Fossil Fighters (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

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.

I want to say some very particular
4-letter words right now.

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.

Oh, speaking of fossil digging, you know what’s bullcrap? When you dig out a jewel rock, there is ALWAYS a Fossil Fighter showing up to battle you over it. That’s the equivalent of having to fight a Trainer every time you’d get your hands on a pearl or any other item that sells for a lot of cash in Pokémon. What’s worse about that? Sure you get a nice diamond or emerald or pearl to sell, but the battle itself gives only ONE point of experience, no matter how hard it was – and those get harder as the game progresses. It’s annoying to go through a fight like this and get barely any experience.

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…

Can you guys stop the whole "B-B-B-B-B-Bee!" thing6
It's not as clever as you think it is.

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.

So we fight mooks, then Rex, Snivels and Vivian, and then reach the BB Boss… And it’s Bullwort. Oh! I would say I’m surprised, but, seriously man, you named your villainous team after your own goddamn initials. It was kinda easy to figure out. Bartholomew Bullwort, you are an imbecile. Although, how the Hell does this make any sense? Did the folks on this island, inhabited by rich people who are there for entertainment, never verify this guy’s background? Do you have any idea how long it takes for a person to become a police chief? You have to be a policeman first! Did he create the BB Bandits while he was in office? Why would he then say he always was a BB Bandit first and infiltrated the cops later? This makes no sense. No fucking sense whatsoever.

I just hope the commentators are
going to stay on my side on this one.

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"

Time for Level-Up Battles! Cleaning test, battle test. Guess who’s the boss this time? Why, Dr. Diggins, of course! We beat him, and we’re now Level 6! Upon victory, we meet Rosie and she asks the player to meet her in the park. We actually get a heartfelt scene where she apologizes for being a bother, always getting herself in trouble, and how you’ve had to save her so many times. She asks if you hate her… you can answer no, but you can also answer yes. Seriously though, don’t be a jerk. You can be, if you want, but that’s just mean. (I mean, I talk like a jerk in these reviews, but it's for comedy. Don't be a jerk for real.) If you say you don’t hate her, she gives the character a peck on the cheek. Aw, sweet.

Well, there's a first time for everything.

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!

Where does she get all of these cool toys?

The hero right now: "Vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs is that a
dinosaur girl vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs vivosaurs"

Entering this dig site, at first the path is blocked by a giant rock, but Duna shows up and makes it vanish with a ray gun. Huh, that girl’s full of surprises. Later, we encounter another large rock, which Duna also blasts. The idol is buried underneath that rock, and when the hero unearths it, Duna asks to take it. Oh, and then it’s revealed that she was covered by a hologram overheating in this volcano, and that her real form is that of a teenage humanoid dinosaur girl. Apparently an alien. Whaaaa? We went from dinosaur revival to a battle against an evil team… to aliens? She fights us for the idol, and we win. Then, the place is struck by an earthquake and a stone falls on her. Welp! It was nice knowing ya. …Oh wait. The stone blocks the path. I can't leave, it's in the way. Fine, I’ll save her… by breaking the rock like you’d break a fossil to revive it. Duna is thankful and leaves, then Rosie shows up and she goes back with the hero to Vivosaur Town…

Yes, let's say I was being nice. I totally
didn't break that rock just because it was
in my way.

…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 dunno, but I know we could get out easily.
We just do't, because of reasons.

I could have just gone to Mt Lavaflow, then.

That’s when Rex of the BB Trio shows up and frees us, then brings us to the Fossil Center, where Diggins and Richmond are found, perfectly fine. Turns out, Bullwort let his legendary vivosaur’s power get to his head, and he’s been treating his team like dirt, so the BB Trio defected. Well that comes out of nowhere… The Digadig chef knows stuff about Frigisaurus, so we ask him and he says that there's only one vivosaur that could stop Frigisaurus – except it’s in Mount Lavaflow. Back to Diggins, and we learn that there’s a valve inside Mount Lavaflow to redirect the lava… somehow… away from the area in order to dig everywhere. Rex of the BB Trio will help us, and we even receive a translator so that we can understand the dog.  Wait, Diggins; you had that translator with you, and you focus on games for rich people with revived fossils instead of making bajillions selling a device that lets people understand their pets? (On the plus side, it reveals that Rex actually has a high level of vocabulary, which is a nifty unexpected joke.)

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?

Sonnuva...

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.

"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.

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.

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?

The real answer is that the stone that fell on her was in the way of my exit, so I HAD to break it, regardless if someone was underneath it – but yes, I guess I can say there was some heroic intent there. If that convinces her that humanity can be good, let’s go with that. She thanks the hero, and leaves after giving him a peck on the cheek. Aw, isn’t that cute, his first love triangle.

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.

Going to the secret lab in the Richmond Building, we see some kind of large rat leaving the place, and a guard cowering in fear, even letting out odd squeaks and talking about a “beam”. Weird. Guess who’s in that secret lab at the moment? Duna and another guy from her reptilian species. The guy presents himself as Raptin and thanks the kids for bringing all the idols together, then happily states that his kind, the Dinaurians, will gladly wipe out humanity. He then uses a ray to turn Rosie into some kind of large rat, and then aims for Nicolas the hero, except Duna gets in the way. Raptin still blasts the hero, but the weapon’s charge has run out, so we’re unscathed. After being attacked by the Rosie rat, Raptin grabs the idols and uses a teleporter to leave, and Duna follows after him, apologizing to Nicolas and Rosie in the process.

Well…. Fuck.

Might as well end this here with a nice cliffhanger, and continue in Part 4.