Cocaina
8/29/2015
Spoony Plays Grandia, Part 9
We scale the great wall at the End of the World and end up in the Valley of the Flying Dragon.
I missed a Mana Egg in the previous dungeon, but it's easy to go back and get. Re-enter the forest and go northwest, over a large flower trap.
Fight your way through a few wimpy enemies and take the right fork to a dead end with a large flower, and there it is.
I also took the opportunity to upgrade my equipment and use my two Mana Eggs off-camera. Justin and Feena now have access to all four elements.
Spoony Plays Ultima IX: Ascension, Part 2
We find ourselves restoring the eight Virtues because they've been corrupted by the Guardian, or something. It's kinda cheesy and lame.
As you can see, Ultima's economy is kind of broken. One diamond is worth about a dozen swords...
There are also a couple of sub-quests you can do before moving on. One you can start is the lighthouse quest, which takes a sizable portion of the game to complete. It requires you to find the three lighthouse gems, get them cut at the jewelers and return them to the three lighthouses. I won't be doing that one, however, because the reward is only a piddly 100 gold.
On the way to Paws, you'd doubtless notice the burning house with the kid trapped inside; he tells you that his mother has been kidnapped by bandits. Hop up the mountains to the west of his house and cross the bridge to a small ledge, where you'll find three bandits (including one who wields a staff). Take them down and talk to the woman will thank you.
Examine the nearby book to learn about their treasure cache. To find it, cross back over the bridge and follow this path up to a snowy area.
Once you're up there, look along the south wall for a cave. Enter and you'll find several chests containing jewelry and gold, which you can sell back in Britain for a tidy profit.
Talking to the lady in the southeast end of Paws reveals that the well valve has gone missing. Search the troll's cave near the bridge to find it, then just pop it into the slot.
You don't gain any money or anything, but you do get a Karma boost. Plus it only takes a minute or two, so you might as well go for it.
As you can see, Ultima's economy is kind of broken. One diamond is worth about a dozen swords...
There are also a couple of sub-quests you can do before moving on. One you can start is the lighthouse quest, which takes a sizable portion of the game to complete. It requires you to find the three lighthouse gems, get them cut at the jewelers and return them to the three lighthouses. I won't be doing that one, however, because the reward is only a piddly 100 gold.
On the way to Paws, you'd doubtless notice the burning house with the kid trapped inside; he tells you that his mother has been kidnapped by bandits. Hop up the mountains to the west of his house and cross the bridge to a small ledge, where you'll find three bandits (including one who wields a staff). Take them down and talk to the woman will thank you.
Examine the nearby book to learn about their treasure cache. To find it, cross back over the bridge and follow this path up to a snowy area.
Once you're up there, look along the south wall for a cave. Enter and you'll find several chests containing jewelry and gold, which you can sell back in Britain for a tidy profit.
Talking to the lady in the southeast end of Paws reveals that the well valve has gone missing. Search the troll's cave near the bridge to find it, then just pop it into the slot.
You don't gain any money or anything, but you do get a Karma boost. Plus it only takes a minute or two, so you might as well go for it.
8/26/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima IX: Ascension Bonus: Hidden debug features
Thanks to TCRF and Ultima Codex for this information!
Debug Commands
Several debug features remain in the game (and were given out by Origin after the game proved to be unbeatable as released). Open the default.kmp file in the game directory and add the following under the [Cheat Commands] heading:
alt+shift+a = toggle_avatar_invulnerable ; Toggles God Mode (Avatar cannot be harmed by enemies).
alt+shift+a = toggle_avatar_invulnerable ; Toggles God Mode (Avatar cannot be harmed by enemies).
alt+shift+b = pass_one_hour ; Advances time one hour.
alt+shift+c = unpass_one_hour ; Moves time back one hour.
alt+shift+d = sunrise_sunset ; Toggles sunrise or sunset.
alt+shift+e = pass_one_minute ; Moves time forward one minute.
alt+shift+f = unpass_one_minute ; Moves time back one minute.
alt+shift+g = toggle_sun ; Toggles the sun.
alt+shift+h = toggle_wind ; Toggles the wind.
alt+shift+i = toggle_storms ; Toggles storms.
alt+shift+j = toggle_avatar_fast ; Avatar moves much faster than normal.
alt+shift+k = toggle_avatar_fly ; Fly mode (free flight, even through walls and other objects).
Patch 1.07 adds a few more debug codes, which can be bound to any key combination.
recharge_mana - Refills the Avatar's mana.
fill_spellbook - Adds all spells to the Avatar's spellbook.
spells_0-2 - Unlocks all spells from level 0-2?
spells_3-5 - Unlocks all spells from level 3-5?
spells_6-8 - Unlocks all spells from level 6-8?
"Cheat Room"
Not a "room" per se, but there is still a debugging feature available at the start of the game. To access it, climb onto the training dummy outside the Avatar's house, then jump over the gate. There is a tree just outside here - activate the switch at its base to make several teleportation pads appear, in this layout:
Pads 1-11 teleport the Avatar to various locations in Britannia, while 12-16 equip him with various armor sets. All the unlabeled pads either do nothing or teleport the Avatar a few steps away.
- Stonegate (same as entering the Moongate after talking to the gypsy)
- Terfin's secret entrance
- Buccaneer's Den
- Ambrosia
- Despise
- Britain
- Valoria
- Cove
- Trinsic
- Skara Brae
- New Magincia
- Equips Avatar with Artifact Armor*
- Equips Avatar with Wyrmguard Armor
- Equips Avatar with Pirate Armor
- Equips Avatar with Bone Armor
- Equips Avatar with Blackrock Armor
* "Artifact Armor" refers to all the non-set pieces of armor in the game, which includes the Crown of Radiance, Chest of the Troll, Arms of the Magi, Gauntlets of Fury, Legs of Sentri and Swamp Boots.
There are also quite a few unused and repurposed elements in the game, mostly remnants from the original plot.
Oh, and I did a writeup on all of the FMVs for the game I know of; used, unused and recut alike.
There are also quite a few unused and repurposed elements in the game, mostly remnants from the original plot.
Oh, and I did a writeup on all of the FMVs for the game I know of; used, unused and recut alike.
8/25/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima IX: Ascension, Part 1
The game gets off to a promising start with some lavish production value and even a bit of clever puzzle solving, but it starts to go downhill in a hurry once the dialog portion kicks in...
One other thing I wanted to show off (but couldn't owing to my laptop's horrendously short battery life) is the game's magic system. Rather than simply buying spells or looking them up in the manual, this game requires you to do a bit more work. First, you must find a scroll of the spell and the reagents to cast it (all listed in the spellbook, thankfully), and then you must find a Binding Ritual Circle:
Next, put all the necessary reagents and the scroll in the center of the pentagram...
...then light the five candles, and the spell will be permanently added to your spellbook. From there, you can cast it as many times as you want, as long as you have the Mana for it.
Also worth noting is that the game arbitrarily restricts you from casting spells of a given circle until you've restored the shrines; each time one gets fixed, another spell circle gets unlocked. This means that for the first portion of the game you can only cast Linear spells...
One other thing I wanted to show off (but couldn't owing to my laptop's horrendously short battery life) is the game's magic system. Rather than simply buying spells or looking them up in the manual, this game requires you to do a bit more work. First, you must find a scroll of the spell and the reagents to cast it (all listed in the spellbook, thankfully), and then you must find a Binding Ritual Circle:
Next, put all the necessary reagents and the scroll in the center of the pentagram...
...then light the five candles, and the spell will be permanently added to your spellbook. From there, you can cast it as many times as you want, as long as you have the Mana for it.
Also worth noting is that the game arbitrarily restricts you from casting spells of a given circle until you've restored the shrines; each time one gets fixed, another spell circle gets unlocked. This means that for the first portion of the game you can only cast Linear spells...
8/24/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima IX: Ascension, Part 0 (Opening FMV)
Good news, guys! I finally got it running. The downside is that it's running on a cruddy old laptop that only has S-Video and VGA output, so the quality isn't great. But hey, it's better than nothing, right?
Ultima's final chapter has a plethora of problems, to say the least. Not only does it retain the unpopular action-platformer format that Pagan introduced, EA also was very much against the project (wanting Richard Garriott to push Ultima Online instead) and nearly all of the original staff from Origin had long since been reassigned or fired, leaving Garriott to work on a strict deadline with a team of inexperienced coders who had little to no familiarity with the Ultima series. The script also underwent heavy rewrites and cuts as the development process dragged on, leading to a lot of disparate elements even within its own continuity. As a result of these and other factors, the final product is a very buggy game that seems to misunderstand or neglect nearly every fundamental aspect of the franchise. I'm sure the development team did the best they could under the circumstances, but that doesn't save it from being one of the most disappointing series finales of all time (to the point where a large contingent of the franchise's fans refuse to even acknowledge it as canon). So with all that said, let's close out the legendary Ultima franchise with a look at its most hated entry. This... is Ascension.
There is a fan patch for the game which rewrites a pretty good portion of the dialog, fixing a lot of inaccuracies with Ultima lore and rewriting a lot of the really dumb bits. I've elected not to apply it in order to highlight just how far out of touch with canon the development team really was. However, I did apply the Version 1.19 patch to fix several glaring bugs left over by the developers, which will hopefully provide for a more stable gaming experience.
Links
Ultima's final chapter has a plethora of problems, to say the least. Not only does it retain the unpopular action-platformer format that Pagan introduced, EA also was very much against the project (wanting Richard Garriott to push Ultima Online instead) and nearly all of the original staff from Origin had long since been reassigned or fired, leaving Garriott to work on a strict deadline with a team of inexperienced coders who had little to no familiarity with the Ultima series. The script also underwent heavy rewrites and cuts as the development process dragged on, leading to a lot of disparate elements even within its own continuity. As a result of these and other factors, the final product is a very buggy game that seems to misunderstand or neglect nearly every fundamental aspect of the franchise. I'm sure the development team did the best they could under the circumstances, but that doesn't save it from being one of the most disappointing series finales of all time (to the point where a large contingent of the franchise's fans refuse to even acknowledge it as canon). So with all that said, let's close out the legendary Ultima franchise with a look at its most hated entry. This... is Ascension.
There is a fan patch for the game which rewrites a pretty good portion of the dialog, fixing a lot of inaccuracies with Ultima lore and rewriting a lot of the really dumb bits. I've elected not to apply it in order to highlight just how far out of touch with canon the development team really was. However, I did apply the Version 1.19 patch to fix several glaring bugs left over by the developers, which will hopefully provide for a more stable gaming experience.
Links
- Ultima IX on GOG
- 1.19 Patch
- Fan Dialog Patch (comes packaged with two other patches that tweak the monsters and economy of the game in order to give it better balance)
- And of course, more of IT-HE's hilarious shenanigans. Ultima IX is perhaps their finest work, creating some truly amazing glitches and sequence breaks that have to be seen to be believed.
8/23/2015
Spoony Plays Castle of the Winds, Part 5
We arrive in a new area and prepare to meet our destiny in the Castle of the Winds.
Spoony Plays Castle of the Winds, Part 4 (Episode 1 Finale) (Twitch.tv S...
Our godparents' killer falls before our might (and persistent savescumming), but a greater trial awaits!
8/22/2015
Spoony Plays Castle of the Winds, Part 3 (Twitch.tv Stream)
We die a lot. But we also get some pretty swag equipment that ensures we will die a lot less in the future!
8/20/2015
Spoony Plays Grandia, Part 8
We earn the trust of the Luc villagers and finally reach the End of the World.
8/19/2015
Mass Effect in a Nutshell
I wanted to enjoy Mass Effect. I honestly did. I gave it chance after chance to grasp its potential and become amazing, but it all came to nothing; at the end of the day, it's just another dime a dozen third person shooter with bland, underdeveloped characters, a dull-as-dirt presentation and a predictable plot line plagiarized from other, better works, all being clung to by a bunch of nostalgia worshippers who think that making one good game a decade ago means you can do no wrong ever again...
The game begins with a character customization scene. A strangely intricate one, too, but not for the reasons you think. Yes, you pick your class and background here, but that all takes a backseat to the incredibly detailed facial construction feature. And therein lies this game's first major problem; when your developers put this much thought into detailing every single insignificant feature of your avatar's face in a game genre where the camera is oriented behind your character's head roughly 75% of the time, and it gets that much more attention than the alleged Role Playing Game element (which boils down to all of two menu choices), it doesn't really speak well to the design team's priorities.
As for your character's back story (ha ha), you get one of three choices. That's it. You literally just pick it from a menu and then go with it, and the only effect it has on anything is the occasional throwaway line of dialog. You know how this could have been handled better? Have something like a practical version of the GOAT from Fallout 3, where your actions during the mission become famous throughout the galaxy and your subsequent reactions to them determine how others look at you throughout the game. Or if that's too much work, just have a linear opening mission that shows how Shepherd became what he is today and have his subsequent reaction to it be entirely up to the player, Deus Ex HR style. Either one of those would be more effective in helping the player get invested in the narrative, and it would also avoid breaking the cardinal rule of show, don't tell.
Anyway, after spending roughly 3 seconds developing my character's origins and 38 minutes hitting the "randomize features" button to make him look as freakish as possible:
David Anderson Keith David, Slumming for a Paycheck: Shepherd, you're a Spectre now. Go stop Nightlamp.
The game begins with a character customization scene. A strangely intricate one, too, but not for the reasons you think. Yes, you pick your class and background here, but that all takes a backseat to the incredibly detailed facial construction feature. And therein lies this game's first major problem; when your developers put this much thought into detailing every single insignificant feature of your avatar's face in a game genre where the camera is oriented behind your character's head roughly 75% of the time, and it gets that much more attention than the alleged Role Playing Game element (which boils down to all of two menu choices), it doesn't really speak well to the design team's priorities.
As for your character's back story (ha ha), you get one of three choices. That's it. You literally just pick it from a menu and then go with it, and the only effect it has on anything is the occasional throwaway line of dialog. You know how this could have been handled better? Have something like a practical version of the GOAT from Fallout 3, where your actions during the mission become famous throughout the galaxy and your subsequent reactions to them determine how others look at you throughout the game. Or if that's too much work, just have a linear opening mission that shows how Shepherd became what he is today and have his subsequent reaction to it be entirely up to the player, Deus Ex HR style. Either one of those would be more effective in helping the player get invested in the narrative, and it would also avoid breaking the cardinal rule of show, don't tell.
Hell, even Bioware themselves got this in games like Baldur's Gate 2, where you start off as more or less a blank slate (despite being roped into D&D's good/evil/lawful/chaotic chart by necessity) and your actions would determine how later events changed. If you had a bad reputation when the Harper fanatics start trying to hunt you down, it would cause Jaheria to leave the party, unwilling to defend you despite her misgivings about their crusade; she clearly cared enough about you to (canonically) accompany you throughout the entire first game, even if you were playing a bastard for most of it, so seeing her choose not to stand by you when a particularly fanatical member of her order comes for your head is a completely valid, in-character moment. Or in another example, if you killed or duped Drizzt in the first game to steal his badass weapons, he'd come back again in 2, friends in tow, to get his revenge against you, with no option to talk him down. Or hell, one of my favorites - if you choose to ally with Sarevok (the first game's genocidal main antagonist) in Throne of Bhaal and show him genuine compassion and forgiveness, you could actually convince him to change his ways. Not only would his alignment shift from Chaotic Evil to Chaotic Good, but his trademark bloodthirst, arrogance and anger would be greatly downplayed for the rest of the game. Your actions and words were a palpable part of the game and had actual consequences later on, whereas in Mass Effect this is almost never the case - nearly everything you do exists in a vacuum and only really changes a line or two of dialog later rather than having any real effect on the gameplay or story.
Anyway, after spending roughly 3 seconds developing my character's origins and 38 minutes hitting the "randomize features" button to make him look as freakish as possible:
...we begin the opening mission. We get dropped off on some planet to pursue a machine race called the Geth, who are apparently the robotic equivalent of Vlad Tepes or something as they impale everyone they kill on big metal poles that turn them into cyborgs. ...I'm sure that sounded cool to somebody at some point, but it just comes across as really silly in the final game. Oh, and we get two squadmates: Whats-her-name and a mostly silent guy named "Jenkins." I'm sure nothing bad will happen to him!
And this is why you don't include internet memes in your games, especially on big budget releases like this one - the joke is run into the ground long before it ever gets released.
Jenkins runs headlong into danger and gets killed within seconds (what a shock) and we continue on alone, shooting a few generic robots and having an extremely drawn out conversation with a guy who fell asleep behind some crates (StC: 19 seconds). It's also about here we start to encounter a major problem with the game: the ungodly dry, boring dialog they use to fill up runtime. None of the scenes feel well-staged, with everyone just standing in a little circle and yammering while the camera randomly cuts between 400 different angles for absolutely no reason, and none of the actors (voice acting or motion captured alike) attempt to look or sound even the slightest bit interested. And in a genre where character interaction is a good 50-75% of the experience the game sells itself upon, this is pretty much unforgivable.
Did I mention this series was inspired by Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? Because the similarities are certainly obvious. It looks good (well, as good as computers and a lack of imagination can make something look, at least), but it's just ungodly dull, droning, science fantasy nonsense from the mind of someone who clearly overestimated how talented they are...
After a small novel about that dull crap, we get a cutscene between two of the bug-alien guys, one of whom shows himself to be evil as he shoots the other guy in the back. Unfortunately they can't even set up a villain right as we have absolutely no context for who either of these two are, why they're here or why we should care about either of them, and the surprise twist of the scene is given away the instant you read the one character's name: Nihlus. Nihlus. If you're going to be that unsubtle, you might as well have just named him "Bad Guy Jones". Though I suppose I can damn them with faint praise and say that at least they didn't give him giant hair antlers and bulging forehead veins before they expected you to think he was a good guy.
I've rambled about this before in my Dragon Age 2 nutshell, but I think it needs to be addressed again. The plot is technically filled in to this point, but only if you stop the game, bring up the pause menu, and choose to view the game's built-in encyclopedia that explains all of the characters, alien races, planets and story events that brought us to the present day. As I've said, this is a completely wrong-headed way to go about establishing a game universe. If you want me to give a damn about your story, then show it to me in the narrative, building things up through context and subtext; don't make me interrupt the narrative so I can thumb through 40+ pages of droning text to get caught up on what the hell everyone is talking about. It's lazy, it's boring, and it's another big violation of the show don't tell principle. If you want an example of how to establish a deep game universe through exposition, pick up Fallout 2 or Deus Ex. As you're exploring, you find text logs that fill in the plot from the perspectives of characters that existed in the game's universe and had hands-on experience with thinks like the FEV/Gray Death virus and the big villains long before you did, and they effectively offer some insight into their workings without reading like a dry Wikipedia article. Characters also don't have to stop the game's pacing dead-cold so you can ask inane questions and get curt one-sentence responses that open up more inane questions for upwards of fifteen minutes, so you actually look forward to the dialog instead of dreading it. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that Ion Storm and Black Isle (now Obsidian) had some very talented writers on staff who know how to make a captivating narrative and fun dialog peppered with clever humor. Instead of, say, wasting 15 minutes on blather about crates.
Moving on...
We eventually come to the spaceport just in time to see Nihilanth's spaceship take off, and we're stuck fighting more Geth in long, narrow hallways with little to no cover, which gets to be pretty frustrating after only a few minutes. Moreso because when you take too much damage, you get stunned for a very long time and can't return fire or even use healing items to patch yourself up; you just have to hide in a corner for roughly a full minute before Shepherd catches his breath and you can continue the fight. And while I'm no fan of the regenerating health mechanic in shooters, this definitely feels like it could have been better handled.
Also not helping matters is the game's somewhat asinine weapon system. I picked a Sniper, which apparently means that I'm moderately skilled with pistols and specialize in long-ranged rifles. Makes sense. Yet at the start, you're given four weapon types (also including a machine gun and a shotgun) and you must have all four types equipped at all times, regardless of your character's class. Why do I have to carry two extra weapons around when I can't use them well and, in fact, will never earn a skill that even allows me to use them remotely effectively? It's a minor point, but it does strike me as another element of lazy design.
Less excusable, though, is the fact that I have to dump roughly twenty skill points into Sniping before said weapons become even remotely usable; any less than that and your aim drunkenly wobbles all over the place, making it nearly impossible to hit anything and forcing me to use my Pistol for the first ten hours or so of the game...
At any rate, we fight the last of the cyberdoofs and come to a pillar, which Shepherd touches, gets a trippy vision of the future from, and then it explodes (GWAAAAAAR!). Then we're off to the Useless Council to get debriefed and told about how Nihilo has gone rogue and the central government is powerless to stop him because, being a Spectre agent, he's basically got diplomatic immunity extending across the entire universe.
Shepherd: Couldn't you just suspend his Spectre access pending an investigation or something?
Keith David, Slumming for a Paycheck: Nope, Spectres are totally off the grid. They're completely untraceable, have limitless access to military tech and have a license to kill indiscriminately and without repercussion. The only one who can stop them is another Spectre.
Gee, it's almost like every history book ever written has multiple examples of why giving anyone unlimited access to military resources and unchecked power is a bad idea, or something...
Shepherd; Fine, I'll stop him. Whatever. Not like this game's going to give me any actual choice in the matter.
Keith David, Slumming for a Paycheck: Good.
Shepherd: It's cool if I act like a complete dickhead every step of the way, right?
Keith David, Slumming for a Paycheck: If that helps give you the illusion that this game has any choices in it that actually matter, then sure.
And that leads into my other big gripe with modern RPGs in general - the fact that "freedom of choice" and "morality" consist of approximately zero shades of gray. Instead, they fall under two opposite extremes that ultimately have little to no outcome on how events unfold anyway (not even garnering an alternate line of dialog from NPCs 80% of the time). It's almost farcical in Mass Effect's case as well - every dialog scene lets you be either stoic or snippy, with both adding to a meter on your status screen. Once it hits certain levels, it lets you unlock new dialog options at specific junctures, like choosing to spare someone's life (Paragon!) or shoot them (Renegade!). It doesn't feel immersive or realistic in the slightest, just shoehorned and - gasp - lazy!
Oh, and most of the big "moral choices" have no far-reaching impact either, as we'll see momentarily.
Then we meet the blue alien chick who is apparently one of Shepherd's romantic interests regardless of gender. Never mind that that when Star Control did this exact same scenario in 1990 it was done to spoof a long-standing and rather sexist cliché of old science fiction serials; here we just roar right ahead with it without a hint of irony whatsoever. Not because there's any actual chemistry between Shep and the character in question, mind you, as their interactions are just as wooden as those of any other characters in this game. Nope, it's just cheap pandering to the pro-LBGTQRBRRBIRBEL crowd, as well as a convenient excuse to dismiss people who criticize the game as "homophobes" and the overwhelming negative reaction to its horribly rushed third chapter and copout ending as a "conspiracy" by ultra-conservative bigots to discredit poor innocent EA, champions of the oppressed. And yes, I know people who were actually dumb enough to eat that load of calculated corporate propaganda up and probably swear to this day that I'm a homophobic asshole because I saw it for the farce that it was and didn't hesitate to speak my mind on the subject. Just because you say you're pro-gay/trans/whatever doesn't mean you're some infallible force for good or that your critics are "bigots" for speaking out against you and yours for any reason, so kindly drop the narcissism already.
You can window-dress it all you want, but it's blatantly clear to me that this is just a sleazy way to earn a few more sales by shoehorning some cheap T&A and superficial political pandering into the game. This is especially evident because none of the game's characters have the slightest bit of depth beyond their sexuality, and completely ignores the fact that there's plenty of porn to be found on the internet for free. But oh, that's right, doing that will cause you to miss out on scoring that achievement on your gamer profile and proving you're a manly man to all of your twelve-year-old buddies on Xbox Live. Blech. Not to mention that, as I've also stated many times, buying video games to further your political views - especially leftist ones - is ineffective and stupid, because the overwhelming majority of your money is going right into the pockets of the rich conservatives who run the multi-billion dollar corporations Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Sony. I'm pretty sure Pepsico's board of directors gets a cut too for all those junk food products you bought to get discounts on DLC and merchandise, to say nothing of the companies that produced said merchandise, the owner of the factory that stamped out the disc you bought, the owner of the other factory that created the case said disc came in, the printing company that printed the case insert and manual, and the company that shipped copies of the game to the tax-dodging, minimum-wage-paying big box retail chain you bought it from. So for every "vote" you and yours have cast for equality by buying a big budget video game, its corporate stakeholders have probably bought at least three actual votes by financing the campaigns of an opposing conservative politician using the salaries you paid them. They, in turn, have gone in to pass massive tax breaks for themselves and their corporate backers without raising their employees' salaries a dime, kept minimum wages well below the poverty line, busted up unions, implemented 100+ hour working weeks, disenfranchised millions of voters and passed law after law taking away the dignity and freedoms of those you claim to support, all while feeding you a convenient narrative to let you pretend you're a fearless champion for the oppressed when the sad truth is you're just an easy mark. Way to stick it to the man! Not that the overwhelming majority of the chuds who instantly stoop to vicious character assassination to defend a fucking video game actually care about any of the people their belovedgodsbillionaires exploit to profit off of; hell, they don't even give a shit about the games themselves most of the time, just skipping through all the cutscenes that 90% of the development time went into and GameFAQsing through what little gameplay there is in a weekend so they can get another platinum trophy for their profile and then sell it back to Gamestop before the trade value drops. Which just results in more mediocre games made by slave-wage workers that are padded out with junk missions and character interactions more stiff than an elementary school play, topped with superficial political pandering so these ghouls can pretend to be superheroes to impress their Facebook followers while they never do a damn thing that doesn't benefit only themselves and the preach-but-never-practice billionaires they love more than their own families. Self-feeding malignant narcissism at its fucking worst.
But I digress.
Shepherd: So, Whats-her-name, what's your story? Tell me about yourself.
Whats-her-name: Not now.
Shepherd: Huh?
Whats-her-name: Concentrate on the Geth!
Shepherd: This entire planet is completely empty of Geth. We're safe.
Whats-her-name: Not now.
Shepherd: Do I need to check the codex just to learn basic facts about my own squadmates, too, so I maybe, hopefully have some reason to care when they throw themselves into a sure-death situation to save my life? [OOPS, SPOILER]
Whats-her-name: Concentrate on the Geth!
Shepherd: ...I'll take that as a yes.
Moving on, now we get access to our own ship and pretty much have free reign to do missions in any order we choose now. As with most things in the game, though, a lot of them are very generic and forgettable. You walk down a corridor, get into repetitive gunfights, do some laughably trite puzzles to open doors (including a dopey lockpicking minigame and dragging out the Towers of Hanoi for the umpteenth time*), have some wooden small talk with another NPC, then move on. The only one that showed a bit of promise was the one with the Rachni, an insectoid race that was a massive scourge to the galaxy at one point and threatens to be so again under Nimbostratus's watch. This leads to one of the few potentially interesting dilemmas in the game: you can either spare their their last queen and allow their species to repopulate (albeit with a new outlook on coexistence with other races), or you can just finish them off and purge the galaxy of their threat once and for all. But what's the end result of the former option? ...They never get mentioned again until the third game, at which point they just go evil and you kill them off again. Which would be fine if you were trying to set up a nihilistic tone to the whole series, but that's not what you promised your fans, now is it Bioware?
*Oh, and if it's too tough, you can just pay some Omni-gel and skip it. I hate to be a gatekeeper to anyone else's gaming experience, but... come on. If you're going to play a genre of games that relies heavily on its cerebral aspect (when more talented companies do them, anyway), you can at least learn how to properly complete a logic puzzle from the 1800s...
Along the way we also meet a dinosaur-looking guy named Wrex (get it? GET IT?!) and get introduced to a particularly horrible mechanic in the form of vehicular combat. Wherein you still go down a linear, sterile metal corridor fighting enemies, but now have to do it in a vehicle that has ridiculously sensitive steering and shields that regenerate at a rate of approximately 1% every three years. They're quite an ordeal to get through... at least until you figure out that you can instantly top off the car's shields by doing a quicksave and then reloading, at which point these segments become laughably easy. Incredibly long and boring, but easy nevertheless.
At one point, we're also told that Nihilexlax is planning to resurrect Wrex's dying (check the codex, since he never mentions this and I don't recall any dialog even hinting at it) race for his own nefarious purposes, at which point he immediately goes turncoat against Shepherd and you're given the choice to either shoot him dead on the spot or convince him to stand down because Noodlesocks clearly doesn't have any noble intentions in mind for them anyway. Unfortunately for me, I didn't build up enough brownie Paragon points with random, completely unrelated NPCs for the former option, so I had no choice but to pick option A.
Oh no, not a party member I had no particular attachment to and whom I never once used anyway! Oh, the humanity!
Seriously though, this Paragon/Renegade mechanic is fucking lame and rarely ever achieves its "thought provoking" purpose. I can get not helping the insect race even if you're going for a "good guy" character since they were allegedly a pretty big threat to the whole galaxy at one point. But having a long-time ally go turncoat in a bid save his own species and then just shooting him without batting an eye doesn't mean you're "doing the right thing" by any measuring stick - it means you're a fucking douchebag who just views everyone around him as expendable. Not being able to talk him down because I didn't pick enough "nice guy" options during mundane dialog with other, unrelated characters is just about the worst way I can think of to handle it too. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Deus Ex: Human Revolution did this a lot better with its "battle of words" segments - you frequently had to talk characters down, and it wasn't always readily evident what the "right" options were - you had to be smart enough to spot and play to the flaws in their reasoning and hope they came to see your point of view, and, in at least a few cases, they would actually use your previous choices against you in their own arguments. And yes, that game came out several years after this one, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a far better mechanic!
Anyway, not long after that I came to a dead end and I couldn't figure out how to proceed, but then I remembered I wasn't having any fun anyway and just shut down the game, uninstalled, and deleted it from my Steam library. The end.
And that's Mass Effect in a nutshell - mediocre, formulaic, derivative and utterly forgettable in every respect. The plot borrows liberally from several other big names in gaming and science fiction like 2001, Star Trek, Starflight, Starcraft, Wing Commander, Star Control and Xenosaga, but makes absolutely no attempt to put their own spin on them or leave the player with any open-ended questions to think about. The gameplay has no pop or challenge to it - it's just another forgettable cover shooter with regenerating health and bad enemy AI that you'll learn to outsmart within the first few battles you encounter, turning the rest of the experience into a mindless slog. There's not even anything compelling on the RPG front as the unified skill set is lazily implemented, the party AI is terrible, the characters are stock (besides the whole "everyone is bisexual" thing, which is neither realistic nor interesting. And since they're clearly only using that element to score easy brownie points and frame anyone who criticizes their game for any reason as a straw man, you can add disingenuous and manipulative to that list too) and the boolean-choice narrative is boring, lazy and asinine in the extreme. Mass Effect is not a good RPG, it's not a good shooter, and it certainly isn't a very good story. Hell, I think Kingdom Hearts actually does a better job as a space opera than Mass Effect ever did; yes, Kingdom Hearts' dialog is also corny and the plot is also a run through every schmaltzy genre trope and stock character and half-assed mythological reference the developers could think of, but at least that franchise knows how to carry a continuous narrative without having to rely on a lazy plot encyclopedia to fill in the blanks. Not to mention the acting, animation, combat, and overall world design are a lot more interesting, polished and entertaining, and the vehicle sections don't suck nearly as hard either. I'm not even kidding; Kingdom Hearts is better at being a space opera, and a video game, than Mass Effect. It even treats gay characters with more dignity, tact and respect than Mass Effect ever does, so there's another dead talking point for you. Also, if you're going to appropriate anything from Star Control, at least make it the awesome tracker music or the sense of humor from 2, not the stupid plotline from the game that killed the series...
Oh, and speaking of storytelling, Mass Effect doesn't even need to be a trilogy. This series does not have three games of worthwhile content; not even close. You could easily cut out half the cast and and all the boring speechifying and the filler missions and you'd have a decent fifteen-hour story rather than a drawn out, self-serving bore that never has any logical progression of events and only stops abruptly at the end when the director finally says "okay, that's probably enough to make the suits happy". The push to stretch out every science fiction series into a trilogy just so people start drawing comparisons to Star Wars (a mediocre, sloppily thatched-together franchise in its own right) is cheap coat-tail riding and, quite frankly, just an underhanded way to gouge your customers for more money. To say nothing of this infamous screen:
...Yeah.
And before I get e-mails about it: yes, I did give Mass Effect 2 a try at the behest of a few series fans, and while it is a better game than the first, it still falls well short of being what I would consider a good game. The game's pacing certainly benefits from its streamlined design and combat is significantly more involving and strategic, but nearly all of the major gripes I had with ME1 are still there. The characters and environments are still generic at best and uninspired at worst, the writing is still derivative and dry (particularly the corny Gollum-voiced evil lizard stock villains, which caused me to break down into a fit of laughter the first time I heard them), and it's still abundantly clear that none of the actors are the slightest bit invested in the project beyond the promise of an easy paycheck. Certainly not worthy of being listed as one of the twenty greatest games of all time on Game Rankings, let alone any top twenty I can think of. Well, except maybe the Top Twenty Games With the Most Undeserved, Overblown and Mindlessly Positive Press Coverage That EA Purchased in 2010.
Killer7 Target 01: Sunset (Part 1) (Twitch.tv stream)
Part 2 of the crazy. -- Watch live at http://www.twitch.tv/spoonshiro
Killer7 Target 00: Angel (Twitch.tv stream)
This game is crazy as hell, but I love it.
I don't think I'm going to do commentary for this one; it speaks for itself pretty well.
I don't think I'm going to do commentary for this one; it speaks for itself pretty well.
8/14/2015
Spoony Plays Grandia, Part 7
After more Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam styled antics, we make our way to Luc Village.
8/13/2015
Old Article Revival: Top Ten Worst Save Features
Just to prove that I can make a top ten about anything.
But first, a couple of honorable mentions.
10. Mach Rider and ExciteBike (NES)
Mach Rider and Excitebike are fairly obscure games today, but they has a legacy as some of the very first titles released for both the NES and the Famicom, and still enjoy a small cult following. In their rush to port Famicom games to America, though Nintendo would often cut corners, from simply throwing simple pin connectors onto Famicom boards (which clever fans can utilize to play imports without a third party adapter) to porting over games without bothering to remove code for unused features. These two games are an example of the latter; they both features a custom course builder that required a tape-driven peripheral called a Famicom Data Recorder to save custom-made tracks. In the NES version, though, attempting to save or load a track will simply hang the game as it tries to access a device that's not there. Perhaps the funniest part, though, is that even the manual explains that the options don't work and even gives a pithy excuse that they were left in "for potential product developments."
Thankfully, the Virtual Console release addresses this issue and allows custom tracks to be saved and loaded as intended.
9. Boogerman (SNES/GEN)
A below-average platformer released in the mid-90s by Interplay, Boogerman's password system is the first one I can recall that perplexed me. You don't save your progress with a series of letters, numbers, or even symbols - you use character sprites. Yeah, they expect you to write down "Scab Creature, Fart Ghost, Abdominal Sewer Man, Boogerman" if you want to come back to your game later. At least it's only four characters long, I suppose.
8. Hydlide (NES)
A simplistic RPG from the early 80s that remains a cult classic in Japan but never really had a chance in the rest of the world (primarily due to not seeing a release there until Zelda had been out for over two years), it also featured one of gaming's most confusing save systems. Well, okay, it's not too bad once you know how it works, but it certainly isn't very inuitive. I'll explain; the game has both a "save/load" feature and a password system, but they both serve very distinct purposes. Save/load essentially serves as a savestate - you can save the game at any time and reload to end up at that exact point. So where does the password come in? Well, the savestate data isn't backed up to any internal RAM - in fact, Hydlide doesn't have internal RAM at all, so the savestate data is erased once you shut off the game. If you want to be able to shut off the system and come back to it later, you'll need to write down the password and punch it in.
7. Mega Man's Soccer (SNES)
Mega Man's Soccer is a game that's notorious for being released incomplete, to the point that the means of accessing the ending and credits weren't even programmed in (the game simply boots you back to the title screen after winning the last match) and there's a "hidden" team that can only be accessed via Game Genie or a similar device. But that's not why we're here, so let's get back on topic. Most Mega Man password systems aren't too bad; you simply plunk down 5-6 dots on a 6x6 grid and you're good to go. Sometimes there's more than one color of dot, but that's not too big of an issue. But this one, oh hell:
IS THIS REALLY NECESSARY?!
6. Christmas Crisis (Philips CD-i)
Here's one for a game you've probably never played on a console you probably never bothered with. As highlighted in Mikeyspiky's review, this game's password system is downright asinine. Not only does it use SYMBOLS in place of numbers or letters, you're given only a few seconds to write it down, so you'd better draw fast or have a good memory. But if that's not bad enough, get this - the symbols aren't even shown in plain sight on the title screen, they're all obfuscated by numbered calendar pages. You have to decode what calendar number maps to what symbol just to punch the goddamn thing in.
5. Etrian Odyssey 1/2 (Nintendo DS)
It's pretty rare to see a password system on a platform this recent, but they do make an occasional return, usually as a means to import data between players or different games. Etrian Odyssey is one such case, allowing you to input a password the first game gets you to get a couple new items and some other fringe benefits in Etrian Odyssey II. However, it's not very well implemented. Not only is it an extremely long code to punch in (45 characters), it utilizes a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numbers, and it's also quite buggy - many users (myself included) would punch it in exactly as shown and get nothing for their work, eventually forcing Atlus to release one that was confirmed to work in order to address complaints. Unsurprisingly, the 3DS remakes of the first two EO games discard this feature entirely, instead transferring data between titles via optional "Extra Data" files stored to the system's SD card.
4. Rambo (NES)
Ah yes, Rambo. A shoddy clone of Zelda II created by the masters of 8-bit crap, Pack-in Video (the same guys who brought you Knight Rider, Thunderbirds, Die Hard and that horrendous Predator game). But without question, one of the game's worst facets is its password system. It's obnoxiously long (32 characters) and utilizes uppercase, lowercase, numbers and even punctuation, making it a total nightmare to write down. On top of all of that, the game is notorious for handing out bad and invalid passwords, which can unfairly force you to repeat a lot of work. The best advice I can give (if you actually want to play this game for some unfathomable reason) is to get no less than three passwords at each checkpoint before you shut the system off.
3. River City Ransom (NES)
One of the finest sidescrolling beat-em-up/RPG hybrids ever made. Actually, probably one of the only sidescrolling beat-em-up/RPG hybrids ever made. But man, is its password system a nightmare. 33 characters with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols and even apostophes that can go over letters just to make it even more annoying. But even stranger, if you exit the screen and come right back in without doing anything in between, the game hands out a completely different password that gives you the exact same stats upon punching it in. I have no idea how this thing even works!
2. Maniac Mansion (Famicom)
The US version of Maniac Mansion is a game with an amazingly complex and well composed soundtrack for the NES, and my personal pick for the greatest adventure game of all time. However, not too many people know that two years before its release, the Famicom got an entirely different version; while it did feature uncensored violence (unlike the US version), it also lacked screen scrolling and had pretty bad sound. But undoubtedly the biggest step down was that rather than utilizing a disk or battery backup, this version of the game had passwords that were a whopping 104 characters long.
No, your eyes do not deceive you. 104. Fucking. Characters. I don't know about you, but I'd rather just start over than spend twenty minutes punching all that shit in!
UPDATE: TCRF reveals a hidden apology for the atrocious password system in the game.
Yes, if you want to carry over all of your character stats and items to the second game, you need to first complete the game, find the hidden menu that gives you the password, and then punch it all into the second game on a menu spread out over six pages. Aye. To Camelot's slight credit, though, they do omit some of the characters that are easy to confuse such the letter O and the number 0, as well as the uppercase I, lowercase l and the number 1... but inexplicably decided to keep the upper and lowercase S letters and the number 5, as well the lower-case i and j and an exclamation point, so there's still plenty of confusion to be had unless your handwriting or typing is impeccable. Not to mention you're doing all of this with a D-pad; Etrian Odyssey at least had the benefit of a touch screen!
Also to their credit, they offer an alternate solution to transfer data via a system link cable instead; yes, that requires two systems, a copy of each game and the link cable itself, but it is a far less headache-inducing alternative to typing in all of that nonsense by hand!
But first, a couple of honorable mentions.
- The Sega CD console itself has an internal battery that saves games. I'm sure it worked fine at the time of its release, but nowadays the things are so old and worn out that they're all but guaranteed to lose all data within minutes of powering off the system. So if you're looking to add a Sega CD to your collection, try and track down a RAM cart too - they're not cheap, but you'll need one for games like Popful Mail and Lunar. Thankfully, Sega acknowledged this problem with the Saturn and relocated the battery slot to a small hatch on the back, so you can easily swap it out once it dies.
- Swords & Serpents on the NES actually has five different passwords - one to track your progress through the dungeon, and one for each of your four characters' statistics and inventory. They're not too bad as passwords go (13 characters each) but it does make you wonder why they didn't just spring for a battery backup instead.
10. Mach Rider and ExciteBike (NES)
Mach Rider and Excitebike are fairly obscure games today, but they has a legacy as some of the very first titles released for both the NES and the Famicom, and still enjoy a small cult following. In their rush to port Famicom games to America, though Nintendo would often cut corners, from simply throwing simple pin connectors onto Famicom boards (which clever fans can utilize to play imports without a third party adapter) to porting over games without bothering to remove code for unused features. These two games are an example of the latter; they both features a custom course builder that required a tape-driven peripheral called a Famicom Data Recorder to save custom-made tracks. In the NES version, though, attempting to save or load a track will simply hang the game as it tries to access a device that's not there. Perhaps the funniest part, though, is that even the manual explains that the options don't work and even gives a pithy excuse that they were left in "for potential product developments."
Thankfully, the Virtual Console release addresses this issue and allows custom tracks to be saved and loaded as intended.
9. Boogerman (SNES/GEN)
A below-average platformer released in the mid-90s by Interplay, Boogerman's password system is the first one I can recall that perplexed me. You don't save your progress with a series of letters, numbers, or even symbols - you use character sprites. Yeah, they expect you to write down "Scab Creature, Fart Ghost, Abdominal Sewer Man, Boogerman" if you want to come back to your game later. At least it's only four characters long, I suppose.
8. Hydlide (NES)
A simplistic RPG from the early 80s that remains a cult classic in Japan but never really had a chance in the rest of the world (primarily due to not seeing a release there until Zelda had been out for over two years), it also featured one of gaming's most confusing save systems. Well, okay, it's not too bad once you know how it works, but it certainly isn't very inuitive. I'll explain; the game has both a "save/load" feature and a password system, but they both serve very distinct purposes. Save/load essentially serves as a savestate - you can save the game at any time and reload to end up at that exact point. So where does the password come in? Well, the savestate data isn't backed up to any internal RAM - in fact, Hydlide doesn't have internal RAM at all, so the savestate data is erased once you shut off the game. If you want to be able to shut off the system and come back to it later, you'll need to write down the password and punch it in.
7. Mega Man's Soccer (SNES)
Mega Man's Soccer is a game that's notorious for being released incomplete, to the point that the means of accessing the ending and credits weren't even programmed in (the game simply boots you back to the title screen after winning the last match) and there's a "hidden" team that can only be accessed via Game Genie or a similar device. But that's not why we're here, so let's get back on topic. Most Mega Man password systems aren't too bad; you simply plunk down 5-6 dots on a 6x6 grid and you're good to go. Sometimes there's more than one color of dot, but that's not too big of an issue. But this one, oh hell:
IS THIS REALLY NECESSARY?!
6. Christmas Crisis (Philips CD-i)
Here's one for a game you've probably never played on a console you probably never bothered with. As highlighted in Mikeyspiky's review, this game's password system is downright asinine. Not only does it use SYMBOLS in place of numbers or letters, you're given only a few seconds to write it down, so you'd better draw fast or have a good memory. But if that's not bad enough, get this - the symbols aren't even shown in plain sight on the title screen, they're all obfuscated by numbered calendar pages. You have to decode what calendar number maps to what symbol just to punch the goddamn thing in.
5. Etrian Odyssey 1/2 (Nintendo DS)
It's pretty rare to see a password system on a platform this recent, but they do make an occasional return, usually as a means to import data between players or different games. Etrian Odyssey is one such case, allowing you to input a password the first game gets you to get a couple new items and some other fringe benefits in Etrian Odyssey II. However, it's not very well implemented. Not only is it an extremely long code to punch in (45 characters), it utilizes a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numbers, and it's also quite buggy - many users (myself included) would punch it in exactly as shown and get nothing for their work, eventually forcing Atlus to release one that was confirmed to work in order to address complaints. Unsurprisingly, the 3DS remakes of the first two EO games discard this feature entirely, instead transferring data between titles via optional "Extra Data" files stored to the system's SD card.
4. Rambo (NES)
Ah yes, Rambo. A shoddy clone of Zelda II created by the masters of 8-bit crap, Pack-in Video (the same guys who brought you Knight Rider, Thunderbirds, Die Hard and that horrendous Predator game). But without question, one of the game's worst facets is its password system. It's obnoxiously long (32 characters) and utilizes uppercase, lowercase, numbers and even punctuation, making it a total nightmare to write down. On top of all of that, the game is notorious for handing out bad and invalid passwords, which can unfairly force you to repeat a lot of work. The best advice I can give (if you actually want to play this game for some unfathomable reason) is to get no less than three passwords at each checkpoint before you shut the system off.
3. River City Ransom (NES)
One of the finest sidescrolling beat-em-up/RPG hybrids ever made. Actually, probably one of the only sidescrolling beat-em-up/RPG hybrids ever made. But man, is its password system a nightmare. 33 characters with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols and even apostophes that can go over letters just to make it even more annoying. But even stranger, if you exit the screen and come right back in without doing anything in between, the game hands out a completely different password that gives you the exact same stats upon punching it in. I have no idea how this thing even works!
2. Maniac Mansion (Famicom)
The US version of Maniac Mansion is a game with an amazingly complex and well composed soundtrack for the NES, and my personal pick for the greatest adventure game of all time. However, not too many people know that two years before its release, the Famicom got an entirely different version; while it did feature uncensored violence (unlike the US version), it also lacked screen scrolling and had pretty bad sound. But undoubtedly the biggest step down was that rather than utilizing a disk or battery backup, this version of the game had passwords that were a whopping 104 characters long.
No, your eyes do not deceive you. 104. Fucking. Characters. I don't know about you, but I'd rather just start over than spend twenty minutes punching all that shit in!
UPDATE: TCRF reveals a hidden apology for the atrocious password system in the game.
1. Golden Sun: Lost Age (Game Boy Advance)
Oh, you thought 104 characters for a password was bad? Well, how about we double down on the crazy and have you punch in a password consisting of 260 characters instead?
Yes, if you want to carry over all of your character stats and items to the second game, you need to first complete the game, find the hidden menu that gives you the password, and then punch it all into the second game on a menu spread out over six pages. Aye. To Camelot's slight credit, though, they do omit some of the characters that are easy to confuse such the letter O and the number 0, as well as the uppercase I, lowercase l and the number 1... but inexplicably decided to keep the upper and lowercase S letters and the number 5, as well the lower-case i and j and an exclamation point, so there's still plenty of confusion to be had unless your handwriting or typing is impeccable. Not to mention you're doing all of this with a D-pad; Etrian Odyssey at least had the benefit of a touch screen!
Also to their credit, they offer an alternate solution to transfer data via a system link cable instead; yes, that requires two systems, a copy of each game and the link cable itself, but it is a far less headache-inducing alternative to typing in all of that nonsense by hand!
8/12/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan, Part 8 (Finale)
WARNING: This video contains rapidly shaking/flickering images which may cause motion sickness or epileptic seizures.
Let's become the Titan of Ether and blow this poor controlling, stunlock-ridden, overly frustrating and incomplete popsicle stand once and for all!
So, what's our lesson this time?
...Well, alright, that's not true. For all its problems, Pagan does show a modicum of realism by having a pretty interesting moral dilemma.
The good of the Avatar's actions on Pagan are dubious at best; he carries out a murders to advance through the Sorcerers' ranks and eventually seizes power from the Titans themselves, resulting in devastating natural disasters and an enormous power vacuum left after their destruction... all so he can return to Britannia and stop the Guardian. However, it is established quite clearly that the four Titans are in the service of the Guardian and that they clearly do not have the populace's best interests in mind, so one could argue that they come out ahead in the end despite the suffering the Avatar brings upon them through his actions.
More than anything, Pagan perhaps best highlights the moral and tonal shift that the third arc of the Ultima series introduced, showing that heroes rarely achieve a total victory and that doing the right thing doesn't mean being popular with everyone (or even the majority of people). Ultimas 5 and 6 were pretty one-sided in their morality, but 7 and Pagan show that there is always a gray area, and that sacrifices often have to be made for the greater good. Which is a lesson a lot of modern RPGs could take notes from, incidentally.
Something else to note is that Ultima IX's original story (the "Bob White Plot") heavily implies that the Avatar is unwittingly acting in accordance with another of the Guardian's plans. Namely, that the Guardian is discreetly manipulating events throughout Pagan and Ascension, forcing the Avatar to commit reprehensible acts in his quest in order to sow distrust between him and Lord British, which would eventually set the two against one another and leave the Guardian free to destroy Britannia unimpeded. However, this is completely discarded in the released version of Ascension, with the story almost entirely rewritten and most of the FMVs created for the original plot repurposed (which results in nonsensical elements like the Avatar summoning Pyros in order to open a dungeon).
Let's become the Titan of Ether and blow this poor controlling, stunlock-ridden, overly frustrating and incomplete popsicle stand once and for all!
So, what's our lesson this time?
...Well, alright, that's not true. For all its problems, Pagan does show a modicum of realism by having a pretty interesting moral dilemma.
The good of the Avatar's actions on Pagan are dubious at best; he carries out a murders to advance through the Sorcerers' ranks and eventually seizes power from the Titans themselves, resulting in devastating natural disasters and an enormous power vacuum left after their destruction... all so he can return to Britannia and stop the Guardian. However, it is established quite clearly that the four Titans are in the service of the Guardian and that they clearly do not have the populace's best interests in mind, so one could argue that they come out ahead in the end despite the suffering the Avatar brings upon them through his actions.
More than anything, Pagan perhaps best highlights the moral and tonal shift that the third arc of the Ultima series introduced, showing that heroes rarely achieve a total victory and that doing the right thing doesn't mean being popular with everyone (or even the majority of people). Ultimas 5 and 6 were pretty one-sided in their morality, but 7 and Pagan show that there is always a gray area, and that sacrifices often have to be made for the greater good. Which is a lesson a lot of modern RPGs could take notes from, incidentally.
Something else to note is that Ultima IX's original story (the "Bob White Plot") heavily implies that the Avatar is unwittingly acting in accordance with another of the Guardian's plans. Namely, that the Guardian is discreetly manipulating events throughout Pagan and Ascension, forcing the Avatar to commit reprehensible acts in his quest in order to sow distrust between him and Lord British, which would eventually set the two against one another and leave the Guardian free to destroy Britannia unimpeded. However, this is completely discarded in the released version of Ascension, with the story almost entirely rewritten and most of the FMVs created for the original plot repurposed (which results in nonsensical elements like the Avatar summoning Pyros in order to open a dungeon).
8/11/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan, Part 7
Sorcery, like most things in the game, proves to be enragingly clumsy and asinine, so I just say "fuck it" and turn on the Cheat Menu to pass the test of Sorcery.
8/05/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan Bonus: Cheat Room and Debug Menu
While not quite as impressive as Ultima VII's debug menu, Pagan does have one of its own. However, you cannot access it via the command line; instead, you must hex-edit a game file to enable it. Use a hex editor to open AVATAR.DAT (located in the GAMEDAT directory) and change the values at offsets 2A and 2B to 01. Now start the game up and you should be able to utilize the key commands, as well as access the cheat menu by single-clicking on the Avatar.
I already showed off a few of its functions in the playthrough (namely Hackmover and being able to cast any spell, heedless of reagents or foci), but there are a few other features one can enable as well. The TCRF page has a comprehensive list.
I also tried to show off the memory/flag editor that comes up when you press F9, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work very well under DOSBox (or in general, for that matter). As this page highlights, though, you can use it to enable some otherwise unused functions, including water-walking and lava-walking.
This page also shows off some other curious leftovers and extra items in the game.
Ultima VIII also has a cheat room of sorts, though it's also not as impressive as those of its predecessors. You get there from the Lower Catacombs, an entirely optional area accessible from the Upper Catacombs.
To get to the Lower Catacombs, head east from the Birthplace of Moriens sign in the Upper Catacombs, then head south, going past the ledge with the chest on it and a broken staircase to a gate. It will close as you approach; just go back and approach it again and it should open. Follow that path to the end to find a door labeled "To Lower Catacombs." Use the Key of the Scion to open it and enter.
This room contains almost every magical weapon in the game, as well as tons of explosives and scrolls and every type of shield and helmet. Walk to the south corner of the room to be teleported out.
For some more content that was cut from the game, check out this page on the Ultima Wiki.
And as ever, I also highly recommend IT-HE Software's anti-walkthrough of the game, which contains many sequence breaking tricks and other humorous tomfoolery.
I already showed off a few of its functions in the playthrough (namely Hackmover and being able to cast any spell, heedless of reagents or foci), but there are a few other features one can enable as well. The TCRF page has a comprehensive list.
I also tried to show off the memory/flag editor that comes up when you press F9, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work very well under DOSBox (or in general, for that matter). As this page highlights, though, you can use it to enable some otherwise unused functions, including water-walking and lava-walking.
This page also shows off some other curious leftovers and extra items in the game.
Ultima VIII also has a cheat room of sorts, though it's also not as impressive as those of its predecessors. You get there from the Lower Catacombs, an entirely optional area accessible from the Upper Catacombs.
To get to the Lower Catacombs, head east from the Birthplace of Moriens sign in the Upper Catacombs, then head south, going past the ledge with the chest on it and a broken staircase to a gate. It will close as you approach; just go back and approach it again and it should open. Follow that path to the end to find a door labeled "To Lower Catacombs." Use the Key of the Scion to open it and enter.
This room contains almost every magical weapon in the game, as well as tons of explosives and scrolls and every type of shield and helmet. Walk to the south corner of the room to be teleported out.
For some more content that was cut from the game, check out this page on the Ultima Wiki.
And as ever, I also highly recommend IT-HE Software's anti-walkthrough of the game, which contains many sequence breaking tricks and other humorous tomfoolery.
8/04/2015
Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan, Part 6
The save file name says it all, really. Oh, and it has another one of those "talk to everyone and exhaust every dialog option until you trip an arbitrary plot flag" puzzles, which is a big pet peeve of mine...
Oh, and I guess we also become an Adept of Theurgy and get double-crossed by Hydros.
Oh, and I guess we also become an Adept of Theurgy and get double-crossed by Hydros.
8/01/2015
Quick-and-dirty Shadowrun (SNES) guide
By Spoony Spoonicus ©2015. May not be reproduced or republished without permission.
Karma
Stats
Skills
Spells
Equipment
Walkthrough
You don't really have catch-all "experience levels" in Shadowrun. Instead you get Karma, which can be spent to improve your skills or your core statistics. Karma is primarily earned by defeating enemies to earn experience. Eight experience points equals one Karma. Nearly all normal enemies in the game give a flat 1 or 2 experience, but most boss characters and scripted encounters give significantly more.
Karma is spent while you're resting at a bed, and can be used to improve your stats or any skills or magic you currently have available. The cost to upgrade a skill is equal to that skill's current level; for example, upgrading Body from level 3 to 4 costs 3 Karma, from 4 to 5 costs 4 Karma, and so on. Most skills only go up to level six, but Body, Magic and Firearms can go much higher.
Body
Determines your maximum HP on a simple formula of 10 * Body level, with the maximum being 20 for 200 points. This stat is absolutely invaluable, especially early on; boost this to at least 6 before entering the Caryard, and at least 10 before you leave. Over the course of the rest of the game you'll want to raise it higher, but it should take a backseat to other important abilities you need to learn.
Magic
Determines your maximum MP total, on the same formula as Body - Magic * 10 for a max of 200 points at level 20. Very useful to have and a good thing to dump your extra points into (especially once you get the Heal spell), but again, it should take a backseat to more important things that come up.
Becomes available once you get your first spell.
Strength
Determines what equipment you can equip. Maxes out at 6, at which point you can equip the biggest, heaviest, and best equipment in the game. You won't get those until a good while in, though, so stick to 3 at first, upgrade to 4 once you hit the Caryard (to equip the shotgun), and only worry about maxing it out once you hit the endgame.
Charisma
Determines the number of Shadowrunners you can hire, on a simple formula of Charisma/2, rounded down. If you plan to hire a party of Shadowrunners, this is an essential skill to have. Otherwise, just ignore it.
Firearms
Determines your accuracy with all firearms, and only that; it has absolutely no effect on damage output. Maxes out at 16. Push it up to 6 before entering the Caryard so you can do well at the arena, and maybe push it up to 7 or 8 if you find yourself missing a lot of shots. Anything higher than that tends to be a waste of points.
Computer
This is essentially the Firearms skill equivalent when working in the Matrix, determining your accuracy in hitting ICs. Maximum level is 6. Maxing it out is essential later on, but you can ignore it in the early stages, since you won't be doing any hacking until a good while in.
Leadership
Determines how long hired Shadowrunners stay with you (in number of battles). Good to have if you plan to hire help, but if you're going it solo (or with just Kitsune) you can safely ignore this. Maximum level is 6. Unlocked once you buy the Skill Software from Dr. Maplethorpe.
Negotiation
Allows you to negotiate lower prices in some circumstances, most notably when hiring Shadowrunners. Worth raising to 2 once you hit the Caryard to save a bit of cash, but pretty pointless outside of that unless you plan to party with higher-end Shadowrunners on a frequent basis. Learned from the arena master in the Caryard. Maximum level is 6.
Armed Combat
A skill unavailable to Jake, but some Shadowrunners have it listed in their statistics to show that they can fight at melee range as well. It doesn't actually factor into their combat abilities at all; it's just for show.
Unarmed Combat
Same as Armed Combat - it's just for show on Shadowrunners that have some melee combat abilities. Jake cannot learn it under any circumstances short of cheating (and even then it has no effect).
All of Jake's spells max out at Level 6.
Heal
Restores 15 HP per level on yourself or one of your allies. I'm sure you can see how valuable that is; Slap Patches only restore 10 HP apiece (which isn't much once you advance past the early stages) and run you 100 Nuyen apiece, while this only costs MP and restores up to 90 HP at a time. Absolutely essential to have; max it out as soon as you get it.
Restoration formula: 15 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required components: Dog collar, Magic Fetish, Leaves
Powerball
An attack spell with high damage output. Not very useful honestly, since it has just as much chance to do 1 damage as it does to do 30+ damage. Just stick to guns, since they have a higher and more reliable DPS overall.
Damage Formula: 6 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required components: Paperweight, Ghoul Bone
Invisibility
As its name implies, this makes the spell's target invisible, making enemies unable to target them (though they may still get hit by a stray shot or two aimed at someone else). Raising the spell level increases the duration. An extremely useful spell to have, and it can be a life-saver in big and fierce gun battles (or just a useful way to draw fire away from your squishier Shadowrunners). Some bosses and tougher foes can see through invisibility, however.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
Required components: Potion Bottles (filled with Clean Water and Dirty Water)
Freeze
Encases an enemy in ice, taking them out of the battle for several seconds. They can still be harmed while in this state, which essentially renders them a sitting duck. Comes in handy against very big, tough foes, but not so much in big firefights with a lot of weaker enemies. Up to four enemies can be frozen at one time.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required Components: Black Bottle (filled with Octopus Ink), Mermaid Scales
Summon Spirit
Another offensive spell that targets all enemies on the screen, doing up to 36 damage to each of them. More useful than Powerball in that you don't need to select a specific target to hit, but unfortunately still not that great - its high MP cost and long casting delay don't make it very practical to use, except as an occasional quick screen-clearer. Most of the time, using Invisibility and just gunning your enemies down is a more efficient option.
Damage Formula: 6 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 2 * (4 + Spell Level)
Required components: Dog Tags, Dog Collar
Armor
A spell that gives you 30 extra points of armor, effectively rendering you invulnerable for its duration; however, you can still be hit and will be stunned when hit. This would have been a useful spell if you got it earlier in the game, as it would allow you to tank through bosses and tough enemies. However, Invisibility does the same job better and is available sooner, so Armor's usefulness is unfortunately limited at best.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
Required components: Mermaid Scales, Serpent Scales
Equipment
Weapons
*The Uzi also has a unique benefit in that it has auto-fire - you can simply hold down the button to fire the weapon rapidly instead of having to repeatedly tap it.
Armor
There is a "bulletproof vest" in the Dark Blade weapon shop, but you can never actually buy it. This was apparently fixed in some of the European releases though.
Important items will also be indicated in bold. Keywords and phone numbers will be indicated in bold italics.
King refuses to let you out unless you pay him 4000 nuyen. Another option is to fight him, but you're probably a bit underleveled for that at this stage. So instead, head east one screen to the Arena. Here, you can talk to the owner and fight in a series of battles, which offers some hefty cash rewards. Just be sure to heal up and save in between each fight, as they do get very tough after your first few wins. If you're having trouble with a fight, exit the arena and go to the small area out the southeast exit of the Caryard to power up.
1. Gang Member - 300 Nuyen
2. Heavy Dude - 700 Nuyen
3. Heavy Dude - 1000 Nuyen
4. Mage - 2000 Nuyen
5. Mage - 3000 Nuyen
The first five fights are pretty easy; you should have no problem beating them with around 5 in Body and Firearms. Once round six hits, however, things get much tougher.
6. Samurai Warrior - 4000 Nuyen
This guy totes an automatic weapon that can drain your health very quickly. However, if you fight him in close quarters, he'll wield a knife instead, which does considerably less damage and has a much lower firerate. So get up close to him and shoot him until he goes down.
7. Ferocious Orc - 5000 Nuyen
This is a tricky one, since he meanders around a lot (making it tough to draw a bead on him) and fires bursts of shots at you for pretty hefty damage. You'll probably want an 8 or 9 in Body and at least an 8 in Firearms before taking him on.
8. Gang Leader - 6000 Nuyen
This guy is definitely one of the toughest the arena has to offer. He moves around very quickly, circling around you and bobbing off-screen to throw off your aim, all the while pelting you with automatic gunfire that will quickly drain your health. You may not be able to win this one without upgrading your equipment.
9. Troll Decker - 7000 Nuyen
A very dangerous opponent, having a high amount of HP as well as a powerful rapid-firing weapon that can hit for double digit damage. You will almost certainly need to upgrade gear to beat this guy.
10. Mage - 8000 Nuyen
Considerably easier than his predecessors, but he can still be a challenge. The mage creates up to four duplicates of himself to attack you, and having five guys firing at you at a time can make it easy to get stun-locked. The clones die in only a couple of shots, so you have to balance between keeping the clones relatively low and training your shots on the real mage to avoid being overwhelmed. Still, if you got past the Gang Leader and the Troll Decker, this shouldn't be too difficult to handle.
You can also talk to the arena owner about "Negotiation" to learn the skill from him; however, he'll charge you 1000 Nuyen for the privilege. You can also ask him about "King" to challenge the King in the arena; he won't go down easily, but defeating him earns you 3000 Nuyen and a pretty hefty chunk of experience. This is the more lucrative option for leaving the caryard in the long run, though you may have to power up a bit to make it through (9 or 10 Body should do the trick).
If you don't want to fight the King, you can raise Negotiation to level 2, which will cause him to lower his price down to a more reasonable 2000 Nuyen. Since you need to pay 1000 to learn the Negotation skill, though, you only really save 1000 Nuyen. Not to mention you come out 6000 Nuyen short when you factor in the 3000 Nuyen gain from beating him!
Whether by the gun or through bribery, though, you'll eventually be able to leave the caryard and reach Old Town. Immediately to your left as you exit are the local monorail station and the Sputnik Club (where more mediocre Shadowrunners can be hired). Go past them and up the street to the northwest; here, you'll find an artillery shop and a talisman shop. Enter the weapon shop first, and purchase the Defiance T-250 Shotgun for 15,000 Nuyen; while expensive, the damage and accuracy upgrades it provides are well worth the price. You will need 4 Strength to wield it, though, so get that first if you don't have it yet.
Grab the Mesh Jacket too if you can spare the expense; you can sell your old pistol (200) and leather jacket (1000) to offset the cost. With these equipped, and a decent Body score and a bit of luck, you should now be able to return to the arena and clear out the remaining challengers.
Now check out the Talisman shop. You can save a bit of time by buying everything here now, but it's not really necessary to do so. Keep these items in mind, though, as we will need the Stake to defeat a certain enemy and the other two items will be necessary to learn two very useful spells. For now, talk to the store owner to learn the keyword Talismans. Ask about that to learn the keyword Shaman and get the talisman store owner's phone number.
Make sure you have at least 2000 Nuyen before you continue onward.
When you're ready to move on, head down the alley just south of the shops to find Ed's Patch n' Fix, a street doc. Ask him about your datajack and he'll investigate it for 500 Nuyen... and inadvertently activate the Cortex Bomb in your head. Talk to him again and ask about the Cortex Bomb to get your 500 nuyen back, then ask him about Street Doc to get referred to Doctor Maplethorpe downtown.
We'd best head there right away, as that bomb in your head will detonate in 30 hours (which equates to 30 minutes of real time). So go to the monorail station and take the northern monorail to Downtown.
Downtown
As soon as you step off the monorail, you'll be attacked by some orcs; take them out, and one will mention the Rust Stilettos with his dying breath. He also drops an Iron Key, which you should pick up, and another Dog acolyte shows up shortly thereafter to give you some more cryptic words. Whoever Dog and the Rust Stilettos are, we'll just have to worry about them later; that bomb in your head takes priority!
Alright. This is by far the biggest map area in the game and it's easy to get lost when you first visit, so here's the quickest route to Dr. Maplethorpe's. Exit the station via the southeast exit, then take the northeast exit in the market. Cross the street (avoiding the traffic) and go southeast down the sidewalk on the other side (don't approach the big building here - the enemies outside are seriously badass). Continue down to the next screen, then enter the door to your right.
Talk to the secretary and tell her about the Cortex Bomb; she'll let you in to see Dr. Maplethorpe, but will still charge you 2,000 nuyen for it, hence why I told you to save that much cash. Talk to Maplethorpe about the bomb and he'll disable it and then try to sell you on some Cyberware. Ask him about that to learn the keyword Matrix Systems. You can also ask him about "healing" to buy Slap Patches from him (100 Nuyen each) and purchase two pieces of Cyberware from him.
Skill Software - 3000 Nuyen, teaches the Leadership skill (which keeps hired Shadowrunners around longer).
Boosted Reflexes - 15,000 Nuyen, raises the rate at which you fire weapons.
Skill Software is only useful if you plan to hire Shadowrunners, but Boosted Reflexes is a very worthy investment, raising your weapon fire rate and allowing you to deal more damage in a shorter period of time. Very useful to have, especially since we'll be hitting a lot of very long enemy gauntlets from this point on. This should be your next purchase, especially since you're probably close to 15,000 Nuyen (if not over it) from clearing out the arena. If not, keep it in mind and come back for it a bit later.
With the bomb out of his head, Jake can now utilize his Datajack (in conjunction with the Cyberdeck) to enter the Matrix and begin hacking. Top off your Computer skill as soon as possible; it will make your life much easier when dealing with the Matrix. For now, you can head back to Glutman's office on Tenth Street and hack his computer for 1,000 Nuyen.
Our next stop is the docks; from the marketplace, head out the west exit, then go south, past the Drake building, and west again once you hit the wall. Go past this screen and you will come out on the docks. The enemies here are significantly tougher than those you've encountered to this point, so I really hope you bought the Shotgun and Mesh Vest. Head down to the end of the dock on the first screen and talk to the guy here to learn the keyword Docks. The first door you come to on the second screen also leads you to a small office with another computer you can hack for 2,000 Nuyen.
The third screen is another important locale. The first door you see is locked (permanently), but the second leads you to Dog. He tells you to find items of man, a creature, and the earth. Pretty cryptic, but keep it in mind.
The last door down on the far end of the third screen contains an encounter with a miniboss - a shapeshifter that first appears as Sassie, then turns into an octopus. Kill the octopus (which nets you 2,000 Nuyen) and note the puddle of ink that appears. If you have 2500 Nuyen to spare, go get the Black Bottle from the Talisman Shop and use it here to gather the ink. If not, keep it in mind and come back for it later (the Boosted Reflexes upgrade should take priority).
That's all we can do here for now, so head northwest to the intersection, then take the west exit to end up on another street. Here, you can stay at the inn (right door) and enter the Jagged Nails club at the top of the screen; however, they'll be reluctant to let you in until you take out the Rust Stilettos, so let's do that now. Go back to the intersection and go north, past the Wastelands Club, and you'll come to the Rust Stilettos' territory. They'll open fire as soon as you enter, so return the favor and take them all out. One of them will drop an Iron Key, which opens the door at the end of the street leading to their hideout. Another will drop a Crowbar, which we will need a bit later on.
Inside, you'll have two more rooms of Rust Stiletto goons to take out. If you start running low on HP after clearing out one of them, just retreat and rest at the inn, then come back; with a decent Body and Firearms skill, and the shotgun, it shouldn't take long to clear them all out. One will mention the keyword Drake and drop a password to the Drake Building; we won't be going there for a while (way too dangerous at this stage), but we will need that password to get in, so don't miss it!
You can also bring Jetboy (one of the Shadowrunners available at the Wasteland Club) here; he'll spot a cach of 2,000 Nuyen for you. He's pretty weak, though, so it's a bit more practical to clear out the building, then bring him here.
Return to the Wastelands Club on the way back and talk to the barkeeper, who will mention that he's waiting for a shipment of Ice. That earns us a keyword we'll need later, so don't neglect to do it!
Now go back to the screen with the inn and inter the Jagged Nails (the doorman will only charge you 50 Nuyen now that you've cleared out the Rust Stilettos). Talk to the bartender on the right and he will mention Kitsune, who is performing on stage. Stand by the phone and wait for her to come to the bottom of the stage, then talk to her; she will reveal that she is the one who saved your life at the start of the game, and offer to join you as a Shadowrunner. She will also give you Leaves if you ask her about Dog.
(It is worth noting that Kitsune will stay with you indefinitely if you hire her for the first time, then defeat the Rat Shaman while she is still in your party. However, she is quite difficult to keep alive, so I don't recommend keeping her around in any case).
With the Leaves, Magic Fetish and Dog Collar in hand, you should now be able to return to Dog and get the Healing spell. This also unlocks your Magic stat so that you can raise it. You should max out Heal as soon as possible to maximize its effect, and put some points into Magic so that you can cast it a few times; this will allow you to tank your way through most of the longer dungeons in the game. Spend some time killing random enemies on the docks until you can do just that (5 points of Magic should do for now).
Once you're ready, you should take on the Rat Shaman next. Head to the southeast corner of the marketplace and take the left exit to a small graveyard. Take the northeast exit here to end up at the sewers, where you'll have to fight your way through several groups of rats. They do give a pretty hefty amount of Karma for your trouble, at least. At the end you'll confront the Rat Shaman himself; take him down and the Jester Spirit will emerge; he'll taunt you and say that you won't see him again until you learn his true name, then vanish. Examine the Rat Shaman's body for another 3,000 Nuyen.
Now return to Dog; he will be happy that you have defeated his mortal enemy, and will tell you that the Jester Spirit will be bound to your will if you learn his true name, but offers no help on how to learn it. However, he will teach you the Powerball spell if you have the Paperweight and the Ghoul Bone from Tenth Street. It's not very useful, though.
Return to Jagged Nails and ask Kitsune about the Jester Spirit; she will suggest that someone at the Dark Blade Manor will know about it. Ask the left Bartender about Dark Blade to learn the keyword Vampires, then follow up that to learn that they're susceptible to Strobe lights. Ask him about Strobe and he'll give you a light to use.
Since we're dealing with Vampires, we'd better bring along something they're susceptible to. Return to the Talisman shop in Old Town and buy the Stake for 2500 Nuyen (and the Potion Bottles if you have the cash for it). Talk to the owner about Vampires and he'll give you the Dark Blade Phone Number; get to any phone and give them a call. Mention the Magic Fetish and they'll open the door for you.
Now head back downtown, and take the exit next to the one that led us to the graveyard earlier to end up outside the Dark Blade Manor. Go through the gate to the courtyard. Note the exit on the far east end of this area, as it takes you to a weapon shop with some very high-grade (but also very expensive) weapons and armor. Keep it in mind for later, as we'll want to save our cash for the best stuff they have on offer.
Enter the manor and talk to the mage. You can mention the Magic Fetish to him to avoid a fight, but since we'll have to fight our way through this area anyway, we might as well just go in guns blazing. Take out the mage in the main hall, then head into the doors at the north and south ends and take out the enemies within, which will earn you a good bit of cash. The head vampire, Vladimir, will flee as you enter the top room. Hack the computer in here to get 10,000 Nuyen (nice), and the one in the bottom room to get another data file, hinting that Vlad is in league with Drake and the Jester Spirit. Be sure to grab the Bronze Key off the shelf in this room too.
Head into the room to the east and you'll fight a few more enemies. One is carrying another Mesh Jacket, which varies slightly from the one you can purchase; it offers the same protective value, but no shop will purchase it. This doesn't stop you from equipping the new one and selling your old one back for a bit of cash, though.
Continue north to the kitchen, take out a couple more enemies, and sneak behind the wall on the right to unlock the gate with the Bronze Key. This takes us to a crypt with continually respawning ghouls, which is a pretty convenient way to earn some quick Karma (but like the ones we encountered earlier, they do get progressively stronger the more you kill). Continue through 2-3 rooms of them to reach the bottom level, where Vlad will attack you with a small entourage of ghouls. Use the strobe light to stun him (your gun will have no effect), take out the ghouls, then use the Stake on him. Ask him about Jester Spirit and he'll say that he's located at Bremerton and his true name is Nirwanda. That message you saw on his computer implies that he's lying, though, so stake him a second time and ask him about Nirwanda and he'll give you the Jester Spirit's true name: Laughlyn. Stake him a third time to kill him and get 5,000 Nuyen.
Bremerton
If you don't have the Potion Bottles from the Talisman Shop, go get them now; you should have more than enough cash for it after dealing with Vladimir and his goons. You'll also want to return to Tenth Street and visit the fountain in the center of the area; use the Potion Bottles here to fill one with clean water. This would also be a good time to rest up and spend your Karma points at Jake's apartment; boost your Magic skill up to at least ten and put any spare points you have into Body.
After that, return to the docks; on the way to the boat driver, you'll meet a big orc who drops Explosives when killed. Grab them and talk to the boat driver about Bremerton. He'll tell you that he won't be able to take you there because some Mermaids are attacking any ships that attempt to set sail. Ask him about that and he'll say that they're attracted to the warm water coming from the sewers.
Hm, didn't the bartender at the Wastelands Club say he was waiting for a shipment of ice? Let's head back and see if he ever got it. Talk to the bartender and he'll say that the "chiller" has come in, and that he's the guy over in the far left corner. Talk to him about Ice, then pay him 100 Nuyen and tell him to have it delivered to the Docks.
Return to the docks and the mermaids will have gone, leaving behind some Mermaid Scales on the dock on the northmost screen. Collect those, then go into the top warehouse and collect the Octopus Ink in your black bottle if you haven't done so already. Return to Dog with these in hand and you will learn the Freeze spell, which is a lifesaver in an upcoming fight. You don't need to power it up just yet, but keep it in mind.
Now return to the captain and ask him to take you to Bremerton; he'll agree for the price of 1000 Nuyen (which shouldn't be a problem with our current resources). Bremerton is a long dungeon filled with dangerous foes, so you definitely want to come prepared; if you don't have at least Level 6 Healing, 10 in Magic and 13-15 Body, turn back and power up until you do. Once you're ready, pay the toll and we'll head off to Bremerton.
Head past the first few screens, taking out the gangers you encounter along the way (and the Doggie, who drops the Dog Tags), until you come to a staircase. Fight your way through a couple more gangers to reach a pair of doors; one locked and one rusted shut. Use the crowbar to pry open the locked door (not the rusted one?) and enter the ship.
Inside, you'll quickly encounter two red-colored slimes. Fortunately, they both go down in a single shot. Press the switch on the wall to open the door and go through, which will lead you to a two-way fork; take the upper stairs and follow the long staircase down to a room with a safe. Kill the enemies in here and root through their stuff to find a Safe Key, which - surprise - opens the nearby safe. Get the Detonator inside, which will combine with your Explosives to create the Time Bomb. There is also a broken bottle in there, but it's a useless item, so skip it.
Go back the way you came and, once back at the fork, take the bottom exit. This leads us to a four-way path; go down the southeast path and you'll come to a room with a gray slime. Kill it, then use your potion bottles on the Toxic Water it leaves behind to fill one with it. At this point, you can retreat from Bremerton (by returning to the boat) and talk to Dog again to be granted the Invisibility spell, and it's honestly not a bad idea to do so, as it will be very handy in this dungeon. Once again, power it up to level 6 as soon as you get the chance to. Collecting the Dog Tags will also cause him to grant you Summon Spirit, which isn't nearly as useful.
When you're ready to move on, return to the four-way split and go down the stairs in the room that you found the gray slime in. This takes you to another of those long stairwells riddled with orc enemies. Go all the way down it to another room with a safe... and several orc enemies that will open fire on you for heavy damage. You can't defeat them in a gunfight, so just retreat from the room before they take you out. Go back up the stairs and press the button near the door you came through, then go through it and back up to the second stairwell section, where you'll find a second switch by this door. Press it as well. These two buttons in conjunction will seal off the airlock door in the orc room and flood it with water, which will drown all the orcs. Once "maximum pressure has been reached", press the button nearest you again, then go back downstairs and press the other button. You may now safely enter the room with the safe.
This safe cannot be opened by a key, so use your Explosives to blast it open instead (stand clear of the safe, lest you take damage). Inside, you will find a Green Bottle full of toxin-dissolving fluid. Now return to the four-way intersection once again and take the path on the upper right. You'll find a single green slime in this general area that, for some odd reason, you cannot kill with the Green Bottle. When you reach a room with two of them, though, the Green Bottle will work on them. Press the rightmost switch to open the door; then the leftmost switch to detonate all the mines in the next room. The center switch will just arm more mines, so don't mess with it.
Go past the mine room and into the portal to end up in the Jester Spirit's dimension. In the first room you'll be attacked by ghouls and a giant Naga, which gives four Karma when killed but is a challenging target to take down (due to its high damage and because its constant movement making it hard to lock onto). Fortunately, he's much less of a threat with an Invisibility spell.
Continue past the bubbles (you can shoot the large masses of them to destroy them; you'll just have to dodge the bouncing ones, though) and enter the final room to confront the Jester Spirit.
This is a pretty dangerous boss, again because of his high damage output. It's also not immediately clear that you can't defeat him through sheer force; you must whittle him down a bit with it, but it's not how you win the fight. At first, he'll just lob fireballs with no real target, making them easy to avoid. Once you've damaged him a bit, he'll start throwing them directly at you (and they hurt, so stay healed up). Once you've whittled him down a bit more, he'll remark "You are a fool to come here. You are no match for the Jester." Once that message appears, you must talk to him and choose the phrase "Laughlyn" to end the fight.
Talk to the spirit again and he will offer to help you now that you've bested him. Ask him about Drake to learn that his lair is a Volcano. This will also cause him to transform into a Jester Spirit item you can pick up; do that, then exit via the portal that appears.
Drake Tower and Volcano
Exiting through the portal trips a flag at Dr. Maplethorpe's, which causes him to get in a very useful new implant called the Dermal Implants; these boost your innate defense by 2 points, making you more resistant to enemy attacks. While they are somewhat expensive at 15,000 Nuyen, they are very much worth the upgrade, so go and get them now. You may also wish to stop by the weapon shop at Dark Blade Manor and pick up the HK Assault Rifle for 15,000 Nuyen, as your shotgun is beginning to get a bit obsolete by this point. The Partial Body Suit also helps, but isn't strictly necessary, so you may want to save your cash for a better upgrade a bit later on. Both items require 5 Strength.
There is a trick you can exploit here as well. Entering the portal in the Jester Spirit's dimension also resets another flag, causing Vladimir to respawn at the Dark Blade Manor. This means that you can enter the basement and kill him again for another 4 Karma and 5000 Nuyen. You can exploit this as many times as you wish by going back to Bremerton, going through the ship, and exiting through the portal again; it is a bit tedious, but it's a relatively quick and infinite source of money in a game that's notoriously stingy about giving it out in large quantities, so it may be worth it if you really want to buy everything available at this point.
In any case, once you're suitably armed, armored and implanted, it's time to raid the Drake building. You should know where it is, as we've already walked past it several times on our way to and from the docks. Head into the lobby and take out the single mage, then hack the computer on the desk (you will need the Password from the Rust Stilettos) to unlock the elevator. Enter and head upstairs.
This is a pretty straightforward dungeon; just five floors of enemy fights, all of whom are packing some pretty heavy artillery. If it becomes too much to handle, just cast Invisibility and they will all stop firing at you, making them easy to pick off. Once that's done, hack the computers you find to unlock the next elevator, as well as find several expository data files and Nuyen caches. The second floor has a computer cache with 8,000 nuyen to find and the fifth floor has a cache with 10,000. You can also find Drake's Phone Number in one of the data files you come across, but it's not necessary.
Once you fight through six floors of baddies, you'll reach the roof. Fight off the goons up here, then talk to the helicopter pilot; ask him about Volcano and he'll fly you there. Odds are you're probably pretty beat up from your trip through the tower, though, so you may want to back out temporarily in order to rest up and spend Karma points. Top off your Freeze spell, make sure your Body and Magic are both at least 15, then take the helicopter ride to the Volcano.
If you ever need to back out (not unlikely considering the enemies here are quite dangerous and can drain your health very quickly), just talk to the pilot again and mention the word Drake to have him take you back to Drake Tower. Continue down the small hallway inside, then take the first elevator down.
Something to note about this area is that many rooms have scientists in them; once they see you, they'll sound the alarm, which causes troll decker enemies to appear in the halls on a frequent basis. They're pretty dangerous, so it's to your advantage to just shoot the scientists dead on sight. The first floor does have a computer you can hack to disable the alarm, though. Another terminal in one room will open the elevator on the east end of the level. Take it down to sub-level 2.
This floor is a bit more straightforward, but the same rules apply. This is also where the sentry guns begin to appear; make sure you shoot at the scientist operating them to disable them, not at the gun itself. Hack another terminal to open the next elevator down, then head down to sub-level 3.
Sub-level 3 has a lot of enemies, but is also a very lucrative place to do some hacking; there are data stores with 5,000, 12,000 and 25,000 nuyen here. You can also find Akimi's phone number in another data file, but again, it's not necessary to do so. She is definitely a worthy ally for the final dungeon, though, so if you use Shadowrunners it is definitely worth picking up. Hack another terminal, go through some more rooms to reach the elevator, and head down to the final stretch.
As soon as you step off the elevator, cast Invisibility immediately - there is a large swarm of scientists and trolls immediately to the south who will make your life miserable in a hurry. They respawn every time you come back here, too, so it may not be worth your while to fight them every single time. The south exit leads to Drake, but you can also take the east exit to reach a long hallway filled with nagas. The first two are green and inflict some pretty hefty damage; the last one is gold and significantly tougher. However, all can be defeated relatively easy with the Invisibility spell. The gold one also drops the Serpent Scales, which are a component of the Armor spell.
This is also the site of another trick. As long as you don't pick up the Serpent Scales, the Gold Naga will respawn each time you enter the room, allowing you to kill it again and again for 6-7 Karma each time. This is a good way to level up, but it's also risky given that the Naga is a strong opponent and you're deep into enemy territory. Still, if you want to max out your stats, this is definitely the quickest way to do it.
In any case, you should head south from the elevator to another room full of Troll Deckers. Take them all out, then check your status - if you don't have at least 40-50 Magic left, you may wish to back out of the volcano and rest up, then return. If you do, press on again. Run through the next room full of grenade-lobbing scientists (they should only hit you once or twice for minimal damage) and you'll finally come face-to-face with Drake.
...Well, if by "face to face," you mean "he starts dropping ice on your head until you approach, at which point he starts spewing fire at you for monstrous amounts of damage". As soon as you enter the room, use the Jester Spirit from your inventory; this stuns Drake for several seconds and chops off a massive chunk of his HP, allowing you to move into a more advantageous position in the meantime. Cast Invisibility while you wait for the animation to play out, then once it finishes, immediately cast Freeze on Drake to immobilize him. Once that's done, fire away at his with your weapon, and once the ice starts to fade, recast Freeze. This is a bit cheap, but given that Drake's fire breath can easily deal upwards of 150 damage to you in an instant (and he can see through your invisibility), it's all but necessary to win the fight. Once you dish out enough damage, he will die and fade to gray, netting you a whole bunch of Karma.
Enter the door to Drake's right and you will find a scientist named Pushkin, who was being held hostage by Drake. Ask him about Drake and he will mention that Aneki has developed an AI computer, which he intends to use to take over the whole of the Matrix. Then ask him about "Head Computer" and he will realize that you're the courier carrying the program capable of destroying Aneki's AI He gives you the Password you need to enter the Aneki building, and you're automatically sent back to the roof of Drake Tower.
Aneki Building
Our goal is clear and our true enemy's name is known, so it's time to end this once and for all. But first, we should arm up. Head back to the Dark Blade Manor weapon shop and purchase that shiny new AS-7 Assault Cannon they have for sale. Yes, it costs a whopping 40,000 Nuyen, but given that it's by far the strongest and most accurate weapon in the game, it's worth every cent. The Full Body Suit is also worth getting if you can spare the 30,000 Nuyen (and 6 Strength) it requires, but the Assault Cannon definitely gets top priority.
Get yourself armed up, spend all your extra Karma on Magic, and head east from the marketplace to reach the Aneki Building. As soon as you approach, several armed guards will open fire. Waste them all with your assault cannon and enter. Hack the computer you see to unlock the elevator, and head up.
This dungeon actually unfolds very similarly to Drake Tower - at each floor you'll have to fight a mess of enemies (invisibility makes them much easier to deal with) and hack computers to unlock the next floor up. You'll also need to recover passwords and data files to ensure that you can access some of the files within said computers, so make sure to check every node you come across and examine every data file within them. Oh, and don't loiter too long in the hall with the elevators, or a troll will spawn and open fire on you. You'll also be finding some rather large nuyen caches in some of these computers (22,500, 25,000 and 75,000), but it's all rather moot at this stage of the game.
On the fifth floor, the north room will have you confront Otto, Aneki's big, bad resident Troll decker. Unfortunately for him (and about 95% of the other enemies in the game), he cannot see through your invisibility, so just click that on and waste him. Now top off your health and hack the large computer in this room. Destroy the two CPUs here and you're done. Sit back and enjoy the ending.
Karma
Stats
Skills
Spells
Equipment
Walkthrough
You don't really have catch-all "experience levels" in Shadowrun. Instead you get Karma, which can be spent to improve your skills or your core statistics. Karma is primarily earned by defeating enemies to earn experience. Eight experience points equals one Karma. Nearly all normal enemies in the game give a flat 1 or 2 experience, but most boss characters and scripted encounters give significantly more.
Karma is spent while you're resting at a bed, and can be used to improve your stats or any skills or magic you currently have available. The cost to upgrade a skill is equal to that skill's current level; for example, upgrading Body from level 3 to 4 costs 3 Karma, from 4 to 5 costs 4 Karma, and so on. Most skills only go up to level six, but Body, Magic and Firearms can go much higher.
Body
Determines your maximum HP on a simple formula of 10 * Body level, with the maximum being 20 for 200 points. This stat is absolutely invaluable, especially early on; boost this to at least 6 before entering the Caryard, and at least 10 before you leave. Over the course of the rest of the game you'll want to raise it higher, but it should take a backseat to other important abilities you need to learn.
Magic
Determines your maximum MP total, on the same formula as Body - Magic * 10 for a max of 200 points at level 20. Very useful to have and a good thing to dump your extra points into (especially once you get the Heal spell), but again, it should take a backseat to more important things that come up.
Becomes available once you get your first spell.
Strength
Determines what equipment you can equip. Maxes out at 6, at which point you can equip the biggest, heaviest, and best equipment in the game. You won't get those until a good while in, though, so stick to 3 at first, upgrade to 4 once you hit the Caryard (to equip the shotgun), and only worry about maxing it out once you hit the endgame.
Charisma
Determines the number of Shadowrunners you can hire, on a simple formula of Charisma/2, rounded down. If you plan to hire a party of Shadowrunners, this is an essential skill to have. Otherwise, just ignore it.
Firearms
Determines your accuracy with all firearms, and only that; it has absolutely no effect on damage output. Maxes out at 16. Push it up to 6 before entering the Caryard so you can do well at the arena, and maybe push it up to 7 or 8 if you find yourself missing a lot of shots. Anything higher than that tends to be a waste of points.
Computer
This is essentially the Firearms skill equivalent when working in the Matrix, determining your accuracy in hitting ICs. Maximum level is 6. Maxing it out is essential later on, but you can ignore it in the early stages, since you won't be doing any hacking until a good while in.
Leadership
Determines how long hired Shadowrunners stay with you (in number of battles). Good to have if you plan to hire help, but if you're going it solo (or with just Kitsune) you can safely ignore this. Maximum level is 6. Unlocked once you buy the Skill Software from Dr. Maplethorpe.
Negotiation
Allows you to negotiate lower prices in some circumstances, most notably when hiring Shadowrunners. Worth raising to 2 once you hit the Caryard to save a bit of cash, but pretty pointless outside of that unless you plan to party with higher-end Shadowrunners on a frequent basis. Learned from the arena master in the Caryard. Maximum level is 6.
Armed Combat
A skill unavailable to Jake, but some Shadowrunners have it listed in their statistics to show that they can fight at melee range as well. It doesn't actually factor into their combat abilities at all; it's just for show.
Unarmed Combat
Same as Armed Combat - it's just for show on Shadowrunners that have some melee combat abilities. Jake cannot learn it under any circumstances short of cheating (and even then it has no effect).
All of Jake's spells max out at Level 6.
Heal
Restores 15 HP per level on yourself or one of your allies. I'm sure you can see how valuable that is; Slap Patches only restore 10 HP apiece (which isn't much once you advance past the early stages) and run you 100 Nuyen apiece, while this only costs MP and restores up to 90 HP at a time. Absolutely essential to have; max it out as soon as you get it.
Restoration formula: 15 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required components: Dog collar, Magic Fetish, Leaves
Powerball
An attack spell with high damage output. Not very useful honestly, since it has just as much chance to do 1 damage as it does to do 30+ damage. Just stick to guns, since they have a higher and more reliable DPS overall.
Damage Formula: 6 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required components: Paperweight, Ghoul Bone
As its name implies, this makes the spell's target invisible, making enemies unable to target them (though they may still get hit by a stray shot or two aimed at someone else). Raising the spell level increases the duration. An extremely useful spell to have, and it can be a life-saver in big and fierce gun battles (or just a useful way to draw fire away from your squishier Shadowrunners). Some bosses and tougher foes can see through invisibility, however.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
Required components: Potion Bottles (filled with Clean Water and Dirty Water)
Freeze
Encases an enemy in ice, taking them out of the battle for several seconds. They can still be harmed while in this state, which essentially renders them a sitting duck. Comes in handy against very big, tough foes, but not so much in big firefights with a lot of weaker enemies. Up to four enemies can be frozen at one time.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
MP Cost Formula: 4 + Spell Level
Required Components: Black Bottle (filled with Octopus Ink), Mermaid Scales
Summon Spirit
Another offensive spell that targets all enemies on the screen, doing up to 36 damage to each of them. More useful than Powerball in that you don't need to select a specific target to hit, but unfortunately still not that great - its high MP cost and long casting delay don't make it very practical to use, except as an occasional quick screen-clearer. Most of the time, using Invisibility and just gunning your enemies down is a more efficient option.
Damage Formula: 6 * Spell Level
MP Cost Formula: 2 * (4 + Spell Level)
Required components: Dog Tags, Dog Collar
Armor
A spell that gives you 30 extra points of armor, effectively rendering you invulnerable for its duration; however, you can still be hit and will be stunned when hit. This would have been a useful spell if you got it earlier in the game, as it would allow you to tank through bosses and tough enemies. However, Invisibility does the same job better and is available sooner, so Armor's usefulness is unfortunately limited at best.
Duration Formula: Spell Level * 5 Seconds
Required components: Mermaid Scales, Serpent Scales
Weapons
| Weapon Name | Str Required | Accuracy Rating | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beretta 101T Pistol | 1 | 1 | 1-3 |
| Colt American L36 Pistol | 1 | 1 | 1-3 |
| Fichetti Light Pistol | 1 | 1 | 1-4 |
| Ares Viper Heavy Pistol | 2 | 2 | 1-4 |
| Ruger Warhawk Pistol | 3 | 2 | 1-6 |
| Defiance T-250 Shotgun | 4 | 2 | 1-8 |
| Uzi III SMG* | 4 | 3 | 1-8 |
| HK227 Assault Rifle | 5 | 2 | 1-10 |
| AS-7 Assault Cannon | 5 | 6 | 1-20 |
| Grenade | 1 | - | 1-13 |
*The Uzi also has a unique benefit in that it has auto-fire - you can simply hold down the button to fire the weapon rapidly instead of having to repeatedly tap it.
Armor
| Armor | Str Required | Def Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Leather Jacket | 1 | 1 |
| Mesh Jacket | 2 | 2 |
| Fully Concealable Jacket | 4 | 4 |
| Partial Body Suit | 5 | 5 |
| Full Body Suit | 6 | 6 |
There is a "bulletproof vest" in the Dark Blade weapon shop, but you can never actually buy it. This was apparently fixed in some of the European releases though.
Important items will also be indicated in bold. Keywords and phone numbers will be indicated in bold italics.
- The Morgue to the Caryard
- The Caryard to Old Town
- Downtown
- Bremerton
- Drake Tower and Volcano
- Aneki Building
You wake up in the local morgue after being gunned down by a group of hitmen (as seen in the intro), with substantial memory loss and only one item in your inventory - a Matchbox from the Wastelands Club. A good thing to keep in mind for later. In the meantime, search the slab you woke up on to find your name (Jake Armitage) and a Torn paper; read it to get the clue "Warehouse No. 5". Search the room to find a Scalpel on the table (get it) and a Slap Patch in the cooler on the left side of the room. Slap Patches restore 10 HP when used, but you should save this one as it will be handy later. Now exit the room and the building entirely to end up on Tenth Street.
Outside, you'll encounter a punk who will say he saw you get geeked. Talk to him to learn the keywords Hitmen and Firearms. Once you exit the conversation, he'll run off; follow him to the southwest, then go southwest again to an alley where he gets wasted by an Orc. Grab the Beretta 101T Pistol near the guy's body, equip it and use it to kill the Orc, then search his body to get the Leather Jacket. Equip it as well, as it provides some protection against enemy attacks. Now go to the north end of this alley to meet a Dog acolyte; he will tell you to seek out Dog. You can also examine the nearby billboard to get a hint about a Cyberdeck, but it's not strictly necessary.
You will notice very quickly walking around that seemingly everyone is out to kill Jake, hitmen will pop out of dumpsters, take potshots at you from windows, attack you from behind walls and atop ledges, or just pop up in the streets to try and gun you down. So our first order of business is to find a safe place to rest and restore HP before they overwhelm us. Thankfully, there is one close by. Go back two screens to the central area with the morgue. Open the gate on the north end of the small park in the middle to free the dog; it will drop the Dog Collar. Pick it up and continue out the exit on the southeast end of the map.
Here, you will come to a building next to the monorail station (which is currently closed for repairs). Inside, enter the door on the left (the right one just contains enemies). You'll find a dead guy on the floor here; search him for a Door Key which bears the number 6. Examine the memo on the table to get another clue to your past.
"Armitage to perform courier run to Matrix Systems. 70-30 split."
The room next door is a restaurant with more respawning enemies. Exit the building and duck down the alley between it and the monorail station. Jake will remark that the building here seems familiar, so we might as well take a look. Enter and you'll find that it's an apartment building. Well, we have a key labeled "6", so we might as well try it out on that door.
Hey, it works. Welcome to Jake's apartment. Pick up the Shades on the table and use them to put them on. This is an essential part of a disguise we'll be utilizing a bit later, though it unfortunately won't deter the constant waves of hitmen. Examine the Note on the table to find Sassie's phone number and the filing cabinet to find 20 nuyen (currency). Jake also has a pay phone in his apartment (which requires a Credstick) and a bed. Beds are where you rest to top off HP and MP, save the game and spend Karma points to level up your abilities, so we'll be using them quite often throughout the game.
Doors 7 and 8 lead to a large room with respawning enemies. This makes for an ideal spot to level up, as you can quickly return to your apartment to top off your health. Stay here and kill enemies until you have enough Karma to boost your Body and Firearms stats to a decent level (say, 5-6 each), using your bed to rest up whenever your HP drops below 10 or so. Also be sure to grab the nuyen they drop; it's not much, but we'll need a bit of spending money soon.
Once you're sufficiently powered up enough to last a while on the street, head back to the central area and then go southeast once again to that screen we passed by earlier. Enter the building on the south end of this area with the double doors. Inside, the first door on the right contains some more respawning enemies, but it also contains a paperweight. Grab that and head to the second room. There's a non-hostile secretary here, but she won't respond to any of the keywords you currently have. So just grab the cyberdeck off the table and leave.
(Despite having this, we won't be able to enter the Matrix just yet; Jake's datajack is on the fritz and will need to be repaired first.)
Continue to the northwest (dealing with any window snipers) and enter the club building you find on the next screen. This is the Grim Reaper Club, and it will provide us with several important clues. Talk to the guy near the entrance to learn the phrases Street doc and Healing. Talk to the bartender and he'll serve you an Iced Tea; talk to the guy at the table and give him the Iced Tea. He'll tell you that a scalper named Grinder got wasted by Lone Star, robbing him of his chance to get Tickets to the Maria Mercurial show. Then talk to the Bartender again to learn the keywords Shadowrunner, Decker, Datajack, and Hiring, all of which will be important later. You can also hire a Shadowrunner named Hamfist here for 500 Nuyen if you wish; I recommend saving your money for now.
From here, you can head east to find a graveyard populated by ghouls. The ghouls always spawn in the same places and can only harm you in close quarters, which this makes a decent place to grind out a bit of Karma; however, you should be aware that the ghouls will get stronger each time you kill them. Your real objective here is to pry open the door of the left-most crypt with your scalpel, and use your Slap Patch on the injured shaman inside. As thanks, he will give you the Magic Fetish and teach you the keywords Shaman and Magic Fetish. Examining the fetish reveals that it has a bat symbol on it, which is an important clue for later.
Searching the coffins in the four crypts will turn up either ghouls or some Nuyen. After speaking to the shaman, one of the next ghouls you defeat will also drop a Ghoul Bone; be sure to pick that up as well.
Searching the coffins in the four crypts will turn up either ghouls or some Nuyen. After speaking to the shaman, one of the next ghouls you defeat will also drop a Ghoul Bone; be sure to pick that up as well.
Once you've gathered as much Karma as you care to (raising your Body and Firearms stats to at least 6 each should do for now), it's time to follow up on some of the leads we got at the bar. Return to the morgue and talk to the two morticians; they won't recognize you if you have the shades on. You can ask about Grinder, but they'll only cooperate with you if you're "family or a badge."
We can't do anything about the former, but fortunately we can find a Lone Star badge nearby. Go back to the screen outside the Grim Reaper Club and enter the building on the right. The first room in here contains more hitmen, but the second room contains a shady guy whom you can talk to. Ask him about "hiring" to get the Negotiation keyword (necessary to get the skill later!), then ask him about "Lone Star" and he'll sell you a stolen Lone Star badge for 150 Nuyen. You can also ask him about "firearms" and he'll sell you grenades for 100 Nuyen each.
Skip the grenades, but definitely get the badge. Use it on yourself to equip it and return to the morgue. Talk to one of the two guys about Grinder and he'll unlock the nearby file cabinets for you. Search them to find a Credstick and the Tickets we heard about from the bar guy.
Now that we have a Credstick we have a couple of phone calls to make. We could go back to Jake's apartment for this, but it's more convenient to use the one at the Cage, so let's do that. Head east of the graveyard to find The Cage, then use the Credstick on the phone in the lobby to call Sassie. She's your old girlfriend, who threw out your stuff when she heard you were dead. Dang. Well, at least you can talk to her to get the keyword Calls. Ask her about that to get the keyword Glutman and she will give you his phone number.
Now use the phone again and call Glutman's number; he's not in, but you'll get his secretary. Ask her about Glutman and she will tell you that he's at the Cage. Hey, that's where we are. How convenient. End the call and give the tickets to the troll bouncer to get in.
Talk to the guy in the upper left corner of the club about Ghoul Busting to learn the keyword Ghouls. This earns you the ability to hire another Shadowrunner at the Grim Reaper club called Jangadance (he was the guy on the phone the last time you visited). He's not too useful though, so I'd suggest just skipping him.
You can ask around a bit about Glutman, but you'll find him soon enough anyway; he's the guy on the couch on the north end of the bar. He'll be surprised that you're still alive considering the value of the tech you're sporting, and offer to take you somewhere safe. Once you end the conversation, Jake will be blindfolded and taken to the Caryard.
The Caryard and Old Town
You arrive in the Caryard, which, as its name implies, is a small hovel made of junked cars. You can rest at the small mattress next to you, which functions as any other bed in the game does. Head south one screen and talk to the various NPCs around; you'll learn that the Caryard is run by King, and that there is a conflict occurring in the Matrix. There is also a brief mention of Drake, the guy who left a message for you in your apartment. You can also talk to a kid near the exit (and King), who will sell you Slap Patches for 100 Nuyen apiece if you ask him about "healing".
We can't do anything about the former, but fortunately we can find a Lone Star badge nearby. Go back to the screen outside the Grim Reaper Club and enter the building on the right. The first room in here contains more hitmen, but the second room contains a shady guy whom you can talk to. Ask him about "hiring" to get the Negotiation keyword (necessary to get the skill later!), then ask him about "Lone Star" and he'll sell you a stolen Lone Star badge for 150 Nuyen. You can also ask him about "firearms" and he'll sell you grenades for 100 Nuyen each.
Skip the grenades, but definitely get the badge. Use it on yourself to equip it and return to the morgue. Talk to one of the two guys about Grinder and he'll unlock the nearby file cabinets for you. Search them to find a Credstick and the Tickets we heard about from the bar guy.
Now that we have a Credstick we have a couple of phone calls to make. We could go back to Jake's apartment for this, but it's more convenient to use the one at the Cage, so let's do that. Head east of the graveyard to find The Cage, then use the Credstick on the phone in the lobby to call Sassie. She's your old girlfriend, who threw out your stuff when she heard you were dead. Dang. Well, at least you can talk to her to get the keyword Calls. Ask her about that to get the keyword Glutman and she will give you his phone number.
Now use the phone again and call Glutman's number; he's not in, but you'll get his secretary. Ask her about Glutman and she will tell you that he's at the Cage. Hey, that's where we are. How convenient. End the call and give the tickets to the troll bouncer to get in.
Talk to the guy in the upper left corner of the club about Ghoul Busting to learn the keyword Ghouls. This earns you the ability to hire another Shadowrunner at the Grim Reaper club called Jangadance (he was the guy on the phone the last time you visited). He's not too useful though, so I'd suggest just skipping him.
You can ask around a bit about Glutman, but you'll find him soon enough anyway; he's the guy on the couch on the north end of the bar. He'll be surprised that you're still alive considering the value of the tech you're sporting, and offer to take you somewhere safe. Once you end the conversation, Jake will be blindfolded and taken to the Caryard.
The Caryard and Old Town
You arrive in the Caryard, which, as its name implies, is a small hovel made of junked cars. You can rest at the small mattress next to you, which functions as any other bed in the game does. Head south one screen and talk to the various NPCs around; you'll learn that the Caryard is run by King, and that there is a conflict occurring in the Matrix. There is also a brief mention of Drake, the guy who left a message for you in your apartment. You can also talk to a kid near the exit (and King), who will sell you Slap Patches for 100 Nuyen apiece if you ask him about "healing".
King refuses to let you out unless you pay him 4000 nuyen. Another option is to fight him, but you're probably a bit underleveled for that at this stage. So instead, head east one screen to the Arena. Here, you can talk to the owner and fight in a series of battles, which offers some hefty cash rewards. Just be sure to heal up and save in between each fight, as they do get very tough after your first few wins. If you're having trouble with a fight, exit the arena and go to the small area out the southeast exit of the Caryard to power up.
1. Gang Member - 300 Nuyen
2. Heavy Dude - 700 Nuyen
3. Heavy Dude - 1000 Nuyen
4. Mage - 2000 Nuyen
5. Mage - 3000 Nuyen
The first five fights are pretty easy; you should have no problem beating them with around 5 in Body and Firearms. Once round six hits, however, things get much tougher.
6. Samurai Warrior - 4000 Nuyen
This guy totes an automatic weapon that can drain your health very quickly. However, if you fight him in close quarters, he'll wield a knife instead, which does considerably less damage and has a much lower firerate. So get up close to him and shoot him until he goes down.
7. Ferocious Orc - 5000 Nuyen
This is a tricky one, since he meanders around a lot (making it tough to draw a bead on him) and fires bursts of shots at you for pretty hefty damage. You'll probably want an 8 or 9 in Body and at least an 8 in Firearms before taking him on.
8. Gang Leader - 6000 Nuyen
This guy is definitely one of the toughest the arena has to offer. He moves around very quickly, circling around you and bobbing off-screen to throw off your aim, all the while pelting you with automatic gunfire that will quickly drain your health. You may not be able to win this one without upgrading your equipment.
9. Troll Decker - 7000 Nuyen
A very dangerous opponent, having a high amount of HP as well as a powerful rapid-firing weapon that can hit for double digit damage. You will almost certainly need to upgrade gear to beat this guy.
10. Mage - 8000 Nuyen
Considerably easier than his predecessors, but he can still be a challenge. The mage creates up to four duplicates of himself to attack you, and having five guys firing at you at a time can make it easy to get stun-locked. The clones die in only a couple of shots, so you have to balance between keeping the clones relatively low and training your shots on the real mage to avoid being overwhelmed. Still, if you got past the Gang Leader and the Troll Decker, this shouldn't be too difficult to handle.
You can also talk to the arena owner about "Negotiation" to learn the skill from him; however, he'll charge you 1000 Nuyen for the privilege. You can also ask him about "King" to challenge the King in the arena; he won't go down easily, but defeating him earns you 3000 Nuyen and a pretty hefty chunk of experience. This is the more lucrative option for leaving the caryard in the long run, though you may have to power up a bit to make it through (9 or 10 Body should do the trick).
If you don't want to fight the King, you can raise Negotiation to level 2, which will cause him to lower his price down to a more reasonable 2000 Nuyen. Since you need to pay 1000 to learn the Negotation skill, though, you only really save 1000 Nuyen. Not to mention you come out 6000 Nuyen short when you factor in the 3000 Nuyen gain from beating him!
Whether by the gun or through bribery, though, you'll eventually be able to leave the caryard and reach Old Town. Immediately to your left as you exit are the local monorail station and the Sputnik Club (where more mediocre Shadowrunners can be hired). Go past them and up the street to the northwest; here, you'll find an artillery shop and a talisman shop. Enter the weapon shop first, and purchase the Defiance T-250 Shotgun for 15,000 Nuyen; while expensive, the damage and accuracy upgrades it provides are well worth the price. You will need 4 Strength to wield it, though, so get that first if you don't have it yet.
Grab the Mesh Jacket too if you can spare the expense; you can sell your old pistol (200) and leather jacket (1000) to offset the cost. With these equipped, and a decent Body score and a bit of luck, you should now be able to return to the arena and clear out the remaining challengers.
Now check out the Talisman shop. You can save a bit of time by buying everything here now, but it's not really necessary to do so. Keep these items in mind, though, as we will need the Stake to defeat a certain enemy and the other two items will be necessary to learn two very useful spells. For now, talk to the store owner to learn the keyword Talismans. Ask about that to learn the keyword Shaman and get the talisman store owner's phone number.
Make sure you have at least 2000 Nuyen before you continue onward.
When you're ready to move on, head down the alley just south of the shops to find Ed's Patch n' Fix, a street doc. Ask him about your datajack and he'll investigate it for 500 Nuyen... and inadvertently activate the Cortex Bomb in your head. Talk to him again and ask about the Cortex Bomb to get your 500 nuyen back, then ask him about Street Doc to get referred to Doctor Maplethorpe downtown.
We'd best head there right away, as that bomb in your head will detonate in 30 hours (which equates to 30 minutes of real time). So go to the monorail station and take the northern monorail to Downtown.
Downtown
As soon as you step off the monorail, you'll be attacked by some orcs; take them out, and one will mention the Rust Stilettos with his dying breath. He also drops an Iron Key, which you should pick up, and another Dog acolyte shows up shortly thereafter to give you some more cryptic words. Whoever Dog and the Rust Stilettos are, we'll just have to worry about them later; that bomb in your head takes priority!
Alright. This is by far the biggest map area in the game and it's easy to get lost when you first visit, so here's the quickest route to Dr. Maplethorpe's. Exit the station via the southeast exit, then take the northeast exit in the market. Cross the street (avoiding the traffic) and go southeast down the sidewalk on the other side (don't approach the big building here - the enemies outside are seriously badass). Continue down to the next screen, then enter the door to your right.
Talk to the secretary and tell her about the Cortex Bomb; she'll let you in to see Dr. Maplethorpe, but will still charge you 2,000 nuyen for it, hence why I told you to save that much cash. Talk to Maplethorpe about the bomb and he'll disable it and then try to sell you on some Cyberware. Ask him about that to learn the keyword Matrix Systems. You can also ask him about "healing" to buy Slap Patches from him (100 Nuyen each) and purchase two pieces of Cyberware from him.
Skill Software - 3000 Nuyen, teaches the Leadership skill (which keeps hired Shadowrunners around longer).
Boosted Reflexes - 15,000 Nuyen, raises the rate at which you fire weapons.
Skill Software is only useful if you plan to hire Shadowrunners, but Boosted Reflexes is a very worthy investment, raising your weapon fire rate and allowing you to deal more damage in a shorter period of time. Very useful to have, especially since we'll be hitting a lot of very long enemy gauntlets from this point on. This should be your next purchase, especially since you're probably close to 15,000 Nuyen (if not over it) from clearing out the arena. If not, keep it in mind and come back for it a bit later.
With the bomb out of his head, Jake can now utilize his Datajack (in conjunction with the Cyberdeck) to enter the Matrix and begin hacking. Top off your Computer skill as soon as possible; it will make your life much easier when dealing with the Matrix. For now, you can head back to Glutman's office on Tenth Street and hack his computer for 1,000 Nuyen.
Our next stop is the docks; from the marketplace, head out the west exit, then go south, past the Drake building, and west again once you hit the wall. Go past this screen and you will come out on the docks. The enemies here are significantly tougher than those you've encountered to this point, so I really hope you bought the Shotgun and Mesh Vest. Head down to the end of the dock on the first screen and talk to the guy here to learn the keyword Docks. The first door you come to on the second screen also leads you to a small office with another computer you can hack for 2,000 Nuyen.
The third screen is another important locale. The first door you see is locked (permanently), but the second leads you to Dog. He tells you to find items of man, a creature, and the earth. Pretty cryptic, but keep it in mind.
The last door down on the far end of the third screen contains an encounter with a miniboss - a shapeshifter that first appears as Sassie, then turns into an octopus. Kill the octopus (which nets you 2,000 Nuyen) and note the puddle of ink that appears. If you have 2500 Nuyen to spare, go get the Black Bottle from the Talisman Shop and use it here to gather the ink. If not, keep it in mind and come back for it later (the Boosted Reflexes upgrade should take priority).
That's all we can do here for now, so head northwest to the intersection, then take the west exit to end up on another street. Here, you can stay at the inn (right door) and enter the Jagged Nails club at the top of the screen; however, they'll be reluctant to let you in until you take out the Rust Stilettos, so let's do that now. Go back to the intersection and go north, past the Wastelands Club, and you'll come to the Rust Stilettos' territory. They'll open fire as soon as you enter, so return the favor and take them all out. One of them will drop an Iron Key, which opens the door at the end of the street leading to their hideout. Another will drop a Crowbar, which we will need a bit later on.
Inside, you'll have two more rooms of Rust Stiletto goons to take out. If you start running low on HP after clearing out one of them, just retreat and rest at the inn, then come back; with a decent Body and Firearms skill, and the shotgun, it shouldn't take long to clear them all out. One will mention the keyword Drake and drop a password to the Drake Building; we won't be going there for a while (way too dangerous at this stage), but we will need that password to get in, so don't miss it!
You can also bring Jetboy (one of the Shadowrunners available at the Wasteland Club) here; he'll spot a cach of 2,000 Nuyen for you. He's pretty weak, though, so it's a bit more practical to clear out the building, then bring him here.
Return to the Wastelands Club on the way back and talk to the barkeeper, who will mention that he's waiting for a shipment of Ice. That earns us a keyword we'll need later, so don't neglect to do it!
Now go back to the screen with the inn and inter the Jagged Nails (the doorman will only charge you 50 Nuyen now that you've cleared out the Rust Stilettos). Talk to the bartender on the right and he will mention Kitsune, who is performing on stage. Stand by the phone and wait for her to come to the bottom of the stage, then talk to her; she will reveal that she is the one who saved your life at the start of the game, and offer to join you as a Shadowrunner. She will also give you Leaves if you ask her about Dog.
(It is worth noting that Kitsune will stay with you indefinitely if you hire her for the first time, then defeat the Rat Shaman while she is still in your party. However, she is quite difficult to keep alive, so I don't recommend keeping her around in any case).
With the Leaves, Magic Fetish and Dog Collar in hand, you should now be able to return to Dog and get the Healing spell. This also unlocks your Magic stat so that you can raise it. You should max out Heal as soon as possible to maximize its effect, and put some points into Magic so that you can cast it a few times; this will allow you to tank your way through most of the longer dungeons in the game. Spend some time killing random enemies on the docks until you can do just that (5 points of Magic should do for now).
Once you're ready, you should take on the Rat Shaman next. Head to the southeast corner of the marketplace and take the left exit to a small graveyard. Take the northeast exit here to end up at the sewers, where you'll have to fight your way through several groups of rats. They do give a pretty hefty amount of Karma for your trouble, at least. At the end you'll confront the Rat Shaman himself; take him down and the Jester Spirit will emerge; he'll taunt you and say that you won't see him again until you learn his true name, then vanish. Examine the Rat Shaman's body for another 3,000 Nuyen.
Now return to Dog; he will be happy that you have defeated his mortal enemy, and will tell you that the Jester Spirit will be bound to your will if you learn his true name, but offers no help on how to learn it. However, he will teach you the Powerball spell if you have the Paperweight and the Ghoul Bone from Tenth Street. It's not very useful, though.
Return to Jagged Nails and ask Kitsune about the Jester Spirit; she will suggest that someone at the Dark Blade Manor will know about it. Ask the left Bartender about Dark Blade to learn the keyword Vampires, then follow up that to learn that they're susceptible to Strobe lights. Ask him about Strobe and he'll give you a light to use.
Since we're dealing with Vampires, we'd better bring along something they're susceptible to. Return to the Talisman shop in Old Town and buy the Stake for 2500 Nuyen (and the Potion Bottles if you have the cash for it). Talk to the owner about Vampires and he'll give you the Dark Blade Phone Number; get to any phone and give them a call. Mention the Magic Fetish and they'll open the door for you.
Now head back downtown, and take the exit next to the one that led us to the graveyard earlier to end up outside the Dark Blade Manor. Go through the gate to the courtyard. Note the exit on the far east end of this area, as it takes you to a weapon shop with some very high-grade (but also very expensive) weapons and armor. Keep it in mind for later, as we'll want to save our cash for the best stuff they have on offer.
Enter the manor and talk to the mage. You can mention the Magic Fetish to him to avoid a fight, but since we'll have to fight our way through this area anyway, we might as well just go in guns blazing. Take out the mage in the main hall, then head into the doors at the north and south ends and take out the enemies within, which will earn you a good bit of cash. The head vampire, Vladimir, will flee as you enter the top room. Hack the computer in here to get 10,000 Nuyen (nice), and the one in the bottom room to get another data file, hinting that Vlad is in league with Drake and the Jester Spirit. Be sure to grab the Bronze Key off the shelf in this room too.
Head into the room to the east and you'll fight a few more enemies. One is carrying another Mesh Jacket, which varies slightly from the one you can purchase; it offers the same protective value, but no shop will purchase it. This doesn't stop you from equipping the new one and selling your old one back for a bit of cash, though.
Continue north to the kitchen, take out a couple more enemies, and sneak behind the wall on the right to unlock the gate with the Bronze Key. This takes us to a crypt with continually respawning ghouls, which is a pretty convenient way to earn some quick Karma (but like the ones we encountered earlier, they do get progressively stronger the more you kill). Continue through 2-3 rooms of them to reach the bottom level, where Vlad will attack you with a small entourage of ghouls. Use the strobe light to stun him (your gun will have no effect), take out the ghouls, then use the Stake on him. Ask him about Jester Spirit and he'll say that he's located at Bremerton and his true name is Nirwanda. That message you saw on his computer implies that he's lying, though, so stake him a second time and ask him about Nirwanda and he'll give you the Jester Spirit's true name: Laughlyn. Stake him a third time to kill him and get 5,000 Nuyen.
After that, return to the docks; on the way to the boat driver, you'll meet a big orc who drops Explosives when killed. Grab them and talk to the boat driver about Bremerton. He'll tell you that he won't be able to take you there because some Mermaids are attacking any ships that attempt to set sail. Ask him about that and he'll say that they're attracted to the warm water coming from the sewers.
Hm, didn't the bartender at the Wastelands Club say he was waiting for a shipment of ice? Let's head back and see if he ever got it. Talk to the bartender and he'll say that the "chiller" has come in, and that he's the guy over in the far left corner. Talk to him about Ice, then pay him 100 Nuyen and tell him to have it delivered to the Docks.
Return to the docks and the mermaids will have gone, leaving behind some Mermaid Scales on the dock on the northmost screen. Collect those, then go into the top warehouse and collect the Octopus Ink in your black bottle if you haven't done so already. Return to Dog with these in hand and you will learn the Freeze spell, which is a lifesaver in an upcoming fight. You don't need to power it up just yet, but keep it in mind.
Now return to the captain and ask him to take you to Bremerton; he'll agree for the price of 1000 Nuyen (which shouldn't be a problem with our current resources). Bremerton is a long dungeon filled with dangerous foes, so you definitely want to come prepared; if you don't have at least Level 6 Healing, 10 in Magic and 13-15 Body, turn back and power up until you do. Once you're ready, pay the toll and we'll head off to Bremerton.
Head past the first few screens, taking out the gangers you encounter along the way (and the Doggie, who drops the Dog Tags), until you come to a staircase. Fight your way through a couple more gangers to reach a pair of doors; one locked and one rusted shut. Use the crowbar to pry open the locked door (not the rusted one?) and enter the ship.
Inside, you'll quickly encounter two red-colored slimes. Fortunately, they both go down in a single shot. Press the switch on the wall to open the door and go through, which will lead you to a two-way fork; take the upper stairs and follow the long staircase down to a room with a safe. Kill the enemies in here and root through their stuff to find a Safe Key, which - surprise - opens the nearby safe. Get the Detonator inside, which will combine with your Explosives to create the Time Bomb. There is also a broken bottle in there, but it's a useless item, so skip it.
Go back the way you came and, once back at the fork, take the bottom exit. This leads us to a four-way path; go down the southeast path and you'll come to a room with a gray slime. Kill it, then use your potion bottles on the Toxic Water it leaves behind to fill one with it. At this point, you can retreat from Bremerton (by returning to the boat) and talk to Dog again to be granted the Invisibility spell, and it's honestly not a bad idea to do so, as it will be very handy in this dungeon. Once again, power it up to level 6 as soon as you get the chance to. Collecting the Dog Tags will also cause him to grant you Summon Spirit, which isn't nearly as useful.
When you're ready to move on, return to the four-way split and go down the stairs in the room that you found the gray slime in. This takes you to another of those long stairwells riddled with orc enemies. Go all the way down it to another room with a safe... and several orc enemies that will open fire on you for heavy damage. You can't defeat them in a gunfight, so just retreat from the room before they take you out. Go back up the stairs and press the button near the door you came through, then go through it and back up to the second stairwell section, where you'll find a second switch by this door. Press it as well. These two buttons in conjunction will seal off the airlock door in the orc room and flood it with water, which will drown all the orcs. Once "maximum pressure has been reached", press the button nearest you again, then go back downstairs and press the other button. You may now safely enter the room with the safe.
This safe cannot be opened by a key, so use your Explosives to blast it open instead (stand clear of the safe, lest you take damage). Inside, you will find a Green Bottle full of toxin-dissolving fluid. Now return to the four-way intersection once again and take the path on the upper right. You'll find a single green slime in this general area that, for some odd reason, you cannot kill with the Green Bottle. When you reach a room with two of them, though, the Green Bottle will work on them. Press the rightmost switch to open the door; then the leftmost switch to detonate all the mines in the next room. The center switch will just arm more mines, so don't mess with it.
Go past the mine room and into the portal to end up in the Jester Spirit's dimension. In the first room you'll be attacked by ghouls and a giant Naga, which gives four Karma when killed but is a challenging target to take down (due to its high damage and because its constant movement making it hard to lock onto). Fortunately, he's much less of a threat with an Invisibility spell.
Continue past the bubbles (you can shoot the large masses of them to destroy them; you'll just have to dodge the bouncing ones, though) and enter the final room to confront the Jester Spirit.
This is a pretty dangerous boss, again because of his high damage output. It's also not immediately clear that you can't defeat him through sheer force; you must whittle him down a bit with it, but it's not how you win the fight. At first, he'll just lob fireballs with no real target, making them easy to avoid. Once you've damaged him a bit, he'll start throwing them directly at you (and they hurt, so stay healed up). Once you've whittled him down a bit more, he'll remark "You are a fool to come here. You are no match for the Jester." Once that message appears, you must talk to him and choose the phrase "Laughlyn" to end the fight.
Talk to the spirit again and he will offer to help you now that you've bested him. Ask him about Drake to learn that his lair is a Volcano. This will also cause him to transform into a Jester Spirit item you can pick up; do that, then exit via the portal that appears.
Drake Tower and Volcano
Exiting through the portal trips a flag at Dr. Maplethorpe's, which causes him to get in a very useful new implant called the Dermal Implants; these boost your innate defense by 2 points, making you more resistant to enemy attacks. While they are somewhat expensive at 15,000 Nuyen, they are very much worth the upgrade, so go and get them now. You may also wish to stop by the weapon shop at Dark Blade Manor and pick up the HK Assault Rifle for 15,000 Nuyen, as your shotgun is beginning to get a bit obsolete by this point. The Partial Body Suit also helps, but isn't strictly necessary, so you may want to save your cash for a better upgrade a bit later on. Both items require 5 Strength.
There is a trick you can exploit here as well. Entering the portal in the Jester Spirit's dimension also resets another flag, causing Vladimir to respawn at the Dark Blade Manor. This means that you can enter the basement and kill him again for another 4 Karma and 5000 Nuyen. You can exploit this as many times as you wish by going back to Bremerton, going through the ship, and exiting through the portal again; it is a bit tedious, but it's a relatively quick and infinite source of money in a game that's notoriously stingy about giving it out in large quantities, so it may be worth it if you really want to buy everything available at this point.
In any case, once you're suitably armed, armored and implanted, it's time to raid the Drake building. You should know where it is, as we've already walked past it several times on our way to and from the docks. Head into the lobby and take out the single mage, then hack the computer on the desk (you will need the Password from the Rust Stilettos) to unlock the elevator. Enter and head upstairs.
This is a pretty straightforward dungeon; just five floors of enemy fights, all of whom are packing some pretty heavy artillery. If it becomes too much to handle, just cast Invisibility and they will all stop firing at you, making them easy to pick off. Once that's done, hack the computers you find to unlock the next elevator, as well as find several expository data files and Nuyen caches. The second floor has a computer cache with 8,000 nuyen to find and the fifth floor has a cache with 10,000. You can also find Drake's Phone Number in one of the data files you come across, but it's not necessary.
Once you fight through six floors of baddies, you'll reach the roof. Fight off the goons up here, then talk to the helicopter pilot; ask him about Volcano and he'll fly you there. Odds are you're probably pretty beat up from your trip through the tower, though, so you may want to back out temporarily in order to rest up and spend Karma points. Top off your Freeze spell, make sure your Body and Magic are both at least 15, then take the helicopter ride to the Volcano.
If you ever need to back out (not unlikely considering the enemies here are quite dangerous and can drain your health very quickly), just talk to the pilot again and mention the word Drake to have him take you back to Drake Tower. Continue down the small hallway inside, then take the first elevator down.
Something to note about this area is that many rooms have scientists in them; once they see you, they'll sound the alarm, which causes troll decker enemies to appear in the halls on a frequent basis. They're pretty dangerous, so it's to your advantage to just shoot the scientists dead on sight. The first floor does have a computer you can hack to disable the alarm, though. Another terminal in one room will open the elevator on the east end of the level. Take it down to sub-level 2.
This floor is a bit more straightforward, but the same rules apply. This is also where the sentry guns begin to appear; make sure you shoot at the scientist operating them to disable them, not at the gun itself. Hack another terminal to open the next elevator down, then head down to sub-level 3.
Sub-level 3 has a lot of enemies, but is also a very lucrative place to do some hacking; there are data stores with 5,000, 12,000 and 25,000 nuyen here. You can also find Akimi's phone number in another data file, but again, it's not necessary to do so. She is definitely a worthy ally for the final dungeon, though, so if you use Shadowrunners it is definitely worth picking up. Hack another terminal, go through some more rooms to reach the elevator, and head down to the final stretch.
As soon as you step off the elevator, cast Invisibility immediately - there is a large swarm of scientists and trolls immediately to the south who will make your life miserable in a hurry. They respawn every time you come back here, too, so it may not be worth your while to fight them every single time. The south exit leads to Drake, but you can also take the east exit to reach a long hallway filled with nagas. The first two are green and inflict some pretty hefty damage; the last one is gold and significantly tougher. However, all can be defeated relatively easy with the Invisibility spell. The gold one also drops the Serpent Scales, which are a component of the Armor spell.
This is also the site of another trick. As long as you don't pick up the Serpent Scales, the Gold Naga will respawn each time you enter the room, allowing you to kill it again and again for 6-7 Karma each time. This is a good way to level up, but it's also risky given that the Naga is a strong opponent and you're deep into enemy territory. Still, if you want to max out your stats, this is definitely the quickest way to do it.
In any case, you should head south from the elevator to another room full of Troll Deckers. Take them all out, then check your status - if you don't have at least 40-50 Magic left, you may wish to back out of the volcano and rest up, then return. If you do, press on again. Run through the next room full of grenade-lobbing scientists (they should only hit you once or twice for minimal damage) and you'll finally come face-to-face with Drake.
...Well, if by "face to face," you mean "he starts dropping ice on your head until you approach, at which point he starts spewing fire at you for monstrous amounts of damage". As soon as you enter the room, use the Jester Spirit from your inventory; this stuns Drake for several seconds and chops off a massive chunk of his HP, allowing you to move into a more advantageous position in the meantime. Cast Invisibility while you wait for the animation to play out, then once it finishes, immediately cast Freeze on Drake to immobilize him. Once that's done, fire away at his with your weapon, and once the ice starts to fade, recast Freeze. This is a bit cheap, but given that Drake's fire breath can easily deal upwards of 150 damage to you in an instant (and he can see through your invisibility), it's all but necessary to win the fight. Once you dish out enough damage, he will die and fade to gray, netting you a whole bunch of Karma.
Enter the door to Drake's right and you will find a scientist named Pushkin, who was being held hostage by Drake. Ask him about Drake and he will mention that Aneki has developed an AI computer, which he intends to use to take over the whole of the Matrix. Then ask him about "Head Computer" and he will realize that you're the courier carrying the program capable of destroying Aneki's AI He gives you the Password you need to enter the Aneki building, and you're automatically sent back to the roof of Drake Tower.
Aneki Building
Our goal is clear and our true enemy's name is known, so it's time to end this once and for all. But first, we should arm up. Head back to the Dark Blade Manor weapon shop and purchase that shiny new AS-7 Assault Cannon they have for sale. Yes, it costs a whopping 40,000 Nuyen, but given that it's by far the strongest and most accurate weapon in the game, it's worth every cent. The Full Body Suit is also worth getting if you can spare the 30,000 Nuyen (and 6 Strength) it requires, but the Assault Cannon definitely gets top priority.
Get yourself armed up, spend all your extra Karma on Magic, and head east from the marketplace to reach the Aneki Building. As soon as you approach, several armed guards will open fire. Waste them all with your assault cannon and enter. Hack the computer you see to unlock the elevator, and head up.
This dungeon actually unfolds very similarly to Drake Tower - at each floor you'll have to fight a mess of enemies (invisibility makes them much easier to deal with) and hack computers to unlock the next floor up. You'll also need to recover passwords and data files to ensure that you can access some of the files within said computers, so make sure to check every node you come across and examine every data file within them. Oh, and don't loiter too long in the hall with the elevators, or a troll will spawn and open fire on you. You'll also be finding some rather large nuyen caches in some of these computers (22,500, 25,000 and 75,000), but it's all rather moot at this stage of the game.
On the fifth floor, the north room will have you confront Otto, Aneki's big, bad resident Troll decker. Unfortunately for him (and about 95% of the other enemies in the game), he cannot see through your invisibility, so just click that on and waste him. Now top off your health and hack the large computer in this room. Destroy the two CPUs here and you're done. Sit back and enjoy the ending.
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