Let's not waste any time with an intro,
there’s a lot of content in this game and a long storyline, so we’d better
focus on that. We complete another Level-Up Battle, with a cleaning test and
three fossil battles, with the boss being Nick Nack. We’re now a Level 5 Fossil
Fighter.
"Tripmon"? Who's that? ...Oh right, the nickname of the guy doing the Let's Play I'm picking these images from. |
You can now take a seminar that will let you dig out
dark fossils, black fossils with a shell so strong they must absolutely be broken
by the hammer before you can drill around the fossil, unlike regular fossils for which
the drill can be used from the start. Dark fossils are rarer but contain red
bones, which add 25 points to your final cleaning score – thus making a Vivosaur
much stronger. Oh, also, you cannot inspect a dark fossil with the X-ray, so
you can’t see what you’re gonna get before you hammer into it. These are fun, but for a later side-quest,
you’ll find dinosaur poop in there. Good for that one quest, annoying every
other time, because I wanted a fucking red fossil, and all I get is literal
crap.
Remember how I mentioned that the black rock had to be
broken by a hammer first? Well, if you’ve got a tiny speck of black rock left
around shattered stone, you still cannot drill that tiny piece away. Gotta
hammer at it and, if your fossil was very clean aside from that one bit, expect
to lose a lot of completion percentage when the hammer inevitably breaks the
fossil around the black speck. That’s annoying as Hell.
That’s not even getting into fossil hardness, and how
some fossils will take dozens of hammer hits to crack while some will shatter
with a single smash of the weaker hammer. hat also applies to black fossils rocks, by the way. Worst part being, you can never tell
until you’ve used the hammer once!
Even though the early-game jewels aren't worth fighting over. |
Upon leaving the hotel on the next day, we are told by
an officer to come to the police station, where we learn from Chief Batholomew
Bullwort that Rosie has been kidnapped, and the letter they received asks
Nicolas to “bring the idols to the Park Area dock”. Might as well save that
girl once again…
We reach the dock and fight the BB Bandit, then get
onto the ship and make our way to the BB Base. This feels like a final dungeon,
doesn’t it? The game even tells you to be ready for battle before going inside.
No refusing battles in here, either. You know… I can still dig around the base
with my pick and gather fossils… why don’t I just menace every BB guy with my
pick? Nah, it wouldn’t be “family-friendly”. Wished I could just go steal a beam katana from No More Heroes and go to town on all these jerks. But nope, not allowed.
Of course no one saw it coming. Outside of your iniials in your evil team's name, there was no foreshadowing at all. |
Boss battle time! Bullwort is pretty tough, but a decent team will beat
his titanic vivosaurs. Once he’s defeated, cops from Vivosaur Town show up
to arrest him and his entire group. Sheesh, took them long enough! When this is
done, we go back to Mr. Richmond and explain about the idols, and he says that
the BB Bandits were hired to get those tacky idols – for a buttload of money,
too! So he’ll have Dr. Diggins checking these idols in order to see why they’re
so valuable, or why some people would want them so much.
Rosie's thoughts: "Heartfelt conversation" Hero's thoughts: "Vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs I don't hate her vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs" |
On the next day, as we leave the hotel, we meet fans
of the current Master Fighter, a guy called Saurhead. They keep bragging that
nobody can beat him. You know what that means: We gotta beat him. There’s
nothing more annoying than extreme fans. One second they praise everything
their favorite celebrity does, the next they riot at McDonald’s over a cheap
promotion. The fight will have to wait though, as Dr. Diggins tasks us with
finding a missing, fourth idol, as he discovered by studying the other three.
Off to Mount Lavaflow!
The hero right now: "Vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs is that a dinosaur girl vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs" |
…which they find taken over by BB Bandits. Hey, they're still losers, right? We’ll
just make our way through them and fight Bullwort again. Only problem is, for
some damn reason, he’s got his hands on a Legendary Vivosaur, Frigisaurus, and
he proceeds to steamroll your team with it. Most of your attacks miss, and no
stat changes are applied to it. Oh, and if you damage it, it regains all HP on the next turn. You literally cannot win. So the Hero loses,
and he and Rosie get thrown in jail. Where did I leave my harmonica and my cup
that makes a sweet sound when knocked over metal bars again? I need them right
now.
…wait. We could pass through those bars if we wanted.
I could have just gone to Mt Lavaflow, then. |
We go with Rex and find a path blocked by multiple
doors, and we carve emblems to fit into them in order to pass through. Then we
get to the valve, turn it off, then find the location of the Ignosaurus fossil,
unearth it… and that’s when Bullwort shows up with some bullshit new invention
that makes fossils unbreakable, and uses it on the Igno fossil. Holy Hell, where does he get those stupid toys?
Unfortunately, that’s true; the fossil is unbreakable
in the cleaning machine… and because this game cannot go five minutes without
pulling a story twist out of its ass, Duna then shows up and, with the help
of an ultra-advanced ray, undoes the effects of the ray on the fossil, allowing
us to finally clean it. Everything is so, so convoluted. The fossil is fairly
solid on its own, but can be damaged like any other fossil – and to revive
Ignosaurus, you need to perfect it, at 100%, no damage to the skull whatsoever.
And so we get Igno, which is immediately at the maximum Level (12), and we can
then go fight Bullwort with it. Put Igno in your team and it will steamroll every
BB Bandit on the way, although it is going to meet its match against
Frigisaurus. I mean, both vivosaurs are unkillable until they face each other
in battle, in which case they cancel each other’s invincibility. Bullwort’s
team is impressive, but with some strategy it can be defeated quickly.
"It's alien technology. It doesn't have to make sense." |
They're a tad less impressive once depowered, but still kick an awful lot of ass. |
With Bullwort’s Frigisaurus beaten, Ignosaurus also
vanishes. Cops show up to send their old boss to jail, while Nicolas is
celebrated by the people of Vivosaur Town.
On the next day, we have Level-Up Battles again. We
can now go buy stuff, sell stones. We can even pass by the
prison and hear that Bullwort is in there, having a carrot sandwich. Oh,
please, officers. Let me in, I wish to give him a sandwich of my own. Of the
knuckle variety. Then again, my aim is pretty terrible, that sandwich will
probably go in his eye and on his nose when I try to deliver it in person.
It’s our last Level-Up Battle before becoming
officially a Master! Cleaning test, followed by a battle test, then two
battles, followed by the boss: None other than Saurhead. He’s difficult since you cannot let any of your vivosaurs fall during the fight,
but he's just a boss, so Nicolas wins and an impressed Saurhead upgrades our license to Master Fighter.
Following this, we get the usual congratulations from
Rosie, but then we find a letter addressed to the hero, asking him to come to
the park. Duna’s there, in her human disguise, reflecting on humanity, and how
her anthropomorphic dinosaur kind, the Dinaurians, always looked at humans with
contempt, we the monkeys always waging war and whatnot… She says that the
protagonist is different, and wonders if we would have saved her, had she been
a proper enemy at the time.
That's okay! It doesn't matter which kind of alien you are, as long as you're friendly to mankind. Are you? |
Speaking of which, on the next morning, Rosie comes
towards the hero to talk about these weird idols we kept on finding. Turns out,
there are weird electronic parts in there that don’t seem to come from human
technology. What, you thought the game was over? Nope! Apparently, we still
haven’t had enough plot even after more than 6,000 words! I can talk about it
some more. Oh, and just in case things weren’t sci-fi enough to your tastes
with dinosaur revival and aliens, things are gonna get weirder.
...Apparently, not friendly to mankind. We're in trouble. |
Well…. Fuck.
Might as well end this here with a nice cliffhanger,
and continue in Part 4.
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