Revenge of the Hand: MacDaddy Mike's playthrough topic part 2

I still haven't started it up, but I'm going to begin by playing through Joao Franco's story, and depending on how long it takes that may be all the time I put into this game for now. There's no sense in me doing any videos for these because I honestly don't remember anything about the gameplay and any video would be padded by me not knowing what to say or what to do, so I'll just stick to text for this one.

Coincidentally, I just started subscribing to a guy who also just started playing this game, and he's doing Ernst's story if you want to take a look at the gameplay:
http://youtu.be/9GFzS-ULNDc
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

I started up as Joao Franco (no, seriously, I don't know how to pronounce it), and there's actually a long scripted series of events at the start to get you pointed in the right direction. Your father (I always thought his portrait made him look evil) checks up on you and tells you it's time to go out and become a man, and he tasks you with discovering the "secret of Atlantis", whatever that means. From there you get your first mate, Rocco, a ship named the Hermes II (lame), and then a few hints on how to make money. You also pick up a man named Enrico who you're supposed to eventually take to Zipanga (which I believe is far far east), and discover a stowaway who goes by the pseudonym Domingo Manana.

If there's anything that I can always appreciate the game for, it's the freedom of gameplay. Everything has so much depth to it, from sailing/navigating, hiring/treating/assigning crew, ship combat, the trade/economics of various ports, investing in industry or economy of ports, weather conditions, rations, supplies, building/remodeling ships, discovering ruins/treasures, etc. etc. etc. I'm still discovering new tricks and rediscovering old ones, and there are still a few features of the game that are mysteries to me because there's just so much depth here to be uncovered.

One thing that I like to do when I play games, especially RPGs, is put in effort at the start of the game to make the rest of the game a little easier for me. Whenever I play Chrono Trigger I usually level Crono and Marle up to lvl 5 before I even go to Lucca's exhibit at the fair, and similarly in Final Fantasy XII I like to grind at the start with Vaan just to unlock some Quickenings for later. Here I set my goals on building myself a fleet, albeit a tiny one, of some of the best ships, before going out to buy some of the best armor and then going out on my adventure.

The Hamburg-Oslo route doesn't earn you too much money too quickly, but the reason I stay up there is because it keeps me close to Dublin, which is a port that I always used to invest in to get good ships. Every 10k I make I go over to Dublin and invest in their market, and soon I'll be able to build better ships there. I've already purchased another small ship to add to my little fleet, if only because I can then carry more cargo and make money faster. I've even modified my original ship to only carry 10 crewmen, so that I can use the rest of the space to carry goods, and I usually sail around with only enough rations to sail for a couple of days, and have all of my crewmembers assigned to navigation (as opposed to lookout [to find ports and villages] or combat [which I won't need for a while]).

And I already got my first game-over. Apparently I was cutting it a little too close and my crew didn't like that I cut their rations down to 70% and wasn't carrying enough gold to pay them all for the month, so they abandoned ship in the middle of the waters between Hamburg and Oslo, and I got a game-over screen telling me that Joao Franco disappeared at sea and was never heard from again. I guess I'm not a very good ship captain, eh?
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

~Joao Franco
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

My ship wouldn't be ready for 40 days so I decided to sail around the Mediterranean just finding ports and villages around there, uncovering more of the map and then going down and up the Nile. Whenever you discover a new port or village your "Adventure Fame" goes up, and most of the scripted events in the game are based on your fame level. For instance, after coming back from the Nile and stopping in Dublin for my ship, I entered the bar to recruit crew when an event happened involving Domingo, the stowaway from before. In an earlier port we had heard rumour that the prince of Portugal was missing, and here we pieced it together that it was Domingo, but not before some pirates attempted to kidnap him.

Here I got into my first sword-fight in the game, against the pirate leader, and I...don't understand it at all. You take turns attacking and defending, with three choices of each--thrust, slash and strike for attack and parry, block and dodge for defend, and the defenses all counter the respective attack. I think you can infer how the opponent will attack based on his stance, but I don't really know. I happened to win this fight but it was tough because I had forgotten to equip any armor, so every attack he landed on me did three times the damage I did on him. Joao is experienced in fencing so I knew to use "thrust" more often than not.

After the fight I actually got my first run-in with another playable character--Catalina. She saves me from a gang-up of those pirates and then curses herself when she finds out I'm Joao Franco, as she thinks that either myself or my father is responsible for her lover and brother's deaths. She then runs off and every other port I enter has people worried that she might be hot on our heels.

So I took my new ship, stocked up on items such as the Quadrant (tells me the longitude and latitude on the map), Telescope (makes it easier to spot ports and villages), Lime Juices (cures scurvy in case your crew catches it) and Balms (which calm storms). There are still other ways to lose your crew, such as being attacked by a "monster" during a discovery or sometimes it'll say that your crew members "got tired of sailing" and decided to stay at the village. I've also had mermaid sirens cause some of my men to fling themselves into the ocean in the Northern fjords. There's so much to this game, damnit! I haven't even had a single ship combat yet!

Anyway, I went Northeast around Russia and Asia, eventually going down through the Philippines and Australia, then looped back around Africa and eventually made it to Lisbon again (though I had one game over on the west coast of Africa because a storm wrecked my ship). The entire adventure cost me practically all my gold and I arrived in Lisbon broke, and sailing around the map took about a year of game time. I forgot to mention, but this game actually has a time limit. After a certain date the game will tell you that you're "too old to sail" and then it's game over. I don't know when that date is, but I think it's something like 30 years from the start point, so I'll be okay.

Was my trip worth it? 400,000 gold in discovery payments says "yes".

Oh, and I stopped by a supply port named "Dikson". I didn't bother renaming it.

So I was trading gold from Madeira with silver in Genoa, but because I wasn't messing with the market I wasn't making as much as I should have been. The gold was what would have been making me money, so I started buying the silver at a loss but with small enough increments so that I raised the market value of gold in Genoa, and then sold the silver in small enough increments in Madeira so as to drop the price of gold. Basically, I was buying gold at half the price and selling it at triple the price, whereas I'd take a little bit of a loss on the silver with every trip. With a ship with a 900 cargo hold, I was making something like 20k profit with every short circuit. Needless to say, I started to make money really quickly (and this must have been how I used to do it back in the day) and I built one more ship, a Frigate I named the "Everend", and I have a second Frigate being built named the "Neverend". I think that's all I'll need for my fleet.

But since my adventure fame went up, the scripted events went up as well. I ran into Catalina more than once, and a couple of times Rocco distracted her while we got away, but I knew that it was gearing up to something. Eventually I'd have a small dialogue come up when entering or leaving ports about how Catalina's still on our trail, and it got me really nervous but I played my luck. And then she did catch up to me, and it was bad. Her entire fleet caught up to me and attacked me outside of Madeira when I had nothing but Bantamanam and didn't even have any cannons on the ship. I got game over once really quickly, so quickly that I didn't even get a feel for how the ship combat is supposed to work. The second try her flag ship went after me right away and challenged me to a duel, which is something that can happen and that I usually hope for, as it preserves the ships for the taking. She kicked my ass, but then I tried again and won, defeating her fleet and being able to claim two ships for myself. I decided to sell them.

I actually remember I got screwed once in this game because I saved right outside of a scripted sea battle that I had no chance of winning, but eventually was able to beat the opponent in a duel. I decided that I'd need some better equipment in the future, because it was an uphill battle in that duel against Catalina, so I sailed around with all that money I had made by breaking the gold/silver trade (I have something like 8 million now), buying myself some top-tier armor and sword from the "black market", which is when the stores are open at 2 am and have special items in stock, like forged tax-free permits and the like. They cost me a lot of money, but I'm sure they'll come in handy, and I'm already itching to do some piracy.

I also did some favors for the king, mostly just delivering messages and stuff around Europe, and now I'm known as "Baron" Joao Franco. At some point I ran into Ali Vezas, another of the playable characters, who tells me that the bargirl from Lisbon was kidnapped, possibly by Catalina, and also asked me to search for his long-lost sister or something. I didn't really care, but the story's really taking off now.
---
Mac plays the games he thought he knew (Current: Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons - SNES):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/548-zsb/61122424

Okay, so I sailed around the Middle East checking every port I could for Ali's sister and eventually found her, and then just had to tell Ali about her and that was the end of that for a while. Then nothing happened. I needed more adventure fame to trigger the next event, so I moored my fleet and sailed Windy over to the New World, looking for ports and villages to search, and eventually Ali ran into me again and informed me that I could discover more about the secret of Atlantis if I go to the port of Massawa in the Middle East. I did, and there they told me that the survivors of the Atlantis incident founded Massawa and that the Turkish navy was planning to attack them for their secrets, and that only the Staff of Poseidon could unite all the people in defense of the port.

We get the idea to return to Lisbon because Joao's mother hired the adventurer, Pietro Conti (another of the playable characters), and upon calling him we ask him to find the staff for us, and then make our way back to Massawa.

And here's where I screwed up. Again. I mentioned before that there was a part of the game that I got stuck on in the past because I saved right before a scripted sea battle that I had no chance of winning, and boy do I not have much of a chance of winning this one. I didn't save directly outside of it so I still have a chance, but I'm going to need to hire more men on my ships to survive this onslaught of ships--I have to fight four fleets. FOUR FLEETS! Sometimes they'll even gang up on me. I tried a few times but they outnumbered me too much and their crew outnumbered mine, so I couldn't even rush the enemy flagship to propose a duel, which is usually how I go about doing things. Lots of reading this:

I fortunately saved outside of this battle, so I still have time to up my manpower and retry, but I'm not doing so well right now. I also realized that I kind of screwed up by not teaching Joao cartography skills earlier, which is a great way to increase adventure fame, but now that I have most of the map already uncovered there's little benefit from it. Shoot. I'm having a harder time with this than I thought I would have, which makes me feel bad because I used to be so awesome at this game.

That's more like it!

I spent an extra month, as you can see, just sailing about and recruiting more men for my ships, and then assigning the right number to combat. By the time the month was over I had 450 men on my flagship, which meant that I had very little room for supplies and could only sail for ten days or so at a time before I ran out of food and water, but I was staying close to Massawa for the time-being so nothing needed to happen. Before heading out for the battle, Catalina runs into you again and demands a duel, but you tell her that it'll have to wait until after you protect the port from the giant fleet massing outside, and she agrees.

The first battle went well enough, as my high number of men meant that I had no trouble in initiating any duels. I did fine against the first fleet, taking it out quickly, but the second fleet took me two tries at a duel because I didn't do enough damage to kill the first time and the duels are sort of on a time limit before you lose your turn. I did manage to capture one of the enemy ships, a Venetian Galleas (which is an awesome awesome ship) that I named "TurkD-elite", which is a pun on two levels, I guess. Before engaging the third fleet, Catalina shows up with her own ship and offers to help you defend the port, leaving only one more fleet for you to take care of personally. I was quick to get a duel in on this fleet, and I managed to defeat the captain in one hit, using a strike that did 100 damage right away. Go me!

Pietro shows up with the Staff and all is well, and then Catalina challenges you to a duel before Pietro steps in and asks why she's so hellbent on killing Joao. She explains that her brother and lover (not the same guy, again) died to a supposed Franco fleet, but Joao explains that his father gave up sailing after meeting his mother and that there was no Franco fleet until I started my own, so it must have been an impostor. Catalina gets angry, demands no sympathy, and runs off, but now I have a bit of a mystery on my hands (though I'm pretty sure it's that scheming Marquis that tried to pin Domingo's disappearance on Joao's dad).

I'm not really sure what to do now, but I sailed back to Lisbon, unfortunately losing TurkD-elite in a storm, and moored my battle fleet to exchange for Windy. I may need to sail around more to trigger the next event, but I dunno.