Chaos Rings: all I know is that I hate that merchant

[sheelal]

Second post of Chaos Rings. In this one, some actual gameplay shots! But mostly hating Piu-Piu.

First, some shots of Ayuta, because I failed at getting shots of Ayuta and Mana during the Official Introduction.


He’s a humble stablehand trying to protect his country’s princess. Also, he fights with katanas.

Eluca has got some sense in her head. This is good.

Mana is worried about her country, and the morality of a bunch of strangers killing each other for a possibly-false promise of immortality.

Treasure chest in the bedroom! It had a Vin Brûlée in it, which is apparently this game’s phoenix down. Yes, you revive your fallen partner with mulled wine. You heal with chocolate.

In case you somehow forgot the Rules of Doom, there’s an ominous plaque to remind you. How helpful!

Escher likes the idea of winning immortality. Eluca tries to set him straight. Established so far: Eluca is pretty reasonable, and Escher is a fucking nutcase.

Poor Musiea. To survive, she’s got to win immortality for her and the guy she just tried to kill.

You’re in a game where the restorative items are wine and chocolate. Seriously.

Maybe the Hypothetical Evil Airship needs to be powered by two brains synchronized through cooperation, or something. That, or the Agent did it for the lulz.

And now, the Shop Guy!


Don’t be fooled; he’s a little bastard. You’ll find out why, later.

We finally get out looking for… er, a bunch of rings that are a prerequisite to actually fighting in the Ark Arena. Sorry, I forgot to mention it last post. Everyone’s more concerned about the stupid rules.

And the immortality, which, yes, is probably not what it sounds like.

Eluca and Zhamo start having a personal conversation. After this, Zhamo asks her if she’s going to kill him after they get out. She more or less just says, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Zhamo comes equipped with “Prisoner’s Clothes” as his default armor, so I’m guessing Eluca was either his prison guard or an executioner, and Zhamo is an escapee or on death row. Wonder what he did.

Battle shots, finally! This is Eluca defeating a giant monkey called a Hanuman. It attacks by smacking you with green coconuts.

There are three slightly different victory pose sequences, depending on whether the final blow of the battle was struck by one character of the pair, or both together. This is what the pair victory pose looks like.

The dungeons are somewhat hard to navigate because Eluca is so damn tiny at that size. She keeps getting hidden under our fingertip.

Desperate attack against a high-level Ziz in the dungeon. It doesn’t work, and they both get killed. Game over, right?

No! It’s LITTLE BASTARD TIME


So, because it’s a fantasy world, you can’t get strep or E. Coli. That’s nice.

All right, Pew-Pew, that’s getting a little TMI.

So he revived you! What a saint! Except, right after this little ecology speech, he admits he did it so he could steal all your money.

Yes, that’s right. It’s not half your money, like Dragon Quest used to do (maybe still does, I don’t know); it’s all of your money, taken off your corpses by this little devil. Then he revives you so you can go out and earn more money to… spend at his shop, because it’s the only shop there. Or you can go die so he can take all your money from your corpses again, it’s all good by him.

Anyway, I backtracked to where we were, did a few sliding puzzle rooms, and got through the dungeon to here:

What is that, a tree?

No, it’s the first boss fight! Hello, First Boss!

Careful use of magic, items, and solo/pair attacks is needed to defeat the tortoise with trees in his back.

Now that there’s no boss in the way, we can proceed!

…to another action sequence!

After Garrick’s death by purple death cloud, Alto has gone completely nuts and is trying to kill Mana. I think.

Yeah, Zhamo, remind her of the rules! That always works with homicidal maniacs!

She attacks Zhamo, he blocks, and Eluca’s impressed he could block, apparently. Then she attacks Ayuta, Ayuta counters and throws her back, and the Grim Reaper takes her away in that purple death cloud of doom. Ayuta waits for the same to happen to him, since he technically fought, too, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, I’m happy, because I actually got a screenshot in during all the action, and not a terrible one! Yay!

Tune in next post when… I don’t know what happens. Maybe Piu-Piu dies in a fire. And then we get to revive him and take back our money. That’d be nice.