Curate of Curiosities

Previously, the party dealt with a criminal engaged in illicit monster breeding and took on a couple more bounties. But it feels like the harder the party tried, the less progress that they actually made with paying rent. Out of desperation, they decided to take out a loan from the local crime syndicate in order to afford it, only to end up getting killed when it came time to pay up.

Before we move forward, I would like to discuss a gameplay mechanic that ties into the game's recurring theme of frustrating the player.

This game being what it is, your party members will find themselves getting knocked out a lot. What's more, every time they do so, they lose one point in a random stat.

This sounds dire, but there's a way to cure it, just go to church! It's right down the street from Ramona's apartment, but the way the area is laid out doesn't make it clear that you can scroll the screen horizontally. Somehow, I feel that it would be in character for Ramona to fail to notice the church that's right next door. What's more, if you get owned enough times, you'll not only get a new skill, but also get a bit of backstory for them.

With Ramona, we find out that she wanted to be a game developer, left college early, had a falling out with her mother after coming out, and took on a job in business before being laid off in the intro. Now, one of the skills that she can learn by levelling up is Lunge, which lowers both her own and the target's defense. Meditating at the church upgrades this skill to Perfect Lunge, which is the same skill minus the drawback.

With Kyrie, we find out that her father owed a large debt to the crime syndicate mentioned earlier, and got himself killed for it. She gains the skill Friendly Advice, which boosts the party's evasion. Given how hard the enemies can hit, and how most of her own skillset costs HP to use, this is incredibly useful.

At the moment, the church couldn't help Devon.

After this, we take out a mutant seagull that's terrorizing the beach, and earn an easy (not really) $500. Now on to the next League quest.

An outbreak of artificial monsters and a murder mystery? Given that we just dealt with someone who was breeding monsters to smuggle them across the border, thiere's no way that this can end well.

Before you even get inside the mansion, you get attacked by the artificial monsters mentioned on the bulletin.

From the entrance to this dungeon, it's more or less a straight shot to the goal, but you really want to explore all of the side rooms and read the documents. that you find there.

And this is where you get blocked off if you didn't bother to help Kyrie. Of course, it's perfectly possible to complete the quest without her.

Note that all of these documents mention a number in them, and that some mention an ordinal number as well.

This might be the worst part of the dungeon. You have to make your way to the back without stepping on tiles with flowers on them. This means you have to follow a path that winds back and forth across the garden several times, meaning more opportunities to get harrassed by the animate flowers and lamps that are threatening to overrun the forest.

Oh right, I should explain what kind of monsters can be found here. The flowers can heal, and the lamps have a hard-hitting magic attack that inflicts blind.

As you fight battles, your party will eventually start to get exhausted, resulting in a stat debuff during battle. If you continue to go on regardless, your party will end up falling asleep at the start of battle. The only way to cure it is to go all the way back to Ramona's apartment and rest. I had to do this twice over the course of this quest.

On the way out of the apartment, we face a rodent version of Logan Paul, or whatever the hell kids these days are into.

He mainly attacks with exploding balloons, so be sure to bring crowd control skills. These influencers are getting to be more and more careless, aren't they?

In fact, his antics prove to be so much of a hazard, that when the landlord fainds out, he raises our rent right then and there.

At the start of the game, our rent was barely more than $1000.

The payout from this quest had better be worth it.

As mentioned before, it's practically a straight shot from the manor's entrance to the elevator leading to the basement, so if you want to, you can completely ignore the documents and head straight there.

If you've been thorough in exploring, be sure to open the safe on the back wall before you take on the boss. The clues to the combination are in the screenshots above.

It's time to face our culprit, the assistant to the manor's late owner, who seems to have been okay wih us looting the safe behind him.

I think that he might have taken out the owner of the manor. It's not entirely clear, but it would explain why he's hiding in the basement. Plus, his goal is to use the monsters to make his own private militia, which might be more social commentary (oh, did I mention that the creator has left-wing sympathies that are nearly on par with Molleindustria's?)

There was probably no need for you to say that, Devon. We already know how typical his motives are.

Like Miss Poma from earlier, Basalmo is accompanied in battle by two monsters, but this time around, they're monsters that we've already fought on the way here. He himself has a chair fitted with a machine gun, which to him, makes it a chimera like the walking lamps.

Despite all this, he's not a very big threat. This may sound bad at first glance, but remember that enemies scale to the party's level.

This is why you should pick up the will from the safe, because if you didn't, then he'll kill himself on the spot.

It turns out that the owner was planning on selling his creations to the army, and leaving nothing for his poor, beleagured assistant, so he decides to destroy the man's legacy out of spite. Right right, the message, stick it to the man and all that. This game barely knows the meaning of the word subtle.

He directs the party to the nearby room, where there's a keycard used to activate the manor's self-destruct mechanism. How convenient.

And would you look at that! We finally have enough to pay rent! No taking out loans in shady establishments required.

And that's our finale. No big villain to fight, no epic climax, just three friends hanging out, celebrating that they get to stay together.

Of course, even though she now has a relatively steady source of income, Ramona's overall situation hasn't changed; she still has to pay rent every month.

But perhaps that doesn't have to stay that way. Maybe she can escape living hand-to-mouth. Maybe she can be something more.