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

This stage has you hunting down Lando's ship, the Lady Luck, and prepping her for take-off. Sounds easy enough, especially when you find the ship only two minutes into the stage, but the rest of the time is spent figuring out how to get the ship moving. First you have to open the hangar doors, then you have to defend Lando as he sets up the fueling pumps, then you have to open the roof, then you have to fix the fueling pumps, and then finally you have to man the ship's guns as you have a final stand-off with Reelo and his men.

It's another hub-based level, as you'll find yourself moving around the ship a lot and unlocking more areas that are nearby. In terms of the gunplay, I didn't have too much trouble until the defend Lando sections, and it really is disheartening to see the message "Mission failed: Lando Calrissian has died" on your screen.

'Not much to say about this level other than Lando kicking ass, and I misunderstood how to get the fuel pumps fixed and spent far too much time running around the level trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. 'Turns out it was a lot more obvious than I was expecting it to be. Overthinking never helps matters.

Well...at least I found all the secrets, right?

"It's time to say goodbye to this wretched hive of scum and villainy, and hello to Cloud City".

YEEEEAAAAAHHH!

Artificially-infused with the Force, these guys are your first big lightsaber-wielding threats, and the first of many. You face two in this stage, an adept-level orange one and a more advanced blue one, both in absolutely breathtaking locations. I'd forgotten how gorgeous some of the areas of this game are, including an area in this level that I had been doingcompletely wrong every other time I've played the game. I never caught on to the safe way to get through it, and the way I was doing it took forever and involved a lot of stopping to Force Heal. Cloud City has always been an awe-inspiring concept to me, and this stage allows for so many memorable moments.

After climbing up an enormous cylindrical room of red and orange light, you use wind bursts to push you up on small platforms to face your first Reborn, and along the way you can use your recently-upgraded Force Push to shove minor enemies off of the catwalks to their doom. I didn't have much trouble with the first Reborn, but the second one is even more memorable, as you fight him in a darkened carbonation freezing chamber, where among the first things you see is the glow from your enemy's lightsaber. This one tested my reflexes a bit more, but I'm considering turning on the "realistic saber combat" cheat for the rest of the game just for the lolz. I even caught myself finding a new move that I had never seen before, and I'm wondering if its just an old move that's been edited with the most recent patch or if it's something I missed altogether. It's a jump+slash move with the medium stance, but I remember it looking completely different than how it did here.

I'd say that I can't wait to get out there and fight more Reborn, but the next level has a...less-than-satisfactory first act. I'll get to that when I get to that.

And all you other folk should start joining in already.

I've also decided to have some fun with things, so I activated cheats, which is something that I'm not sure the Cube version has. I wasn't going to do anything cheap like up my Force Powers or get all guns or anything, I just wanted to a) change my saber color to purple because it looks pretty and b) turn on realistic saber combat. There is nothing more fun than having realistic saber combat on, as it makes it so that every saber swing that connects with flesh tears right through it, leading for intense decapitations and dismemberments, as well as some really stressful fights with Reborn, as they too are able to kill you in one good hit. It also means that, if you're awesome like me, you may be able to end saber fights in seconds. I got ambushed by two Reborn in the later end of the level and the fight lasted all of ten seconds because I pulled a wicked wall-jump overhead decapitation on one of them and then a rolling slash to cleave the other through the abdomen. Bad. Ass.

Hell, aside from the sections mentioned in the first paragraph, this level had me feeling like one hell of a powerful Jedi. I've found a great way of taking care of enemies at close range is to push them to the ground first and then just stand overtop and slice them in half. I remember entering a room with four stormtroopers standing really far apart, and I was all the way on the other side of the room from them, but I guess I used Force Push in the exact perfect spot in between them because all four of them toppled over with one use, and I was able to turn on speed and run around the room slicin' heads like nothin'. I also got a slow-motion death by Force Push'in a Rodian into a tripmine. All made better by slow motion.

I have Force Pull upgraded now, which makes it so that I can pull a weapon away from an enemy at close range, and that's fairly useful. It also pulls their body close enough that I can cut them right after. Force Grip is also in my repertoire but it doesn't actually do real damage at this point, so it's fairly useless. The next level has me learn Force Lightning, which is far less useless.

...I really like Force Push.

I won the Illumina, Cat Hood, and Merit Award in the Colosseum. I also had Gogo, equipped with the Merit Award, steal four Economizers from Aquilas by using the Strato<->Pearl Lance loop.

After this, I went down to the Ancient Castle, defeating the Master Pug with sleep and poison, confusing the KatanaSoul into obliterating itself, and going head to head with the Blue Dragon, fully enjoying the benefits of not having to Osmose every other turn. The Blue Dragon isn't weak per se, but the power creep in this game is starting to come through in full force at this point. I picked up Odin but didn't convert to Raiden.

I went to the Veldt to start teaching my party members more magic, the level 3 spells being the main focus. I also used these fights to start uncursing the Cursed Shield. Once everyone had Fire3, I started hunting down Doom Gaze to finish it off. It took 6 encounters, bringing the total to 10 or 11, I think. The curse hasn't been broken yet, so it's more magic teaching on the Veldt for the foreseeable future.

That's it for now. I can elaborate on things a bit if desired; the "Cast Ultima on EVERYTHING!" phase hasn't been hit quite yet, but it's looming. 

I hope you guys have a Merry Christmas.

And, again, I've never ever EVER spent more than a minute in the Colosseum, 'cause I really just don't understand how you're supposed to manage it without any control. Aside from winning Shadow (which happens usually after one attack), I've never put any time into it. I know what the Economizer is because I had to farm for some in the Dinosaur Forest when I was playing FFVIa (they were pretty much mandatory for doing the bonus dungeon, which I really enjoyed), but I don't know what a Merit Award is. A lot of FAQs I looked at mentioned them but never explained what it was.

Blue Dragon can't be too impressive if I was able to take him out without any trouble.

And a Merry Everyone to you too!

Perhaps I will..

I'm damn happy they included MotS as well, as it's the often-forgotten one of the group. It didn't have a very successful first release, but I guess it's been getting some steam (lol) recently, 'cause my walkthrough for it has been getting a lot of hits lately. I'm pretty sure I'm the only walkthrough out there for this game, too.

Perhaps the best moments of this game are all of the entrances of the Reborn encounters. The first one is iconic, the second one is even MORE iconic, and everyone after that is full of surprise and wonder. I mentioned the one where you get ambushed by two at once, and then later I opened a door with a security key and there was a Reborn right on the other side to yell "Die, Jedi!" and scare the crap out of me. At the very start of this level one drops down from the ceiling as you're walking, but it was a little hilarious because he practically fell right on top of my saber and died instantly. I was still surprised, so, uh, mission successful?

'Not much to say about the first part of this level. It's actually pretty short, but that's because it's all gearing up for the fight with Tavion, whose voice actress is the most impressive yet (and hey, she played Bubbles on The Powerpuff Girls..........which I totally have never watched before, I swear). I had at least ten deaths on this fight, 'cause damn she good. She uses a stance that's actually built into the game but that's not available to you, and that you can only unlock via cheats. She's damn fast, though, and I had a lot of trouble with this fight, but it was the most exciting one yet. And somehow, SOMEHOW, this fight's excitement is already beaten at the beginning of the next level.

Secret areas found: 1 of 1
Enemies killed: 41
Accuracy: 63.35%

The next level has you at some kind of Imperial Remnant docking bay, looking for Galak Fyyar's (most awesome name) ship, the Doomgiver (second-most awesome name). The first few rooms have some neat firefights and then you run into Luke Skywalker, who fills you in on goings on before you're both ambushed by four Reborn warriors of varying skill-level. Jesus. This fight is so much fun, and I got to replay it seven times or so because while I would be busy killing one off to the side, the other three would buttslam Luke and I'd get a game over because "Luke Skywalker has died", which made me feel kind of crappy. I utilized the new light lightsaber stance (as opposed to medium stance or the later heavy or strong stance) and its killer lunge attack to take care of a lot of the Reborn, and when I finally did manage to take all four of them out, it felt fantastic.

There was a lot of platforming for the remainder of the level and I got myself a little lost at times, but all in all it was good. I find myself a bit of a loss for words because, in my opinion, the game sort of peaks at Cloud City. The locales never get as unique and become more of the standard/generic Dark Forces fare, and even though you get into some awesome lightsaber fights and awesome bossfights and awesome everything, I just find it's never as "wow factor" as the first time it happens on Cloud City. It's a mean bias that I need to get rid of, but I'm honestly having a hard time remembering what happens after this level, so maybe the game will surprise me yet.

Secret areas found: 1 of 1
Enemies killed: 60
Accuracy: 100%

WOOOOOOOOO! I only killed maybe twenty guys with my blaster, but I nailed every shot damnit! That's worth something, and now I can die happy.

COMMAND.

I.
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The Blue Dragon largely uses magic attacks that target the whole party and is only vulnerable to poison and slow. With high magic block across four characters, he only ended up downing at the most two party members at a time. 1MP Life spells also made that trivial.

I removed the curse from the Paladin Shield, finally. Now characters not named Sabin can start doing 1600 damage to a single enemy!
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We just don't have any use for [classy head shots] and also, as people on Fark love to point out, we look exactly like Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. - Gabe

There are these, I dunno, tiny walking guys that are less like AT-STs and more like those robots from Robocop, and I fought two of them at once in this level. I took care of them by staying really close, deflecting their attacks, and then sneaking in saber swings when I could. What was weird was that I could see the shadow of a third robot in one of the crates but he never ended up coming out, which leads me to believe that you face three on a higher difficulty level but they still load the third one on all difficulties; they just don't open the crate. That's a strange way to go about things, I thought.

This stage had a lot of platforming, including a section with electrified floors that took some slippery jumping. You'd think that it'd be easier to do the jumping if you're in third person and have a view of your entire body, but I always find it easier to be in first person and judge the distance.

What's great about this level is that you make it all the way in one direction and then have to go all the way back, and on the way back you face Reborn in almost every room you enter. I had this epic duel with two of them where I killed one with that light stance lunge attack and it went into the slow-mo kill cam, and I could see that at the very end of the move when I had the lightsaber held above my head, I actually blocked an attack from the other Reborn that was coming from behind. It was like something choreographed straight out of the movies, and it happening in slow-mo made it that much cooler. The other battles weren't too difficult but were similarly cool, and then you end up fighting an AT-ST one-on-one, and I did a lot of running in a circle while shooting this pulse rifle at it, and even though I entered the fight with full everything, I finished it with only 7 health.

I did a lot more shooting this level, too. Hell, I probably fired 20 shots just at the AT-ST. Go me.

The next stage starts with a quick Reborn fight and an introduction to the laser beams of death, which becomes the gimmick for the first bit of the level. It's a great way to show off your new Level 3 Force Speed, which allows you to move at 400% speed or something like that. When you're moving that fast it's actually super hard to control yourself, so this is mostly useful for platforming and not too useful in a combat setting, as you'll likely just run right past your enemy and miss him entirely. I got a little lost during this section, with the lasers, and a lot of missteps meant a lot of easy deaths, but the way you're supposed to go was actually kind of clever, now that I think about it.

This stage had a surprising amount of great visual moments, including an absolutely gigantic room that you cross on a platform that gets bombarded by troopers with rocket launchers. I had just figured out that a great way to take care of enemies from a distance was to deflect their shots with my lightsaber, and then this happens to ruin everything. I had to be really careful crossing the chasm because I had no good way of killing the two rocket troopers, so I just avoided their attacks while I maneuvered. Lots of deaths here.

Later there's a cool section where you have to speed and jump across these rotating gears that fry you to ashes if you touch them (which led to lots of deaths), and halfway across the section you get a challenge from a Reborn that I got to Force Push right into one of those gears...AWESOME. 'Tons more platforming here, I tells you.

That accuracy was with only two shots fired, both at extremely long range, and both connected. Heh.

And then the rest of the level is a stealth mission. Thanks a ****ing lot, Star Wars. As if I haven't mentioned how much I suck at stealth gameplay on this board before, they force me (lols) into this here. If you get spotted by a guard and they reach an alarm station, they play a cutscene that shows you getting captured, thrown into a cell, and then tortured off-screen as you're screaming in pain before finally giving you the game over message. It's unique, but annoying...when it happens twenty ****ing times. I hate stealth gameplay. I am no good at it. There's a reason I always played MGS games at "Very Easy" difficulty.

I mean, at least you have Jedi Mind Trick to fool some guards, but there were areas where I'd open a door and suddenly there's a dude in a room that I can't even situate pressing an alarm button and I just got game over. This legitimately happened. It turns out I'm not supposed to go through that door, but how was I supposed to know? There was one area that I just couldn't figure out how to beat stealthily, so I killed the only officer, grabbed the security key and ran like hell hoping the other troopers around would forget about me and not press the button. I was fortunate.

Still, ****ing annoying. This is just not up my alley.

No shots fired. They call it 0%, I call it 100%.