Okay… It's time to earn our paycheck…
It's dark in here…
Sadly we don't see Shoko and Gintamas sprites in the top down view. Unfortunate, because their little Chibi sprites are amazing.
Let's venture forth… What surprises does the Kowloon Walled City have in store for us?
And we trigger our first battle! We're up against a body builder and a golden rat.
It seems Gintamo has about 200 health points, which is quite high. Maybe he'll make an effective human shield.
Shoko only has 160hp, but she appears to have about 10 magic points.
She didn't mention this in the job interview, unless they're relevant to Scuba Diving... Maybe there is more to her than we thought?
Shoko, attack!
Shoko rears back her arm and slaps it onto the bodybuilders face at great speed!
… It does a total of 4 damage points….
It barely even scratched the guy...
Let's try Gintama's attack! Incidentally the beeper here reads ‘Silver Ball Dad’, which, at first thought was his nickname, but now I realize it's the name of his attack. Regardless, I’m calling him this from now on.
So, Silver Ball Dad, with all the might he can muster while delicately balancing a tray of pachinko balls on his head, throws his right fist into the body builder's exposed chest.
… For a grand total of two damage points. Oh dear.
Taro's turn. With the power of the wooden Moonlight, he dispatches the bodybuilder in one fell swoop with 135 damage. And that's actually quite low. He often lands a double hit which would deal twice the damage.
The rat is up next. Shoko and Silver Ball Dad do the damage equivalent of gently blowing on it, before Taro mashes it into a fine paste with his wooden sword.
...We better not have to split these earnings equally…
We continue through the first floor, battling more enemies… Silver Ball Dad and Shoko aren‘t really contributing that much, but at least they seem to be leveling up quickly given they are so low level.
As in the Minato Building, we come across a few chests containing items on our journey, including this wooden shield…
This reminded me that I can actually equip party members with items!
However it seemed only Taro can use the shield.. I believe the different classes of weapons suit different characters... I'm now kicking myself for selling all our spare armour and weapons to the molesting witch.
In my defence, it seemed perfectly logical at the time. I never imagined I would need to hold onto this stuff to outfit a party of slappers and gamblers.
Eventually we come across a combat knife.
Silver Ball Dad can’t wield it on account of being useless, But Shoko can, and puts it to great use!
Proper knife technique involves putting one high heel in the air as you swing apparently.
The combat knife is quite powerful! I snapped this mid animation but it did around 135 damage. That's a big step up from the single digit damage Shoko was doing previously!
Now we just need a weapon for Silver Ball Dad so he can do more than 3 damage per turn…
All this time I was focused on regular attacks, I hadn't noticed the additional button on Shoko's screen that Taro and Silver Ball Dad do not have. It seems this is her ‘magic attack’
The move is called ‘Water Technique’
I'm keen to use it on some evil thief or criminal here in the depths of Kowloon… Who's going to be our first victim?
…Oh goddamnit… not again.
Oh well. ‘Water Technique’ sounds pretty gentle, right? I mean, we don't want to be too harsh on these young girls. It can't be easy living in the Walled City, and perhaps the performance art of ballet is their only escape from living in this cesspit.
With this attack Shoko raises her hand in the air and…
Oh my word… She vaporized them… This move is crazy powerful! That did about 200 damage per enemy!
Seems like it uses a few magic points though, so I guess we'll use it sparingly.
And check it out, not long afterwards, Steel Ball Dad leveled up and now has magic move too. Perhaps that’s going to be where he starts showing his value…
Let's use it!
Oh…. with this move... he fell over…And is out of the round for a couple of turns?
…Yep. That seems to be the special ability…
I guess the idea is no one can hit him when he does this?
This isn't very useful, because just about the only useful thing about him at the moment is he is occasionally attacked by enemies that would otherwise hit Taro or Shoko…
In some of the rooms, we find a staircase, which is new…
You can go up them to visit the next floor, but as I found out the hard way, it will wipe your exploration process on the current floor, so it’s better to wait until you’ve completed it first.
We continue through and battle all types of enemies, many we've encountered before, but there seems to be an abundance of wildlife here in the KWC.
Did these all escape from the Kowloon Walled City Zoo or something?
And there's not just hostile Fauna, but Flora as well..
And of course, plenty of examples where we meet enemies we've seen before, but this time they have a slight sprite change and new name / stats.
Scarface eh? Yeah, well say hello to my little friend. He’s called MOONLIGHT.
There is… a lot… of grinding in this game. You will trigger a random battle every ten or so steps in the over-world, so I'm immensely grateful for emulators with fast forward frame skipping and save state capabilities.
This would be an absolute chore on original hardware. I'm reminded why I never had the patience for JRPGs when I was a kid.
Through seemingly hundreds of battles we make our way from the first level to the third, visiting every room on the way, turning the map yellow and marking the floor as ’complete’.
With each battle, our party levels up a little more, and we gradually start unlocking new abilities…
Shoku seems to have learned a new power - ‘Recovery Technique!’
She can use it to heal the team. This is super handy and means we don’t need to rely on energy drinks as much.
It appears being around magic users has rubbed off on Taro too. He now apparently has magical powers!
He can now summon lightning through his fingertips! Boy, I hope we get to use this on Fujiwara.
Better test it on this fake policeman first…
Oh boy! That crisped him up good! … Err. We are sure that was a fake policeman, right?
And after all these battles, Silver Ball Dad is…
…still completely useless…
We clear the first three floors, but hit a snag when trying to visit level 4…
It seems the elevator doesn't go there. In fact, this is the case for all of the floors above 3….
Instead, we have to backtrack and take the stairs instead. Once on the floor, we can battle our way to the elevator and unlock from the other side to return later if we want to.
As we get higher in the building, true to the managers word, the enemies start to pose more of a problem for us...
Oh dear…. That is… a lot of guns.
Oh no! They took out Shoko!
And… yes, it looks like they took out Silver Ball Dad too, but, surprise, surprise, he's just pretending to be dead…
As usual, it's up to Taro to finish the job.
Since Shoko was taken out, we'd better make our way back to the elevator to make sure she’s safe...
On the way however we encounter a new enemy…
Yes, not only is Kowloon full of murderous residents and triad gangs, it's it’s full of dead ones too.
Though we managed to finish him off, The Ghost has knocked out Silver Ball Dad…
…Yes, he's actually out this time and not faking it. You can tell because his leg is not in the air and his precious pachinko balls are sprawled out over the floor.
…Can’t we just leave him here?
It seems the Ghost was guarding a ‘thick-legged sword’. Maybe Shoko can use it when she recovers.
I'd give it to Silver Ball Dad so he could contribute more than 2 damage per turn, but for some reason he can't equip any weapons or armor we've come across thus far… Maybe I should have held onto that back pain corset, it's probably the only thing he'd be willing to use…
Without the help of his colleagues, Taro manages to complete the level by himself and unblock the elevator to escape… All this whilst presumably carrying the unconscious Shoko over one shoulder and pulling the (debatedly) unconscious Silver Ball Dad along by his leg…
:
Oh no! This is terrible!
:
Hey, sometime call a doctor!
Hrm. You didn’t seem this concerned when it was Taro who was unconscious last time…
:
What's going on, Taro-chan?
What's going on? Well, we cleared four stories of one of the most dense, crime ridden places in the world like you asked us too.
You're welcome, by the way.
:
It's no good pushing him so hard. Please be considerate of the other members' bodies.
Hey! We let Silver Ball Man lie down and rest through just about every battle we had in there!
:
I'll cut my part-time pay today. I have to pay for my doctor's bills. It's 1,069,800 yen.
Aww man. 1 million yen is great, but we would have gotten twice that had he not docked our pay!
…. I feel like there's laws against this. Doesn’t he have insurance?
…Wait, is this one of those situations where the Yakuza have taken out life insurance policies on us? That would explain a lot about the motivations of these security guard managers.
:
I'll be more careful from now on.
Yeah… next time we won't invite Silver Ball Dad…