11 - Monkey Magic
Originally posted May 3, 2024
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Last time, our charter ship got blown up by the captain, who was secretly one of Dio's assassins. After drifting on the waves, a mysterious tanker picked up our life boats...
I was on a ship once that had total power failure in the middle of the night. I remember this mostly because the TV picked up airwaves from Mexico and I was watching Spanish-language Rurouni Kenshin at the time.
She kind of has a point. Would you want to hang out with a bunch of muscley dudes who get jumped by assassins every twelve hours?
I always liked how Joseph kind of slips into Dad Mode when the little scamp gets involved. It's relatively subtle character work, at least compared to a guy getting impaled through the face by a freight hook.
Now, this is kind of interesting. One of the selling points of the "R" rework for 7SU was that they removed random encounters. When I last played, the whole ship was an encounter zone. Now, it just has hooks moving back and forth everywhere.
Due to our current FP standings, we'll be hanging out with Polnareff the entire update. I'm writing this a good while in advance to make sure I get quality time with Dragon's Dogma 2, so I don't have any audience input about whom Cascada should be best buds with yet. Please vote in the poll and also comment so I don't feel like I'm screaming into the void.
(Edit from the future: Jotaro won)
Even in older versions of the game, you could examine the hook above the blood puddle here to get a guaranteed encounter. The Ghost Ship is a solid grinding location as a result.
We'll have to ask Abdul for a Viking Funeral later.
Kakyoin is accordingly unavailable as a party member for this segment.
Polnareff is our Speed-type party member, and accordingly fulfills a sort of DEX-build like niche. He's fast and has a good amount of status-inflicting multi-target attacks just like when he was a boss fight, but he might as well be made of phyllo. Also notable is his Armor Takeoff skill here, which as far as I'm aware is a permanent mode-change ability. Here's a before and after:
He already moves first most of the time and hits plenty hard, so I don't think it's quite worth the hit to his Durability.
These hooks are swinging back and forth so that you could avoid all of them if you had more patience than I. Instead, imagine me getting into somewhere between three and five encounters between every single screenshot because I'm just stomping through everything.
This means I get into substantially more battles than I would have run into with random encounters.
The bridge is, indeed, eerily empty other than this treasure chest.
Oh, it's been an orangutan this whole time? Glad nobody was in earshot while they were saying "monkey". They'd be banned from the Unseen University for life.
According to RPG logic, we therefore must seek out the thing we were explicitly told not to. Below deck we go!
The treasure chest has an Overdrive SY (3% HP and 20%+60 SP).
The Hydrants can inflict Bind and Propellers can be reasonably dangerous if they use their self-destruct attack, but Polnareff one-shots 99% of the encounters here with multi-target attacks.
Like so. Again, imagine seeing this five times between every other screenshot and you'll get an idea of what playing this is like.
This does heavy physical damage to one enemy. Considering how I hoard items, it'll probably never get used.
The fore of the ship has a row of treasure chests containing two Overdrive SY, a Ripple-Infused Cola (5%+40 HP and 1%+1 SP for the whole party), and an Herb-Infused Drink (flat 80 SP).
Other than the Hydrants, Green Hornets are still buzzing around too. At this point they're truly more of a nuisance than anything else. The chest in the cabin there only has a measly 500G, while fighting things along the way to it probably got me around 250-300. Barely worth it.
Down another deck. There are a few chests here with Ointment and First-Aid Kits, guarded by the usual Hydrant Horde.
I'm not sure what the thing on the right side of the screen is meant to be; I assume some kind of freight crane/pulley. The "green tube" sprite just always makes me think of ninjas sneaking around underwater.
There are two stairwells down to the next deck. This one goes to a treasure room cut off from the rest of the map.
The other chests just have Rations.
He was level 12 when we started. He'll be level 15 (and Cascada level 18) by the time we leave. I guess that Badge of Honor wasn't that impressive after all?
Taking the other stairwell leads into the lounge area where the normie crew members are holed up.
I'm kind of fascinated by varying attitudes towards eating fish. In Japan, it's a protein staple, but they're an island nation where getting fresh fish isn't a big deal. I like fish because growing up it was a welcome reprieve from my mother's usual school-night dinner of unsalted chicken breast, mushy frozen broccoli, and plain steamed rice. Meanwhile, the majority of white people I've met, even those raised coastally, categorically dislike seafood.
The late great Anthony Bourdain infamously said to never order fish on Mondays, because it was probably caught/bought on Friday morning and sat in the fridge all weekend long. Writer Tobias Buckell grew up poor in the Caribbean and said that dinner was usually whatever they'd catch that day, so he associates fish with poverty. But in my mind, fish is at a weird cross-section of more-expensive-than-but-not-as-fancy-as beef.
...This has nothing to do with the Let's Play. Moving on.
The nurse here gives us free full heals without causing the day counter to tick forward, which is the other reason this is a popular grinding spot. But as we leave...
Random chance of getting a random status effect. I guess she's still in training.
Cell key in hand, we go up to release the orangutan for... reasons...?
What did we expect.
In the manga, this is recognizable as the August 1989 issue of Playboy Japan, which is silly because Part 3 takes place in November/December of 1988. Then again, 7SU decided this is summer vacation instead, and these are the kinds of details that nobody should actually give a shit about.
Jotaro still doesn't say shit.
There isn't anything around the rest of the ship. We have to head back down into the lounge, where...
Everyone's dead. With our RPG top-down God cam, we can see that the runaway girl is being accosted in the shower by the creeper orangutan... but Steel said there are two Stand users here. We examine the rest of the bodies.
We scour the rest of the ship. Can you spot the difference?
Silver Chariot wipes out all six hornets before any of them have a chance to act. The ones in this boss battle actually have lower HP than normal, but they do more damage and respawn... if they get a chance. Cascada got a new special move last time, remember?
*
This is a little interesting, because normally the "Insects" status can only be inflicted by one of the player Stands. It halves Speed, lowers accuracy by 20%, and deals 2%+1 HP damage per turn. The Stand in question can also inflict "Swarm" and "Bugs", which do 5% and 7% HP damage, respectively. They can stack with each other, which is one of the best ways to deal with a hidden boss or two.
Accordingly, if you have that Stand, there's a bit of extra dialogue here.
...I may have gone too far in a few places.
If you don't defeat Kate here, the Green Hornet encounters stick around for another few maps, slightly stronger and more annoying. This way we get some breathing room and a nice shiny Badge of Honor.
Okay, now we can go kill the ape.
This is a very silly moment, but it helps establish some more guidelines about what Stands can be. Remember, Cascada's arm cannon is a non-canon addition.
Stands like Star Platinum and Hierophant Green are at least vaguely humanoid and each has some kind of special ability useful in a combat situation, like you might expect if you've read any battle manga ever. Next to that, we have Joseph's Hermit Purple, which is just a weird bundle of vines that does "spirit photography"... so Stands don't necessarily have to be human shaped or combat-oriented.
Next up is Tower of Gray, a weird needle beetle, so also not humanoid. Dark Blue Moon is broadly humanoid, but has a whole slate of powers that are all just sort of loosely water-themed rather than a single ability.
And now Strength breaks all the rules we've seen so far. The Stand-user is a fucking orangutan, normies can see and interact with the Stand, and the Stand is huge.
Anyway, Polnareff picked up a new move after cutting down several dozen propellers.
...so, normally, Forever can melt into the wall and become untargetable, forcing you to deal with constantly respawning Hydrants and Propellers every turn until he reappears. Quicksilver hits hard.
Polnareff kills an orangutan with a sword, giving animal rights activists even more ammo against Hirohiko Araki. In the manga, Jotaro does it with the second and final use of Star Finger in the series. Funnily enough, in the older OVA adaptation of Part 3, it is Polnareff who lands the killing blow.
That's all, folks! Tune in next time for another enormous hub map!
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