east, and the gap map can be used to go there, so why warp in the human village? Why, costumes of course! So many costumes to hand out now... for that reason, I'll spoiler it so it won't cut the flow of the story. {Spoiler} Momiji and Hatate get similar outfits. As I recall, this is the tengu costume that showed up in one of the covers of the official works, worn by other tengu. Aya would probably have this as her alternate costume as well. Anyway, both the normal and alternate costume of Momiji lacks the shield she carried around in Touhou 10. Aside from the games they debuted in, Ran and Chen doesn't have any alternate costumes when they showed up in other works. Chen's alt costume here looks cute, though. Suwako still keeps her eye hat on her alt costume, while Kanako trades away her giant rope thing for an onbashira and a giant snake. Kanako is the snake, while Suwako is a frog... so I guess that makes Sanae a slug. Yatsuhashi and her sister (plus the EX boss of Touhou 14) doesn't get a lot of attention fanart wise, and doesn't have a lot of significance in other official works. For that game, most of the attention is towards all the other bosses of that game: Waggysaggy, Sekibanki, Kagerou, Seija, and Sukuna. A little because the three don't have a lot of characterization, and fanon can't really expand on them. I enjoy the remixes of the EX boss, though, and she's one of my favorites due to it. That said, she's the last Touhou 14 boss that I haven't caught a puppet of. Kasen wearing the Hakurei miko outfit. She wore those clothes in the Wild and Horned hermit because Reimu was slacking off. Once all the costume changing is done, it's time to head off to Route 1! The smashable rock just lies a teeny bit north past the Route 1 rest house, and a little past that Yin sets foot in route 2 for the first time. I sense new puppets! And surprisingly, it doesn't take long at all to catch all the new ones in the area. Route 2 has Sekibanki and Kogasa puppets for the ones I already caught. Chiyuri Kitashirakawa, and Yumemi Okazaki. Two humans from another dimension, not from the outside world where Yin resides in. That's what I vaguely remember about Touhou 3, at least. Yumemi is a professor, and Chiyuri is her assistant, and the former is light and water type while the latter is electric and water type. Ruukoto and Mimi the missile. NPCs who showed up in the ending of Touhou 3. Ruukoto shows up in Reimu's ending, and Mimi on Marisa's. Steel type. Anyways, most of the current team has reached level 42, or are close to it so it's time for a probably unwise shuffling of teams again! The trainer puppets are already around level 33+, so this'll probably bite me in the ass at this point. Ran and Chen stay in the team for now, while Sanae and the three newly caught puppets get to be added to the team lineup. All of them are ready for style change. Spoilered them below for the long version of things. Short version is this: chose power style for Sanae and Ruukoto, and Chiyuri and Yumemi go with speed style. {Spoiler} Power or speed for Sanae, and going with the former since her speed is rated E+ only. The ability for power style immediately adds a weather effect when Sanae is fighting. Never really used moves that changed the weather or terrain, so I don't really know what effects it grants. Sanae learns wind wave from changing to power style; wind type, spread attack, 75 damage and has a 30% chance to make opponents flinch. For Ruukoto it's either assist or speed. Assist provides better defense for both types of attacks, and some boost in hit points, but her attack power stays low - and she's pretty much focus attack oriented due to her poor spread attack stat. Power gives her a sizeable boost in focus attack and speed, though her hit points will be lower than normal style. I go with the lesser of two evils with power style, so she'll have at least a chance to attack before she gets hit. Fire type gets added with her initial steel type, and she learns rising sun. Between defense or speed style, I think I'll go with the latter for Chiyuri. Defense style has a very nice ability, not to mention having a very high boost in focus defense... but in the end, I gravitate to the speed and attack stats more than defense. The gap in defense and speed style in terms of focus attack is too high. Chiyuri becomes electric and light type instead of electric and water. She gets the move atomic energy, which is a light type version of the hit point stealing move aura drain. One of the moves she already knows, ice machine gun, is the move that hits 2-5 times - only with lower damage, but functions as a quick attack as well. She also has powerful magnetism, which turns the next move of the opponent into electric type - which could be a handy defense move as Chiyuri takes very low damage against electric type moves due to being electric and light type. Lastly, Yumemi. Power or speed style. Both offer more or less similar boost in spread attacks which is Yumemi's specialty. Power increases focus and hit points more by a tiny bit, and it's the same for speed style, though in this case it's spread defense and speed getting the tiny boost. Hrmm... well, right now there's three power style puppets in the team and two speed styles, so might as well choose speed for an equal distribution, at least for now. Yumemi learns charge stealing... aura drain, atomic energy, and this move are the kind of the same: 75 damage and heals hit points by half the damage inflicted, and for charge stealing the move is electric type. With the new team set up, I head back to Route 2 and proceed with the journey. The trainers are a little stronger than my team, but I got the numbers game on my side. Most trainers have 3 puppets at most, and it's rather rare to encounter a trainer with four or more... heck, I think I only encountered one trainer each that had five and six puppets, and those were boss fights. Anyway, route 2 is surprisingly short. Just four trainers encountered and Yin finds the entrance to the cave to the underground. There's really nothing else of note in the area - no areas blocked off by anything, and probably no hidden items as well. As for the trainers fought... well, the current team is having a tiny bit of trouble, and I suspect that it'll be a ton of trouble if I encounter a boss. I'll stick with this team for now, since the next area will be a cave and there'll be no shortage of wild puppets to fight. New area, and my eye spies new puppets to catch! Tiny drunk oni get! Anyway, I reckon I'll explore the place now, and catch puppets when I encounter them. Also, from this point on is more or less Touhou 11 territory. The game was particularly quite hard, and it had a pretty cool final boss battle as well. Most likely, Yin will get all the Touhou 11 puppets in the underground, and with that the Windows era Touhou will be one step to completion, as aside from the Touhou 11 cast, the only one left is the EX boss from Touhou 14. The cave seems a lot more complex than the one in the Youkai Mountains, what with there being multiple levels on one floor, plus the fact that there are ladders leading to more floors and all that. Anyway, I ignore the first ladder I saw and keep Yin on the current floor. She hasn't even checked the entire place yet, and it would be more prudent to do that first. As it turns out, that ladder was the only one Yin can go to at the moment as every other path on this floor is a dead end. Down we go, then. Yin won't fall down on those pits, and aside from one trainer, the floor itself is a short path, leading to a ladder heading back up again. There are some inaccessible areas in this floor though, so most likely there are more ladders heading down. Down is probably where Yin is headed. I mean, Yin is finding her way to the Underground City and all, and it'd be a bit daft that the way towards it is up. Back on the first floor, there are more bridges to cross, and ladders that'll lead back down again. Yin probably won't get lost here. If she somehow does, the gap map is usable in places like this, so in a pinch it can be used after a battle that somehow led to multiple KOs on Yin's team. With regards to that, Ruukoto seems to most vulnerable. She doesn't get a lot of HP on level up, and I think she's worst than Flan when it comes to total hit points. Random note. The evil spirit NPCs are still cartoony looking, but they're a lot less cute than the rest of the NPCs in the game. Anyways, Yin finds another ladder going down one floor - and continuing on the path south will lead to some gold dust lying around. It's sell price is 500... at this point I'd rather have a healing item. Nothing else to see on this path, so it's time for Yin to head back down again. And from just trying to find the way further down, Yin finds all the puppets available in the cave. The ones that were already caught in other areas that shows up in this cave is Kisume and Yamame. Suika Ibuki. Teeny drunk oni. Final boss of the first fighting game, playable in the second fighting game, and made some appearances in other works. Drunkard. Super strong, and can grow gigantic if she wants to. Apparently that gourd she carries around can produce infinite amounts of sake. Drinks while blocking attacks in the fighting games. Fighting and earth type. Parsee Mizuhashi. Stage 2 boss of Touhou 11. Surprisingly difficult for a stage 2 boss, at least at first. Players who figure out the pattern to her attacks won't have a lot of difficulty... though for most part you can say that for a lot of bosses in the games. Yuugi Hoshiguma. Stage 3 boss of Touhou 11. One of the four oni devas in Touhou. Suika is also one of the four, and it's been speculated that Kasen may be one as well. Often paired with Parsee, which more or less happened because Parsee is the stage 2 boss and Yuugi being the boss of the stage after that - though personality-wise they're kinda compatible, I guess, if Parsee is being tsundere. Or something. Her sake NOT EVEN DROP, or somesuch. Fighting type. Going down to the floor below, the path starts from the south of that ladder. Instead of climbing on that ladder up, Yin continues north and encounters a new NPC type: the oni. In Touhou lore, the oni of gensokyo used to live in the Youkai Mountain, but they left the place and made the underground their new home. Of course, being an oni, the trainer uses the oni. Power Suika KOs Yumemi in one shot, but due to their ability they can't act on the next turn. Sanae uses this chance to do super effective moves to knock the oni out. Nature moves for power Suika, then wind moves for defense Suika and assist Kasen. Yumemi and Sanae reach level 36 from the fight (and Yumemi gets revived due to level up). Sanae learns slime shot (kinda meh); water type, spread attack, 55 damage and lowers the foe's speed. Yumemi learns backdraft, which seems a bit better damage wise; fire type, spread attack, 95 damage with a 10% chance to inflict burns. Past the oni is another ladder up. Before going there, Yin goes up on the ladder she saw before... which lead to a path that hid another gold dust (oh joy). Taking the ladder past the oni brings Yin to a different area in the first floor. There's another gold dust in the area, and skill card 17, grand liberate. Earth type focus attack, 80 damage with a high chance for critical hits. Ran and Chiyuri can learn it. Going down a little bit more Yin finds yet another ladder going down... plus one Touhou. In terms of offense, defense Kisume isn't that powerful at all. On the other hand, she's a wall in terms of hit points and defense and Sanae's attacks aren't doing a lot of damage, even the super effective ones. Still, a bit of healing on Yin's side and the battle is easily won. Also switched to Sanae's other ability: lucky, which increases the chance for the secondary effects of attacks to activate, which seems more useful. Going down the ladder, a straightforward path leads Yin to one NPC fight, and past the spirit is an entrance deeper into the caves. At this point, Yin is still somewhere around stage 1-2 of Touhou 11, location-wise. Following the path, Yin encounters a new NPC type. Another oni, this time female... which reminds me. All the crow tengu trainers (not counting Aya and Hatate) are male, and the wolf tengus are only female in this game. Anyway, this oni trainer uses the onis for a team. Sanae is perfect for the job as most of Suika and Yuugi's attacks are not very effective against Sanae, while wind and nature type moves, which Sanae has, is super effective. I wanna catch as many Yuugis as I encounter. Apparently, power Yuugi and Suika are tied for the puppets with the highest possible focus attacks - and power Yuugi doesn't have the restriction of the drunkard ability, though power Suika overall has better stats in other areas. There's only one path to take past the oni, and so Yin goes forward, taking on trainers on the way. There's no way around them if I wanted to avoid them. Anyway, as we probably reach the end point of the area, another Touhou character is encountered. Yamame has a Wriggle puppet since they're both more or less insect youkai. Nothing was really notable about the battle. It was a Wriggle, a Medicine, and a Yamame puppet. All of them were poison type, or at least had poison type attacks. Ruukoto was more than enough to take all of them out, due to steel type immunity to poison. Anyhoo, going past Yamame there's stairs which lead under the bridge with skill card 73 lying in the corner. It contains flash bullet, no damage but confuses the opponent. Yin enters even deeper into the caves, and she finds herself in a rather large bridge. This is where Stage 2 of Touhou 11 took place... so soon enough Parsee will be encountered. This kinda feels like a boss rush somehow. Yin can't use the boat, and soon after crossing it she does encounter Parsee. Power Yamame is actually a somewhat tough fight, a little due to bad luck as my entire team is weak against many of her attacks. She managed to KO 2 puppets, and put another two in a critical state. She also has the annoying ability infection, where attacking her or getting attacked gives the infection ability to my puppets. In comparison, defense Parsee barely did any damage. Very lucky that Ruukoto managed to attack before Yamame, because if Yamame attacked first Ruukoto would be KOed very easily. There are no wild puppet encounters in this area, so I was somewhat hoping that I'd soon find the underground city. I did, but didn't notice that Yuugi was standing outside the gates. 2 puppets KOed, let's do this. Like the two oni trainers before her, Yuugi's team seems to have oni puppets in her team. Got very lucky on the first turn - as Suika missed on her attack. Next turn Suika couldn't move and Sanae finished her off. Kasen next. After that it was smooth sailing taking down probably-most-likely-an-oni Kasen and Yuugi with wind attacks. Yuugi mentions an interesting tidbit after the fight: the PLF's HQ is near this place. Certainly, Yin just aimlessly wandering after the Moriya Shrine bore some results! Past the oni, is the city that was formerly hell, now inhabited by oni and all sorts of other youkai. Finally, a town! While I'd love to find the rest house now, I think it would be better to save the game now and leave exploring the place later. Expect another team change next time! Until then, see ya all laters.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 12, 2016 13:49:49 GMT -5
New episode time! As it turns out, the underground city can be accessed with the gap map, in case I have to go to a different area above ground at the moment. I don't need to, but it's convenient in case I ever have to backtrack to an aboveground location during this current journey. Anyway, let's get started! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 23 Previously, Yin started her aimless journey underground, and finds herself in the underground city of oni and youkai with some interesting news. Apparently, deeper inside the caves is the HQ of the PLF. After her trip to the Moriya Shrine, Yin didn't have a goal in mind on where to go, and now she does in the form of facing the Puppet Liberation Front on their home turf. Before that Yin has to prepare; she's in the underground city that was formerly hell. The oni and other youkai moved in a long time ago, and it now serves as a rest stop for wanderers like Yin. This place should help Yin stock up on her journey, and her team does need a little rest after all the battles they went through reaching this place. Despite being the former hell of Gensokyo, the oni turned this into a somewhat festive looking place. The BGM is rather cheerful, and the many lamps lighting up the underground gives the place a rather lively feel. Anyway, the two item stores offer some nice items. Skill cards are being sold on one store, and they're all mostly the same: the javelin moves are all focus attacks, dealing 75 damage, and what differentiates them from each other is the type and secondary effect, like fire javelin is a fire type with a 10% chance to burn the opponent, while shadow javelin is nether type with a 10% chance to inflict fear. Since skill cards can be reusable as many times as needed, this could be a handy set of moves to give focus attack oriented puppets. The price though is pretty big... but I reckon I can afford some of them. Lots of gold coins which sell for 10k each from encountering Yuugi puppets. On the other store though, among the healing items in stock is the Moriya shinsus. Finally, a revive item being sold in stores! One problem I end up having is getting a puppet KOed while wandering around areas, and going back to a rest house to heal them is becoming a pain, so having a number of these stocked up will be very useful. As for other items, I sell off the charms and the bronze mirror. I don't use them, preferring using the Myouren tea to cure status conditions, and while the bronze mirror can be useful as it can copy stat boosts, it will probably copy debuffs as well. Plus is sells for a whopping 60k. All in all, I sell items for a total of 300k. Enough to buy the skill cards, get some contract threads and revive items. Hooray! The town itself is fairly average in size, around the size of the human village. In official sources, the underground city is probably a little bigger, but due to limitations or somesuch this place is somewhat small. I recall seeing a screenshot of the expansion pack where this place is bigger, with a festival area and all that, but for this vanilla version there's not much to do in the city; aside from buying items and talking to drunk oni. Kinda thinking that this would be the perfect place for a game center or something, to play some minigames and win prizes or something. Skill card 41 is 4 Gods' Assistance. Void type, spread attack, damage 50 where the attack changes depending on terrain effects. Weather and terrain effects are separate, so you can probably have a terrain and weather effect on one battle. So far, all I know is the aurora weather effects make light type moves stronger and weakens dark type moves, and dusk is the other way around... oh, and there's also sandstorm which Suika puppets have, which does damage to anything that's not earth type, I think. In the games, most of the stage bosses of Touhou 11 reside here, and the other stage bosses of the game reside deeper underground. Suika may have been a resident of the place, but by the events of the first and second fighting game she's already living above ground, sometimes loitering in the Hakurei shrine, and sometimes the celestial realm where Tenshi resides in. Basically, Suika being Suika caused a ruckus among the celestial realm and bothered Tenshi to the point of giving Suika land so she would stop (though Tenshi didn't own the land she gave Suika). Anyways, I think Yin's business in the underground city is concluded, so it's time to go further underground. Of course, with the team in the previous episode getting quite strong, I thought it was the perfect time to switch teams. Only Yumemi is the only one in the current team, while the rest of the new team is the ones caught underground. Why is Nue there, you ask? I needed a little bit of extra cash, so I wandered a bit in the outskirts of the city to fight wild puppets and get them to drop items to sell, and I encountered and caught one. Nue was sealed underground during the events of Touhou 11, and the incident of that game caused a number of things that led to Touhou 12, one of which is releasing Nue above ground. Well, all of them are ready for style change. Long version is spoilered, short version is this: Yamame and Parsee are now assist style, Nue and Yuugi are power style, while Suika is defense style. {Spoiler} Power or defense for Nue, and since defense style doesn't boost Nue's spread attack at all, I'll go with power style (plus the fact that her potential for focus and spread defense is rather poor). Hit points might be an issue though, and it generally seems that I often catch puppets with rather underwhelming potential for that stat. Either way, Nue's spread defense is good on both styles. Anyway, Nue's alternate ability for power style is hobgoblin, the one Mamizou is using, as both of them are shapeshifters, though the telescopic ability seems to be slightly more practical. She learns charge stealing and paralyzing wave from style change. The former I mentioned before, and the latter doesn't do damage and just paralyzes and confuses the opponent. The two status effects combined make it similar to the paralysis status effect of the Pokemon games, as the paralysis status here only drops speed, while confusion doesn't do damage and only has a chance to prevent puppets from using moves. It's power or assist style for Yamame. Power will boost her spread attack, and assist boosts focus attack. Normal Yamame seems to gravitate to spread attacks in terms of stats and moves learned, but I think I'll go with assist style and make her focus attack oriented. That gives her a slightly better boost in speed. On all styles, Yamame has the same abilities to choose from; nimble and infection (which turns the foe's ability to infection if the attack has a damage rating of 85 and lower - somewhat handy for those with dangerous abilities... though probably not good if, say, an enemy power Suika gets the infection ability for the fight instead of their limiting drunkard ability). Anyway, Yamame learns poisoned arrow; poison type, focus attack, 80 damage which easily gets criticals and has a 10% chance to poison opponent. From skill cards, she can learn aqua, grass, and shadow javelin (20% speed decrease, 10% weakness, 10% fear respectively). In general, assist Yamame seems to have a versatile choice when it comes to learnable moves via skill cards. Defense or assist for Parsee. A tough choice. Both styles will boost her focus attack, but the styles differ in terms of defense and speed, with defense style focusing on the former and assist on the latter. From fighting a defense style Parsee, I know her alternate skill nullifies steel type attacks, while the ability of assist nullifies illusion. And the fact that her focus defense and speed potential is very great makes the choice harder... hrngh, I flip a coin and end up selecting assist style. Maybe it's for the best, as Parsee becomes dark and water type instead of dark and nether as those two types are weak to light. She learns panic call; dark type attack that increases damage if foe is holding an item, and it can steal the held item as well. Power or defense for Suika. Power grants a very big boost to focus attack in comparison to defense, as well as making Suika giant size... but the ability more or less makes Suika into a punching bag on the turn after she attacks. Power would boost speed, but considering how poor her potential for that stat I go with defense style for Suika instead. Less power, but due to her ability the damage is boosted, sacrificing secondary effects of attacks for doing so. Suika becomes fight and fire type instead of fight and earth type that normal and power style has. Suika gets a variety of decent moves from doing defense style... but of course, the game decides to tease me. All of them have secondary effects. I can switch her ability from charge! to battle mania, a less useful skill that prevents fighting type foes from escaping or switching out. Maybe I'll go with that so Suika can reap the benefits of the many secondary effects of her moves. Yuugi can choose between power or speed style. Will go with the former; as power Yuugi and power Suika has the highest focus attack in the game, from what I heard - and power Yuugi is not restricted by power Suika's drunkard ability. On the other hand, power Yuugi doesn't have the overall highest total stats in the game. The ones who have that distinction is power Suika and power Yukari, having close to 100 points higher total stats than every other puppet in the game, though both have limitations set by their abilities. Anyways, speed Yuugi doesn't get that much of a speed boost. Yuugi gets rising sun and break shot as new moves given by speed style... though why waste PP on that when I have the skill cards for those two moves? She can't learn any of the javelin skills, which is a slight shame... Also, one of the moves that Yuugi already knows is cross counter. A low priority move, so she'll attack last, but the damage will be double the damage she gets if the attack used on her is focus powered (useless against spread attacks). I switch her ability from free breathe (ignore enemy ability) to imposing stance, which nullifies secondary damage (sandstorm damage, poison, burns, traps, that sort of thing). Well, time to head out with the new team! Looking at the map, Yin is currently at the city that was formerly hell, and the goal is the geyser control center at the very end of the map. Between the city and the center is Chireiden, or the palace of earth spirits, which is where the fourth stage of Touhou 11 is set. There's a road outside the city leading to it, and if the place is long I reckon that'll be one episode at least. If the road is short, the episode will continue and Yin will explore Chireiden. Maybe. Whatever the case is, onwards! And we're off to the road leading to Chireiden. I caught a new Nue here while farming for items to sell. The team wasn't shuffled around yet, so most of my current team is a little lower in levels compared to the wild and trainer puppets - though Yin's team has the advantage of having a full team of six puppets, and items. Once again the oni trainers continue using Oni puppets. They're a little harder to fight as Sanae has moves that were super effective against all of them (wind and nature type for most part). Kasen puppets can be found in this area as well, and they're somewhat more common than finding one on the east side of the Youkai Mountain. Had I known, I wouldn't have gone through all the trouble trying to find one then. In this area, the puppets that can be found are Parsee, Nue, Suika, Yuugi, and Kasen. Suika and Yuugi are two of the four devas, and general speculation is that Kasen is an oni as well (Suika knows who she is in the official source, she doesn't like beans (a weakness of oni), and she has an oni artifact in her possession, to name a few things) and probably one of the devas. Time will tell in the manga. It's a straight path with no alternate routes. The trainers in the way can't be avoided, and all in all it's not a long path and soon Chireiden is in sight. The evil spirit NPC dialogue continue to be somewhat malicious compared to all the other NPCs. The PLF is just being silly, and the ghosts are more or less the same, while the evil spirits are being... well, rather evil, with the exception of the evil spirits in the underground city. One was even chillin' on his/her house on a chair, and was somewhat friendly. Entering Chireiden, Yin almost doesn't notice that shoebill standing there. Those birds look rather badass in real-life, with their glares and all that. Anyway, the master of Chireiden keeps a lot of pets due to her ability, and Yin will probably encounter them along the way. Would be amusing if pets challenged Yin to battles; though there are two pets here than can transform to humanoid form - but what I mean it'd be silly if an actual non-humanoid animal challenged Yin to a battle. The place is somewhat more colorful than the SDM, which due to its name, is all red for the majority of the design. Yin's talking to the animals, checking to see if they wanna fight with puppets... which if looked from afar makes her seem kinda loony. Anyway, the place seems like a small area. A few rooms checked and we encounter the mistress of the mansion, Satori Komeiji. Well, Satori seems to already know why Yin is here. While it might look at first glance that Yin is communicating via the language of silent protagonists, she isn't in this case. Satori is... well, a satori. A type of youkai that can read minds/hearts. Normally disliked by most beings because she can look into their thoughts, animals like her since she can communicate with them. Well, if Yin wants to head down to the geyser control center, she'll have to prove herself to Satori first. Well, Yin's game, so it's fight time! Ohhhhh, crap. Not good. Her first puppet is almost ten levels higher than Yuugi, and the rest of Yin's team is below level 40, with Yumemi being an exception. Looks like my constant shuffling of teams has finally come biting me in the ass, haha. Well, it's a challenge, but I'm sure I can win with the items I have. By sheer dumb luck, I use Yuugi's cross counter by accident, and it works out. Speed style Rin deals a lot of damage, from a move that's focus type... cross counter will return double the damage if hit by focus moves, and Yuugi survives Rin's attack for a one-hit KO. However, she doesn't survive what's next, speed style Utsuho, who KOs Yuugi in one hit even though I healed her back to full hp. Nue is sent out, and Utsuho attacks again, almost KOing Nue, though not before Nue deals some damage. Considering speed Utsuho being speed style as well as her level, trying to make Nue attack is pointless. I use a Moriya shinsu to revive Yuugi in case she's needed. Nue gets KOed, and I send out Suika. Utsuho seems to use fire and fighting moves, so she's probably that type. Suika is chosen since she's fire and fighting type so hopefully she'll at least soak up some damage before getting a hit in. It works for at least one time; and I find out Utsuho is weak to sound type damage. Doesn't really matter as Suika is the only one with a sound type move in the party. I use another Moriya shinsu to revive Nue, just in case. Suika gets KOed, and I send Yumemi. She's water type, and Utsuho is probably weak against water. And Utsuho finally goes down to a slime ball. Defense Satori up next. Yumemi manages to survive the attacks of that puppet, allowing me to prudently heal up the rest of my team (while healing Yumemi every once in a while). The next puppet of Satori will probably have a much higher level, and it would be wise to have a team ready to take the next one on. However, just as I finish healing the team, Satori gets a critical attack, making Yumemi KOed. I switch to Parsee... because Satori has been using nothing but illusion attacks on Yumemi, and Parsee's ability nullifies that. It works. Satori's has no other damaging attack, so she's stuck to non-damaging ones of Parsee. I revive Yumemi and make Parsee wear down Satori... and that takes a while. Satori's defense style works as advertised and Parsee doesn't have any moves that are super effective against her. Parsee doesn't get damaged, but she only deals about a tenth of Satori's hit points per turn. Things pick up a little as Parsee's fire javelin causes the burn status effect. After a while, Satori is KO! One more to go! Power style Koishi... level 45. I was expecting something higher in level, but I'm not really complaining. Parsee is faster, and panic call is super effective (stealing blue earrings in the process), but she won't survive the next turn... She doesn't, but I do notice something. Two attacks of Koishi are void type, and while lots of puppets can learn void-type moves, Koishi's personality in the games make her a perfect fit for void type... and panic call is super effective because void types are weak against dark type moves... so, with that in mind, I send out Nue. Illusion types take no damage to void attacks, and it works. Koishi can't hurt Nue, giving me time to revive Parsee and finish Koishi off. Battle won. Battle was easier than expected, considering the levels of the enemy team, though that's probably due to the Satori and Koishi puppets having no attacks to deal with Parsee and Nue. Rin and Utsuho, being speed types, attacked first and did tons of damage. If Yuugi didn't manage to stop Rin in the first turn (which was pure luck since I used cross counter by accident), the battle would have been bad for Yin. Utsuho was quite tank-y as well, taking on several super effective moves before being brought down. The use of Moriya shinsus helped out a lot as well. Everyone except Yamame got a chance to fight, and Yin also gets 4 gold coins (40k) from winning. More items! Tempted to get some new costumes for my team now, haha... Anyway, Satori allows us to go to the geyser control center where the PLF is. It's just past Chireiden, though first Yin has to go through the remains of blazing hell first. Remains of Blazing Hell, huh? Sounds like a charming place. Chireiden is stage 4 of Touhou 11, and the remains are stages 5 and 6. On previous games, the final boss is usually a boss-type person, and their subordinates/servants/underlings are the stage 5 bosses (Sakuya being the maid of Remilia, Udonge being the assistant of Eirin, and Eirin herself being a servant to Kaguya the true final boss of Touhou 8, Sanae serving Kanako and Suwako, for example), while in the case of Touhou 11, Satori is just a stage 4 boss despite being more or less the leader of the place. Also, just right now I read up on something interesting. In the expansion pack, the Satori fight has been changed, where instead of facing that 4-puppet team, the main character would instead fight a mirror match to fit with Satori's abilities more, as several of her attacks in Touhou 11 referenced the spell cards of past games. So Yin would have to fight her team, which would have been an interesting fight. Yin can now go to the back of Chireiden and enter the Remains of Blazing Hell, but for now it's time to explore the place. There's some items lying around, most of them just basic stuff like oath threads. Yin also finds a room to rest in, but going to the bed to sleep treats Yin to the scene of someone else sleeping beside Yin, though there's no one there when Yin wakes up. Hmmmm. In the main courtyard there's some tall grass with new puppets to catch; basically all the puppets that Satori had on her team, completing Touhou 11 bosses set in the puppet book. For the windows era puppets, only one is left. The magic ring that Yin found near the fountain increases the chance for crits, so that would probably be handy. It doesn't take a while to catch all the puppets in Chireiden, and all of them are new puppets. Satori Komeiji. Satori the satori, stage 4 boss of Touhou 11. Can read minds, already mentioned that. Has a little sister. Illusion type. Rin Kaenbyou. Orin. A cat. Stage 5 boss of Touhou 11... and one of the hardest ones in the series. I mentioned a long time ago that Stage 5 bosses usually have a distinct gimmick in the fight, and in this case Rin had zombie fairies. Defeat the fairies and they respawn in no time. Very annoying. Pet of Satori. Fire type. Utsuho Reiuji. Okuu. Final boss of Touhou 11. Showed up as a playable character in the expansion pack of the second fighting game. A normal raven... well, as normal as ravens in hell can be. Acquired the power of a god due to the Moriyas meddling about, went insane and tried to incinerate the world. Very fun boss fight. While previous final bosses tried to defeat you with a ton of small bullets, Okuu's projectiles were massive objects. Simple patterns, but due to the size of them, they were still hard to dodge. Her theme is the standard boss theme of this game. Birdbrain. Another pet of Satori. Fire and light type. Koishi Komeiji. EX boss of Touhou 11. Playable character in the third and fourth fighting game. Satori's little sister. Also a satori... but she sealed off her third eye, and in doing so sealed off her mind reading powers as well. More importantly, this also seals off her consciousness to herself more or less. Among other things, can't be seen unless she enters your field of vision, and other stuff. Void type. Well, I think Yin's business with Chireiden is done, so it's time to exit from the back and enter the Remains of Blazing Hell. This is where stage 5 and 6 of Touhou 11 happened. Lots of lave here, and lava is hot so using the inflatable boat is impossible. The bike is okay to use in cavern-like maps, making exploration somewhat faster. So far the place looks rather large, and if it's too large I might end the episode in the middle of the exploring this place. Maybe. Anyway, there's some new puppets in the area, though the puppets here that Yin has already caught is Yuugi, Rin, and Utsuho. Level-wise, the wild puppets are more or less equal to the team's level. One more thing I noticed about the evil spirit NPCs. Unlike ghosts, the evil spirits only have one puppet on their team, which sort of implies that they're possessing the puppet. Anyway, a few more evil spirits fought later, and Yin finds a ladder down. Since my general method of doing things is exploring the entire floor first, we leave that ladder alone for now. Yuugi puppets seem like the best puppets for item farming as they tend to drop gold coins. With the amount of money Yin can make from selling these, I sense more costumes in the future. A cat is encountered. That's probably Rin, as she showed up as a mid-boss in cat form some time before facing her humanoid form in the boss fight of stage 5. Anyway, she runs away, and Yin must give chase. Eventually following the path Rin went to leads to a second ladder on this floor. The first ladder is kinda far away, so let's go down here first. Again with the evil spirits. The ones in this place seem less malicious with their dialogue and more silly. A few steps south of the last trainer fought has a ladder leading up, while going north has Rin who runs away from Yin again. Backtracking to last ladder seen by Yin leads to a lone island that has skill card 67, thermit. Fire type no damage and will heavily burn the opponent. Heavy burn and poison can be somewhat useful, as compared to normal poison and burn the damage slowly increases per turn. Could be possible to cause a heavy burn/poison and then tank hits and use healing items while the opponent slowly gets damaged. Any puppet that has imposing stance won't get damaged, though. All the lava everywhere is kinda hurting my eyes, and reminding me of mining for candy in DF. Back to the floor below, Yin encounters a new NPC: the zombie fairy. In this game and the official ones, they're not really zombies, just ordinary fairies playing around in costume. I go back to where Rin the cat was last scene and explore there. I also want to repeat what I said: speed style puppets are probably the most dangerous type of puppet to deal with. They're usually quite strong, and would often hit first unless I have a speed style puppet of my own. Found another prismatic candy, giving Yin a total number of 11 in her inventory. If I were to use them all on one puppet, that'll be a pretty sizeable level boost. Yes I am, zombie fairy. Anyways, the entire team is now at least level 42, with the highest in the current team is at level 45. That should be decent enough, I think, considering that Satori's team are all level 45. Yuugi has the burn status effect, but I reckon that there's no need to use a Myouren tea on her since she won't get burn damage due to her ability. Me being me, I end up using a Myouren tea anyway, due to a strange feeling of guilt. Past the zombie fairy is a ladder leading up, and Yin goes up on it. At the first floor again (or at least I think it's the first floor) Yin encounters Rin again who runs away to the southeast, and wanting to explore more Yin goes southwest and doesn't notice Utsuho just standing there. Uh oh. The entire party is healed up, but was not expecting this. Utsuho's theme is playing, so this is a boss fight... though surprisingly the first puppet is weaker than Satori's puppet. Odd. Still, Rin being a speed type is not good... Well, while Rin deals large amounts of damage, Parsee survives. Since Rin is a fire type, that makes her easy pickings for a water type move. Speed style Okuu is next... yeesh, why does it have to be speed? I heal Parsee up, in case she can survive the attack. She doesn't. I send out defense Suika who can survive Okuu's attacks, as long as I use a healing item every other turn. It's a slow fight, and I'm somewhat worried about Utsuho's last puppet. Eventually, speed Okuu is taken down, and out comes a level 46 power Okuu. Just a level higher than Satori's puppets, but considering that speed Okuu is already powerful, and Utsuho puppets in general are pretty powerful, I'm wary. Good reason for it, as the defensive Suika takes a lot of damage - I heal her to full health, and one attack from Okuu is enough to take off more than 70% of her health. My worries are unfounded, however. Suika gets KOed before she could attack, and I bring out Parsee again, revived during the battle between Suika and speed Okuu. She's faster, and one ice coffin is super effective enough to KO Okuu. Whew. Lucky that one super effective attack is enough. Surprisingly an easy battle for a boss fight. Is my team already too strong, I wonder? Anyway, Okuu lets Yin through, so going west will lead to the geyser control center. While I can end the episode now and leave the geyser for next time, I want to check out the rest of this place, and maybe find Rin who's been running away from Yin. Going back to where Rin the cat was last spotted, going southeast leads to a ledge than Yin can drop down on. There's a trainer and skill card 12 close by. The skill is burn strike; fire type, focus attack, 90 damage and easily gets crits and has a 10% chance to burn the opponent. Suika, Yuugi, and Yumemi can learn it, though for Yumemi it's not very useful as her stats are focused on spread attacks. There's another ledge to the east, and a little further from there is a ladder up. Very, very, very lost at this point. There's a rice dumpling found on this floor. I've been using items quite a lot lately, especially Myouren teas for status effects and my supply is running out... and at this point I get tired of wild puppet encounters on this place and start using talismans to ward them off. Past the recently encountered fairy zombie is another ladder down. Really quite lost right now, as I have no idea what floor Yin is at. I can only tell if I had already explored the place from new trainer encounters at this point. In general, it seems that this place if functioning like the SDM corridor labyrinth; chasing Rin around causes new routes to be opened. It really seems that way to me, and all I can do is find trainers who'll still fight Yin to figure out where to go next, or find items lying on the ground. Eventually, somehow Yin ends up back on the entrance to this place. Ehhhhhhhhhhh. How lost is Yin? A talisman can repel puppets for 200 steps, and about 40 talismans has been used. Three times Yin walked past a ledge and ended up going in circles. ...and then, of course... Rin is found on her human form west past Okuu... argh. Like hell you did! If you've got puppets, I'm KOing all of them, rargh! Take the wrath of Yin the easily gets lost! ...as it turns out, she doesn't want a fight with puppets, so my rage of getting lost has nowhere to go. Too bad, so sad for me. If you take a look at Rin, she has two pairs of ears. One set of pointy youkai ears, and a set of cat ears. The official game sprites were like this, and no one is sure if that was an error in design. Before Yin found Rin, she also found some burning stones, which give the puppet holding it burn status, and I have no idea how that's supposed to help. Though, some moves do get stronger if the puppet has a status effect, and maybe some abilities are affected by status effects as well. Anyway, the geyser control center is just a step away. So close, yet so far. It's been a rather long episode, and it's time to call it a day. So, until next time, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 13, 2016 10:17:47 GMT -5
It's next episode time today! Previously, I caught a couple of new puppets in the area Yin is currently in, but I forgot to mention them. In the Remains of Blazing Hell, Yuugi, Rin, and Utsuho can be caught in the area, where the last two can be caught in Chireiden's courtyard/backyard, and Yuugi can be caught in the road before Chireiden, plus the underground cave. P.S. Also forgot to take a screenshot of Koishi's entry in the puppet book. Kikuri. The 15th stage boss of Touhou 1. The first game of the series isn't quite like the rest of the games of the series, and it barely gets any attention at all anywhere. I've seen quite a ton of Touhou fanworks, and I can count the number of times I saw Kikuri with one hand - and two of them are Touhoumon games, this one and the romhack. Konngara. Again, a boss from Touhou 1. For most part, the only boss that got attention in this game in later works, both canon and fanon, is Mima. For Konngara though, there's at least one fan-comic where it's been speculated that Konngara is one of the four oni devas, due to the horn. Well, that's about it, so let's get it on with episode 24! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 24 Previously, Yin found the underground city and learned from one of its residents there that the PLF have their HQ at the deepest section of the area, the Geyser Control Center. In order to go there, Yin had to go through Chireiden and the Remains of Blazing Hell, the latter of which took quite a lot of time due to Yin's poor sense of direction. A couple of bosses were fought (though Satori didn't have boss music and Utsuho somehow had a weaker team than Satori) and quite a lot of trainers were fought as well, and even more puppets were fought (and some captured). And now here we are. The exit of the blazing hell, and through that is the geyser control. I'm expecting a boss fight at this point and I'm making sure that my team is up to the task. There will probably be another shuffling of team lineups once this matter underground is settled, but that's for later. Going inside the exit brings Yin to a corridor, and there's a room on the side that can be used to heal puppets. Aside from that, there's nothing of consequence in the area, so no point in taking a screenshot. And Yin has reached her goal. The Geyser Control Center aka currently the Puppet Liberation Front HQ. Just a few steps from entering it Yin gets ambushed by the PLF. It's Medicine; Yin met her way, way, way back in the second or third episode, just before entering the Human Village. She's not too happy about Yin messing around with the PLF, and it looks like Yin's about the enter a gauntlet of fights with the PLF, but suddenly there's a mystery person objecting about that! Reimu! Her theme that plays whenever she enters the scene is quite fitting for suddenly showing up on the scene. Her battle music is the only one uploaded on Youtube though, so I can't really show it. In any case, she's here doing shrine maiden stuff: resolving incidents, kicking some ass. Medi and the rest of the PLF scatter, and Reimu decides to team up with Yin and fight the PLF. She'll be taking the west path, which Yin can't go to, while Yin takes the south path. The path in the east is nothing but a dead end. Well, going down and left for a bit and Yin finds her first opponent. Luna, 1/3rd of the fairies of light. Fight time! Luna seems to use a team of wind type puppets: not exactly the best opponent for Yuugi. Gyokuto gets defeated after a few exchanges, though she does a large amount of damage to Yuugi in turn. Kagerou up next, and despite the fact that Yuugi was healed to max hp, the wolf girl is much stronger than Reisen II and KOs Yuugi in one hit. Suika and Yamame would be a bad choice, since they have types weak against wind. On the other hand, Nue's the best bet for the fight, as she has electric type on her and one electric type move. Kagerou hits first, but Nue's attack is super effective and drains hp, healing Nue back to max hit points. Speed Luna is the last puppet to fight. Unlike speed Kagerou, Luna doesn't seem to be wind type, and Nue's electric attacks aren't very effective. On the other hand, it deals enough damage, and Luna's attacks aren't effective either. So Nue's charge stealing is spammed to victory. One down, some more to go. Sunny's up next, and it's another three puppet team. Started off with Suika this time, fighting a defense Star. Star's ability immediately creates the aurora weather effect, which makes light type moves stronger and weakens dark type moves. Star also has a drain attack that's light type... so best move is to KO her quickly. None of Suika's moves are super effective (and her own hp draining move is not effective) but eventually Suika does enough damage to overtake Star's hp drain and wins the first fight. Speed Luna is up next, and a lucky crit for her KOs the recently healed Suika. Yuugi is sent out and she has Suika's burn strike move as well, which is more or less enough to defeat Luna. Assist Sunny is the last one to fight for this team. Yuugi's taking too much damage against Sunny. Doesn't help that the aurora weather effect is still active, so Sunny gets a damage boost. Not wanting to switch puppets out, I end up pumping Yuugi full of healing items and wait for aurora to deactivate. Eventually it does, and Yuugi just barely manages to grind down Sunny while Yin heals Yuugi every other turn. Honestly, it would be more economical to just let Yuugi get KOed and let another puppet finish Sunny off. Two down. Going on the top left part treats Yin to the scene of Reimu fighting and winning against Wriggle. Continuing on the path left of Sunny, Yin encounters Cirno, the first PLF member Yin fought. Eh. Squash match. Cirno's puppets are a level higher than Luna and Sunny's teams, but she only has two puppets. Yamame was also the one I set up on first position this time, and both Daiyousei and Cirno are weak against poison. Due to level difference, assist style Yamame is faster than speed Dai (though assist Yamame is pretty speedy as well). Three down, next is Rumia on the hit list. Set Parsee on the starting position this time. Hmm, Rumia was the boss of the PLF during the encounter on the village, and she had five puppets on her team last time. Guess she got a demotion. Assist Sekibanki's ability turns the weather into fog, though I think that's the opposite of aurora. Ah well, most likely due to level difference, Parsee wins out. She's dark type, so she doesn't take a lot of damage and both Sekibanki and Rumia are KOed in 2-3 hits each. After beating Rumia, Reimu's waiting ahead, already done with her gauntlet of fights. She goes on ahead, and Yin takes this time to chat with the PLF members Reimu won against. There's a room to the side holding a number of healing items as well, plus skill card 25, ray dance. Light type, focus attack, damage 60 which doubles if there's a weather effect as well as canceling weather effects after being used. Rushing ahead didn't help Reimu as she gets swarmed by PLF mooks. That leaves Yin on her lonesome, and Medi has decided to deal with her personally. Fight time! The PLF boss theme is running, which is still my favorite battle theme in this game. Speaking of which, there's a quite a lot of battle themes in the game. Like cavern areas have their own theme, the Youkai Mountain has their own as well, etc. Four puppet team, and slightly stronger than the PLF members that we've faced in the control center. Still, my team is stronger overall. Parsee vs. Rumia: and Parsee has the advantage as Rumia only has dark type attacks. Infinite darkness is one of those moves that do damage every turn, though. Sunny is the next one sent out; being light type Sunny would have been super effective if Parsee was only dark type... but since Parsee also has water type, and that type is strong against light type damage, so it cancels out. On the other hand, it still does enough damage, so Parsee gets KOed anyway. Sent out Nue, since she doesn't take a lot of damage from light type moves. Her drain attack doesn't do a lot of damage to Sunny, but it's enough. Easy peasy. Cirno is sent out next, and she does do a lot of damage, but most of it is recovered by charge stealing. One more to go. Medicine is the last one at level 48, equal to the level of my strongest puppets in the team. I heal Nue, but Medi's dust bomb attack nearly KOs Nue... then Medicine's ability kicked in, poisoning Nue and then KOing her from that. Sent out Yamame. Poison against poison type (though since Yamame is also nature type poison does normal damage to her). If I had a steel type puppet around Medi's poison attacks would be useless... ah well. Earth type moves are super effective against Medi, though Medi's own attacks do a lot more damage to Yamame. Thanks to Yamame's speed, she's able to get a second hit in before getting the KO, and then Yuugi finishes off the job. Somewhat close in Yuugi's case, as dust bomb did a ton of damage to her. Dust bomb is a focus attack, if I recall, so it may have been cooler to finish the fight with cross counter... oh well. Medi runs away after the fight, and Reimu orders Yin to give chase while she continues to deal with the mooks. Just in case, I heal up all my puppets. Going forward leads Yin to the... center of the control center? I dunno. There's some NPCs to talk to, and no wild puppets to encounter. Well, as it turns out, this is the alternate entrance to the geyser, more or less a shortcut for people who don't want to go to the long way via the underground route. Exiting the place leads to the Youkai Mountain, on that area that was blocked by PLF members before. Well, it seems that Medicine managed to reach the exit, but she's nowhere in sight outside. I have a slight clue on where she might be... but I think that's better off explored on the next episode. Don't really want to do long episodes as those can be somewhat time consuming since I write the LP while playing the game. No wild encounters during this episode, but quite a lot of fights. Until next time, then. See ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 14, 2016 17:18:27 GMT -5
Well, here we are, and it's time for episode 25! At this point, I think we're a little halfway past the game at this point. Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 25: Been a while since I gave titles to the episodes, yeah? Previously, there was a somewhat climactic battle at the Geyser Control Center, HQ of the PLF, or should I say ex-HQ of the PLF. Yin came, and she conquered the PLF alongside her team. Reimu may have helped out, though it's our silent protagonist who struck the decisive blow against the leader(?) of the PLF, the youkai Medicine Melancholy. So why is Yin at the human village, you ask? Well, of course, one reason is for MORE COSTUMES. Another reason is that this place is as good as any to shuffle the team lineup once more. Got some new puppets caught, and a few returning ones. The current team is a bit too strong, so I'm not feeling a lot of tension on the important fights and all that... Third reason? Well, Medicine managed to escape out of the Geyser Control Center after the fight. She's nowhere to be seen in the vicinity of the Youkai Mountain, where the other entrance of the Geyser Control Center is, and I have a gut feeling on where Medi might be, after looking back at something a few episode ago. First things first, new team! Satori, Rin, Utsuho, and Konngara were caught in the underground region, while Lyrica was caught on the Misty Lake and Reisen II makes her return. The last two are severely underleveled, but a few fights with them taking turns holding the combat handbook and things should be all right. The other four on the other hand is ready for style change; assist style for Satori, Rin and Utsuho get power style, and Konngara is now a speed style puppet. {Spoiler} Defense or assist for Satori... and neither specialize in attacks at all. Assist even lowers both attack stats. Defense provides big defense, while assist is more focused on a big hit point boost. I actually read up on Satori's style change, and apparently assist Satori relies on using counter moves to do big damage. Seems like an interesting choice so I'll go with that. True enough, she learns cross counter from style change - so she can basically use that against focus attack using puppets to deal big damage against them. Due to being illusion type only, she has no real weaknesses except for other illusion types. She doesn't have a move that counters spread attack moves, but I reckon she'll get it after a few level ups. Speed or power type for Rin. Well, looking at her speed potential choosing speed style may be a little foolish. Power style is the way to go, which interestingly provides her with a decent boost to spread attack, close enough to match her focus attack. Her ability also increases her speed every turn, so that would be a good workaround for her low speed potential (though even with low potential her speed seems pretty good). Normal and speed style is just pure fire type, but nether type is added for going to power style. She learns exploding blaze from choosing power style. Fire type, focus attack, 80 damage and 30% chance to burn opponent. She can also learn either fire, shadow, or wind javelin thanks to the skill cards I bought. Power or speed style for Utsuho. Same problem as Rin with having a low speed potential, and Utsuho's speed is worse than Rin, so power is the obvious choice. Power gives equal boosts to both focus and spread attack, so that's nice. Since Yuugi and Suika are currently resting in the puppet box, it's nice to have a heavy hitter on the team. She learns atomic energy from style change, and for skill cards most of the stuff she can learn are focus attacks. Kinda wish there were more skill cards she could learn that's a spread attack. Power or speed as well for Konngara. The boost to focus attack is somewhat similar to both styles, though power is a few points stronger, and power style also boosts spread attack. I kinda want a fast hitter, so I go with speed style. Changing from steel and fighting to steel and fire can be dangerous against earth type puppets, since both types are weak to earth. Oh well. Next thing that'll be spoilered, costumes! {Spoiler} Satori's alt color is pretty much the same color scheme as her little sister. She gets a fancy shmancy pet for her alternate costume. Since this is a costume store, did the store provide the pet as well? Like did they find a tiny lizard crawling around and gave it to puppet Satori? Hmmm... ...so how does Rin fit into her alternate costume? Anyway, like I said before, in the official games before the Stage 5 boss fight, Rin is fought in some points of the game while she's still in cat form. Well, since they are Satori's pets, their alternate costumes is gonna be animal forms, I guess. Lyrica replaces her somewhat odd hat with a less odd one. Some slight alterations to her usual clothes as well. Feels rather plain after the last three costume changes, don't you think? At first I thought Konngara's alt costume is armor, but looking at it closely you can see her shoulders out, so maybe just another kimono for her. It ain't over yet, since I gotta reward the team I used on the previous episode! Suika's wearing... not really sure. Only thing I recognize is a pair of sunglasses. A snazzy looking kimono for Yamame. Parsee looks ready to curse people with the candles in her head and hammer in her hand. Yuugi shows some leg with hers. She wore this for an advertisement of one of the fighting games (though she wasn't a playable character). A schoolgirl uniform for Yumemi. I think she's that age, though she's a professor. She's some sort of genius though, so I guess she became a professor at an early age, or something. More or less the same deal for Yumemi's assistant, Chiyuri. Sanae's alt color is somewhat Hakurei-ish. And she also gets a school uniform, since if I recall she's high school aged when she entered Gensokyo. Man, this is a long costume change, isn't it? Anyway, Ruukoto and Mimi sporting the Hakurei red-white colors for the alt costume. Finally, Nue is riding a nue on her alt costume. With all these screenshots I'm tempted to just call this episode episode 24.5 or something, but since it's spoilered anyway, it doesn't really matter much. Time to start doing storyline stuff! Heading out of the west exit of the village and into route 5, Yin heads south. There used to be a fairy guarding the road here preventing passage, but they're gone now leaving Yin free to enter route 6. Yay, new area! If PLF fairies were guarding this place, then Medicine may have ran off to this area or somewhere beyond it. Well, there may be some new puppets in the area, and Reisen 2 and Lyrica needs some level ups to be usable, so I'll grind a bit in this place. Just Lyrica and Reisen 2, while the four others are set aside in a box for a bit. Sanae and Yorihime are placed in the team temporarily so Lyrica and Reisen 2 can level up safely. Soon enough, the two reach level 30 and style change. It's power or speed style for Lyrica. Speed doesn't offer a big boost in focus attack, but I'll take it. Power seems to switch her to spread attack, but due to her potential I don't think it'll do her good in the long run. Speed or power style for Reisen 2 as well. Speed has her continue focusing on spread attacks, while power shifts her to focus attack. Potential for both stats are good, but I like having her be speedy more, so speed style it is. Speed adds the water type to her initial void type, which kinda gives her more weaknesses in exchange for becoming more resilient against other types. Strategist is always a handy ability to have. She learns purple lightning (electric, spread, 50 damage with a 70% chance to boost attack) and shake gear (steel, spread, 50 damage and attacks twice) which is perfect for strategist. I even add in yang energy, which does 55 damage. Yin and yang energy is the only dream type moves in the game, and unlike void no one is weak or strong against it, so it's handy as a default attack, and kinda strong thanks to strategist. Reisen 2 is capable of learning all the javelin skills, but since all of them are focus attacks, there's no point. It doesn't take long to level up Lyrica and Reisen 2, so it's back to Route 6. The wild puppets and trainer is a little higher in level, but it's not a big problem. Satori is fun to use, just countering focus attacks and usually one-shotting the opponent. Cross counter is useless against spread attacks, though. I also realize that Reisen 2's speed potential is incredibly low. E- which I think is the lowest rating though her speed is currently quite good but probably won't fare well against other speed style puppets. Anyway, the route seems relatively straightforward. It's no maze, at least. Some paths lead to dead-ends with items, but the way to the next area seems clear. My puppets being slightly lower in level is causing some trouble against trainer fights, but for wild puppets they're strong enough to take the puppets on since they're all normal-style. Thanks to having a massive supply of items, even if I end up in a trainer battle that KOs three on my team, I can heal them back to full health after the fight. Past that trainer that was recently fought, across the water is the floating stone. It makes the puppet immune to earth type moves, but will the stone will crumble when the puppet is hit by non-earth moves. It can be sold, so I'll be doing just that. Mentioned it before, but the items in the second hold category, like the combat manual, can't be sold. The ones in the hold 1 category are stuff like charms and the floating stone. Anyway, Route 6 is bigger than I thought. From where the box cursor is to the space in the left of the blue cursor is all route 6. The gray dot southwest of the blue arrow is the Suzuran Fields, which should be where Medicine is. Past that is a number of unexplored areas, so it should be interesting where that leads to. Going north via the stream will take Yin to a Hakurei shinsu and a dead-end area in Route 5, so going down south is where Yin has to go. Also, I'm not sure if this was going on earlier, but it seems certain wild puppets are style changed - take that Lily for example. Some of the puppets in Route 6 are normal style, but some of the Lily puppets in the area are in power style. Somewhat interesting, and due to that fact those puppets take a little more effort to beat. Current level average of the team right now is 41-42, matching with the wild puppets in the area. It's just too easy to level up the entire team due to how XP is given in the game. Encountering a PLF member seems more or less a sign than Yin is heading in the right direction. Using Satori to cross counter foes to KO remains quite fun (though using this tactic intentionally uses up the healing item supply). For most part, one cross counter is usually enough for victory, and thanks to Satori's large amounts of hit points, it won't be easy for an opponent to one-shot her. Cross counter doesn't work well for those multi-hit moves, though. If the attack hits five times, Satori will only counter one of them. More PLF members are encountered as Yin explores deeper into Route 6, though I think we're close to reaching the end of this route. It's a pretty big place, especially compared to how short Route 2 was. There's a prismatic candy hidden in one of the rocks, and a champion's medal is also found just lying around. When held, moves that hit have the chance to cause an opponent to flinch. Also wondering about Utsuho's ability. Her current ability is absorbent; when hit by light type moves, damage is nullified and Utsuho's spread attack is boosted. On one hand, it's kinda nice. Light immunity is good, but being a light type it's not like Utsuho will be KOed by it, and the spread attack boost is rather moot since her current moveset is all focus type. Her other ability, aggressive, may be more useful, as it would boost a random stat at the start of the fight depending on the opponent. Skill card 26 is found. Evil crushing arrow, light type, focus attack, 90 damage with a 10% chance to make the foe flinch. Anyways, Utsuho... and a few others in the team are real glass cannons against attacks that are super effective against them, like they'd be KO in one or two super effective hits (the exception being Satori). So much Moriya shinsu used... Anyway, still at route 6 where Yin encounters a mini-maze. Thankfully, it's no SDM corridor maze, and it's easy enough to find the exit. Yin seems to be close to the exit of Route 6, and Utsuho keeps getting KOed on trainer battles. So many items being used... and it might be somewhat problematic, as the puppets here don't seem to drop high-priced loot unlike the wild puppets in the Remains of Blazing Hell. I may have to be more prudent in the use of items and all that. Heading in a mostly south direction, Yin soon finds herself in the vicinity of a rest house. I sell off some items, including the floating stone, mostly because I want to buy those new skill cards. Unlike the javelin skill cards in the underground city, these cards are spread power attacks, and most of them seem pretty powerful. Yin can only buy two at the moment, though: inferno (fire type, spread attack, 120 power, 85 accuracy, 10% chance to burn opponent - Utsuho, Reisen 2, Rin and Konngara can learn the skill in the current team though the first two are best suited due to their spread attack), and Emperor's Indignity (basically like inferno, except it's electric type, 10% chance to paralyze opponent instead of burn - though only Reisen 2 can learn it). South of the rest house is the next area, the Suzuran fields. If this place seems too big I'll end the episode with the place not completely explored, but for now the goal is to find Medi! Charge, Yin! Seems like this is the last stand of the PLF. The white flowers don't have any wild puppets in them, though there seems to be quite a bit of trainers and items lying around. If Yin fights them all, the situation might end with her team becoming too strong that the possible boss fight in this place becomes easy. Well, if I stuck to one team for most of the game it would most definitely become super easy, so I suppose my current situation at least keeps things somewhat challenging. Or something. The important thing to know is Utsuho keeps getting hit with super effective moves, KOing her all the time. On the other hand, Satori continues to be super effective against most focus attack using puppets. This place seems like a small map. Quickly heading southwest will lead to a path blocked off by PLF members, and according to the gap map, it'll lead to route 8 and beyond - and it'll probably open up once Yin finishes off her business in the fields. There's a wolfsbane root and skill card 77 among the items found here. The latter puts the puppet holding it in the heavily poisoned status (why do that?) and skill card 77 is miasma, which does no damage but heavily poisons the foe. On the south-east corner of the map is Medicine. Looks like it's boss time! Hmm, isn't one of the plots in Pokemon like this? I haven't played Pokemon games since... I dunno, Diamond, I think. At the same time though, Medicine in the official sources is a doll who became a youkai, and there she also wants the dolls to rise up, so it's not that much of a stretch that she wants to liberate the sentient puppets in this game. Hmm, five puppet team, and she has her own boss theme, looks like this might be a chall- Oh dear. This might be trouble, haha... Yeah, me, great idea... she was overpowered by team Yin in the Geyser Control Center, so you should hold back on leveling up the team to make things challenging. Good job, me. Banzai, me. Oh well. Also, great job on having glass cannon Utsuho be on the first position, me. To be fair, though, while Alice is faster, she's steel/light type, and her attacks isn't effective against Okuu who's light/fire. Fire is super effective against steel, though it's not enough to KO Alice. Okuu is KOed by Alice in the next exchange, due to Okuu being slow. Gyokuto is sent out next. Foolishly use the steel type shake gear on the steel and light type Alice. It's not very effective, but due to Reisen 2's ability and the move hitting twice, it's enough. Assist Hina is up next, and despite being speed style Reisen 2 is slower and gets KOed in one hit by Hina with dust bomb. Dust bomb is a poison type move, so I think the best choice would be the steel and fighting type Konngara. Steel is immune to poison... so Hina uses a non-poison type move instead. It doesn't KO Konngara, and Konngara returns the attack with a super effective steel move. Not enough to KO Hina, so on the next turn Konngara finishes the job by using her steel type fast attack to avoid further damage. Power Kokoro up next. Somewhat lucky here since I got a power Kokoro of my own, and I know she's super duper weak against one type: dark. Konngara has changeling, a move I rarely use but keep in case of light types. It takes out nearly half of Kokoro's health, and changeling's secondary effect is to switch puppets, so I end up sending Satori. Kokoro uses a void-type move meant for Konngara, and it doesn't do damage to illusion type attacks. Kokoro uses the light-type light javelin next, which doesn't do much damage to Satori, but it's a focus attack and is enough damage to finish of Kokoro with a cross counter. Power Mokou next... and she uses burn strike, a focus attack. See that damage which almost KOs Satori? Well, take that damage and double it, and that's what cross counter gives to Mokou. Medicine is sent out last. I try to heal Satori, but Medicine's damage is too high, so Satori gets KOed for her trouble. Hrm, instead of trying to make Satori attack on her last turn, I should have taken the time to heal Konngara. I send out Rin, and use her turn to heal Konngara, then send Konngara out after Rin is instantly KOed. Since Konngara worked well with assist Hina, she should work just as well with the similarly poison type Medicine, right? WRONG. Last puppet left... the level 46 speed Lyrica versus the level 58 Medicine... yeah. Wanting to preserve the win streak, I use the easy way: use Lyrica's turn to use the full hp healing Hakurei shinsu to Satori. Lyrica is KO, and Satori finishes off Medicine with the super move cross counter. Medi's life meter moved slow near the end, and I almost feared it wouldn't be enough, but it was. All in all, I'd say Yin's team performed admirably for the majority of it. They came in quite underleveled compared to what Medicine had, and despite planning things on the go, the team managed to pull off some pretty nice wins by working together. In particular, Konngara using changeling to do big damage and then switch out to Satori who was immune to Kokoro's counter attack was a lucky, but great move that set up another relatively easy fight against Mokou. After that point though, things somewhat fell apart as Medicine completely wrecked three puppets with ease. It's a slight failure to have used the Hakurei shinsu to revive Satori to finish the job. It's by complete luck that Medicine used focus attacks, since if she didn't Satori would have been easily squashed. In any case, the PLF leader has been defeated. Great job Yin... you just managed to crush the hopes of a youkai girl. Feels rather odd. Before this point, the story, as small as it is, was rather lighthearted. Most of the PLF members were on the carefree side, though in the case of Medicine she was being entirely serious and earnest about her goals. They're still heels, in the end, I guess. Hard to tell, since during Yin's journey the only success that the PLF had was taking over the Kappa Hideout, and the aim of the members who did that was to steal some kappa-brand optical camouflage for the purpose of pranks and hide-and-seek, and then you have Medicine who's seriously trying to the help puppets, as misguided as her methods are. There's also the MO of the PLF where they take puppets from defeated trainers - though that's what the members say to Yin, and there's no one in the game who mentions about having puppets taken away from them. Well, whatever the case is, Medicine disbands the PLF upon her defeat. She also mentions a being named Yuuka in her dialogue, which is somewhat not good news at all, Yuuka being a pretty dangerous youkai in Gensokyo. It seems that Yin has to dig a bit deeper into this PLF incident before it could be truly concluded. That's something to be explored in the next episode, though. So, until then, see ya all laters.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 15, 2016 14:48:46 GMT -5
Heeeeeeeeeeeey! It's time for yet another episode! 26 episodes... I'm frankly amazed that it took this long, like while I'm more or less doing a blind run, if I didn't have to LP this I'd probably have finished the game in about a week already. Ah well, who cares, it's rather fun to take my time playing this game. Anyways, in the episode before I caught a couple of new puppets in Route 6. Meira. Debuted in Touhou 2. Reimu mistook her for a man, I think. Steel and dark type. Louise. Debuted in Touhou 5. The majority of the PC-98 era Touhou is still a blind spot for me. Wind type. Mamizou, Daiyousei, and Lily show up in Route 6 as well, and some Lily puppets in the area are power style. In the Suzuran fields, the puppets in the area are the ones that Yin has caught before: Medicine, Daiyousei, Undonge, and Eirin. The Undonges and Eirins had some style changed ones in the area as well, and after a few encounters it seems that there were no new puppets to catch. So yeah, that's about it for wild puppets. Let's get the next episode running! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 26 Medicine is gone. She's no longer in the spot where Yin fought her in the Suzuran Fields, and before she went away she declared the disbandment of the PLF. So... what now? The PLF was encountered in the way of Yin's investigation of the puppet incident... but then that investigation has been vague at best. Like, really, if you're willing to re-read past episodes, can you point out any progress in the investigation of the puppet incident? Yin's a pretty decent puppet trainer, but in terms of finding out the origins of the puppets, and why they exist, she hasn't gotten any substantial information to provide an answer at all. Ah well, it's a rather aimless journey, so let's just keep going at a relaxed pace! Before the PLF was disbanded, there were some fairies standing guard on the south-west exit of the fields. They're gone now, and according to the gap map it'll lead to uncharted territories: Route 8 for starters, where there's a hillside cavern right in the middle of that route. Beyond Route 8 is the Garden of the Sun which connects to Route 7 and in turn loops back to somewhere in Route 6. All those places Yin hasn't been to yet, so I reckon it's for the best to take a look at those places and see where it leads Yin. Well, before that... I do use the gap map to warp Yin back to the Route 6 rest house, to more or less recuperate her puppets for free, and maybe do a small change in the team lineup as well. A few things of note here; after the battle with Medicine, all the puppets leveled up, reviving them with a teeny bit of hit points as a result. In particular, Satori has reached level 49, and she learned the move reflecting water... and it's basically cross counter for spread attacks. From this point on, using her would probably break the difficulty of many battles, in a far more efficient way than Momiji's indomitable ability + restitution move can manage. I may use Satori in the future, but for now I think it's okay for her to take a break. There are some types immune to fighting types (for cross counter) and illusion types (for reflecting water)... but there's a certain holdable item in the inventory that ignores type immunities. Give that to Satori, who has a the highest hit point stat in the team, and yeah... too easy. So as expected, since it seems to happen once every new episode or so, it's time to shuffle up the teams! Remi and Patchy make their returns, and making their team debut are some of the puppets I caught in Route 6 and the Suzuran Fields. They need to get style changed, so let's get that done now! Assist style for Louise and Udonge, power style for Meira and Medicine. {Spoiler}{Spoiler} For Louise, it's either defense or assist style. Defense offers better spread attack and defense, while assist is aimed at focus defense and speed, while still providing a decent boost in spread attack. The latter seems to be the overall better choice due to the speed and respectable spread attack... though in terms of ability I prefer lucky more since it increases the chance of secondary effects of moves from activating... hrmmmmmmm. A coin flip told me to go with assist in the end... In terms of moves, the ones granted by style change doesn't seem too handy, so I end up using some skill cards to give her some damaging attacks. Maybe defense style would've been better...? Meira can choose between power or speed... but her speed potential isn't that good, so power would be better. Her defense seems low, so she might end up as another glass cannon, which seems to be norm for the majority of my puppets, it seems. She learns armor piercing (steel, focus, damage 90, 10% chance to make opponent flinch) and royal prism (earth, focus, damage 75, 30% chance to make opponent flinch). Her alternate ability is assault, which gives her a 10% chance to make opponents flinch from attacking them... I wonder if that stacks with her flinch causing moves? She has ignorant darkness as well, which is the dark type move that hits 2-5 times, and I wonder if each attack from those can cause the opponent to flinch? Assist or power style for Reisen I. Power makes her damage focus on focus attacks, while assist makes her focus and spread attack somewhat balanced - though the focus attack of assist is lower than the boost in power style. Going with assist, though, as it'll provide her with some pretty good spread defense. I always go with speed, and power gives quite a bit of it to Udonge, but I reckon something different once in a while works well, like Satori for example. She learns a few new moves, one of which is flower of hell. Illusion type, focus damage, 80 power and 30% chance to break the opponent's stance. If I recall, that status effect makes it so that the opponent won't be able to avoid the next attack. Doesn't seem too great of an effect... Also, one other reason why I chose assist style for Reisen is due to her ability: strange drug makes it so that poison damage causes healing instead of damage. On the previous episode Yin found the wolfsbane root, where holding it causes the heavy poison status effect. Each turn the poison damage will go up, and due to the ability she'll recover more hp as time goes on. There's also one secondary effect - heavy poison is a status effect that's worth two slots: one puppet can only have two status effect slots in effect; so this in theory means that Reisen will be also immune to burns, paralysis, weakness, fear, darkness, and stop effects. Pretty good deal, when you think about it. Finally, it's either defense or power style for Medicine. Defense seems to boost her spread defense more than focus defense, and I'd be tempted to go with that if not for the fact that she has a rather low spread defense potential. Power it is. She learns dust bomb (which seems to be a pretty common move by poison types Yin fought so far) and hornet's dance, the nature type version of the attack that hits 2-5 times. She can learn burn strike from skill cards - which is rather useful since that means she can fight against steel types who are immune to her poison attacks. Annoyingly, I realize that speed Remilia mostly has focus type attacks, even the ones she can learn from skill cards, while stat-wise she's geared towards spread attacks. For Patchouli, her spread attack and defense is excellent and she has a variety of powerful moves to choose from. She'll get crushed by focus attacks, though. All the PLF members that were loitering in the Suzuran Fields are gone now, and there's nothing else to find in there so it's time for Yin to head to the south-west exit and enter Route 8. Where that road will take her with regards to Yin's journey, no one knows, and there's only one way to find out. Onward! Remi and Patchy are underleveled compared to the wild puppets here, and that probably goes double for trainer battles while the rest of team Yin is about even, maybe a level or two lower. Udonge holding the wolfsbane root alongside with her strange drug ability seems to work as intended. I'm wondering if it's possible to drag a fight out long enough for the strength of heavy poison to fully heal Reisen on each turn. That fairy trainer is not a PLF member, and right now I'm wondering if there are still PLF members lurking about. I mean, yeah, Medicine disbanded the group, but I'm still getting the feeling that Yin hasn't seen the last of the other members like Cirno and Rumia. Anyway, trainer puppet levels are definitely higher, and Yin will end up using quite a lot of Moriya shinsus or going back to the rest house if she's not careful... Well, it's the first time in a long while that Yin has encountered a rabbit youkai (speaking of which, Tewi is nowhere to be seen in Eientei). Aside from that, the trainer almost caused a loss by KOing five puppets in the team, and almost KOing Remilia, which would've resulted in Yin's first loss. To a non-boss, generic NPC? Yeesh, that was close... I reckon it's a sign to train the team a little before rushing in. I get Patchy and Remi to level 42 before heading further in Route 8. Patchouli learns inferno... which she can already learn from a skill card, while Remi gets smash spin; wind type, spread attack, 50 damage and removes traps from the field. Kinda lame. Well, aside from one side path Route 8 is relatively straightforward in its path. In generals, the routes and most of the aboveground areas are relatively easy to navigate through, while caverns and other indoor areas are a lot more maze-like in structure. Speaking of caverns, the path of Route 8 ends with the entrance to the Hillside Cavern waiting for Yin to enter through. Before that, I gap map back to the Route 6 rest house and do a number of things. First things first, new puppets from Route 8. In the area, the puppets Yin have already encountered before are Orange, Kurumi, and Elly. In this route, all three are either normal or power style. Aside from them, there are two new puppets caught. Mugetsu and Gengetsu. Sisters and EX bosses of Touhou 4. There was no real reason why they were the EX bosses of that game, they just came from outta nowhere. More importantly, I more or less decide to put Remi back on the bench and replace her with the newly caught Kurumi. Like, I dunno, stat-wise Remi is pretty good, but speed style for her does not favors at all for her moveset. A lot of it is focus attacks (when spread attacks is her main attack stat) and the spread attacks available to her are either rather lacking in damage, or has low SP making it annoying to have to relearn it after a few fights. The Kurumi Yin caught is already power style when she was encountered. All in all, Kurumi is kinda fast, and in terms of spread attack she's stronger than Remilia, though on the other hand Kurumi loses out overall in every other stat. She definitely has a more damaging moveset, from the looks of it. Anyhoo, into the cavern we go! Already I'm expecting to get lost trying to navigate this place. Yet again, these one puppet trainers are proving rather difficult to handle. Power Ran has a skill where she gets a power boost every time she KOs a puppet, and by the second puppet down she was capable of KOing puppets with ease. If Medicine didn't poison her, it'd have been Yin's loss. Not having a speed style in the team is making things rather difficult, I feel. Past the trainer the only path to take is northwest. So far so good. That item on the east is just one Myouren tea, nothing important. The wild style-changed puppets are making things slightly more difficult for most part. Take that defense Kisume, for example. She got hit by gigantic, which has a damage rating of 120 and is super effective against Kisume's types, but all it did was take off about 1/3rd of her life. Well, defense Kisume has one of the highest defense stats in game, but even a power Yamame might take more than one hit to take down. As a result, puppets get damaged, items get used. It all adds up, really. Right now, the current team doesn't have a puppet with more than 150 hit points, and usually super effective attacks against the team usually means a KO, so I have to be real careful in making sure that their hp is close to full most of the time, otherwise I'll be using up a lot of expensive Moriya shinsus. Also, defense Kisumes have reflecting water. Considering that four on my current team use spread attacks, this makes fights with them quite problematic. Unlike me, they won't spam that move every turn so at least my puppets don't get one shot most of the time. The game sure does love making side paths that lead to dead ends... Still, aside from that path, the road from the trainer with the Ran, until that fairy trainer with the Rumias is more or less linear. West of the fairy is a prismatic candy, and to the east is the ladder down another floor. Hopefully the layout there remains relatively simple. Random Touhou stuff: While Cirno is generally regarded as dumb, Rumia is probably worse. Cirno was at least capable enough to win against Marisa of all people in her game, while Rumia has no idea how to use her powers. Like, she generates a ball of darkness around her, so she can catch and eat humans who can't see where she is. Only problem is that she uses the power during the day, and she can't see through her own ball of darkness. Cue her bumping into trees. Going down and Yin already encounters a trainer. Been a while since she saw a ghost NPC... anyways, luckily that Youmu used a low power move on Kurumi, and Kurumi in turn survived and KOed Youmu in one hit with a super effective attack. No one would have been able to match Youmu's speed and she'd have done some wrecking if she survived Kurumi's attack. Going south leads to finding a gold coin on the floor - very useful as so far the puppets here and on the previous areas are somewhat lacking in item drops of good value. The Remains of Blazing Hell probably had the best in terms of item drops; magic crystals and gold coins worth 10k each, and the puppets who dropped them were relatively common. Anyways, going west from the ghost leads to some stairs that lead to a bridge. Taking the path under the bridge leads to skill card 48, jewelry storm. Earth type, spread attack, 80 damage and no other effects. No one in the team can learn it. Going past the bridge has a trainer to fight in the way. Speed puppet enemies... argh. Anyway, really so far so good. The areas in this cave Yin has already explored are not really maze-like, so there's no moment yet for this time where I end up running around in circles. There's a few dead end routes past the bridge, but so far it's nothing that'll cause Yin to get lost. On the other hand, almost got a loss from another trainer with a solo puppet. The morale booster ability is brutal, I tells ya. Every puppet it KOs gives it a focus attack boost, and it was only due to Medicine's ability that causes poison that any damage was done to Tojiko. With her speed, and my team's general lack of defense and hit points, I had no choice but to let Tojiko just wail on the team while I revived them and waited for the poison to KO Tojiko. So many Moriya shinsus used... that's about 15k down the drain... The path continues west from the ghost. A few dead ends, but soon enough a fairy trainer is fought and past her is a ladder leading upwards. I reckon that the floor above will lead to the exit of this cave, and I gotta say that this place hasn't caused Yin to lose her sense of direction so far. Quite nice for a change. As for the fairy, she's just a normal trainer. I kinda already miss the PLF theme, especially their standard boss battle music. Anyway, surprisingly, the floor above is just a short path leading to the exit of the cavern, and back into route 8. Caught some (well, one) new puppet as well. Sara. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 5, I think. Was kind of annoying to catch and fight, as she kept spamming false courage to endure KOs. Earth type. Yamame (normal and power), Kisume (normal and defense), and Koishi can be found in the hillside cavern. Back at Route 8. Outside the cavern entrance there's a fairy who'll share some candy with the team, which recovers lost hp of the puppets. A little ways east is a pool that can be crossed for skill card 52, lightning speed. Electric type, spread attack, damage 70 where after attacking the user switches out during trainer battles. Ends battles with wild puppets. I think this is the strongest attack that causes a switch out. Anyway, the fairy mentions a sunflower field. That's probably the Garden of the Sun I mentioned around the start of this episode, and it's the residence of one Yuuka Kazami, a person who Medicine mentioned in the previous episode. I sense a boss fight in the horizon! There's still a Route 8 to go through, though, and a gauntlet of trainers... I goofed up here. The fairy that gave candy to restore the team's hp is a short, safe stroll back, yet I still used items after every battle. That said, I am somewhat worried in case there's a boss fight. Medicine had an entire team that was over level 50, level 58 being the highest. There could be trouble as my entire team is slowly reaching level 50. The wild puppets here are the same as the ones in the other side of Route 8. Aside from one more trainer battle, the path is relatively peaceful and soon enough Yin reaches the end point. The Garden of the Sun. Yin doesn't have a reason to go here aside from it being in the way of exploring things. Still, a youkai named Yuuka Kazami lives here, and apparently she had a hand in influencing Medicine on the creation of the PLF. At the very least, it'll tie up loose ends in the PLF incident. Unfortunately, that's all the time I have for today. Exploring this area, and perhaps fighting a boss, will be reserved for next time. Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 16, 2016 11:04:12 GMT -5
Hey there, FAN. It's time for another new episode! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 27 Here we are, at the Garden of the Sun. My gut feeling is telling me that there will be a boss battle. I'm not certain on that 100%, but considering what Medicine said when she was defeated, that a person named Yuuka gave her the idea to start the PLF, the chances of there being a boss battle are rather high considering that the Garden of the Sun is where Yuuka resides. I'm somewhat worried about that. When Yin fought medicine, her puppets started at level 53 or 54 and her last puppet is level 58. If there's a boss battle then there's a good chance that the puppets she'll face will be around that level range, and currently her entire team is below level 50. Generally, my main worry is that I'll end up facing off against a full team one of these days and getting utterly trashed from the level difference. That said, this might be a short episode, depending on the length of the area and the difficulty of the (possible) boss battle. It's been a while since I played Pokemon, but after playing this game I think one difference of the boss battles in this game from the gym battles in Pokemon are the types. Since gym leader battles are usually centered around one type of Pokemon it's somewhat easier due to needing only one type of Pokemon that's weak against the Pokemon type that's centered around the gym, while the boss battles here can end up with a mix of different puppet types adding a slight degree of difficulty to fighting them. I've been very lucky with boss battles so far though, though for most part it's because I have a full team while the boss battles usually have less than four puppets most of the time. The boss battle puppets hold items, but the trainers don't use healing items which is another thing which makes fighting them easier - I wonder if the expansion game has made NPC trainers use healing items, which would certainly make fights a lot more hard. Anyway... well, here we are. The Garden of the Sun boasts several fields of sunflowers, and they act like walls making this place feel like a maze. I have no idea on how large the place is, but from the looks of it Yin will have to be careful not to get lost. There's some tall grass in the area, and thankfully this place isn't a cavern so I won't have to encounter a hundred wild puppets while navigating this place with Yin. The team's level is currently better than I thought. I'll fight wild puppets and trainer battles if I encounter them, and hopefully it should be enough in case of a boss battle (but at the same time not too high that the fight would feel trivial). And yeah, this place is definitely a maze. There are trainers waiting in some passages, and there's tall grass on certain points and there are items to find. Of course, true to how this game does things, there are also routes leading to dead ends. Yin finds skill card 19, impact rebellion, a steel type focus attack where the damage increases the slower the user is compared to the foe. Sounds powerful, but it seems like the type of move where you'll need a slow puppet against a fast one in order to get some good damage, ensuring that the slow puppet will get hit first. The wild puppets are lower in level, but a lot of them are style changed now, while the trainer puppets are a lot more dangerous thanks to being more or less equal in terms of level. My item supply is getting somewhat drained by it. Healing items are still good, but my dwindling supply of revive items is becoming worrisome. Basically if there's a KO I'll go back to the entrance of the hillside cavern to heal up instead of using a shinsu. Meira learns dark sphere, a dark type focus attack that with 100 damage and a 20% chance to make an opponent flinch. So far, a lot of her moves involve causing a flinch, so I'm really wondering if her ability, which gives her a 10% chance on making an opponent flinch from an attack, stacks with those effects. Most of the trainers so far are one-puppet teams, so it's somewhat easy to take them on if the puppet they have is weak against super effective attacks from one of Yin's puppets. That said, they seem to be guarding dead ends, so I'm not even halfway done yet. Of course, sometimes there's just one puppet who can easily smash a large chunk of the team with ease. Yeesh. Good thing I'm still somewhat close to the entrance to go back and heal, otherwise this'll take a long time for me. Need to be more careful. That trainer with the Komachi puppet leads to a dead-end with skill card 75 lying in wait. Sweet nightmare, which only inflicts darkness on the opponent. Lame... well, not really, since it does halve focus attack. There's also a silver coin hidden in that spot as well, in one sunflower. Since the hillside cavern isn't a red area, Yin can't use the gap map to warp there so she can get healed by the fairy in the entrance. She has to bike there manually to do so. Thankfully, it's not like Yin will have some trouble with that as the garden only has a few fields of tall grass where wild puppets lurk... though she'll still get lost once in a while. It's also handy that the path on the way back from Route 8 to the entrance of the cavern is kinda short. I reckon I'll be coming back to this place a lot, considering the amount of times Yin's puppets faint. Going back to the garden, Yin finds a healing item, for the first time in this episode ends up running around in circles due to getting lost. A puppet faints again, and Yin finds another dead end. Oh, the horror. I bought all the skill cards in the Route 6 rest house, so money is low and I'll have to do my best to prevent use of Moriya shinsus unless it's really needed. Getting back on track. So far, all of the trainers here are fairies. Not PLF members, as in Touhou they're more or less beings of nature, so it makes sense that they'll gather in areas like the Garden of the Sun. In one of the manga series the three fairies of light more or less revive a tree by living in it. Back on the game things, Meira gets KOed again. Her type is super effective against some puppets here, but she's also weak to several attacks by them. So troublesome. If she gets KOed again I might just use one Moriya shinsu. ...though in this case, I'm definitely gonna go back to the hillside cavern entrance to heal. Power Aya is just brutal. So she has twister, the wind type attack that hits 2-5 times. Normally the move hits 2-5 times, but Aya has the salvo ability, where attacks that hit 2-5 times will always hits the maximum number of times. Meira would have been useful if she wasn't KOed, as steel type doesn't get a lot of damage against wind moves... if not for the fact that Aya also has rush attack, a fighting move that hits 2-5 times (5 times always due to her ability) which is super effective against steel. Also, Aya is one of the fastest characters in the Touhou series, so guess who always attacks first? Surprisingly, she's weak against wind-type moves despite being wind type, so I managed to eke out a victory using Louise. Since 5 puppets are KO, it's time to bike back to the hillside cavern entrance. Again. One good thing though. An item dropped for that trainer battle, and its magic crystals worth 10k each. In wild puppet battles, defeating a puppet has a chance for them to drop an item, and they only drop loot to sell. The item dropped varies from puppet to puppet, and one puppet would have about two possible items to drop. For trainer battles only one kind of item would drop, multiplied by the amount of puppets that trainer has. Basically, I got lucky since one of those puppets can drop magic crystals, so it did times three, as the chances are decent that they'd drop low-price stuff like pearls (500 each) or copper coins (200) instead. Getting used to figuring out which route to take in the garden. It's really not as stressful to navigate in compared to a cavern, since for most part the tall grass can be avoided. If it was a cavern, there'd be lots of puppet encounters, which can get annoying after a while. Well, uh oh. Just as Yin seems to have reached the exit of the garden, Yuuka appears. Whew, good thing I healed after the previous trainer battle. The fact that Yuuka has her own music replacing the current BGM seems to tell me that a boss fights about to happen. She claims to not be directly participating as a member of the PLF, but seems like she's itching for a fight nonetheless. Fight time! She gets her own boss music, her boss theme in the PC-98 era to boot. Still, it's a three-puppet team, so it's rather underwhelming compared to Medicine's almost full team. On the other hand, Yuuka's first puppet is the same level as Medicine's highest leveled puppet, and now I worry what the level of Yuuka's last puppet. My highest leveled puppets are level 54, so there's a four level or more difference for starters. Still, her first puppet is assist Kurumi. I got a power Kurumi on my team, and if her puppet type is the same as assist Kurumi then steel or fighting should be super effective. Light type should also good on her, but Meira doesn't have it (and she's also a dark type puppet), and Kurumi's ability causes the fog weather effect which weakens light type moves and strengthens dark type moves, so steel it is. It works! Kurumi hits first, but Meira KOs her with armor piercing in one hit. Level 58 power Elly next. So far so good. Elly is steel type, I think. The puppets wielding weapons usually are, and checking previous posts normal Elly is steel and wind type. Fire would be useful against steel, but Meira lacks fire moves... so instead I use ignorant darkness, which can hit 2-5 times. Since fog weather is still in effect, dark type moves are boosted. It works well enough, hitting for a full five times and taking out more than half of Elly's health. Elly uses a fighting type move to KO Meira though. Medicine has a fire type attack, though. Burn strike, and it's super effective and is enough to remove what remains of Elly's hit points. Two down, one to go... and it's a level 62 power Yuuka. Dat level difference... Still, I got five puppets left on my team, so I have the advantage. Luck is on my side by making Kurumi and Elly easy to beat, so I reckon I can hopefully pile in the damage on Yuuka. My guess is that she's nature type at least, considering that she's flower-themed and all that. Medicine has both a fire type move and a poison move, both of which are super effective against nature types. I go with dust bomb - it's weaker but more accurate than burn strike, and it has a chance to poison as well. Don't recall if burn strike can cause burn. It works! Dust bomb is super effective and poisons Yuuka, then Yuuka KOs Medi... but Medicine's ability kicks in, which has a chance to poison an opponent when they use focus attacks, so poison becomes heavy poison. Louise is sent out next. Louise also has a poison attack: poison bomb. It deals super effective damage... though it only takes off a small chunk of hit points from Yuuka. Only a small bit of hit points left... so I send Reisen out. Thanks to the magic of skill cards, Udonge also has poison bomb, and that's enough to take down Yuuka! An easy battle. Kinda underwheling. I'm pretty sure that Power Yuuka would have been dangerous, as it did take several super effective attacks to down her, and in turn Yuuka's attacks were one-hit KOs. There was also the fact that she got heavily poisoned which damaged her even more. In the Windows era games, Yuuka had a powerful attack, but she was pretty much the slowest character in the game, so even with the level difference my puppets managed to hit first. Also, the item drop for this battle is some low-value copper coins. Oh joy. Yuuka seems pleased about having a good fight. Amazingly, she seems to have some info for Yin with regards to the puppet incident. I don't exactly understand what she said, but it's a clue nonetheless. Yuuka won't give more information as she left, so it's up to Yin to figure out what she means. Walking for a bit leads to the entrance to Route 7, but before that going east from where Yuuka was fought Yin finds Yuuka's house. There's no bed for Yin to rest in, and talking to Yuuka yields no extra clues - though she does suggest walking around in various places. That seems like a thing Yin will be doing... next episode. Today's episode is rather short, but doing the exploring now will probably take too much time. When the next episode starts I'll probably start off with exploring route 7 and then go back to the human village for clues (and costumes) and work my way to exploring other places after that. So until next time, then. See ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 17, 2016 14:42:34 GMT -5
Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Time for a new episode! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 28 Right. Last time, we defeated Yuuka in the Garden of the Sun, and she gave Yin some clues regarding the puppet incident. I don't understand what she said, but she also mentioned going back to areas Yin has already explored, and that seems simple enough to do. Before that, there's one last area to explore: Route 7, and going through there will lead back to Route 6 which will lead on back to the Human Village. Once Route 7 has been explored, I reckon that the village and the Hakurei Shrine might have a clue on where Yin is supposed to go. First things first, though. I use the gap map to go back to the Route 6 rest house. Got a few items to sell, and want to buy some other items. More importantly, I think it's time to do yet another shuffling of teams for fun. Before that, here's what can be caught in the Garden of the Sun. For the ones already seen by Yin, there are Wriggles, and the three Prismriver sisters in the area. Wriggle and Merlin have power style puppets in the area, while Lunasa puppets can show up as defense style while Lyrica puppets are speed style. Aside from that, there's only one new puppet to catch in the area. Yuuka Kazami. Both the Stage 5 and Final boss of Touhou 4. Re-debuted in the Windows era in Touhou 9 as playable/opponent. One of the few PC-98 characters who migrated to the Windows era. Her powers is to promote the growth of flowers, but due to age she's one of the most powerful youkai in the series. Somewhat of a troll. Nature and electric type. And so, say goodbye to the current team and say hello to the new lineup! Rikako and Seiga make a return, while four recently caught puppets are added to the team. Lunasa was already defense style when caught, and she pretty much brings what's advertised. Both focus and spread defense are very high, and her ability lowers damage further at the expense of attacking last... which isn't that big of a problem since her speed is low to begin with. Her focus attack and defense is rather low, however, so I balance it out by giving her moves that don't rely on attack power that much; will-o-wisp, which just burns and darkens foes, miasma which can heavily poison, then for a damaging attack there's dancing rain which has a high chance of lowering focus defense, and charon ferries which does fixed damaged depending on the puppets' level. The three other puppets require style change, so away we go on that one. Power or defense for Yuuka. Power's got good focus attack, but defense style's focus attack is no slouch while providing a really big boost in focus defense despite having average potential for that stat. Her spread defense remains low but against focus attack users she'll probably shrug off damage. Yuuka's slow, but that only serves to help her out with her ability which gives a nice 30% boost to her attacks if she attacks last. She learns power drain (nature type hp drain move), booing (drags out reserve puppet), and swirling dust gate (traps opponent in an attack that lasts 4-5 turns). I also use the skill card impact rebellion, which increases damage the lower Yuuka's speed is compared to the opponent. Power or assist for Koishi. Power is slightly more defense and spread attack, while assist provides better speed. Hard choice for me. Assist's ability is kinda useless while power style's charge! gives a damage boost in exchange for ignoring secondary effects. In general power would probably be the better choice, but assist style usually offers something interesting so I go with that. Koishi learns mysterious wave; illusion type, spread attack, 80 damage where instead of the opponent using spread defense, focus defense is instead used for damage calculation. She also learns doppelganger which imitates the foe's types. Lastly, it's either power or assist style as well for Mugetsu. Koishi is already assist style, so choosing power style for Mugetsu. It's kind of a shame that either style doesn't give Mugetsu a big speed boost despite her potential for the stat... Anyway, she learns unknown flare (illusion/spread/80 damage and may confuse opponent), honest person's lie (transfer status effects to opponent), and infinite scales (power boosts the more stat boosts Mugetsu has during the fight). Anyway, her alternate ability is interesting. Brutality, which gives a massive 50% boost to spread attack, in exchange of lowering accuracy by 20%. I think the upsides is better so I'll give her that ability once she has enough PP for it. With those things done, Yin sells off some loot and stocks up on important items and returns back to the garden via gap map. Time to go to Route 7! (for the sake of not causing a lot of KOs on my team, I train the team first so all of them are level 46 at the minimum) Route 7! The last place in above ground Gensokyo that Yin can explore! Probably! The trainer puppets are a little stronger in level than the team right now. Mugetsu now has the brutality ability, and the damage she gives is quite high... though if she had missed the second exchange would have KOed her without a doubt. The wild puppets in the area seem to be more or less the same level as Yin's team, though after a few battles the team should be higher in level than them. Style changed wild puppets are becoming more of a common occurrence now. Anyways, judging from the gap map, the way out of Route 7 should be somewhere east, though there's a stream that heads to the west that leads to a small clearing with skill card 42, mist fog. Nature type, spread attack, 95 damage and has a 10% chance to lower foe's spread attack. One thing I noticed. The boat often gets used often since there's a lot of water to cross in Gensokyo. On the other hand, the woodcutter doll and superhuman glove, aside from a small number of areas, have never been used again. Using Mugetsu on first position until she levels up. The more I use her the more the negative effect of brutality shows up. I think she missed about 6 times on that trainer battle. Normally she'd be KOed easily if she was just dark type, since aurora was in effect during the start of the fight and all the enemy puppets used light-based moves, but since she's also illusion type it only did normal damage to her. A little bit of healing, and she unknown flare'd her way to victory. As for Lunasa, she functions somewhat like Satori in the sense that direct attacks aren't her forte. Charon ferries does damage depending on Lunasa's level, and that isn't much for most part. She can use miasma to inflict heavy poison for increasing damage after every turn, or will-o-wisp to inflict burn and darken, the latter effect to lower focus attack by half. She doesn't have Satori's large hit point stat, in fact Lunasa's hit points are pretty damn low... but with her defense it's super unlikely that she would be one hit KOed, so she can slowly wear down her opponent, unlike Satori who relies on soaking up a lot of damage to inflict a deadly counter attack. She learns high tone crush upon reaching level 49, a high damage sound type move that has a 10% chance to lower a random stat of the opponent. Instead of that, I make Lunasa learn continue. It'll put Lunasa on the stop status effects in exchange for healing all her hit points, which is a pretty good trade thanks to her defense. Poison or burn the opponent, then use that move to heal Lunasa as the opponent gets slowly damaged. Seems like a pretty sound strategy. So far, Route 8 seems like a fairly large place. Lots of paths to take, some items to find, a few trainers to fight, and a lot of dead ends to run into. I'll carefully look through every route so I don't end up missing anything. Switching to Koishi, she's not very strong when it comes to attacks, but having decent hit points and two puppet types that only has one weakness allows her to come out on top most of the time. If she can get a damaging move she'll be super handy. Freaking speed puppets utterly trashing most of my team... Also, it's been a while since Yin has fought a non-boss, not involved in the story, Touhou character. The Tsukumo sisters this time... Route 7 seems to be the place to find nearly all the Touhou 14 characters - including the one that more or less completes the Windows era Touhou bosses in the puppet book. Anyway, Lunasa manages to pretty much KO speed Yatsuhashi with nothing but waiting while heavy poison kept damaging Yatsuhashi each turn. Same deal with power Benben, who took about five turns of heavy poison to KO, while Lunasa kept healing to full hit points with continue. The other sister gets taken down rather easily as both puppets are super weak against poison type Seiga. Past the sisters the path becomes a little more simple. The road has trainers to fight, while using the boat on the stream can bypass several of the trainers. Taking the water path leads to a small area across the water that has skill card 29, lost crisis. Dark type, focus attack, 60 damage and cancels weather effects. Damage doubles if there's a weather effect to cancel. Quite a lot of trainers in the area. So much that all the puppets in the current team has already reached level 50. Also found skill card 24, plasma ball. Electric type, focus attack, 20 damage and paralyzes opponent. I noticed that the majority of skill cards are focus attacks, while spread and status moves have a slightly lesser amount of skill cards. A little further east and the exit to Route 8 is found. A little more east and there's a ledge to jump down from to reach the area of Route 6 that Yin has already explored. Yeah! All routes have been explored! I guess Route 7 functions as a shortcut back to the human village instead of going back via the hillside cavern, in the event that the gap map hasn't been acquired - since that's an optional item more or less. Anyways, since Yin has explored all of Route 8, it's time to gap map back the the human village. I reckon it's the best place to gather clues on where to go next. After that, Yin will travel to other areas, like the Moriya Shrine, the SDM, and the Myouren temple in case that's where Yin has to go. Also, there was one new puppet in the area. Route 8 had Sekibanki, Seija, Benben and Yatsuhashi puppets in the area. Aside from Seija, the puppets had some style changed ones that were sometimes encountered. Raiko Horikawa. EX boss of Touhou 14, and the last puppet entry in the puppet book. Not counting one playable character, all the Windows era Touhou character is in the book! Raiko doesn't have a lot of fanart, partially due to having not a lot of impact in the story of that game. Heck, the EX boss of Touhou 15 is slowly gaining more fanart than her. Raiko's one of my favorites, though. Sound and electric type. The Human Village! Yin searches for clues, but more importantly, gets new costumes! {Spoiler} Yuuka gets her pajamas she wore during her Stage 5 boss fight in Touhou 4. She's encountered when she was still sleeping, but when she's fought as the final boss in the same game, she's already wearing normal clothes, which is kinda like her normal costume, except she was wearing pants and had longer hair. A more Japanese-style maid costume for Mugetsu. Koishi's alt color makes her look more like her sister, and she's a cat in her alt costume. In the third and fourth fighting games, one of Mamizou's special attacks transforms her foe into an animal who does weaker damage; in Koishi's case, she becomes a cat. Lunasa trades her hat for a hairpin as well as having a different dress. Lunasa plays the violin, but since puppets are small, it looks like a cello. Some sort of princess-y/wedding dress for Medicine. Due to a hunch, a quick google search tells me that the dress is based on how a lily-of-the-valley flower. Suzuran is lily-of-the-valley, and it's a poisonous plant fitting Medicine's powers and where she lives. Louise's alt costume reminds me of something, maybe an anime or a video game, but I can't put my finger on it... Meira still looks like a Japanese swordsman (well, swordswoman) with her alt costume. Kurumi with a maid-like outfit. And lastly Udonge gets the clothes she wore during her debut in Touhou 8. Like Sakuya, kinda boring. Time to check the village for clues. Kosuzu, Reisen, and Keine have nothing new to say. Apparently the expansion pack gives Kosuzu a role in the story, but for this vanilla version she doesn't impact the game in any way, at least so far. Talking to Akyuu updates her on the PLF's disbandment. She doesn't know what Yuuka's clue is about, but after thinking it over I think I figure it out. Touhou 10, a flying ship was launched from the underground due to the incident of that game. That flying ship is the base of operation of the Myouren crew, and they're looking for their leader, Hijiri, who was sealed in Makai. Don't know how to get to Makai, but I do know where to find the Myouren crew: to their temple. They weren't around at the start of the game, but maybe they are now. Only one way to find out. To the gap map! Turns out I'm right. Upon entering the temple Yin immediately encounters Byakuren, and she does have the info Yin needs. However, she wants to test Yin first with a puppet battle before she hands out the info. And it's not just one battle either. Her companions are in the temple grounds, and Yin has to face them as well. The screen flashed by so quickly that I only got to take a screenshot of one of them. Basically, find Byakuren's companions in the temple, fight them all before fighting Hijiri herself. Should be easy. Right, then! Time to find them, and I reckon I'll search for them by order of stage. First one, Stage 1 of Touhou 11, Nazrin! Despite my usual wariness against speed style puppets, the battle ran smoothly in favor of Yin. Mugetsu was out first, and the light type Shou did some damage, but it was Mugetsu who handed out the KO in one hit with a dark type move (thankfully she didn't miss). Speed Nazrin was out next, and I sent out Yuuka so Mugetsu won't be KOed. Naz's attacks were super effective, but thanks to Yuuka's focus defense she managed to survive the attacks, and with power drain Yuuka drained hp to survive more attacks from Naz, eventually coming out as the victor. Next up is Kyouko! Stage 2 boss! ...though she was the Stage 2 boss of the next Touhou game. She's still part of the Myouren crew though. Well, I had a hunch on which puppets Kyouko was gonna use, so I set the order of Yin's team accordingly. Rikako, with a bit of healing, managed to take care of Kogasa and Mystia, and she gets KOed by Kyouko in the end. I realize that many in my team is weak to sound types... so I use Lunasa the sound type and slowly nibble away at Kyouko's health for the win. Stage 2 cleared, so let's move on to Stage 3, Ichirin and Unzan. It's just a solo puppet fight, but Ichirin did some damage. Yuuka got KOed after a lucky crit from Ichirin, and while Koishi was faster she didn't do enough damage to make it a win. Still, Ichirin was taken down a turn later by Seiga. Time for Stage 4 with Murasa. Well, I reckon she's water type, so I set up Rikako to be in first position. Murasa up first, so I get Rikako to shock her... and turns out it's Nue with the hobgoblin skill. Still, Nue's attacks aren't very effective on Rikako, and with a bit of healing Nue is eventually defeated. After that, the next puppet is Murasa, who's easily taken down by emperor's indignity. That's one of the 35k skill cards from the peddler in Route 6, and while it has the same high damage of the other skill cards sold there, it has more uses. The other three skill cards only have 5 SP, but emperor's indignity has 10 so it's kinda more useful. You can forget skill card moves and learn them again without spending PP, but it's still handy to have twice as many SP compared to the other three. From Stage 4 we go to Stage 5! This feels like a boss rush, though Yin can heal in-between fights. It's Shou time for Shou! Was only expecting Nazrin and Shou, as those two are kind of servant and master. Didn't expect Kyouko, but having Lunasa on first took care of Kyouko. Speed Nazrin up next who got a crit on Lunasa, knocking her out, so I sent out Yuuka. Nazrin hit first for high damage, but all of it was for naught as Yuuka used power drain to KO Naz in one hit, and the hp drain healed Yuuka to max hp. Power Shou was sent after that, but since she's light and electric type she couldn't do a lot of damage to Yuuka, who in turn did with an earth type move. A winrar is Yuuka. And that's it! All of Hijiri's companions have been defeated, and it's time to square off with the final boss herself. Before that, Yin gap maps to the human village to heal up. I think Yin just wants to find a way home, probably. In any case, it's boss fight time! Kinda forgot to change the puppet order. Oh well, Lunasa works just fine against defense Ichirin. Ichirin's attacks deal over 50% of Lunasa's hit points, but Lunasa puts a stop to that with will-o-wisp, as aside from burns, it also causes darkness which halves focus attack. Next up is Speed Hijiri. Speed Hijiri, huh... level 65, huh... hah, after fighting Murasa, my gut feeling tells me that's a fake! Lunasa uses miasma this time for heavy poison. Indirect attacks won't break the illusion, but this speed Hijiri uses charge stealing, an electric type move. Hijiri is a fighting type, so she should be using aura drain instead. Still, charge stealing drains hp, so it takes a while for the heavy poison damage to overtake the hp drain. Speed Shou is sent out next. I switch out to Koishi, which proves to be a bad move as she's KOed easily. I end up using the same tactic when Yin fought Nazrin, get Mugetsu to KO speed Shou in one hit with a dark type attack. Finally, the real speed Hijiri is sent out. As it turns out, speed style reminds me why it's the bane of my existence as it KOs Mugetsu and Yuuka with ease. I send out Lunasa and heal her... but even she can only barely survive the attack, giving her no room to use miasma on Hijiri. Still, I realize something. Hijiri's main attack, luminous flux, does recoil damage! Since Rikako and Seija are particularly squishy against focus attacks, I simply heal Lunasa while Hijiri sets up her own doom with recoil damage. Eventually Hijiri's attack deals too much damage for Lunasa to survive and she gets KOed... but it's too late, as Hijiri's hit points were low enough that it became a mutual KO. Victory! Pretty easy battle for the first three puppets, though the last fight made me sweat a bit. Again, a puppet who's not focused on direct attacks becomes the key point of victory. Once again I'll consider this a slight loss due to the amount of healing items I used up, but not so much since the level difference was pretty big. The fight results also show that 4 magic crystals were dropped. Hooray, money! Well, a win is a win, and Hijiri gives Yin the info she needs. Makai, huh... Hijiri was sealed there, and she was unsealed during the events of Touhou 11. Furthermore, it's where Touhou 5 takes place, and apparently the way there can be found near the Hakurei shrine... First I'll explore other places on the map if they still have things to find, then go to the Hakurei shrine for possibly the path to the end game... and all that will be next episode. Been a long episode today, I think, so it's the perfect time to stop for now. Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 19, 2016 8:11:06 GMT -5
The end is near! Probably. It's time for yet another episode, and it feels like we're close to the end game... time sure does fly fast. Been about a month since I started LPing this game, and right now I'm already thinking if I'll LP something else after this one. For no reason at all, maybe Monster Rancher 2? Who knows? Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 29 To Makai! Yin has information that the puppet incident might be connected to the realm called Makai, and on the previous episode she and her team faced off with the Myouren crew in order to find the means to enter that realm. After winning, Yin is pointed towards the direction of the Hakurei shrine, where a gateway to that realm exists. Seems like it's gonna be a long journey, so Yin and her team has to prepare. Of course, that means reshuffling the teams yet again. New team! Caught that Sukuna just a short while ago on Route 1, as the one I caught all the way back on the start of the game had rather horrible stat potentials... obviously, some training needs to be done for all of them. I wanna get them all reach level 50 first, for starters, before making the trek on the Hakurei shrine backyard. That giant Suika is probably still there, and I sense that there will be a fight against it. I'll get to training the puppets, especially that Sukuna, so I'll just omit what happens during that time since all of it will be fighting wild puppets. Of course, before that, the other five members of the new team needs to be style changed first. Assist style for Raiko and Wriggle, speed for Gengetsu, power for Elly, and defense for Seija. {Spoiler} Power or assist for Raiko. Power gives more spread attack, but assist offers a more balanced defense and good speed, kind of making her a jack of all trades. Her low potential for focus and spread defense makes me a little wary... but I go with assist anyway. She learns decrescendo, which lowers an opponent's focus and spread attack and switches out with a puppet - could be handy. Roar is also added, which greatly lowers the foe's focus attack... which seems rather useless considering that Raiko uses spread attack moves. Lightning speed is another move she learns, and as a move that switches out puppets it could be better than decrescendo. She can learn emperor's indignity from skill cards, as well as thunder force (electric/spread/95 damage with chance to paralyze) and ultra high tone (sound/spread/95 damage and chance to boost random stat). Her ability active makes her immune to the stop effect, but I choose her other ability instead: disturber, which raises her spread attack if she gets hit with an attack that she's resistant against. In general, her type combo is pretty defensive. About three types which doesn't do a lot of damage, and her only weakness is earth. That said, most of her attacks are sound and electric type only, which kinda makes her somewhat limited in being super effective against many types. Gengetsu can choose between power or speed. Power style goes all in on focus attack, but speed makes both focus and spread attack on par with each other while still being quite high, as well as granting her a big boost in speed. In exchange, her focus and spread defense is low turning her quite squishy. Again, I'm wary due to her low speed potential, but speed is the style I'll go with her. She learns unknown flare, and spirit rush: void type, focus attack, 120 damage but does recoil damage. Could be a handy move, but due to her low speed and void not being strong against anything is worrying. Still, with her focus attack stat it could do some damage. On the other hand, recoil damage is 1/4 of the damage she does with it... Seija has speed or defense style to choose from. Going with defense, which has a better power boost and an increase in spread defense. Her current ability is unjustness, but her other ability to choose is usurpation which inverts stat changes. That could be useful, as it would benefit her if she got hit with a move that would lower her stats, raising it instead. Wondering if the ability would affect the foe as well, so foes with the ability to gain speed every turn would lose speed instead... She also learns the move stalk and murder. Acts like the fly move from Pokemon. When used she disappears on the first turn then attacks on the next; with her speed she'll be hit first, but she should be safe on the next one. Between power or defense, going with the former for Elly. Her stats are pretty good that she gets a good boost in focus defense for power style anyway, and her ability suggests that she'll get a recoil-damage move when she style changes. And she doesn't yet, so I reckon I need a few level ups for her until she gets a recoil-type move. One other reason why I didn't choose defense is because she becomes steel and earth - making her super weak against fighting types. Hrrm, Wriggle either has power or assist style. Assist style seems to suggest that there should be a big boost in both defense stats, but since her potential for both stats are rather low she doesn't get a big boost. Power style would probably be a better fit, but for the slightly better speed I'll go with assist. She learns power drain and dust bomb, which are pretty decent attacks. She also learns forest therapy, which removes the status effects of the entire team, which seems handy. Right. Time to train a little! Goal is level 50 minimum for the entire party, maybe 55. Unless something super amazing happens, not to mention Sukuna getting style changed, I won't be mentioning what happens during training and the next few paragraphs we would already be in the process of going to the Hakurei shrine. Training on the Remains of Burning Hell, as the XP there is pretty good since most of the puppets are high cost... not to mention that most of the foes there drop some pretty decent loot. It doesn't take long for Sukuna to reach the level for style change. Hmm, defense or power style for Sukuna. Her focus attack and defense is pretty small on defense style, but due to her ability which doubles both stats it puts defense style on par with her power style, with slightly better focus defense. The ability is unique to her, as the miracle mallet is the hammer Sukuna holds in her hand. 'course, one weakness of this ability is that some opponents have moves that change abilities, and there are abilities like infection which can change Sukuna's abilities during the fight. Oh well, still choosing defense style. She learns reflecting water, the counter for spread attacks, though I have my doubts if she can survive super effective spread attacks. Oh my she's teeny! Well, the non-puppet Sukuna is an inchling, small enough to live in a bug cage, so defense Sukuna is probably closer to the real one's size than normal or power style. And here it is! The team, post-training: -Sukuna's stats are pretty basic at first glance, but with regards to her focus attack and defense, once you take the miracle mallet ability into account those two stats are doubled, making her come close to matching the focus attack and defense of the heavy hitters of the current team. If I actually bothered to use reinforce stats, and put points in focus attack and defense, her stats would then rival power Suika or Yuugi's focus attack, and the defense will be like defense Yuuka - if those puppets aren't reinforced. Still won't use reinforce stats, though. -Gengetsu is a glass cannon. Her stats are 151/158/56/156/70/158 (hp, focus attack, focus defense, spread attack, spread defense, speed). She's got a mix of focus and spread attacks in her moveset... and if only I can figure out if the enemy puppet is weaker in focus or spread defense. In any case, Gengetsu probably won't be able to take strong hits with her defense. -Elly is also a heavy hitter. 183/153/133/87/92/83. Better focus defense, but spread defense probably isn't much. On the other hand, she learns fiery foehn winds at level 49 and brandish at level 56. The former is wind type and the latter is steel type - both are focus attacks with 120 damage and 15 SP each. Both also do recoil damage... but due to her ability she won't get any damage from recoil making those two moves perfect for her. -Seija also shows surprising offensive powers, and her spread defense is also quite high. 160/145/90/83/165/80. One of the moves she learned from style change, but didn't notice at first, is cross drive. It's a fighting type focus attack, with 100 damage. It lowers her speed... but thanks to her usurpation ability which inverts stat changes, she gets a speed boost instead. After some testing, Seija's ability only affects herself, so opponents can still boost their stats (though Seija does have a move that inverts the stat changes of the foe). -Raiko is pretty well rounded in stats. 155/68/128/136/139/115. Focus attack is low, but her attacks are spread attack only so it's not really a problem. She suffers from a slightly limited moveset though, as her current moveset is a mix of sound and electric type. She does have one light type defense move: field barrier, which halves spread attack damage for the entire team. -Wriggle is speedy, with some surprisingly decent defense. 146/105/125/72/141/141. Her focus defense is somewhat surprising as her potential for it is low with an E rating. She's also the highest leveled because of her low cost. While the rest of the team is at the 100-120 range (with 120 being the highest cost), Wriggle has a cost of 80 which is the lowest. Mentioned it before that wild puppets with higher costs give more XP, but at the same time high cost puppets will also need more XP for level ups. So... anyway, it's time to tour Gensokyo! Before heading to the Hakurei Shrine, Yin will check the places that she went to before in case she missed anything. Like training, won't bother giving screenshots for anything unless there's anything interesting to note. -The Human Village: Well, costumes, of course! {Spoiler} Sukuna looking a bit more princess-y with her alt costume, since she's a princess. She still keeps a (smaller) bowl for a hat, though. Random fact of this game: if you don't give a nickname for them, the default name of the puppets is their first name of the Touhou character the puppet is based on. Sukuna is an exception, with Sukuna being her surname, as her first name Shinmyoumaru seems to be too long. Another puppet who uses their last name as the default is Hijiri, whose first name is Byakuren. Udonge is another one, kinda. Her full name is Reisen Udonge Inaba. Gyokuto is another one, since the Watatsuki sisters renamed her to Reisen II. A maid(?) outfit for Gengetsu. She's the older sister of Mugetsu. Gengetsu is the boss after Mugetsu, but aside from that in Touhou the stronger sister is usually the younger one: Flandre, Koishi... heck, even the Aki sisters: Shizuha (stage 1 mid-boss, goddess of making the leaves red during autumn) and Minoriko (stage 1 boss, goddess of harvest). More maids. Elly trades away her scythe for a broom. Seija carrying around a bunch of tools. Usually, at the end of Touhou games, the heroines more or less befriend the people behind the incident of the game. Seija is one of the two people currently who's an exception (the other one is Tenshi). Tenshi was more or less kind of forgiven, but in Seija's case she was branded as a criminal, which set up Seija's own game, Impossible Spellcard, in which she has to cheat and use tools to make the impossible spell cards possible. Raiko dressed for a festival. Her alt color kinda makes her look like Yuuka, and fanart has noted their similarity in looks before. Wriggle dressed more girly for her alt costume. -Nothing new in the Moriya Shrine, Mayohiga, and the Kappa Hideout. In Mayohiga, the PLF members who hung out there are gone now, due to the disbandment of the group. Sanae does compliment Yin for winning against the PLF. -...actually, nothing of note is in the places that Yin has been to before. Some of the Touhou characters have new stuff to say, but there's no real importance to what they said. So with that, it's off to the Hakurei Shrine. I'm guessing there will be a boss fight with Suika to get some passage into the Hakurei backyard. Reimu is not home yet. Last time Yin saw her was the Geyser Control Center as she was swarmed with PLF mooks. It's not Suika, but Marisa, huh... She shows up on scene just before Yin could enter the Hakurei backyard... It's been a while since we saw her and I can pretty much tell what she wants from Yin. Hmm, well, Marisa's team is still higher in level than Yin's team, with the exception of Wriggle. Still, it's not a full team so the advantage is probably on Yin's side. Switched to Raiko which was a good move as speed Nitori had an attack that would have been super effective on Sukuna. It wasn't effective on Raiko, which triggered her ability that lowers Nitori's spread attack. Nitori's next move was super effective, and I picked the right time to try out field barrier to cut down spread attack damage by half. After that, it was a back and forth fight with Raiko eventually wearing down Nitori with sound type moves. It took about four hits from Raiko to take down Nitori, with field barrier being used twice. Power Patchouli up next, two levels higher than Nitori. From having one of my own, I know that this style for a Patchy puppet is weak against electricity, so it's somewhat of a lucky strike that Raiko has one of the most powerful electric type moves in the game with emperor's indignity. Still, Patchy is squishy against focus attacks, but not spread attacks, so it took two hits to take her down. Thankfully, since the second field barrier was in effect Raiko was able to survive Patchouli's inferno attack. After that, power Alice is sent out, same level as Patchouli. I heal Raiko back to full health, but it was a futile effort as Alice's chrome ray put her back to low hit points. No point in trying to make Raiko hit Alice, or switch out to another puppet. Raiko has decent defense, but even then a normal attack from Alice is enough to do a lot of damage, and that would be bad news for the rest of the team. Instead, I make Raiko use field barrier for a third time in the battle, as the field barrier affects the entire team, so my other puppets would benefit. Besides, being a light and steel type means that Raiko's electric and sound moves won't be effective. At the very least, Raiko is faster and she does get the field barrier set up before getting KOed. Sent out Seija. Alice is a steel type, and Seija has the perfect attack for that: cross drive. Despite being super effective, it only takes about a third of Alice's hit points. Like wow, Marisa's team is surprisingly resilient. Alice starts off being the faster puppet, but cross drive has a special effect. Without fail, cross drive will lower Seija's speed... but thanks to usurpation it's raised instead. By the second blow Seija became the faster one. It takes three hits to take down Alice, and so all that's left is the level 67 speed Marisa. Nitori, Patchouli, Alice... random Touhou trivia: all three have been paired up with Marisa in the games. Alice during Touhou 8, and Marisa can select between the three to be her partner in Touhou 11. Marisa's emperor's indignity took out half of Seija's hit points... and the turn after that Raiko's field barrier wore off. Uh oh. I think Raiko would be the perfect candidate to fight Marisa, since if I recall both have the exact same type - and Raiko has an ability that lowers the foe's spread attack if she's hit by an attack she's strong against. Anyway, I make Seiga hit cross drive one more time... even with the speed boosts Marisa is faster, but even so she missed! Emperor's indignity has lower accuracy than most attacks, so that was possible. Still, that was luck, and lightning doesn't strike twice... or in this case it did, KOing Seija. Gengetsu is sent out. Being light and illusion type she should be resistant to electric attacks... and very resistant to light. On the other hand, I fail to take into account Gengetsu's very low defense. Even when it wasn't very effective... and it managed to crit, so Gengetsu was KO before getting the chance to attack. I send out Sukuna... and the same thing happens. I send out Wriggle, with the intent to let her be a sacrifice so I can revive Raiko, and somehow she manages to get only half her hit points down. I more or less didn't realize that assist Wriggle was resistant to both light and electric types. In between some heals Marisa misses with emperor's indignity, allowing Wriggle to take some shots with dust bomb, and after a couple of those Marisa's remaining health puts her down for the KO. Hmmm, the battle was somewhat good. The level difference of the foe was still quite bigger than my team, and for most part my team managed excellently against the first three puppets of Marisa. After that things got shaky for a while as Marisa took down three of my puppets, two of them with ease, but Wriggle was the surprise factor that led to victory. I think I still relied on items a little too much, but with the level difference I suppose that's to be expected. After the battle, Marisa learns that Yin is headed off to Makai. She decides to investigate the Netherworld instead. Come to think of it, there's a lot of afterlife/underworld-like places in the series... Anyway, Yin pops back into the shrine to heal the team. That giant Suika may still be asleep on the backyard, so it's important to make sure the team is healed up and ready for a fight. That proves to be a wise move, as after walking around the Hakurei Mountains behind the shrine, Yin encounters Reimu. The armpit miko then accuses Yin of probably being a suspect in the puppet incident, which of course means it's another boss fight. First Marisa, now Reimu... what's next? Will Sanae be hiding in a tree ready to fight as well? Anyways, it's a level 60 power Aya for Reimu's first puppet, so the levels of her team would probably be the same as Marisa. Still, it's a fortunate situation. Power Aya is weak against steel, and Elly (who I put in first position after the Marisa fight as she was the only one who didn't participate in the fight) has brandish. It's high damage, and it should do recoil damage if not for Elly's ability. Still, Aya hits like a truck with rush attack, and her ability makes her hit it for five times. Thankfully Elly survives and deals the KO blow with brandish. Defense Yukari sent out next. I try to heal Elly, but the damage that Yukari does is too much. Also, Yukari is much faster so Elly is KO before being able to make a move. So, Raiko is sent out, with me aiming for more or less the same tactic like when Raiko fought Nitori. Field barrier, and then ultra high tone while healing once. It works - and it helps that Yukari is weak against sound. Still, defense Yukari has a lot of defense, and it took three ultra high tones to KO her. (IMPORTANT NOTE: On the next picture you may notice a slight discrepancy with Raiko, on how she has less hit points left and the lack of the darkness status effects. This is because there was a freaking power outage for five seconds, and since I don't put the battery in my laptop it shut down on me. As it happens, right now I'm thankful for two things, -That I remembered to save the game, especially after all that time spent training the current team. -That the forum saved this post. I usually post on the reply box instead of word, only copy-pasting the stuff I've written to notepad after a while. I'd be really annoyed if I lost a giant chunk of text that I wrote. That said, the power outage happened just a few seconds after sending out Suika, so we shall now return to our regular programming.) Well, field barrier's effects won't work on Suika, since she's focus attack oriented. The attack crits and almost takes out all of Suika's hit points, leaving her with just a tiny bit of health left. I send Gengetsu out to finish the job. Finally, Reimu sends out her level 67 Reimu. Like Marisa; Aya, Yukari, and Suika were partnered with Reimu at some point. Yukari in Touhou 8, and all three could be picked as her partner in 11. Once again, I get lucky. Reimu is weak to illusion type attacks, and Gengetsu has unknown flare to be super effective... and then unknown flare's secondary effect comes into play: Reimu gets confused, and is unable to attack. After that, Gengetsu pelts Reimu with more unknown flares, while Reimu gets unlucky as the effects of confusion successfully does its job and prevents Reimu from attacking. After the battle, Yin manages to explain to Reimu on her intent to investigate Makai. Reimu then agrees to Yin's idea and sets off to a different area. Yuuka's clue was that the puppet incident originated from another world that's not Gensokyo; so Marisa is investigating the Netherworld (which Yuyuko resides in), Yin will investigate Makai, and Reimu will investigate heaven (where Tenshi resides). Well, that's two boss battles down. I reckon that I'll find the entrance to Makai and end the episode then. The power at my home still seems rather iffy, so it's probably for the best to do a short episode for today. Random fact: this three is the current home of the three fairies of light in the official works. They used to live in the big tree of the Forest of Magic, but they moved to this place so they can easily play pranks on Reimu. Due to this, Yin can encounter style-changed puppets of them in the area. After a bit of wandering Yin finds skill card 38 on the ground. The move it has is dancing rain; sound type, focus attack, 75 damage with a 50% chance to lower the foe's focus defense. (again, the power went out around this time) Well, there seems to be no trainers on the mountainside, and heading straight north will eventually lead to the Hakurei Cave. I think I'll have to end the episode here, considering the power outages. It's a very short episode for you guys, though with all the puppet training I did this one took a long time for me. Two bosses were fought, and Yin has stepped foot in what may be one of the final areas of the game. All that will be explored in the next episode. Until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 21, 2016 14:09:54 GMT -5
Hello. Because I am reeeeeeal dumb, I decided to train my entire team; that is, the puppets I've used since the start of the game all the way up to level 56. Level 56 is the highest level of puppets encountered in the most recent area, and I wanted to look at the stats of my puppet team on that level.
Almost done with it. Had about 60-70 puppets that's considered part of the team, and there's about 10 left... Blargh.
Did this partially because I was kinda feeling sick, and I didn't have the energy to play and write the LP at the same time. Basically listened to podcasts while basically playing the game in a tuned out state.
Expect episode 29.5 by the end of the day, and continuation of regular programming after I get to watch the TV screening of Fastlane.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 22, 2016 19:26:28 GMT -5
It's... finally done, finally. Every puppet that I've used and considered part of the team have been trained to level 56. I'm not exactly clear on why I wanted it done, but all the same I did it. Two important things I learned: -It took me this long, to understand what the emblems mean. Each puppet has one unchangeable emblem, and they pretty much mean that a particular stat gets a bonus. For example, Mugetsu there has the red emblem, which means that she gets a boost in focus attack. Since her attacks and ability lean toward spread attacks, having the red emblem for her is more or less useless. Like stat potentials, the emblems are randomized so there's no way to change it. -Something that I found out halfway through training the puppets. See that Y:Lv50 below Mugetsu? Well, holding the Y button will show the stats of the puppet when they're level 50... like yeah, that would have saved me a TON of time if I did that instead of training them. Urgh. Holding Y won't show what moves they could learn, so at least that's one benefit to training the puppets. Also, this game is for the PC. The Y key is C by default. Why they'd mark is Y instead, I have no idea... Anyway, a lot of things done. A lot of puppets trained. There's a total of 65 puppets on the team, more than half of the 118 entries in the puppet book. In general, I just wanted to see what their stats would be like once they reach level 56 (that level was chosen as a move will usually learned at that level - if not, that means the puppet is already using that move, obtained via skill cards). So, this is episode 29.5 - pretty much mostly numbers and whatnot. Here it is, in no order in particular, all my puppets in the team and my thoughts on them. Will start with two new additions to the team, though. Power Miko, light and fire type. -181/186/97(emblem)/86/140 -Defense is rather low, but high focus attack and good speed. -On the other hand, she only has one ability: true admin... which lowers her focus and spread attack by half when her HP is less than half. -Still, she has some pretty damaging moves, so generally it's best to hope she KOs her foe by attacking first and not getting hit. Power Alice, steel and light type. -183/72/139(emblem)/156/108/78 -Decent focus defense and good attack. -Ability gives her attacks a 30% boost, though she has to hit second. Due to her speed, it's likely to happen, and she has decent-ish defense and good hit points to make her likely to survive a hit. Speed Marisa, light and electric type. -HP 148, focus attack 91, focus defense 108 (blue emblem increased the stat), spread attack 145, spread defense 96, and speed is 160. -Good speed, despite her speed stat being rated D. Why did I choose speed style, then? If I recall, power style shifts her moveset to focus attack, and her focus stat is rated a poor E. -Spread attack is rated S, and she has a good mix of high-damage moves, and with her speed most other puppets will be hit first before Marisa gets hit. Her defenses is somewhat okay, and pretty normal hit points. Still, one or two super effective attacks would be enough to finish her off, so she has to rely on her speed to win in one go or at least do good damage for the next puppet in the team to win. Assist Koishi, void and illusion type. -198/58/102/109/111/173 (green emblem: boosts speed) -Mostly spread attacks, and that stat of hers is mediocre. -On the other hand, she makes an excellent support member of the team. Aside from her speed, she can choose between the mostly useless ability: waster, which ignores the effects of held items. -Now, the more useful ability she can choose from is curiosity. Having that ability adds a +1 priority to support skills. +1 priority is something that pretty much all the quick attacks have, so even if Koishi was slow she will still use her move first. She can use the moves field barrier and protect, to halve damage of either spread or focus attacks - and after that battle with Marisa and Reimu the usefulness of those moves have been shown quite well. -Basically, start the battle of using either field barrier or protect, then switch out to a different puppet to do damage, as the move protects the entire team for five turns. Power Yukari, void and illusion type. -213/73/145 (blue emblem boosts focus defense)/186/132/131 -Excellent stats on nearly everything. Focus defense is just rated C, and if it were higher she could have possibly been a passable focus attack move user. -That said, her main arsenal is composed of spread attacks. Unfortunately, because Power Yukaris in general have great stats, they're the only puppet burdened with the allowance ability, where for five turns they only have half spread attack and speed. -Basically, it boils down to making Yukari survive for five turns so she could rain hell after the time has passed. There's a number of ways to do it, though she'll end up being damaged at least once or twice before allowance times out. -She also has the moves attack replacement, and defense replacement. It basically trades away either the attack or defense stat of the foe with Yukari's. Attack replacement could come in handy against focus attack using puppets, since Yukari's focus attack is fairly low... but then spread attack stats will be swapped as well, so Yukari would end up with low damage as well. Defense Momiji, steel and earth type. -183/137 (red emblem)/178/75/57/92 -Decent when it comes to taking focus attacks. Spread attacks will squash her quite easily. -Of course, one of the more viable tactics is to make use of her indomitable ability with restitution. Indomitable makes sure she won't get KOed in one hit. If it happens, she's left with one hp, and then restitution will make sure that the foe will also have 1 hp. -Alternate ability is telescopic, which increases accuracy by 30%, but for most part I rarely even have to worry about accuracy. -Aside from that, okay attack, but not a lot of moves to really make her shine on that department. She does have killing bite, which will always be a critical hit - and will be deadly for most puppets weak against steel. Power Yorihime, steel and light type. 193/163 (emblem)/104/127/84/124 -Pretty decent for attacking, though aside from her hit points none of her other stats are rated A or above. Speed and spread defense is E, and I wonder if having those stats ranked higher would have made those stats more impressive. The encounter rate for Yorihime puppets is real low so I stopped finding one after finding a Yorihime with halfway decent stats. -Ability is either insight (easier to score crits) or sniper (more damage from crits). -Has some high damage moves, including brandish - though that does recoil damage to the tune of 1/3rd the damage inflicted. May be a risky move. Would be less risky if perhaps her hit points were higher or she was faster so she could hit it before the foe does an attack - hopefully scoring a KO. Speed Remilia, dark and fighting type. -161/95/110/141/102/165 -Kinda hard to use. Her focus attack is rated B+, so naturally that'd mean she'd focus on spread attacks, right? -Not at all. She has some decent spread attacks, but on the whole she has a lot more focus attacks to choose from. -Her abilities don't do her favors either. Abyssal spirit which boosts dark type moves at 1/3rd health... and unless I find a new skill card she only has two dark type moves available... and both kinda suck in damage... and both are focus attacks. -Her other ability is vanishing act. During fog weather her evasion rate increases. Fog also boosts dark type moves and weakens light type moves. She also has a move that creates the fog weather effect... but aside from a boost in evasion, her low focus attack (and again, only having two focus attack dark type moves available, doesn't help her a whole lot. Power Flandre, dark and fire type. -135/149/118/202(!)(emblem)/86/99 -Dat spread attack. Needless to say, she does amazingly high damage with spread attacks. Her focus attack is also pretty good so she can have focus moves in her moveset and still be deadly against most puppets. -Her current ability, short-tempered, also grants her a big bonus to focus attack. If she gets hit by a critical attack, her focus attack is boosted to the maximum of six stages, and that's usually enough to one-shot most puppets. -That said, her hit points are low so surviving a crit is an issue. Power Kagerou, dark and earth type. -161/158/96/85/112/113 (emblem) -Good attack, but a little slow and just kinda mediocre defense. She has roar which greatly reduces the foe's defense... but Kagerou will have to survive a hit once or twice if she wants to follow up with an attack. Moveset is fairly mediocre. Nothing special, but she also has killing bite. Her ability gives her attacks a 10% chance to cause the opponent to flinch as well. Speed Yumemi, fire and electric type. -167/67/87/158/105/147 (emblem) -Decent speed despite speed stat being low ranked. -Has a number of damaging moves. Her positive ability gives her a big boost to spread attack if she gets hit by a stat-lowering attack, though again, her defense could be an issue. ...that said, I'm not super sure on what would be considered good defense. Power Sekibanki, dark type. -171/162(emblem)/127/54/90/97 -Good attack, and quite handy against light types. Dark types are super effective against light types, and vice versa. With her speed though a fast light type will KO her... but if Seki is faster she'll most likely come out as the winner. -Furthermore, she can easily take care of her fellow dark types with her ability, bright form. All void type moves Sekibanki uses become light type and gets a 30% power boost. So far, the only void type move she uses is furious recitation which starts off with 100 damage. Add that boost in power from the ability and her focus attack, leaving other dark types easily taken down. Power Iku, electric type. -167/101/124/162/104/67 (emblem) -Pretty good spread attack... very slow. One of the slowest puppets in the game. Still, being an electric type, she can learn emperor's indignity from a skill card, which is so far one of the most damaging electric type spread attacks in game. -Still, so slow... -HP is pretty good despite that stat being rated E for her. Wonder if it would have gone past 200 points if it was ranked higher... -Can choose between electromagnetic (nullifies electric attacks against her and raises Iku's spread attack instead) or air cushion (nullifies earth type attacks). -The former is kinda nice for the spread attack boost, but defense wise it's kinda not so good as electric attacks don't do much damage on Iku anyway. -On the other hand, air cushion is better for defense, and Iku is weak against earth types. Since Iku only has one type, having earth nullified means that no other type is super effective against her. Defense Lunasa, poison and sound type. -120/75/195/81/194 (emblem)/50 -Great defense, low attack and pretty poor hit points. With her defense, her low hit points isn't that much of an issue. -No point in giving her power moves. Instead, stuff like will-o-wisp and miasma that do damaging status effects are better, having the foe slowly get damaged while Lunasa soaks up damage. Furthermore, she can use continue to heal all hit points at the cost of putting Lunasa with the stop status condition. Still, while stopped, the opponent is either burned and darkened, or heavily poisoned. -She also has charon ferries. Since damaged is fixed, at the moment she'll do 56 damage due to being level 56, which is a decent amount of hit point damage. Power Kurumi, dark type. -158/80/79(emblem)/159/83/124 -Great spread attack but low defense. -Her ability gives her spread attack a nice +50% boost, but it requires the fog weather effect, and that weather will also damage her due to said ability. She doesn't have a move that creates fog weather though. -One particular move that stands out for her is surge of flame. Spread attack, fire type, 80 damage. The damage is good, and it has a 50% chance to boost her spread attack, which is a pretty good chance since usually the % chance stuff is usually between 10-30%. Power Seiga, nether and poison type. -157/84/84/167(emblem)/143/130 -Quite speedy, good spread attack and defense. Nether is a type I don't enjoy much as it's weak to light, dark, and nether. The first two feels pretty common sometimes... Anyways, has access to some pretty damaging moves. -Her ability curse return is kinda handy as it'll reflect back status moves. Assist Hatate, wind and illusion type. -178/69/94/122(emblem)/131/150 -Her spread attack is somewhat on the low side despite her emblem boosting the stat. Also her focus defense is ranked E-, the lowest rank. Still, it's 94 so I figure that the ideally she'd have much better focus defense if that stat was ranked higher. -Has some decent damaging moves to make up for her rather average spread attack. Her ability also lowers the opponent's spread attack, so that's rather useful. Power Yuugi, fighting type. -175/206/93/123(emblem)/87/86 -Her emblem is for spread attacks (making her stat for that one decent-ish), but Yuugi has the highest possible focus attack stat among puppets, and it shows. Would be crazy if her emblem was for focus attack instead... -As long as Yuugi survives the hit she'll be able to return the favor with her high focus attack. Has cross counter for focus attack using foes, but with Yuugi's focus attack stat being so high it doesn't seem that necessary to use that move... -She has cross drive which has a 100 damage rating. It lowers her speed... but since her speed borders on slow already it's not much of a problem. -She also has vacuum rupture fist, which has a 150 damage rating, though Yuugi won't be able to move on the next turn, so it's a risk. Still, if the puppet isn't strong or immune against fighting types, they'll most likely go down. -Her ability imposing stance only makes Yuugi get damaged by direct hits. Status effects like poison or burn won't do anything to her. Speed Chiyuri, light and electric type. -166/159/95(emblem)/80/83/133 -Pretty fast and can hit hard, but like many of my puppets probably not set to get hit by the foe. -Ability increases recoil damage, but increases the damage of the move... which could be interesting if she had a move that does recoil damage in the first place. -So far the only one with ice machine gun. It's like all the multi hit moves, which hit 2-5 times, though all the other moves have 25 damage each, ice machine gun only does 15 - but to compensate has a +1 on priority, essential being a better fast attack-like move if it hits at least 3 times or more. Assist Parsee, dark and water type. 163/154(emblem)/94/67/90/156 -Again, fast and can do damage but flimsy on defense. -Ability nullifies illusion attack damage. Other ability will damage opponent if Parsee is KOed by an attack that has a damage rating of 90 or more. -Doesn't have any moves that are rated 100 or higher, but still pretty good considering her focus attack. Can also learn miasma, and heavy poison is a pretty good status effect. Power Ran, illusion and fire type. -151/155/108(emblem)/128/96/145 -Focus attack is better, but spread attack is passable. Good speed too so she can probably hit first against several types of puppets. -Her jamming ability reduces foe's speed if Ran is hit by a move with damage rated 80 or higher. Speed Chen, wind type. -152/67/104(emblem)/122/91/177 -Very speedy. Despite low spread attack she compensates by being able to learn a number of pretty good attacks. -Oddly, learns returning swallow. Illusion type, 80 damage, +2 priority, so faster than most quick attacks... but it's a focus attack. Defense Suika, fighting and fire type. -201/132/130/106(emblem)/120/72 -Somewhat well rounded defense (though her focus defense is rated A+ while spread defense is D-, making me suspect that she could have had much better defense in the latter) -Her somewhat okay attack is boosted by her charge! ability, which adds 30% to damage in exchange for preventing the secondary effects of her moves from triggering. -Decent moves. Has mount leveling palm where damage is dependent on the opponent's cost. Can do a near one-hit KO most of the time against high-cost puppets. Defense Kanako, wind and earth type. -189/156(emblem)/177/125/90/87 -Good defense for focus attacks, decent attack stats for spread moves so she can use either that or stick to focus moves which she excels at. -Her nice focus attack can make twister, which hits 2-5 times, quite powerful. -Also has fiery foehn winds which does recoil damage, but I suppose it's okay considering her hit points. -Also has wind god protection, which doubles the speed of the team for some turns. Quite nice. Power Utsuho, fire and light type. -150/188/64/188/82(emblem)/74 -Like Flandre, very powerful attack for both focus and spread. Pitiful defense, though, and her hit points probably won't stop a good move from doing a lot of damage. -Still, high damage and a good moveset means that she can easily take down most foes with ease... as long as she survives the foe's attack since that'll happen most of the time considering her speed. -Her ability will boost either her focus or spread attack depending on the foe's defense, making sure that Utsuho will do a lot of damage. Alternatively, her other ability nullifies light type moves... though light type moves won't deal a lot of damage to her anyway. -She has pulse laser, a light type spread attack version of vacuum rupture fist. Power Nue, illusion and electric type. -167/92/87/173/147(emblem)/76 -Decent spread defense might make sure that she can survive hits from spread attacks and hit back. Focus defense, not so much. -Learns blaze of dawn at level 56. 100 damage, and will burn the opponent. 50 accuracy, though. -On the other hand, her ability is telescopic which gives a 30% boost to accuracy. -Her alternate ability is hobgoblin, like Mamizou. Assist Yamame, poison and nature type. -176/150/84/77/100/126(emblem) -If only her speed stat was rated higher than D... Alas. Still, she's speedy enough, and has good focus attack. -Her infection ability can be useful against puppets with annoying abilities, too. It makes opponents get the infection ability for the battle if a move rated 95 or lower is used. -Has some pretty damaging moves available to her. Considering her cost is 90, that makes Yamame quite a powerful puppet. Like, compare her with Ran's stats who has a cost of 120 - the highest puppet cost in the game. First stage boss beats EX stage boss... Power Ruukoto, steel and fire type. -119/177/90/30/85(emblem)/110 -Very fragile, considering her low hit points and below average defense. -Moveset is somewhat limited... pretty damn limited to be exact. Some void moves, a few steel and fire moves. -That said, she does have two high-damage recoil moves (though one is void type, which isn't strong against anything). The other one is a fire type with a chance to burn opponent, and to top it off she does have recoil offset which negates recoil damage... and she'll certainly need it thanks to her low hp. Assist Udonge, illusion type. -153/122/86/115/160/96(emblem) -Pretty average stats all around, aside from very good spread defense. Well, focus and spread attack are rather equal so she can use both types of moves if she wants to. -Her strange drug ability heals her if she's poisoned/heavily poisoned instead of damaging her, so it's kinda useful for her to hold the wolfsbane root to make use of her ability. Defense Yuuka, earth and nature type. -184/149/243(emblem)/72/58/49 -Amazing focus defense, but horrible spread defense. -Good focus attack, and ability boosts her damage by 30% if she attacks last - and considering her speed that's most likely what will happen. -Somewhat limited in attacks as most of her moves are either nature type or earth type. Speed Gyokuto, void and water type. -158/57/139(emblem)/86/145 -Why did I choose speed again for her? Her rank for speed is E-... -Still, she's nonetheless kinda fast and having her emblem for spread attacks gives her decent attack damage. -Furthermore, her ability is strategist, which gives a 50% boost to damage if the damage rating for the move is below 60. -Perhaps due to her ability, many of the moves she learn are below 60 in damage. One particularly nice one is shake gear; a steel type move that has a damage rating of 50, and it hits twice. So combine that with strategist and it's basically 150 damage. All in all, her stats could be better, but as it is Reisen II is pretty good, especially since her puppet cost is at the lowest tier at 80. Power Sanae, wind and water type. -175/95(emblem)/121/145/113/91 -Pretty decent stats all around, though I wish her emblem wasn't for focus attack since she doesn't need that stat. -Damage wise, most of her moves don't go above damage 100, but her ability makes up for it: lucky, which increases the chance of secondary effects of moves happening. Speed Yatsuhashi, sound type. -176/91(emblem)/82/130/91/145 -Again with the emblem being on a stat that the puppet doesn't need. -Pretty much like Gyokuto: Yatsuhashi has the strategist ability to make use of a number of low damage moves and turning them into moderately damaging ones. -Instead of shake gear, she has quick throw which hits 2-5 times for 25 damage each. Add in strategist and the damage it'll deal will do more than shake gear... provided that it hits the maximum 5 times. Assist Eirin, poison and water type. -245/108(emblem)/80/156/100/103 -Her focus defense is rated E, and I kinda wish it was higher. Still, Eirin has quite a lot of hit points, which at least gives her more of a chance to survive a move compared to all the other low-defense puppets I have. -Moveset is all right. She has a multi-hit move, though it's a bit less valued because it's void-type. A move that hits 2-5 times which hit for the maximum 5, if super effective, can be real dangerous. Power Sakuya, steel and fight type. -167/182/133/97/100/83 -Another one with the strategist skill... though unlike Reisen 2 and Yatsuhashi, her low-damage moveset is limited to 2 moves so far, and one of them is yin energy, the default attack. The other one is cruciform with does 50 damage and hits twice, but is void type - again, nothing is weak against void, and light and dark types are strong against it and illusion is immune to it. -That said, Sakuya has at least better overall stats than the other two, and much higher stat for damaging moves. Speed Wakasagi, water and sound type. -154/73/81/152/81/163(emblem) -Fast, quite strong, but yet again frail in terms of defense. -Has a number of moves available that's in the 80-95 damage range, so she can deal quite good damage and can most likely be the one to hit first unless the opponent is a speed type. -Ability makes her immune to nature type attacks, which is nice because normally she's weak against it. -Another puppet with a cost of 80 that's actually quite strong. Power Rin, fire and nether type. -172/155/65/135(emblem)/75/128 -Emblem being for spread attack allows her to use spread attacks learned from skill cards and be decent at doing damage. Still, yet again, her defense is low like many others. This is probably why so many puppet battles I've shown get my team getting KOed in one or two hits... -Speed is fairly average, but her up tempo ability increases it every turn in battle, so she could possibly rival other speed types if she can manage to survive that long. Speed Meiling, fight type. -167/182(emblem)/66/66/102/132 -A somewhat faster, and slightly weaker in attack, version of Yuugi. -Like Yuugi, can also learn vacuum rupture fist. Her focus attack is high enough to KO a lot of puppets. These attacks are especially handy for wild puppet battles, since you don't have to worry about the cooldown time. -Ability is fairly average, but nice. Meiling heals 1/3rd of her hit points when she switches out. Alternatively, she cannot be forced by a foe to switch out. Speed Lyrica, sound and nether type. -146/131/130/59/91/149 -Quite speedy and at least pretty decent with focus defense. -Thanks to many skill cards, Lyrica has some pretty decent damaging moves available to her. -As for ability, she can either nullify sound moves (and get a focus and spread attack boost), or reflect back status effect moves. Defense Yoshika, poison and nether type. -263/64/94/146(emblem)/61/90 -great hit points... very low defense. She's gonna need all that hp to survive an attack. -that said, her ability halves damage from light and dark type moves... and since those two are basically super effective, the damage is more or less normal instead (though still probably a lot). Power Mamizou, illusion and earth type. -160/165/122/95/110/146(emblem) -Pretty decent stats for everything aside from spread attack. -On the other hand, while the moves she can learn are focus attacks (and her stat in focus attack is the highest, in terms of damage rating none of her attacks have a damage rating above 75, which somewhat lowers her damage capability. -Her only ability is hobgoblin, which makes her look like the puppet in the last position of the team. Seems like it's only handy for online battling. Assist Raiko, sound and electric type. -158/69/130/138/141(emblem)/117 -Focus attack is low, but since it's not needed every other stat is decent. -Well, she's assist style, so she can assist by using moves like field barrier then following up with damaging moves like emperor's indignity - or using the protection offered by field barrier to switch out to a different puppet. Power Kasen, fight and illusion type. -200/176/124/126(emblem)/82/68 -Slow, but great focus attack. High hit points, so even with a low spread defense Kasen might(?) survive. -Her mind's eye ability gives her a whopping +50% to focus attack... if she's hit with a status condition. It also ignores the focus attack being halved by the darkness status effect. The burning stone could probably be used to give her that massive attack bonus, since holding it will burn Kasen. The wolfsbane root as well, but that gives heavily poisoned instead which does more damage. -On the other hand, she could choose charge! as an alternate ability. Her attack is far higher than Suika, so charge! could probably be better at the cost of having no secondary effects for her attacks. Assist Louise, wind type. -155/73/128(emblem)/115/81/142 -Her ability creates the calm weather effect during the start of the fight if she's on first, or if she's switched in. Calm weather prevents secondary skills from activating, I think. -Aside from that, she's pretty average when it comes to offense, so using support moves would be a more useful role for her. Defense Seija, poison type. -162/147(emblem)/91/84/168/81 -Her emblem being for focus attack helps her quite a bit, and she has some pretty high spread defense as well. -Her usurpation ability inverst Seija's stat changes. So foe's that'll try to lower her stats will only raise it instead. She has cross drive as well, which does pretty good damage and lowers her speed... but thanks to her ability it just raises it instead. Power Kokoro, void and light type. -181/142/108(emblem)/145/104/82 -Pretty decent all around. Focus and spread attack are more or less equal, though she's less strong in both than compared to a puppet like power Utsuho, though on the other hand Kokoro is somewhat better in hit points and defense. -Her ability changes her type during battle to match the move Kokoro will use. I'm not sure, but I think the attack's power is boosted if it's the same type as the puppet. Alternatively, she can choose an ability in which she ignores the secondary effects of moves. Defense Sukuna, steel and earth type. -163/75/74/83/90(emblem)/93 -Focus attack and defense is low... but due to her unique miracle mallet ability those stats double instead, making her good on both stats. Oh, how I wish her emblem was for focus attack, and she probably could have rivaled Yuugi or Kasen in focus attack. -Her alternate ability is expert body. Fighting type damage is nullified (super useful since both steel and earth are weak against fighting), raising focus attack as well. Still, it's not a surefire way to keep Sukuna not KOed, since fighting types don't have fighting moves only... Power Tenshi, earth type. -176/166/149/102(emblem)/93/99 -Pretty decent with focus attacks, and defending against them. All her stats are A+ rank, as she's the starter puppet I have, but all in all kinda average. Power Elly (level 58), steel and wind type -183/159/137(emblem)/90/95/86 -Somewhat low spread defense, but decent focus defense and good hit points. Focus attack is also quite good. -Like Ruukoto, she has recoil offset, and Elly also has to recoil moves (wind and steel type). Power Medicine (level 57), poison type. -168/145/124/43/126/111 -Decent defense, and focus attack is pretty good. -Her abilities are quite handy. One ability has a chance for the opponent to be poisoned if they attack Medi, and the other ability has Medi having the chance to poison the opponent when she attacks. -Regarding the latter ability, it can be used well with her nature type move that can hit 2-5 times. Possibly five chances to poison the opponent in one turn, and it's possible to heavily poison the opponent with that. Power Komachi, water and steel type. -195/180(emblem)/102/73/128/75 -Another one with the strategist ability. Pretty much the same case as Sakuya; Komachi doesn't have a lot of moves that have a damage rating that's less than 60, but she makes up for it in terms of focus attack. -Alternatively, she can choose moody instead. Moody raises a random stat by two stages and lowers another stat by one stage every turn. Can turn out useful, or can turn out bad. Can be really handy if it raises evasion, though can be a disaster if it lowers accuracy as well... Speed Suwako, earth and water type. -189/111/108/152/108/160(emblem) -All stats are above 100, and speed is especially good. Decent attack power as well, though somewhat limited in that most of the moves she can learn are water or earth type only. -Ability makes her immune to confusion, or she could choose moody like Komachi as well. Defense Murasa, water and nether type. -169/146(emblem)/134/86/103/91 -Kind of wish I went with power style instead. Still, focus attack and defense are decent. -Ability nullifies dark type attacks, which is nice since that's one less type to worry about from having nether type. Power Shou, electric and light type. -142/105/122(emblem)/179/106/108 -Like Suwako, all stats are above 100, though Shou has far higher spread attack but less hit points and speed. Like many electric types, Shou can learn emperor's indignity which works very well with her 179 spread attack. -Nullifies light type is her ability. Alternatively, her speed doubles if the weather is aurora, and she does have a move that creates the aurora weather effect. Could possibly make Shou quite potent against dark types if so. Defense Ichirin, fight and electric type. -203/156/106/116/99/52 -Slow, but all the other stats are pretty decent. Despite being electric type she can't learn emperor's indignity. -On the other hand, she can learn heavenly thunder, a spread attack with the same damage rating as emperor's indignity, and has a guaranteed effect of paralyzing the opponent. The problem is that it has an accuracy rating of 50. -The solution? Ichirin's duel ability. All attacks made by Ichirin and her foe will never miss. -She also has thunder cut, a focus attack with 90 damage and a 10% chance to boost her speed. Assist Wriggle, nature and poison type. (level 62) -151/109/128(emblem)/74/146/146 -Decent speed and defense, but very low attack, so probably better using support moves. Speed Gengetsu, light and illusion type. (level 58) -153/161/57/159/71(emblem)/161 -Attack is high, though not as high as Flan or Utsuho. Also very low defense. Even an attack that's not very effective can take a large amount of hit points from her. -On the other hand, way faster than Flan or Utsuho. With her focus and spread attack, it's certainly possible for Gengetsu to KO an opponent before they could try to attack. Defense Keine, steel type. Were-hakutaku form is steel and fight type. -172/127/141/81/112(emblem)/58 -When hit points is less than half, Keine's were-hakutaku ability activates. She gets a pretty good boost to focus attack and speed, but her defense is lowered. Wonder if her defense stats affects the boost she gets for focus attack and speed. -Kinda wish that I caught a Keine with much better hit points (the one in my team has hp with a rating of E-) Power Eiki, light and fight type. -200/175/94/119/92/97(emblem) -Great attack, somewhat below average defense. Hit points are high despite being rated E-. -On the other hand, most of the focus attacks available to her is below damage 100. Assist Satori, illusion type. -285/44/93/49/93/73(emblem) -Really wish her emblem was for hit points instead. -That said, not a lot of point in giving her attack moves. -Instead, cross counter to reflect back focus attacks and reflecting water for spread attacks. A good hit on Satori will usually mean the opponent will be KOed by the damage which is twice the amount of damage Satori will get. -That said, cross counter is fighting (nether is immune), while reflecting water is illusion (void types are immune). There is a held item that ignores type immunities, if I recall. Power Meira, dark and steel type. -171/165(emblem)/109/66/89/120 -Again, low defense. Kinda fast, but nowhere near the level of speed style puppets. -That said, most of the moves she learns from level up has a chance to make the foe flinch, and her ability gives the chance to make the opponent flinch from all attacks (not sure if it stacks with the moves that can cause flinching). Power Patchouli, fire and water type. -143/93(emblem)/46/183/194/88 -*sigh* the emblem is on such a useless stat for Patchy. -That said, she's kinda like a reverse Defense Yuuka in stats. While Yuuka had high focus attack and very high focus defense, but very low spread attack and defense, Patchy has high spread attack and defense instead. Both are also quite slow. Power Rikako, steel and electric type. -146/97/74/165/134(emblem)/127 -Kinda like Patchy, but lower spread attack and defense in exchange for slightly higher focus defense and speed. -Ability increases the chance for crits, and like many electric types who primarily rely on spread attacks, Rikako can learn emperor's indignity. Speed Konngara, steel and fire type. -161/159/110/133(emblem)/93/147 -Pretty decent stats all around. Having the emblem on spread attack makes that stat pretty okay, though I haven't checked what spread attacks Konngara can learn. Power Mugetsu, illusion and dark type. -175/89(emblem)/99/161/134/96 -Slightly more resilient than her sister Gengetsu, though lacks her speed and focus attack. -On the other hand, her spread attack is kind of higher in terms of damage potential due to her brutality ability. -Brutality gives a massive 50% boost to spread attacks, but in exchange accuracy is lowered by 20%. Still, I reckon giving her a held item which boosts accuracy should balance things out. AND WE'RE DONE! Good god, finally. I kinda expected this would go on for a while, but after the training being at halfway point there was no choice for me but to soldier on and just finish the damn training. The same can be said for this half-chapter, though I felt like stopping a fifth of the way there... Still, it's done, and later today you can expect me to go and try to finish the game. Also, I realize that many of my team's weaknesses could be fixed if I used reinforce stat to boost some much needed stats for all of them - like giving Sukuna more focus attack and speed, for instance, but since I'm stubborn I'm not gonna do it until the bitter end. Anyways, until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 24, 2016 6:02:16 GMT -5
Got some documents to send tomorrow for surgery stuff and a wedding to attend on Friday, but dammit I'll finish this game by Sunday! Let's go, episode 30! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 30 Aw yeah, all puppets trained to level 56, and it's time to search for the entrance to Makai from the caves in the Hakurei Mountains. Still, there's a few areas in the mountainside that's kind of unexplored. Kinda since Yin has been to this area at the very start of the game, when she was still outside Gensokyo. Now there's wild puppets in this area, and perhaps a few items to pick up. For now, this'll be the team I'll be going with. Pretty much just selected them randomly with no real thought if they'd be effective as a team, with the exception of Koishi who'll be playing a role supporting the team with the field barrier/protect moves. And we're off! At the mountains, heading north-west will lead Yin to the path of the caves, which should in turn lead to Makai... so first things first is to check the path north-east to see if there's anything interesting in that direction. For most part, the only wild puppets in the area seem to be style changed forms of the three fairies of lights, and they can put up quite a fight. That assist Star in particular can be especially annoying. The ability of that puppet immediately grants the aurora weather effect, and with the buff it grants light-type moves she can easily KO dark-types with ease. Furthermore, they have a move that increases their evasion, and an attack that reduces accuracy which further makes them annoying to take on. Well, the area is basically the same path Yin took all the way back on the first episode, and there really isn't anything new to see, aside from skill card 33, which has the move meteor impact. It's a high damage fighting type move, but it has low priority, and will fail if the enemy attacks the puppet using the move. Kinda useless for most part. With everything in the mountains checked, it's time to enter the caves and perhaps find the entrance to Makai. The mountainside has a couple of new puppets, and like I mentioned earlier, style changed forms of the three fairies of light: Sunny is assist style, and Luna and Star are both power style. They don't have normal styled ones for them in this area. It's a cave! As such, I expect to be kinda lost in this area after a while. Should be all right at least, since if I get tired of wild puppet encounters Yin can use talismans to avoid them. That said, I did get Yin to loiter around the entrance during the long training that was done, so I more or less know what the puppets in this area are. Pretty much all of them are normal style, with a max level of 56, and quite a lot of them are rare high-cost ones. Some of them have been encountered before, but their encounter rate is so low in those places in comparison to how common they are in these caves. Even though they're normal style, due to being quite rare puppets they can still be some trouble if the wrong type of puppet is fighting them. Anyway, just heading north leads to three different paths that Yin could take. Seriously, I am so gonna get lost here... As for wild puppet battles, using Koishi up front is kinda useful. Field barrier/protect to halve spread/focus damage for five turns, then switch out to a different puppet who'll deal damage. Kinda time consuming, but it really does soften up incoming blows, and since Koishi has the curiosity ability, those moves will always go first unless the enemy puppet has a higher priority attack (and there's really only a few of them in the game). The game has a rather good sense of timing on that. I take the right path and encounter a trainer, and her first puppet is power Seiga - whose ability allows her to bypass field barrier/protect type effects. She's fast and hits quite hard, but luckily Koishi triggered the second effect of emperor's indignity. Even though Koishi doesn't do a lot of damage, it matters not as she paralyzed Seiga, who's pretty dang fast as well as doing pretty good damage. Kokoro is sent out and KOs Seiga with a super effective attack. Speed Futo is sent out next... more or less a bad opponent for Kokoro, as Futo is strong against all of Kokoro's moves. For a while, Kokoro manages to do a little damage and survive Futo's moves... but field barrier runs out and Kokoro is KOed the turn that it happens. Reisen II is sent out, since being a water and wind type Futo is super weak against electric attacks, which Reisen II has. After that Gyokuto is KOed, and I send out Kasen who I know has an illusion attack that Miko is weak against. Not really a bad fight, though three of my puppets did get KOed. Heading north and another trainer is encountered. ...EHHHHHHHH? Like really? 6 puppet team? I mean, all right, I was complaining that enemy trainers rarely have more than 3 puppets, but I certainly wasn't expecting the first full team in a long while to be from a NPC trainer of all things... But man, that's a full team, and for most part equal in level to my own team. Wasn't expecting a challenge this early, but here we go! Koishi with field protect first, then sent out Kasen to attack Seija since Kasen has an earth-type move that'll be super effective against her. On the other hand, Seija spams stalk and murder, and since Kasen is slow she misses the first attack since Seija disappears. Kasen hits her after Seija attacks, but it only takes about 70% of Seija's health. Seija uses stalk and murder again, pretty much making field protect go away from all the turns wasted, but Kasen KOs her in the end. Power Youmu sent out next. Kind of easy. I heal Kasen, and Youmu's attacks isn't enough to KO Kasen in the next turn. I decide to be a flashy fool and KO Youmu in one hit with vacuum rupture fist, and it does. Speed Futo is sent out next and since vacuum rupture fist makes Kasen unable to act on the next turn Futo easily finishes off Kasen. Sent out Koishi because she has an electric move that'll easily KO Futo, but first I set up field barrier and protect for the next puppet to fight. Even though Futo is speed style, Koishi's curiosity ability makes her use the support moves first. Koishi almost gets KOed because of a crit, but she manages to finish Futo off with emperor's indignity. Power Shou is sent out next. Easy. Koishi also has an illusion attack that's super effective on Shou. I heal Koishi, set up field barrier again, and easily take down Shou with mysterious wave. Even when paralyzed, field barrier gets to act first because of curiosity. After that, speed Sanae is sent out. She doesn't deal a lot of damage, even more so when field barrier is active. I wait for the barrier to run out before setting it up again, then switch out to Reisen II who KOs Sanae with a super effective steel attack. Finally, speed Sakuya is the last puppet to be sent out. Reisen II is faster, but she doesn't get to finish off Sakuya in one hit since she has stalk and murder like Seija. That move doesn't KO Reisen II, and after that taking care of what remains of Sakuya's hit points is easy peasy. A somewhat easy battle, though I suppose a large part of it is thanks to Koishi's support moves. If damage wasn't halved in some instances it would most likely been harder. Perhaps this is a sign that trainer battles past this point could become a whole lot harder. Who knows? Well, only way to find out is for Yin to venture further in the cave. This place is huge, though. In the three paths that Yin encounters at the start, each of them leads to some fairly length passageways, and the one in the middle eventually leads to a ladder on another floor. So, yeah, not quite sure where the right path is, but for now the main goal is to explore the entire place first. If the exit is found before that, I'll keep on exploring. And, if the puppets reach level 63 or 65, the former is when puppets learn a new move, I may head back to the shrine via gap map to do a little bit of switching. Basically, north leads to a ladder up, right has the first two trainers fought in the area, and the path continues past them, so for now Yin will check left and see what's there. ...well, there's one evil spirit, and a dead end. Right, then, time to continue where Yin left off in the right side. From there, another full team trainer is encountered. The game is really pulling out all the stops to make the trainer fights more challenging. Basically that trainer had all the music-themed Touhou characters: The Prismriver sisters, the Tsukumo sisters, and Raiko. Fairly okay fight, and Kokoro did most of the heavy lifting. Thanks to her ability, she can shift to light type moves for the Prismrivers, fire type for the Tsukumos, then finally earth for Raiko. After that, the path continues with several more trainers in the way. For most part, the fights are okay-ish enough for Yin. I got enough supplies to keep them healed after the battle, which is good since one or two tend to get KOed during trainer battles and all that. At the end of this gauntlet of trainers is just one combat handbook. Like... eh. I already have one, and this second one probably would have been handy if I had it during the long training. Ah well. In any case, this path also has another passageway that leads to a fate thread and a ghost NPC trainer. Speaking of threads, the wild puppets in this area seriously don't want to get caught. Even with the oath threads, the highest quality thread that can be bought, sometimes it can take five attempts to get a success - and then you still only have 2-3 turns to KO them before the thread runs out. Anyways, near the ghost is a ladder leading up to the next floor, and I think this more or less clears the current floor of areas to explore. Basically, at the start with the three available paths; going left is a dead end, going in the middle leads to a ladder up, and going right is another ladder up. Gonna take the ladder up on the right path since Yin's already there. Hrmm, a fairy trainer is encountered, and going west past her will lead to a pool of water with a waterfall leading to somewhere down. Since the inflatable boat can't go back up, I reckon I better explore the area south of the fairy first before going down the falls. This place is really big. On the first two pics above, that area east of the ghost and below the bridge is the area that can be accessed from the first floor of the cave, so Yin will probably have to backtrack in order to see what's on there. Going east of the bridge leads to a ladder down to a small dead-end area that contains the yoke charm; apparently it raises focus defense when the puppet holding it is in a pinch. Well, aside from the waterfall and one oni trainer, there's nothing else to see on floor 2, so it's back to floor 1 and go to the other ladder. Also, Kasen's aura drain's hp drain doesn't count as a secondary effect, so it works very well with her charge! ability. Anyways, I reckon that using the gap map to warp back to the Hakurei Shrine and bike to the other ladder would be somewhat faster than backtracking in the cave, so I do just that. Got a lot of talismans and magatamas to avoid wild puppet battles as well, so going back doesn't take any time at all. P.S. Since I was at the Hakurei Shrine, I took the time to switch out one member of my team to a new one I just caught, Mima. Defense style has Mima continue specializing in spread attacks, while power style offers a much bigger boost and a shift in focus attack. Add in the short tempered ability, and she has the potential to be a very heavy hitter... if she does manage to survive a hit, at least. Going with power style, then, though nether and light style makes her super weak against dark type moves, though in general she's not weak against anything else. She learns over ray (light type quick attack) and ruinous voice (KOs foe in three turns unless they switch out). Aside from that, I use skill cards to give Mima more focus attacks. Back at the cave. So far, there are two floors in this place, and the first floor has two ladders leading to the floor up. One of them led to the waterfall Yin hasn't gone down yet, and the other one will be checked out first. Also, Waggysaggy learns water breath upon reaching level 63 (150 damage can't move next turn), while Reisen 2 learns geyser (60 damage always critical hit). If I ever have to warp back to the Hakurei Shrine again, maybe they'll be switched out as well. Yin climbs the ladder up and immediately she finds skill card 46 nearby. The move it has is bright flowers, which is more or less like solar beam; charge on the first turn, hit on the second for high damage. If the weather effect is aurora, it won't need to charge. A wild puppet then crits on Mima, activating her skill. She then uses the same move that only took a small chunk of hit points from Sara, and it causes a one hit KO - since short tempered boosts focus attack to the maximum level of boosts (six stages). That ledge on the bottom right will lead to the other area of floor 2, the one with the waterfall, so Yin goes left to see what's past that ghost trainer. So far, the wild puppets in the area, once the puppets in my team are strong enough to easily take them on, still manage to be annoying: Mima and Yuuka puppets can sometimes have the unreasonable trait, doubling SP usage, and also have borne scorn which reduces the SP of the last move that my puppets used. Reimu has nature barrier which can nullify damage, Sara has false courage to survive KOs... basically a lot of them have moves to wear down move SP. 'course, by forgetting and relearning moves, they're back to full SP, but it's still quite time-consuming. Past the ghost is another ladder leading up, so now there's three floors in this cave. I dunno, if Makai is an underworld-like place, shouldn't Yin be going down instead? Anyways, up there Yin encounters a zombie-cosplay fairy, who has a six-puppet team of five Yoshikas (3 power, 2 defense style) and one Seiga. The first Yoshika (and the other ones) have killing bite, which always crits... against Mima with short tempered... well, do the math. A bit of healing, and Mima manages to squash all of them with the fast attack over ray. More trainers to fight. Lots and lots of trainers in this area, and this place so far seems to be as large or larger than the road to the underground city. Well, after the trainers the path leads to skill card 21, which contains Gensokyo typhoon. High damage wind type move, and can easily get crits and can cause foe to flinch, but requires a turn to charge first. Focus attack, and no one in the team can learn it. Aside from that, nothing else seems to be on this floor, so I reckon it's time to head for the waterfall and see what's down there. Again, it's kinda faster, or at least just as fast, to go back to the Hakurei Shrine and bike the way to the waterfall, so Yin uses the gap map to warp back and do a little bit of team switching. Kokoro, Reisen II, and Waggysaggy gets replaced with Yuuka, Gengetsu, and Shou. At this point, I am considering what team I should use by the time I encounter the final boss. Switching out teams so much would be problematic, since they won't be getting as much training and I might end up grossly underleveled against the final boss. So far, Koishi will be part of the final team, thanks to her support abilities. As for the rest, I reckon I can figure it out along the way. Down the waterfall we go! Yin takes the boat to the right side first. There's one trainer on a small island that has a sun fruit jam, then going south encounters an evil spirit trainer. Past that is a ladder back to the first floor that has a trainer, and past her is a ledge that leads to the entrance of the cave. Slowly, but surely, the cave is being explored of all its locations. One reason I'm using Shou is to make use of bright flowers. Since Shou has a move that sets the aurora weather effect, she can then use bright flowers to do good damage without having to worry about the charge time. Furthermore, I switch her absorbent ability (which nullifies light moves against her) to flash, which doubles Shou's speed during aurora. The double speed pretty much makes her faster than most speed puppets, and more or less turns dark type moves into normal damage for her due to aurora weakening dark moves. Seems like a pretty sound strategy to me... Back to the waterfall, Yin goes to the west path. On one corner is a second wooden sword (doubles PP gain), and after that there's only one path blocked by an oni. At this point I'm 95% sure that I've explored all areas prior to this point, and so far despite the size of this cavern I'm not lost when it comes to direction. Seems like a good sign, as Yin pushes past the oni to see what lies beyond. The path splits up after that; one at the western-most side, then going north leads to a rabbit youkai trainer, and then another one at the northernmost path - each of those three has a ladder leading up to floor 3. Hmmmm. Going up via the west ladder up first. There's a trainer nearby, and a stream heading south. Heading east will lead to a ledge down another area, which is probably the area that one of the two other ladders lead to, so for now Yin will take on the trainer by the stream and head down via boat. The trainer's nothing special; the puppet she has uses focus attacks, and Yuuka's pretty much the best one for the job since she has the highest defense for focus among the entire team I have. Past the stream is a Hakurei shinsu, and a ladder leading to the fourth floor. I consider going back down to the three ladders and seeing what else is there first, but I decide against it an go up. Skill card 16 is found on that area of floor 4, which has the move shooting press (earth/focus/100 damage, no other effects). In that floor is another ladder leading back to floor 3 in a completely different area. Hmmm, I'll leave that for later and have Yin check back on the other two ladders first. Now going at the east ladder in floor 2, the one with the rabbit youkai trainer close by. Above there's skill card 28, dark arrow. Dark type, focus attack, 50 damage but hits twice. Wondering if this is compatible with my puppets with the strategist ability... The only one in the current team who can learn it is Yamame. Anyways, heading south, past one evil spirit, leads to another area where the path splits. Taking the path that requires the boat leads to skill card 60 that has unknown flare. There, the path continues south that leads to a ladder down to a fairly big area, and there there's another ladder up that leads to the area with the ledge that can be jumped down from the area from the west ladder in floor 2. I'm kinda confused on directions by a little bit, but typing it out here as I go along helps. I backtrack to where the path splits up. From the east, there's an oni guarding a dead end, no items or anything, so that's a bust. Before exploring what lies beyond the ladders past the stream on floor 3, Yin goes down to floor 2 to explore the last ladder there in the northernmost part of the area. All it leads to is one youkai to fight and a ledge from floor 3. Well, everything has been explored in this area, so it's time to explore the rest in floor three past the stream! From there, a ladder back to floor 2 is located, which leads to an area with a ladder going back to floor 3, which has another area with a ledge separating an area accessed from the westernmost ladder in floor 2. I'm not exactly sure if I explained that right. I'll ignore the ladder back to floor 3 first and check what's past the fairy (who has another 6 puppet team). Well, past the fairy is an area that leads out back to the Hakurei mountains to a small clearing with a Hakurei shinsu and an evil spirit who heals(?) the team. Well, the team is healed (even though the spirit says thanks for the meal), and Yin goes back inside to check the ladder that leads to floor 3. Yin finds a prismatic candy - and you can see the ledge on the north-west corner from the prismatic candy, yeah? That's the ledge that can be leapt down from if Yin takes the ladder on the west-most side of floor 2. Yin takes the bridge heading south, and at this point I'm pretty sure that every place in this cave that has been explored is explored to the full. Across the bridge is an oni and another exit out of the cave. Outside is skill card 8, overskill which is a void-type recoil move. There's also a magic crystal to sell, but aside from that the outside path leads up via several stairs, and it's a peaceful trek without any tall grass or trainers in the area, but eventually it leads Yin back into the caves. Man... this place is really big, ain't it? Far bigger than the cave to the underground city, and maybe matching that plus the Remains of Blazing Hell. I'm not sure what this floor leads up to, but the area past the ladder is another big one. So far, the path seems to split into two areas that are rather large, and I take the one with more trainers it seems. My puppets are more or less higher in levels... and while I want to warp back to the Hakurei shrine for a team change, this place is just too large that I might have a long time getting back to this place. All that gauntlet leads to is the houen charm, which increases spread defense in a pinch. Ah well, one path down, one to go. Slightly less trainers around, and a side path leads to a spot under that bridge that has the formation charm, which increases evasion during a pinch. A little bit further north, and I spy a doorway leading to an exit(?). Hooray! Been a long episode and I've been wanting to end it, but first there seems to be a couple of peeps guarding the area. Boss fight senses tingling! I heal up and get my puppets to relearn moves so their SP will be full. Hopefully the level of my team would be enough... Boss fight time! The music when Yuuka was fought is being used. So far, it looks like my team is more or less equal in level to them, aside from Koishi who has a high level in general. Power Remilia vs Assist Koishi up first. Easy win. Field barrier to protect Koishi, then the wind/dark type Remilia is weak against lightning, so Koishi with emperor's indignity is enough. Power Mugetsu is out next. Despite being level 70, I know what to do with Mugetsu since I used one quite a bit. Again, Koishi wins because she has the illusion type mysterious wave to defeat her. Speed Flandre sent out next. Easy. Using field barrier and protect, I shield the team from Flan's attacks, and feeling confident, I switch out to all members of the team so they can all get some XP from this. That's how easy the battle is. Flan doesn't help on her side as she begins to use arclight, which does high damage at first but lowers her spread attack each time. Again, I switch back to Koishi who uses mysterious wave to KO Flan who's weak against illusion. Speed Gengetsu out last. I have one on my team, and I know this: Speed Gengetsu has horrible defense for both focus and spread attacks, and she's super weak against illusion type moves. Koishi pretty much stomps her flat with her last mysterious wave. Very easy battle. No danger for my team at all... like Remilia is weak against electric moves, then Flan, Mugetsu and Gengetsu are weak against illusion moves... and aside from field barrier and protect Koishi has emperor's indignity (high power electric move) and mysterious wave (illusion), and with so little damage done to Koishi thanks to the field support skills (and the fact that curiosity makes those two moves happen first) pretty much made this an easy one-puppet fight for my team. Still, without Koishi the battle could have been pretty bad. That four puppet team has four puppets with high stats for attacks, and quite fast to boot, so not having a puppet to set up barriers to halve damage would have really smashed my team's face. Then again, all four puppets of the sisters also have low defense. Truly, it shows that I should not really on offense only for battles... Anyway, after that skirmish the two leave, and Yin is free to go past that doorway. Finally! This has been a long cave to explore, and I'm pretty much tired out from all the exploring done. Now, whether that doorway leads to Makai or more caverns... I don't know. Again, it's been a long episode to do, and whatever lies beyond will have to wait until the next episode. Still, I feel that we're close to the finale, and ending this LP before Monday is possible. But until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 25, 2016 8:10:46 GMT -5
Before the next episode starts, here's what can be caught in the past two areas Yin has explored: Hakurei Mountains: -Assist Sunny, light type. -Power Luna, light and wind type. -Power Star, light and water type. -Shingyoku, void type. Kinda on of the first bosses in Touhou 1. To be honest, I played all the other PC-98 era Touhou games, except for this one, so I don't really have a comment on it. The gameplay of the first game is completely different from how it is from the second game onwards. -Reimu Hakurei, void and illusion type. The armpit miko herself. Main character of the series, pretty much showing up from the very start at Touhou 1 and the most recent game at Touhou 15. The girl more or less in charge of guarding the safety of Gensokyo and whatnot. In the PC-98 era she looked pretty different with purple hair and stuff while the in the Windows era her hair is now black, plus the red-white color scheme of her clothes. This puppet is pretty dang rare on the mountains. Hakurei Caves: -(all puppets here are normal style) -Yuuka, nature and electric type. -Hijiri, fighting type. -Sara, earth type. -Reimu, void and illusion type. -Marisa, light and electric type. -Mima, nether type. -Yuugenmagan, poison and dark type. Touhou 1 boss. Definitely non-humanoid, which is more or less be an out of place design for a boss in later Touhou games. -Elis, dark and electric type. Again, another Touhou 1 boss. Her puppet sprite has something on her mouth, and I wasn't exactly sure what it was first... turns out it's the tip of a wand she's holding. -Sariel, dark type. One of the final bosses in Touhou 1. I think Konngara is the other final boss in that game, depending on the path Reimu takes. Anyways, that's that, and it's time for a new episode. Perhaps we might land on the event that'll be the final episode? Only one way to find out! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 31 Last time Yin fought the sisters Gengetsu and Mugetsu in a relatively easy fight, to the point that Koishi more or less solo'd the entire fight. She has reached level 70, which I think is the last level where a puppet could learn a move, and for Koishi it's catastrophe; illusion type, spread attack, 95 damage and 10% chance of lowering spread defense. It's slightly stronger than mysterious wave, though attacks aren't really Koishi's strongest point - though it does work well with her support skills. Past the doorway is yet another cavern, but the tunnel seems to be an entrance to Makai, judging from those columns at the end. Going near it confirms that the place is a way to Makai, but Sara the gatekeeper is preventing Yin from entering it. Of course, there's a battle. Normal Touhou character BGM for the battle. Sara's team consists of the gatekeepers of Touhou; Elly, Meiling, and Sara... and after the previous boss fight this battle is beyond easy for Yin's team. Sara's team has some high power attacks, such as Elly having brandish but once again field protect saves the day - as it would have taken out more than half of Koishi's hit points per hit without the protection. Kept field protect active, switched out to a different puppet to KO the foe, then switch back to Koishi to do the field protect again and switch back to a heavy hitter... pretty much what I did. That said, I wonder if it's needed to have Koishi with the curiosity ability, as she's actually quite fast, and has her emblem on the speed stat to boot. Then again, her other ability is more or less useless, so might as well. Beaten, Sara then allows Yin to enter Makai. ...so yeah, here we go! The journey in the Hakurei caves was pretty dang long, and Yin has finally reached her destination. Before her is the gate to Makai, and perhaps she'll find answers with regards to the puppet incident. Marisa is investigating in the netherworld, while Reimu is investigating the heaven of celestial beings, so this is more or less a solo mission for Yin and her team. As much as I want to maybe do one last team change, the distance to this point and the Hakurei shrine is too big, and I'm hoping somewhat that the gap map can access Makai once we get there. Either way, here goes nothing! Yin steps into the gate and warps into a mysterious location. Going outside confirms that she is indeed in Makai, and better yet, this place can be accessed via gap map, which suggests that the place Yin has warped into is actually a town. Furthermore, checking the gap map reveals that the area itself is fairly small, Makai is where Yin is, and what lies beyond that is Pandemonium, which is probably the end goal. Well, it is a town, but probably due to budget or time constraints there's no houses to enter, after giving the place a quick look-see. Somewhat of a shame, as I like exploring towns in RPGs, plus the city-like feel of Makai is different to the rural looks of the human village... and pretty much the other two towns in the game, the Kappa Hideout and the Underground City. Still, there are people to talk to and stores to buy from. Apparently puppet battles are also popular in Makai just like in Gensokyo. There's some areas of tall grass littered in the city to catch wild puppets, and there are stores that sell goods for puppet-related things. Among them are a new set of skill cards: all of them are sign attacks. They're normal spread attacks of a specific type, except for void and dream, and it seems that almost every puppet can learn them. Apparently a puppet can only learn one sign attack at a time... like for example if I give Yuuka the illusion sign attack, she can't learn fire or water sign unless illusion is removed. The pretty average damage (60) is kind of underwhelming, but I suppose having a puppet use an attack type that they normally don't have access to can be useful. There's no rest house building in the area, but Louise is outside who Yin can talk to, giving her team some much needed R&R at the same time, as well as there being a puppet box for some team switching. So yeah, for now I'll be loitering around the tall grass of Makai before exploring further in, and at the same time this gives me perhaps one last opportunity for a team change. See ya all in an hour or two! First off, I reckon I wanted to try having Sariel on the team. Her stats are pretty good, so she may be a good fit for whatever lies ahead. Her style change choices are either power or defense style. Honestly, both are really good choices. Power makes her a heavy hitter for both focus and spread, while defense style is of course better geared for defense; furthermore, she becomes light and dark type on defense, plus with her new ability she doesn't take a lot of damage from either type (though dark and light types have their own weaknesses aside from each other). In the end, I flip a coin and end up with power style. After training a bit... I end up feeling impatient. Here's the team I'll go with. Didn't even use Sariel... Anyways, Koishi, Shou stay. Kasen and Waggysaggy return after briefly being put in the box on the previous episode, and Lunasa makes her return. I figure, with Koishi's defense moves and Lunasa's actual defense and status attacks they could be a pretty good combo. Furthermore, Tenshi is placed back in the team cause she's my starter, and this is the end game. Tenshi and Lunasa is a bit underleveled... so I use up the prismatic candies I found since the start of the game to give the two a little boost so that they become level 66... since the previous boss Mugetsu and Gengetsu have level 70 puppets as their strongest puppets, level 66 seems to be decent enough for my team. Finally, it didn't take surprisingly long to catch all the new puppets in Makai - and with that, at 118 entries, the puppet book is complete! YEAH! So, in Makai, here's what can be caught: -(all puppets here, like the Hakurei Caves, are all normal style) -Alice, steel and light type -Louise, wind type -Yuki, fire type -Mai, water type -Sara, earth type -Yumeko, steel type. Stage 5 boss of Touhou 5. Maid/servant of the goddess of Makai. Kinda like a proto-Sakuya, as both are blade-wielding maids, though Yumeko doesn't have the time-stop abilities of Sakuya. -Shinki, dark and illusion type. Final boss of Touhou 5. Goddess of Makai. Considering where Yin is, I'm suspecting that Shinki might be the last boss of this game. Right, then. It's time to exit Makai and head on up to Pandemonium. There still might be some puppet trainers to fight, which would hopefully give Tenshi and Lunasa some much needed training. Like I said, the previous bosses had puppets that were level 70, so I need to be at that level probably for the final boss, maybe even higher considering things. Past Makai, there's no tall grass or trainers to fight... just one long road to bike through and one big building at the end. Ya know, since it is a Pokemon-like game, I wonder if this'll be an elite four like building. My bet is on big-ass dungeon to get lost on though. Oh gods, this is an elite four-like building. Ghh, now I have my doubts if my team does require some training. Hrmmm, despite my doubts, I think my team is ready and Koishi would at least provide some much needed support moves in a pinch. No time like the present. Go to that door on the left, Yin. CHARGE! Without a doubt, this is an elite four-like gauntlet. First up, is Yuki. Fight time! New boss music, and blargh, a five-puppet team. Koishi is stronger in level, and so is Shou... but the rest of my team isn't so fortunate. Oh well. This is it, no other choice but to fight this as best I can. In any case, puppet Yuki is fire-type, and speed Rin is also fire type so I suspect that Yuki's team is fire-themed. Quite lucky that I have Waggysaggy on the team, then. Of course, field protect is set up first, and I switch out Koishi with Waggysaggy. However, Rin stops with the fire-type moves and uses the dark-type changeling instead. Aside from damaging Waggysaggy a bit, changeling makes Rin switch out to the more defensive defense Suika. I keep cool and use aqua breath which KOs Suika. Rin is sent back out, and since aqua breath makes Waggysaggy unable to act on the next turn, Rin once again uses changeling on that turn to switch out to speed Futo. Well, I switch back to Koishi to use field barrier instead, as Futo's a spread attack user. I've fought quite a bit of speed-style Futos in the past episode, so Koishi also doubles as the perfect candidate with emperor's indignity being so super effective against Futo. Again, speed Rin is sent out after. If I switch to Waggysaggy Rin will probably just switch out using changeling again, so I keep Koishi healed and have her use field protect while pelting Rin with the moderately damaging catastrophe until she goes down. Three down, two to go. Speed Marisa up next. A spread attack user, so field barrier is the way to go. I gotta admit using Koishi to use these protective moves is kinda cheap, but it's a strategy nonetheless. Good thing nonetheless, as Marisa is using the high-power emperor's indignity. I switch out to Tenshi who's immune to electricity (but not immune to Marisa's light-type moves) and finish the speedy black-white witch with the earth-type spirit stone jig. Speed Yuki out last, who's level 72. Again, back to Koishi with another field barrier. I switch to Kasen so she can get XP. Yuki's volcano attack does high damage... but at the same time it drops her spread attack by two stages, so too many of that and Yuki will be uselessly weak. Finally, Lunasa is sent out. With her high defense and field barrier, plus Yuki using volcano so much, even with low hit points Lunasa doesn't take much damage. She uses miasma to heavily poison Yuki, then pelts her with charon ferries for extra damage. Since Lunasa is level 65, charon ferries deal a respectable 65 damage. The battle is won with no KOs on my team. One down, three(?) more to go. I heal up the team and continue on. After walking through a hallway, Yin tries to ignore Mai and goes up the stairs. Naturally, Mai (and Yuki previously) comments on that. Fight time, round two! Hmm, Mai puppets are water type, and Patchy is water and fire type. Again, Koishi sets the tempo of the battle with field barrier, then emperor's indignity to knock Patchy down a peg. However, Patchy's explosion deals too much damage, at the cost of not being able to act on the next turn. Furthermore, Koishi's low spread attack doesn't do much damage, and she gets KOed by a second explosion. Shou is sent out who's a lot stronger in spread attack, and her emperor's indignity does KO Patchy. Defense Satori sent out next. If she's like assist Satori, then this would be problematic. I switch out to Lunasa, but it proves futile as Satori's ability is curse return, so status effect moves are out of the question. So I revive Koishi, and heal the team up. Mai seems to understand that Satori won't do much damage to Koishi, so she withdraws her and uses Seiga instead. First I was worried that Seiga has the infiltration ability that bypasses barriers, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I send out Tenshi who super effectives her way with spirit stone jig. Power Iku out next. At first I thought it would be another easy fight for Tenshi, as earth is strong against electric, but Iku is immune to spirit stone jig due to air cushion. Basically, Iku is a one-type puppet, so she has no weaknesses in terms of puppet type due to her ability. Still, Tenshi vs. Iku... Iku is kind of serving Tenshi's family, so it's a master vs servant kind of fight. Tenshi doesn't do a lot of damage, but Iku does okay even with a not very effective fire attack on Tenshi. Still, I keep Tenshi healed, and eventually she gets the win. Before Tenshi could get the win, Mai withdraws Iku... probably because Iku ran out of SP for her fire type moves... Satori is back out, so I switch to Koishi again. After one attack, Satori gets switched back to Iku... and Koishi hit her instead with catastrophe, KOing Iku. Satori is sent out again, but due to her low health Koishi KOs her easily. Finally, defense Mai is the last one standing. Mai is probably water type, but Koishi is out of SP for emperor's indignity. So... it's Shou time! Even with emperor's indignity, it isn't enough to KO Mai in one hit, but the second one does, and so giving team Yin another victory! Two down! Yeah. I do some healing and keep moving forward. And so, the third trainer to fight is Yumeko. Since she's the stage 5 boss of Touhou 5, the next one is probably the final boss of the game... unless we'll have to fight the EX boss of Touhou 5 as well. First puppet out is level 72... making me worry a lot about what the next boss will have. Still, again, Koishi proves to be the perfect one in the starting position for Yin's team. Since I got a Miko of my own, I know that she's light and fire type... so field protect, then super effective illusion attacks against light types. It doesn't KO Miko, but it's enough, as Miko's true admin abilities cut her high focus attack in half when her hit points are less than half. Feeling that my team needs all the XP it can get, I use this opportunity to switch them all out. Before I could finish that though, Miko starts using luminous flux which deals recoil damage, so she gets KOed by her own hand. Speed Yumemi up next. She hits hard, and I mostly take this time to heal my team up. I switch to Lunasa who heavily poisons Yumemi with miasma, and in response Yumemi uses lightning speed to do damage and switch out to power Kokoro. Used Waggysaggy to test her out with aqua breath. It does good damage, but it's not enough to KO Kokoro. In turn, Kokoro reveals herself to use spread attacks with danmaku jig, a void type attack that deals high damage but confuses Kokoro. Switch back to Koishi, then Kokoro doesn't do herself any favors by using arclight which reduces her spread attack. After a few of those, Kokoro's attacks become ineffective and I take this time for a bit more healing before finishing Kokoro off. Power Sakuya sent out next... and I use the wrong field support move and Koishi gets KOed. Fortunately, Waggysaggy is faster and KOs Sakuya with a super effective sound move. Yumemi sent out next, I switch out Waggysaggy because she's weak against electric attacks, and in turn Yumemi uses lightning speed to switch out with Yumeko, who KOs Lunasa. As it turns out, Yumeko most likely has the salvo ability, and she has both quick throw and rush attack, and those moves hit the full five times. I also mistook it for a focus attack when it was actually a spread attack... so Koishi gets KOed again. Furthermore, she has brandish as her high power focus attack, so even though it does recoil damage to her maintaining two field support skills becomes troublesome very quickly. I bite the bullet and send out Kasen after Koishi gets KOed. Yumeko uses brandish, and there's no field protect to halve the damage... but it isn't enough to KO Kasen! Kasen responds with vacuum rupture fist to finish Yumeko once and for good. After the onslaught from Yumeko, Yumemi is pretty easy to deal with afterwards. I heal the team, and Yumemi slowly gets KOed from the heavy poison Lunasa inflicted. Whew. I probably would have an easier time in the fight if I actually focused on fighting and not giving the entire team a chance to switch in, but no point in pondering if that is so, as the deed has been done. Yumeko allows us passage. Still, I am 80% sure that what's next is the final boss. So... yeah, I think it's best to save that finale for next episode. Until then, see ya alls later!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 26, 2016 9:36:29 GMT -5
Is this the episode where Yin fights the final boss? It certainly seems like it. Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 32: Finale? The Makai trio has been defeated, and the leader of them, Yumeko, more or less allows Yin to meet with her master. Perhaps she will have answers with regards to the origins of this puppet incident, but one thing is for sure: there's probably gonna be one more puppet battle to fight. So yeah, this may very well be a pretty short episode. In light of that, it's time to prep the team up. It's nothing much, really, just forgetting moves that are low on SP and letting the puppets re-learn them. There are some notable changes, though: such as replacing Koishi's emperor's indignity with the paralysis inducing thunder veil. It does no damage and as such counts as a support move; while indignity has been a useful component for Koishi's moveset I reckon one problem my team often has is a speed difference: enemy puppets are too fast, so they end up squashing some on my team before they could at least try to damage the foe. Paralysis halves speed, and with luck it can be a turning point for team Yin. To Lunasa, I remove continue and replace it with behind you! which causes the fear status effect that halves spread attack. To Shou, I remove the aurora weather + bright flowers combo and give her spark cross (lowers speed) and dark sign... after checking I realize that I lack dark type attacks which can be somewhat essential against light types. I also give Waggysaggy one just in case Shou is too slow. I considering giving the team items to hold. Aside from the combat handbooks for XP gain, and the blinding orb early in the game for escaping, I haven't really used items during combat. Hmm... well, I haven't used them then and I guess I won't be using them now! That's about everything, I think, so it's time to climb the staircase up. Yin's got a date with destiny and she can't be late! And so Yin meets Shinki, goddess of Makai, and from her comments the originator of the puppet incident. Such a lighthearted reason for this incident, though! In any case, the incident is preventing Yin from going back to the outside world, so Shinki has to do something about it. Of course, first Yin has to prove herself first in a puppet battle! Well, Shinki goes all final boss on us, with her theme breaking the silence prior to this point. It's on now! Gh, first puppet out and she's two levels higher than Koishi... urgh. No point in panicking. No one panic. First, Koishi starts with field barrier. Alice responds with chrome ray. After that, Koishi begins her attack and the end result is that Alice does more damage than Koishi and Alice's hp doesn't go down so much after two hits. Still, unlike enemy trainers I know how to heal puppets, so it's a slow war between Koishi and Alice for a battle of supremacy. Eventually Koishi wins the exchange, and Shinki sends out power Mima. I'd also like to point out the moving space-like background the battle is taking place in. Also, the current opponent is now two levels higher than Alice, with a four level advantage on Koishi. I know that power Mima is focus attack oriented, because I do have one of my own. If she has short tempered I'll be in for some big trouble if that activates. Anyway, field protect this time, due to focus attacks... and Mima unleashes midnight apparition which does recoil damage on her. I then make a big blunder: instead of healing Koishi, I accidentally use a move as well: thunder veil. The good news is that Mima doesn't have short tempered, and the bad news is that she has curse return which reflects back status effect moves. Koishi is paralyzed, and is KOed on the same turn by another midnight apparition. Such a blunder. So... my strategy is to keep Koishi alive for her protective moves, so I intend to heal her immediately. For that, I use Tenshi. She has the indomitable ability, so my plan is to get Tenshi to do some damage first; Mima will probably act first and use midnight apparition again - and even if it's enough for a KO, Tenshi will survive with one hit point remaining and she'll at least get to damage Mima. Next turn, I revive Koishi and let Tenshi get KOed. The plan sort of works! Instead of midnight apparition, Mima uses luminous flux which is another recoil effect move. Tenshi survives, doesn't even get to use indomitable since the move only took out about half her health and Tenshi responds with spirit stone jig which hits five times and puts Mima on the red. Curiously, I heal Tenshi, and as I guessed, Mima still used luminous flux, where the recoil damage KOs her. Nice! Level 76 speed Hijiri out next. Hrmm. To gauge out what that Hijiri is capable of, I heal Tenshi first and see how she does. Then the oddest thing happened. Hijiri uses a move called transcend form: it misses, and apparently takes out half her hit points when it does. I take this time to revive Koishi. When it hits, it took out all of Tenshi's hit points, but due to indomitable Tenshi remains at 1 hp. I heal Tenshi again to full hp, and once again indomitable kicks in for that. Seems like it'll keep activating as long as a)Tenshi is at full hp and 2)the attack done to her at full hp should normally KO her in one hit. I heal Tenshi one last time, but Hijiri misses, and without doing anything Tenshi wins the battle. Next up, level 78 speed Yumeko. Once again, to gauge her power, I heal Tenshi. No recoil moves this time... but Yumeko uses cross drive, which lowers speed. So, yeah... I get tempted. I make Tenshi into a meat shield for a bit, while cross drive lowers Yumeko bit by bit. Considering the level difference between Yin's team and Shinki's team, I need all the strategy I can get. Until it no longer said that Yumeko's speed dropped, I keep at it. Healing Tenshi, the forever masochist (though I don't like that fanon interpretation of Tenshi that much) while she soaks up damage until Yumeko is slow. So slow that Tenshi hits first... and amazingly, spirit stone jig hits five times and KOs Yumeko with ease. This battle is turning up way better than expected, then out comes power Sariel at level 80, 6 levels higher than Koishi. Big uh oh, considering that power Sariel is quite speedy, and is both good at focus and spread attacks. I use Tenshi as a guinea pig; I heal her up, and Sariel uses darkness sweets, a spread attack. I let Tenshi get KOed on the next turn and have Koishi set up field barrier, and Sariel uses twilight infection, a focus attack. Urgh. I sacrifice Koishi and make her set up field protect as well. Again, by complete incompetence, I end up using thunder veil instead. Koishi is KO after that. I send out the most suited for the job: Kasen. Power Kasen is strong against dark type moves, and she has fighting type moves that work well against dark types like Sariel. I know power Sariel is pure dark-type since I style changed on the previous episode. Still, I kinda wish instead of giving Shou and Waggysaggy dark type moves I should have gone with light sign instead for both. Urgh. Actually, I do end up using Shou instead. I summon aurora weather, and as I expected field barrier + aurora is just about enough to survive Sariel's attack, and confirms that Sariel has slowed down. One problem: I forgot that I replaced Shou's decent light move star flare with the stronger pulse laser. The problem: pulse laser will make Shou unable to act the next turn, and my plan was to keep Shou fighting after that. I assume the last boss is Shinki, who's probably a dark type puppet. Caught one, but didn't check her puppet type. Oh well. Pulse laser it is. With the aurora powering Shou up, plus pulse laser's raw power, Sariel is KO with no trouble. One to go! ...and it's power Shinki, and she's freaking level 85. Because Shou is unable to move, Shinki disposes of Shou with ease. One more, me... just one more and the battle is won. I send out Lunasa... just in case I use will-o-wisp to burn and darken Shinki. ...and she gets KOed before getting to do anything. Uh oh. Big uh oh... I send Kasen next. Due to aurora still in effect Kasen only takes half damage... dark performance also seems to cause confusion sometimes, and Shinki has a healing charm which removes the confusion status effect, so if Lunasa survived will-o-wisp wouldn't have done anything then. It will now, since the charm is used, but Lunasa is still KO. I reckon this is time for drastic measures, and since Kasen is still conscious I use this turn to use the last Hakurei shinsu on Tenshi. I send out Tenshi. I revived her using the Hakurei shinsu so I can revive Lunasa with a Moriya shinsu. Shinki will then attack Tenshi, but due to indomitable it won't KO Tenshi on that turn, so on the next turn I heal Lunasa to max hit points. Confusing? Yes it is. Of course, Lunasa won't survive without field barrier, so Koishi is sent out first to do just that. Shinki uses dark performance - and it confuses her! This stroke of luck allows Koishi to get a couple of hits in - apparently Shinki is weak to illusion type moves, and the two hits take out half of Shinki's hit points before Koishi gets KOed with a sound type move, which is one of Koishi's weaknesses. Lunasa is sent out, and this time she survives and successfully inflicts will-o-wisp's burn and darkness status effect. Since she's alive, I use the next turn to revive Tenshi with a Moriya shinsu. Lunasa gets KOed, and I send out... Waggysaggy. She hasn't been used during this fight, so might as well use her now. With Shinki burned, I can in theory heal Tenshi to full as she tanks Shinki's attacks and she'll stay alive due to indomitable, while Shinki is slowly brought to KO by the burns. Still, I do want to try KOing Shinki with a direct hit, so I try to make Waggysaggy hit her. No dice, Shinki is too fast due to the level difference, and Waggysaggy is left KOed before she could hit Shinki. Tenshi is sent out... and I heal her. Shinki attacks, and Tenshi remains indomitable. On the same turn the burns finally catch up to Shinki, and thanks to the damage Koishi did earlier, Shinki is KO. OH YEAH! YIN AND THE TEAM IS VICTORIOUS! On one hand, it's a bit of an iffy strategy for me to rely on so many items, but at the same time pretty much my entire team was underleveled... heck, Shinki's team was full and is higher leveled than anyone on team Yin, so in light of that there was no other strategy to take. Aside from the item use, pretty much the entire team played their roles to perfection. Well, it looks like Yin has succeeded. Shinki allows Yin to return home, and our heroine closes her eyes for what Shinki is about to do. Everything is dark, I guess this is it. Still, someone else enters Yin's field of hearing. It Yukari again, and she continues to be rather vague about things. Still, she seems to hint that there may be something more to see. Whatever it is, it'll have to wait until Yin wakes up... And so, the credits begin to roll. Well... maybe some of you may know it by this point, but there is indeed a post-game story to still play. The story isn't quite done yet, and there's actually a couple of places left unexplored. Maybe you guys know where it is? I ran into those places several episodes ago, and they weren't really accessible, but they probably are now! It ain't over yet. Main game's over, but the post game is just getting started here. Still, I did say that I'll finish the game by Sunday, and doing the main game counts! The post-game itself probably won't take a week to finish in any case, so stick around for a little while longer, dear reader. Anyhoo, Yin wakes up at the Hakurei shrine, still in Gensokyo. She's puzzled since she thought she'd be back at the outside world. Outside the room (forgot to screenshot Yin waking up) Yin sees Marisa, and after being brought to the living room of the shine, it seems that the gang is all here. Reimu being deredere after being so tsun. Anyways, seems like the incident is more or less resolved. Puppets are apparently decreasing, which eventually means that Reimu can weaken the barrier so Yin can go home. Still, while there's still time, it seems like Marisa is looking forward to a rematch. Sanae seems to be the same, and also suggests to Yin to explore a little more. That I shall do... next time. For now, it's been a pretty big episode. Final boss and all, end credits and whatnot. Next episode we tread to the post game! So until then, see ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 26, 2016 20:37:03 GMT -5
Post-game! Here we go! There's still a little bit of story left to do on this game, so let's get on with it to fully finish the game! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 33 Previously, the puppet incident is more or less resolved, and peace has come back(?) to Gensokyo. There's still a few loose ends out there, and so Yin sets off for one more journey. Now, from watching a few youtube vids from way back, like before I started LPing this game, I know that some peeps in Gensokyo are looking forward to a rematch. For example, going back to Makai will allow Yin to challenge the people there, and they have upgraded puppets in their arsenal. Checking out the Hakurei Shrine, Reimu is also itching for a rematch. I don't exactly remember what her team is, but again, from watching gameplay vids, I know that she has a stronger team than Shinki. So yeah, I'll refuse Reimu's challenge for now and wait until much later before taking her on. I suspect Marisa and Sanae probably want rematches as well, and like Reimu that'll wait until Yin gets a new and improved team to send out to battle. Speaking of new and improved team, there's another thing I know. Aside from the junk puppets drop to be sold for cash, there's one item in the game that the puppets drop that actually have a purpose: the magical fragments. To use them, the game has to be finished first, and Yin has to speak to Patchouli, I think. So off we go the the SDM! There was no need to speak to Patchouli, as Yin has pocketed the reincarnation items in the library! Well, so the reincarnation system has been unlocked. Basically, you can reincarnate one puppet, and have two parent puppets plus two items to affect the reincarnating puppets. ...okay, that sounds confusing, so let's do a step by step example. First step, choosing the puppet that will reincarnate. This Mokou I used for a slight bit, but due to average stat potentials (in particular the spread attack which Mokou needs for attacks) I never really put her among the team I used. Next, choosing the parent puppets. This Rumia and Rikako seems to have promising stat potentials, so let's go with them! After that, an emblem can be chosen. I mentioned the emblems before, and how they give a boost to a particular stat. These usable emblems will allow us control on what emblem the reincarnating puppet will receive, unlike the case of wild puppets where stat potentials and what emblem they have are randomized. I suppose not using an emblem means that what emblem the reincarnated puppet will get will be random. For Mokou, either spread attack or speed will be good, but let's go with black for spread attack. Lastly, there's the support/magic stone. I'm not sure what it does, but as the omega magic stone Yin found in the library makes it so that the reincarnating puppet will have their stat potential stay the same, we will avoid it for now. And so, let's reincarnate that Mokou! Notice the changes in stat potential? I was expecting her to get an S in multiple ranks, especially spread attack... Looking at the game's wiki regarding reincarnation: apparently, this is what happens when no magic stone is used: three stat potentials between the donor puppets will be chosen at random and be given to the reincarnating puppet, then the other stat potentials will be randomized. Different magic stones will change that... but since all we have is the omega stone Yin can't do it yet. Two other things to note about reincarnation: One: as long as Yin has magical fragments in her inventory, you can keep on reincarnating the same puppet and the same donors over and over again. Nothing happens to the donors, so it can probably be possible to just keep rerolling until Mokou gets superior stats. Heck, Tenshi could be a good candidate for a donor, considering that she has A+ on all her stats. Two: The donor puppets are unaffected, but the reincarnated puppet will be back to level 1 and normal styled. Like, one one hand, I could reincarnate Tenshi with the red emblem to give her a boost in focus attack, and use the omega stone as well to keep her stat ranks, but I'll have to go through the trouble of leveling her up all over again. That does open up the possibility of having her try defense style instead... The randomization seems easy to exploit, as shown here. Using Tenshi and Yamame as donors, as both have good stat potentials, I more or less spam reincarnating Mokou until I get one with desirable stats. Tenshi has A+ on all stats, while Yamame is A+ on hp, S on focus and spread attack, E on focus defense, S on spread defense, and D on speed. So possibly, the three random stat potentials Mokou got was S on focus attack and defense from Yamame and the A+ on focus defense came from Tenshi. The rest of the stat potentials for Mokou were randomized; while spread defense is a very poor E-, reroll for other stats were pretty good, A on hp and A- on speed. I used the green mark for Mokou instead since I recalled that one style change for Mokou is speed. I'm not exactly sure if I got that explanation right, but that's reincarnation in a nutshell. Talking to Patchouli makes her give Yin a tutorial on, you guessed it, reincarnation. Maybe I should have talked to her first instead of checking the wiki entry instead... *mumble grumble*... Anyway, it would be interesting to see what the other support magic stones can do for reincarnation. There's details on it on the game's wiki page on reincarnation, but frankly I want to get surprised so I won't read up on how to find them. Hmm, actually, this new feature is giving me thoughts. So much potential... in theory, since I've caught all the puppets in the game, I can set up a whole new team. No more need to catch puppets, since all I have to do now is reroll stats via reincarnation until I'm satisfied. So, sorry, for now I'll think about setting up new additions to the team. This is a short episode, where we all get schooled on the game's new feature. I'll probably start LPing the next episode in a couple of hours, but I feel that the explanation for the reincarnation system needed its own episode. So... yeah. See ya all laters!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 29, 2016 18:12:29 GMT -5
Hello, again, and it's time for another episode! Before that, a small preview of what could be the next game I LP. Gensou Shoujou Taisen/Fantasy Maiden Wars, or Touhou x Super Robot Wars. It's a four-game series, and the next one I'll LP will probably be the first game of that series. Possibly. Nothing is set in stone. I might end up LPing a game on the Playstation instead. Anyway, let's go with episode 34! Let's Play Touhoumon, episode 34 - post game! So you're probably wondering why Yin is loitering around Makai... well, wonder no more, for I shall explain it! So after learning the wonders of reincarnating puppets, I went about and reincarnated a bunch of puppets to train. So I reincarnated several and set about training them. Very long process, no point in telling what went on with training and head right into the finished results: First up, my starter. Tenshi went all the way back to level 1 - and I forgot to use the omega stone during reincarnation so her all A+ stats changed for the worse - so I rerolled her over and over again, with two donor puppets with great stat potentials until I got a favorable one. Now, instead of power style, Tenshi is now defense style. From being purely earth type to earth and light type - movewise, power Tenshi had some steel type moves, but defense Tenshi doesn't but has light type moves to her arsenal. Her defense and hit points are much better as well, and putting the red emblem on her during reincarnation gives her focus attack on par with her power style self. Speed Elis is not reincarnated. Yin caught her in the Hakurei Caves and her stats potentials are quite nice, so no point in reincarnating her. Great speed, high power, and decent moves - lots of damaging moves, but nothing fancy or risky. Reincarnated the Mokou I caught so long ago to fix her low stat potentials. Good speed and power, but moveset isn't quite versatile. Has volcano... but that lowers her spread attack. Also has fire dragon dance - does decent damage, then the move will continue giving low damage to the opponent. There's several moves that do damage per turn, but fire dragon dance is unique in the sense that the initial attack does good damage; 100 compared to the 20 other moves with similar effects have. Power Reimu is pretty balanced in defense, and has great focus attack thanks to the emblem being placed on focus attack. Kinda slow, but it benefits one of her moves: second hand skill which doubles damage if Reimu attacks last. Furthermore, she has the economist ability. That ability gives her the chance to reuse holdable items every turn - and the chances of reusing are pretty damn good. At the moment she's holding the morganite, which boosts illusion type moves during battle for one time. With economist, she can use it multiple times. For an 80 cost puppet, Rumia has amazing spread attack, equal and sometimes stronger that many heavy hitters, though she pays for it with low defense. She even has Mugetsu's brutality ability which increases her damage further, though she does get less accuracy from it. I suppose one other flaw she has is a rather weak moveset, as none of the moves she learn doesn't have a damage rating of 100 or higher - not counting ignorant darkness if it hits 4 or 5 times. Lastly, speed Yumeko is my favorite. Compared to the others, her focus and spread attack is low, but she makes up for it with her ability: salvo. Mentioned it before, but salvo makes it so that moves that hit 2-5 times per use will always hit 5 times... and Yumeko just happens to have four different moves that do just that. Void (kinda meh), nature, fighting, and steel. Those moves do massive damage when they hit five times, especially when they're super effective. 3 out of those 4 moves use spread attack, and Yumeko has slightly weaker spread attack than focus, but it's still good. An alternate ability Yumeko can choose is strategist. Those multi hit moves will do more damage if they hit five times, but the guarantee of salvo is much better, I think. Furthermore, I've begun giving my puppets items to hold, and Yumeko has the magic ring which increases the chance of criticals happening. With salvo, it becomes normal to see two to three criticals in one move. Anyway, I have a few other reincarnated puppets that have been trained. I'll probably mention them if I'm gonna use them this episode. For now, onwards! Onwards, where? Honestly, I'm not sure. There's two areas I can probably access now, so I'll have Yin go there to see if there's any changes. The sisters are lounging about Makai, but they're not seeking any rematches. That said, a lot of Touhou characters are seeking rematches, and they're all freaking strong. It happened offscreen, and I didn't save afterwards, but Yin lost a battle. For realsies. All the rematches feature teams of five with puppets at level 80+, of course she'd lose! Saved or not, a loss is a loss. *sigh* Sara is an exception though. Momiji and Ichirin are added to her team, and the entire team is level 80+, but somehow I managed to win. This is surprising due to the fact that 4 of the 6 puppets I had were newly reincarnated/completely useless in the fight, but Koishi and Kasen managed to win it. Perhaps this is a testament to Koishi's OP support skills, and as much as she's useful, is one reason I won't be using Koishi in the postgame. Anyways, let's head on out to the Youkai Mountain. One of the two areas that can't be accessed on the main game should be accessible now, and the other area is on the Misty Lake. The one on the lake, if I recall, is an ice maze. Mazes alone are trouble, but add ice? No way, I'm going to the mountains first. The Giant Toad's Pond. Earlier on, going here brought Yin to a straight path where heading to the exit west will take her back to the entrance, but now the area has opened up for exploration. Now that it's open, time to see what's lying in wait on this place. Probably a fight with another trainer, or some items. It certainly can't be new puppets, as the puppet book has been completed. No legendaries in this game. On the romhacks, if I recall, the legendaries on the Kanto region were Mima, Sariel, and Yuugenmagan, I think. Konngara as well. Just wandering around the place, searching for items and trainers to find. So far, I'm finding none of the latter, though wild puppets are fairly strong. The fish scale charm increases focus attack when in a pinch, and it could be handy for Reimu and her economist ability. Still no trainers, but Yin encounters a lost merchant. He's selling a bunch of rare charms, most of them the once-per-battle use variety. I buy a haste charms, where moves that take two turns can be used in one turn. Reimu can learn Gensokyo typhoon, which takes two turns, but with economist on she can use the move multiple times in one fight without needing two turns to use them. Nifty. A bunch of items here and there. No more normal style puppets in the area anymore, and right now I'll fight all of them. Considering that the rematches have puppets over level 80, I reckon I need all the training I can get. After a bit of random wandering from one exit to another, Yin finds the Giant Toad's Pond. There be toads here. Can't help but wonder if the next boss battle will be against a giant toad and his puppets... Random note; I hate frogs in real life. They be freaky. Still, one of my favorite Pokemon is Croagunk/Toxicroak. It's a small area, and the wild puppets seem to be limited to power Cirnos and speed Suwakos. I train my puppets a bit. Style changed wild puppets can still be dangerous if I'm not careful. There seems to be absolutely nothing in the pond. It's a small area and I've checked everywhere and made Yin talk to all the toads, in case one of them is a trainer. Nothing, and I'm left wondering if I have to do anything else. I leave the place and check the misty area to see if there's anything still there. A bit of wandering around takes me to this place. It doesn't say where Yin is upon entering, but according to the Gap Map this area seems to be Kasen's home. Yin enters the house and meets the one-armed, possibly an oni, Kasen Ibaraki. She seems to be in a pinch as some puppets went and stole some items of hers, and she asks Yin for help. Quite odd to ask a total stranger who barged in all quite-like, but hey, Yin's free and the rules of silent protagonists means they have to take all the side-quests there is, so I'm game. There are four items to find, and there's no real clue on where to find them. Alas, looks like Yin has to search all over Gensokyo for them... There's nothing else to see in Kasen's house. Now I'm wondering if one of the items she's looking for is in the pond. Probably worth a try, yes? Anyways, the tall grass outside her house holds a number of strong puppets; Komachi, Kasen, Miko, and Reimu, all of them power style. High cost as well, which means that they're a great source of XP, so this is probably a good spot for training more reincarnated puppets. So I went back to the pond and examined everything, and I mean everything; the shrine, the flowers in the water, and the stone frogs until I found the peach hairpin on one of the frogs. Checking the key items confirms that it's one of Kasen's lost items, so that's one item out of four in the bag. As for the rest, I have no clue, so I reckon that I'll look into every area in the map until I find them. Unless I do find something, I won't be mentioning them here, at least if there's nothing interesting to note. I start off in the very first area of the game, the Hakurei shrine. From there I reckoned if I should go to the puppet box and switch up the teams a little when I spy something new in the top-left corner of the room. A small ornate box. Knowing a thing or two about Touhou makes me know that this is the home of a certain little inchling. Yin will take any item on the ground as if it was hers, so why should a box be any different. Shinmyomaru is currently living in the box, and of course she's a little peeved at Yin for shaking it around. Of course, this leads to a puppet battle. First up, is power Suika. In general, has great stats, but is weighed down by the drunkard ability. This makes her an easy target for Reimu, who has nature barrier; it's no field protect/barrier, but it does negate damage and has high priority, so it basically goes like Reimu uses nature barrier, then attack on the turn where Suika can't. With that tactic, Reimu takes down Suika for an easy win. So far so good... so of course something goes wrong. Power Benben is sent out, who easily crushes Reimu with a sound type attack. For the record Reimu is illusion and fighting type, both of which are weak against sound. I send out Elis who KOs Benben in one hit with twilight infection. Speed Yatsuhashi is sent out next... and Elis doesn't fare as well against a higher leveled speedster. Sent out Mokou, who at least survives one hit and is also able to deal some damage. On the next turn Mokou is KOed, but manages to deal some damage with her hate reincarnate ability which causes the foe to get damaged when they KO Mokou with a high-power move. I send out Tenshi, who survives thanks to indomitable, and KOs Yatsuhashi in return. Next is speed Seija. Friggin' speedsters. A fully healed Tenshi manages to survive, and in return Tenshi's shooting press KOs Seija in one hit. One more to go. Level 84 Sukuna... just one level less than Shinki's final puppet. Luck is one my side, though. I heal Tenshi to full, and Sukuna uses transcend form... and misses! That move is powerful, but one miss and it's half the max hit points in recoil damage. That move looks like the one uses it charges straight for the foe, so I guess it missing means Sukuna hit a wall or something. Anyway, Tenshi is at full health and Sukuna is at half health. I send out Rumia who uses the sound type sorrowful tune to remove what's left of Sukuna's hit points, and the battle is won. All in all, a pretty good fight. Puppets on my side were KOed, but two survived. A few items used, but no revives. Pretty good results, all things considered. Anyway, Sukuna showing up at the shrine at this moment seems to be relevant to Kasen's quest, as she mentions an item in the well behind the shrine. Random Touhou stuff: in one of the endings of Touhou 14, Sukuna does end up living in the shrine, and the box she lives in was previously a bug cage. Sukuna wants another fight, but Reimu asks her and Yin to knock it off. Yin exits the shrine, and if she returns back Sukuna's house is no longer there. Why would she carry her house away? I mean, it's portable, but it's not like Sukuna has super strength to carry her house all over the place. The dog flute is found, so that's two out of four items down for Kasen's place. Quite lucky of me to start off in the shrine, and after this I guess I'll continue the search by following the road to the human village, and see where that takes me. I do try to fight Reimu... but as you can see that didn't turn out so well. A complete loss, where her Aya squashed four from my team with ease before I got lucky with Mokou. Yumeko is the sole survivor to fight Yukari, who easily gets squashed . On the bright side, I do know how to deal with Aya from this loss. And so I leave the shrine to continue with Kasen's quest, resolving to level up my team more so they can defeat Reimu. ...then again, was it really that hard? Aya did squash my team, but I was panicking a little and just threw my team to the slaughter. Of course, this is enough for me to go and challenge Reimu again. This turns out far better than expected. Thanks to knowing beforehand, Aya will only use twister or rush attack if it's super effective against foes. If not, she will use transcend form instead, which again takes out half her hit points if it misses. Before the rematch I made Mokou learn two support skills; one of which is nature barrier, which negates damage and has high priority. The latter means that even though Aya is faster Mokou will activate nature barrier first, the former means that damage negation counts as a miss. Nature barrier has a higher failure chance on consecutive uses... but that doesn't matter in the end as Aya misses on her second try of transcend form, KOing herself without Mokou directly attacking. Instead of defense Yukari showing up, power Suika is out next. Power Suika? Reimu had defense Suika before. Wonder if she also use the reincarnation system. Anyways, this one is just as easy; same tactic as Sukuna. Nature barrier first, then attack when Suika can't due to her drunkard ability. Fire isn't super effective on Suika, but it doesn't matter much when Suika can't do a thing to defend herself. It's really pretty dang easy to figure out what to do when a puppet is rendered unable to do anything after every other turn. Power Kasen out next. Risking it a little, I use Mokou to use fire dragon's dance first. Alternatively, her volcano move deals more damage, but it lowers her spread attack in exchange. When Kasen attacks, she almost KOs Mokou, and that's what's important. Fire dragon's dance deals extra damage, and since Mokou won't survive the next blow I make her use volcano, bringing Kasen to low hit points. I send out Elis to finish the job. Next up is defense Yukari. She certainly lives up to defense style, as it takes four puppets to take her down. During the first match, she was sent out after Aya was KOed, but that plan failed when Suika was sent out instead. The plan was to make Mokou use field barrier to lower Yukari's damage, by the way. Last out is Power Reimu. My Reimu is lower in level, and I know that power Reimu has mirage edge which Reimu is weak against. I tried using nature barrier anyway in hope that she uses transcend form instead, So instead of trying to fight, I use the turn to revive Rumia, because Reimu is mega weak against sound type moves. My Reimu is KOed, and I send out the newly revived Rumia. Rumia hits with sorrowful tune which almost KOs Reimu. I expected Reimu then to finish off Rumia, but she does end up using transcend form instead... and it misses! That's enough to KO her and give Yin the victory! Amazingly, the battle turned out far better than expected. Despite Yin's second loss, it gave Yin enough info on how to deal with the first big threat of Reimu's team, and a little bit of luck made the battle lean heavily on Yin's favor. Only one item was used in battle as well, a surprise considering how most battles are a big drain when it comes to item use. Like Sukuna, the item drops for this fight is rather underwhelming in terms of cash value. Victory is ours. Even though I didn't save, a loss was still a loss, so the record stands at 4-1. Also, Reimu accuses Yin of stealing her senbei... which may probably be true. If you look way back on the first or second episode of this LP, Yin does find a fuji rice cookie in the cabinet of the room. I can't help but wonder if she would have given us a different item if Yin didn't take the item during the beginning... Checking back into the Hakurei Mountains, Yin encounters a set of familiar faces. It's the three fairies of light! And they return with a fight and the PLF boss theme... still my favorite boss theme. Only three puppets, but they're much higher in level than Reimu's strongest. Uh oh. Speed Luna's ability brings forth the aurora weather effect, which means their light type attacks will pack a punch. Best thing to do is to try to make that weather effect run out of time as soon as possible, so Mokou does nature barrier for the first move. A second time fails, and Mokou is KO. Sent out Tenshi next, and she almost gets KOed as well if not for indomitable. By mistake, I end up using earth shattering; it has super low accuracy - but it does do an instant KO if it hits, and it does hit, KOing Luna. Power Star next, and I use this turn to revive Mokou. Rumia and Elis will be perfect with their dark type moves, but until the aurora weather is removed they won't do enough damage. Tenshi gets KOed on this turn. Mokou with nature barrier first, then field barrier. Even with field barrier Mokou can't survive at half-health against a super effective water attack. Aurora is still in effect but I send out Elis anyway. I'm hoping that field barrier should at least be enough to make her survive Star's attack, or that Elis can KO her even though aurora is weakening dark type moves. Neither happens. Elis deals good damage, but it's pretty much just half Star's hit points, then Star KOs Elis with ease. Yumeko is sent out, and promptly KOs Star, and finally the aurora weather is gone. Hopefully, when it all goes down all I have to do is send Rumia to finish the job. Finally out comes power Sunny, and this one almost gives Yin another loss. Sunny is too fast, and she easily KOs Yumeko, and Rumia who's not a slouch in speed. I had revived Tenshi when I discovered a hole in the AI. In general, if the puppet I'm using is weak to an attack the puppet the computer is controlling, the computer will use that move no matter what. For Sunny against Tenshi, that's bright flowers, which takes two turns. It's a KO move... but since Tenshi is at full health she survives via indomitable. With a bit of healing, when I heal Tenshi during the charging time then attack during the attack time of bright flowers, it becomes an easy victory. Well, it's easy enough. Only Tenshi is the survivor, but all in all figuring out the weakness of this trio is relatively easy. Once again, the item drops for this battle is low in cash value. With the three fairies defeated, Yin checks the rest of the mountainside out, but nothing else that's new seem to be around. Time to go the human village, then... if not for the fact that this episode took quite a bit of time. Whatever's next will, like always, be on the next episode. Maybe next time there will be a change in teams. Until then, see ya all laters!
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