Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 14: Yamata no Orochi Caves

<- Previous: Yamatai Village

Working out the blogpost breaks for the Yamatai Village quests is a bit awkward for reasons that will become apparent.  I did think about giving the village and shrines separate posts, but there isn’t enough happening in Yamatai Village on its own and the village + shrines is too big for a single post.  And then there’s that back-and-forth into the Yamata no Orochi Caves (which I think is the right name for this location).

Anyway, we’ve satisfied the Cat and Fox shrine quests.  Now it’s time for the Raccoon Shrine quest, which involves going into the Yamata no Orochi caves to find the Raccoon God.

And not fight Yamata no Orochi.  Alice is absolutely insistent on this.  She tells us Yamata no Orochi is a very powerful demon.  I think the game is trying to subtly hint that Yamata no Orochi is a challenge boss along similar lines to Sphinx in part 1 (and Leviathan earlier).

Paradox makes use of the MGQ Chapter 3 Yamatai monster girls to populate the caves.  This means appearances for the Miko Lamia and Kejourou.  There is one new monster girl – a Miko Arachne.

Dancing dancing spiders

She has a very annoying curse dance.  If you’re relying on magic attacks for damage, make sure to have Nullify Silence equipped, or you might end up like this:

She's a rare spider girl. She doesn't eat Luka afterwards.

To find the raccoon tanuki girl*, take the right fork on entering and walk into the big cavern behind the waterfall.

*Pedantic aside warning.  I wrote it as machine translated, but raccoon is not strictly accurate.  Japan doesn’t have racoons, it has raccoon dogs (tanuki), which while sharing a superficial resemblance to America’s lovable (unless you’re a pet owner) trash pandas, are a completely different animal.  They look like someone spliced a raccoon and badger together, and threw in a bit of fox for good measure.

Tanuki girl is cowering over on the left.

Quest objective for shrine #3

She asks not to be eaten.

Alice never passes up an opportunity to bully (sort of) fox girls

After some teasing from Alice about tanuki pots, we’re returned to the Tanuki Shrine.  That’s shrine #3 solved.

Oddly, you don’t seem to be able to recruit tanuki girl.  I tried talking to her afterwards without much luck, so I don’t know if she can be recruited.  Maybe she’s exclusive to players on the Ilias route?  Maybe you’re supposed to recruit her later?

I don’t know to be honest.  If she is recruitable and you know how, post in the comments below (but please avoid spoilers if it involves waiting for a later event to unlock her).

Last shrine is the snake shrine, and I’m guessing this is where we’re going to have to do some fighty stuff.  The snake shrine is in revolt, and it’s as suspected.  The good white shirohebi sister confirms on the bridge—her more rebellious twin has been corrupted by Black Alice and is raising an army.

Was raising an army.

While speaking to Good Shirohebi there’s a loud crash from the main shrine building behind her.  On entering it we find a lot of bashed up monster girls.  Nobody is dead, but they aren’t in any state to fight.  On the second floor we find the reason for all this, and it’s not much of a surprise.  Neris (Alice 17th) has been beating up all the monster girl queens Black Alice recruited and it’s Evil Shirohebi’s turn.

Neris getting involved again
Or would be Evil Shirohebi’s turn.  For some reason we picked the wrong time to show up as Neris scarpers leaving us to fight Evil Shirohebi instead.

Boss fight!

Now don’t get tempted there Luka-clone.

They're fighting... I think
Shirohebi is a lamia, so blast her with ice magic effects and all will be fine.  This is a repeat boss fight from the original series, which might also explain why Neris ran off.  “Classic” Luka fought Evil Shirohebi at some point in his adventures so it might as well be here, or something like that.  I still don’t know what’s going on.

That’s enough to settle the issues of the 4th and final shrine.  If you go back to the village headman he’ll reward you with the Book of Eastern Secrets.  This unlocks the Samurai, Taoist and Ninja jobs.

It also triggers the beginning of a side quest.  Outside the main hut you’ll find a group of four young men.

You're going to have to find these four idiots at some point
They have a plan to see the world and... get fucked, basically.  The side quest is to find them after they’ve dispersed.  Three can be found right now, but the fourth buggered off to Succubus Village, which we haven’t reached yet.  I’ll come back to this side quest when we reach that location.

We’re still not done with Yamatai.  Evil Shirohebi can be recruited if you talk to her in the snake shrine.

Her good sister has to stay around and run things, but Evil Shirohebi is available (probably in more ways than one).  But first she requires we fetch her a Beckoning Cat item from the Yamata no Orochi caves.

This had me stumped for a while.  If you ask around the NPCs they’ll tell you rumours of a secret treasure cave in the Yamata no Orochi caves.  I didn’t find it on the first lookthrough and so assumed it was something that was unlocked later, maybe when your party has levelled up enough to defeat Yamata no Orochi.

This isn’t the case.  Enter the caves and this time take the left fork.  This leads to another waterfall area with chests.  While they might look unreachable, the first party member can hop across the short gaps.  It’s a variation on the classic top-down JRPG ice puzzles.  The Beckoning Cat isn’t here (the far chest is another boxed girl).

The thing I missed was this damn rope here.

Completely missed this rope the first time around
Climb down it and then walk to the right to enter the secret treasure area.

Walk through the waterfall to the right of the sign...
...to find the secret treasure cave
The Beckoning Cat can be found in here as well as a bunch of other treasure.  Now you can go back and recruit Evil Shirohebi.

And that’s all for Yamatai Village.  With both Caesar’s and Arthur’s side quests resolved, it’s time to hop back onto the main quest line and check out Mephisto’s school of magic for Queen Noah.

Wait, what about Yamata no Orochi?

Well you can find her here, in the cave north of where you find Tanuki Girl.

Warning: Yamata no Orochi, do not approach
But I wouldn’t recommend fighting her unless you have a serious fetish for tongues and licking that you absolutely have to satisfy right now.

Okay, okay.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It's okay Luka.  She'll let you go in a year.

-> Next: Mephisto’s School of Magic

9 comments:

  1. No, you cannot recruit the Tanuki. Ever. Who knows why.

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    Replies
    1. You can recruit Yamata simply by defeating her however.

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    2. That is odd. Maybe TR never got the Bad End art in time?

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    3. I think she will be in part three along with the kunoichi elf group that because abit of a spoiler but you never make it to the elf village in this game

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  2. Fuck this let’s play bullshit.

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    Replies
    1. Oof, tough crowd. I'm not going to do the usual snark I see other "woke" writers respond to criticism with, and instead ask if you wouldn't mind elaborating. (This also goes for anyone else feeling the same.)

      Why don't you like this stuff? Is it because:

      a) Don't like the games
      b) Think my writing on the games is too long, boring, or otherwise shitty in a way that isn't up to my usual standards.
      c) Would rather see new fiction (short stories/succubus summoning) here instead.

      if it's a) we're probably stuck, come back when I finish the game and hope I get enough negative feedback to not do this again.
      If it's b) I can look at my writing and try to make it less sucky.
      As for c), yeah, working on that. Been a rough couple of months in terms of getting any story finished for one reason or another. :(

      Anyone can feel free to chime in one this. I allow anonymous comments for a reason. ;)

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    2. If he has to leave a comment as anonymous hydra probably just a troll

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  3. I seriously love the way you take criticism. Too many people just don't know how to handle it.

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  4. I love how you called the real Luka "Luka-clone".

    I know the game involves different dimensions and that kind of complicated stuff, but I thought it was funny.

    ReplyDelete