This 3rd world... this is where I started having a lot of trouble with this game... The main thing that's causing me to get game over multiple times per stage is the new enemy introduced in this world, the lantern ghost.. These jerks start charging towards you as soon as they appear on the screen, and if you try and attack them like you normally would on reflex, they'll explode and damage you. It's the most unfair bullshit in this game so far. It seems the way you're supposed to deal with them is by jumping back out of the way to avoid their explosions.. But I usually get killed often enough by these things that I eventually memorize where they are and just shoot them from offscreen.
The 3rd town is "Spook Village", there's a cutscene with Wise Man.. he tells us about the great demon Dochuki who nearly destroyed the ghost world. Dochuki has been sealed for 300 years, and now Bismaru is trying to revive him. There's also a bunch of weird Iguana people in this town who give you a pass for doing a trading quest with them, and at night there's a fireworks minigame just like the one at the beginning of Goemon 3.
This world has 2 stage-based sidequests. One of them you're hunting roadside guardian statues and putting hats on them, but if you put a hat on a "fake" statue you'll lose. The "puzzle" to figure out which statues are fake is really dumb, but the main difficulty in this challenge is the time limit and the fact that enemies get in your way a lot here. The other sidequest involves hunting mushrooms in a stage with all enemies removed, and it's just a matter of figuring out the best route to take to get all of them in the time limit.
Majin Castle is the 3rd castle level, it only requires 15 passes and I already have 24.. This stage felt really intimidating at first, but then I realized Goemon could be used for the whole thing. There's this part where a spiky floor is rising and it seems like you have to use Sasuke's bombs to break the blocks, which takes a while, but actually you can just double jump over the blocks with Goemon. Some other parts that looked like you needed Ebisumaru, you can get through with Goemon just fine, but have to take a hit on some spikes. I only ended up getting game over here once, and on my 2nd try I managed to make it through to the boss without dying.
The boss of this castle is a fat sumo robot with a chainsaw. He mostly just jumps around which is easy to avoid, and rolls back and forth from the background to foreground which is also easy to a avoid. The only part that's hard to avoid is when he makes pieces of the ceiling crumble.
After that boss, we find Bismaru just as he's summoning Dochuki from his 300-year prison. Dochuki asks Bismaru for a drink, and they go off somewhere to get drinks, while leaving us with an Impact battle against "Gods of Wind and Thunder - Ukulele". This boss has more health and moves around faster than any other boss so far. Didn't have too much trouble beating him though. It helps a lot that you can switch between the 2 Impacts, and they don't share the same health bar, so you basically have twice as much health as normally.
Wise Man shows up and tells us that his ghost reviving machine is still out there, Bismaru left it behind, and we have to go through the gate to the ghost world to destroy it.
This 4th world, "Underworld", is where the gate to the ghost world is located... I'm really liking the atmosphere and music in these stages... in fact the whole game has really great atmosphere, I think I'm just noticing it more and more as I play through it... This world doesn't seem to have as many cheap/unfair ambush situations here as in the 3rd world (except for the Ebisumaru path in Wonder Valley, that part was crazy).
The town in this world is also very confusing, it's a huge maze of treehouses.. and there's a sidequest where you have to play a randomized, timed hide and seek game with some kids.. and there's also a tengu-hunting sidequest that involves going back through Wonder Valley and backtracking through its many alternate paths, which is kind of tricky but at least all the other enemies are gone..
The 4th castle level, Underworld Castle, seems to have a medieval sort of theme.. and lots of tricky platforming with enemies placed in just the right way so that they'll likely knock you back into a pit. The gold fortune doll didn't help much here because most of my deaths were from falling in pits. There was an Ebisumaru-only path, but I took the other way, not sure if that way was easier or what.. The boss of this level is Kabuki64, a recurring boss in this series. There's also a giant blob enemy in the background who tries to hit you with his club, and you can make him hit the boss instead. It's a pretty easy boss battle but also really fun.
After that, we find the ghost-reviving machine, which seems to be a giant crockpot. Ebisumaru destroys it by ground pounding it. Then there's an Impact battle against Kabuki64's giant robot while floating in the water. It's really funny seeing Impact in a swim tube... After that, Suzaku shows up again, and tells us that Dochuki is in a floating castle in the sky, and is preparing to attack the human world. Suzaku explains that she is from the ghost world, and that Dochuki destroyed her village. She then gives us the container that is used to seal Dochuki...
Now onto the final world.. and then apparently there's an extra town and some more stages I can access after beating the game.. yeah I'm using a guide to find the stuff I'm missing. I find this game is hard enough that I don't need the added difficulty of having to look for secrets.
No comments:
Post a Comment