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Last time, we explored about 80% of Karachi, got sold a bootleg Famicom cartridge, and learned about a secret shop. This time, we’re going to wrap all that shit up.
Cascada: For all we know, this is one of those bootlegs that’s secretly kinda cool.
Kakyoin: My smile is gone for good. The mere concept of counterfeit Dragon Quest III cartridges spreading throughout the world fills me with dread and anhedonia.
Cascada: Crushing my enemies usually cheers me up.
Kakyoin: I don’t usually go for the wisdom of the commonfolk, but I’m willing to try.
When I was a kid, I got a bootleg Game Boy Color cartridge labelled “Pokemon Jade” at a local Chinese supermarket. It had the forest spirit from Princess Mononoke on the cover. Turns out it was a completely different monster-collecting game with a shoddy translation called “Cellphone Monster Telefang”. Instead of keeping dudes in Poke Balls, you called monsters on your cellphone to fight for you.
Let’s test out Cascada’s new move. I always forget Quicksilver is meant to work by transforming minerals into energy rather than simply shooting beams.
It doesn’t always restore both HP and SP, but it’s a nice way to spend a turn rather than dropping a curative (as long as the situation isn’t too dire).
Cascada: That so-called secret shop is supposed to be around here.
Kakyoin: Soon they shall know the wrath of a gamer.
There’s a hidden alleyway here with a door at the far end.
Kakyoin: No! I am here for JUSTICE!
Secret Shopkeep: …You a cop?
Cascada: Fuck the police.
Secret Shopkeep: Right on, sister.
Kakyoin: The charlatan down the road claims you provided him with this putrid forgery of the honorable Dragon Quest III. What do you have to say for yourself!?
Secret Shopkeep: NO! DON’T BRING IT BACK!
Cascada: Wh-
Secret Shopkeep: That thing is cursed! I tried to get rid of it dozens of times, but it always returned to the console! I couldn’t play anything else except F-MEGA!
Cascada: Oh my god… not F-MEGA! That’s a fate worse than death!
Kakyoin: …and yet, it passed to that shopkeep’s hands, and now to Cascada’s! Explain yourself!
Secret Shopkeep: I asked a fortune-teller in Cairo. He said the curse could not be broken, only transferred to another… by selling it at full retail price. The mafia sold it to me, so I couldn’t do anything but find some other sucker…
Both: …
Cascada: Well, shit.
Kakyoin: Cascada… no… I…
Cascada: Eh, my PC-Engine is better anyway. What you got for sale?
Some of these damage items can be pretty useful, such as the Bearing/Rifle Ammo which gives Jotaro access to a decent Long-range attack. We’re also long overdue for an armor upgrade since I’m still using the brass knuckles from HK. But forget all that; this shop sells something very special.
I said Cascada only learns two more moves (well, one more now that we have Absorb Iron) by leveling up. I didn’t say anything about learning moves from books.
Cascada: I always wanted to learn some trick shooting, even before I had an arm cannon.
BZZZZZT
I fucked up. These books teach bullet skills; Quicksilver shoots beams. I guarantee none of you are as annoyed by this as I am.
There’s no point holding on to the manuals, so I load a save to get my money back.
Cascada: Well, that was a total waste of time and now I’m stuck with a cursed video game cartridge. Yippee.
Kakyoin: We can still seize the day, Cascada! Surely one of these quaint foreign shops has something worthwhile.
Cascada: (I almost miss crazed gamer Kakyoin…)
Cascada: You could certainly call it that…
Kakyoin: That’s right. Why don’t I get you something to remember this trip by? Something that just screams Karachi!
Cascada: Screams… Karachi?
Kakyoin: Just like y-
Cascada: Brass knuckles.
Kakyoin: …right. At least as an apology for the Dragon Quest debacle, then?
Cascada: Oh, fine.
The mirror does in fact get added to our inventory as a reusable item.
It hits all enemies with a decent chance to cause blindness. I will probably forget it exists immediately after this update.
Cascada: It’s been a few hours, I’m gonna go check on Mr. Joestar.
Kakyoin: Give him my regards. I must ensure the rest of these shops are up to standard.
Cascada: Mhm. You feeling any better? Good enough to finally get some grub, even?
Joseph: Yeah… but everyone in the lobby kept talking about some kind of mansion north of here…
Cascada: Aaand you think there might be an enemy Stand user?
Joseph: Let’s go!
Cascada: Nice place. Time to loot!
Joseph: HOLY SHIT!!
Cascada: Aaagghh!
The entire mansion is scattered with tiles that inflict around 20-30 damage. It’s possible to avoid most of them if you use a map, but I do not have that kind of patience.
Yes, this is the exact same Handkerchief that was in a chest in Cascada’s room, where you start the game.
This is a battle item that lets you absorb some HP from an enemy. It will probably go unused the entire game like most of our battle items.
Unlike many field/environmental damage traps in JRPGs, the invisible force can outright kill you if you aren’t paying attention.
Cascada’s Ripple Breathing and Joseph’s Deep Breathing see some use here just so that I don’t deplete all my good items. I do use up some of the lower-level ones to restore SP along the way.
Imagine seeing about a dozen more of these.
The center stairwell is a trap that takes you to a dead end. We need to use this side one instead.
Cascada: -huff, huff, huff- Okay, yeah… breathing… like this… is actually… pretty hard…
Joseph: -huff, huff- I’m really out of practice…
Joseph: Are you the one behind all those slashings!?
Cascada: Even if he wasn’t, I’d kick his ass out of principle at this point.
Cascada: Can we meet ONE Stand user who isn’t a massive creep?
Weirdly enough there are multiple musicians named Don Cherry and multiple songs/albums titled Dirty Work, so pick your favorites.
Don Cherry either heals himself or shoots guns, while Dirty Work deals solid damage along with annoying status effects like Fear and Bleed. Meanwhile, the Slash Energies are invisible enemies that spawn in and self-destruct, but you can still target and attack them if you want.
Not that it matters.
If you forgot, Devo was the guy who ambushed Polnareff in his hotel room in Update 12. Weird pull for this random guy.
Cascada: For all the people talking about this mansion, it was a bit of a letdown.
Joseph: Hmm… maybe there’s a different mansion?
With the slash energy gone, we can loot with impunity.
Cascada: …
Joseph: Uh…
Ah, the infamous bunny suit. If you wear it, your overworld sprite changes along with a surprisingly large amount of dialogue throughout the entire game.
Honestly, not a a terrible piece of equipment. Because it’s too embarrassing, you can only equip the bunny suit while your character is alone (really alone, not out in public); even then, there’s only a 10% chance it works. If you’re in NG+ and join the Drama Club, that goes up to 50%.
None that matters if you’re playing as the “Chubby” character type. There are no upsides, so many blatant downsides, and the game is just generally so mean-spirited about it that I don’t even know why the creator made it an option.
The other side has the Jockstrap, the equivalent for male player characters that has way less unique dialogue acknowledging it. It’s not in a chest here, but male characters also get “Japanese Clothing”, a whole jidai-geki samurai outfit that serves a similar purpose.
No other player type has to deal with this kind of shit! Why!!
Joseph: I’ve worked up a bit of an appetite myself. Let’s eat!
Again, I visited this place with Joseph last update to get food and nothing triggered. I was shocked and appalled when this popped up because I didn’t know it was even possible.
Haleem is a stewed porridge dish where various grains and meats are cooked together and then mixed into a paste.
Joseph: Mmm… Hearty, but mellow! This would pair well with almost anything!
Biryani is a mixed rice dish with about as many variants as there are people who cook it. According to my cursory research, Sindhi biryani (which includes potatoes and tomatoes) is one of the most popular kinds in Pakistan.
Joseph: Mm, the Basmati rice goes well with the spices. It’s got a lot of volume… Good, good!
With our sadly brief food tour at an end, it’s time to hit up the final, terrible hot spot in Karachi. There’s a shadowed alleyway on the eastern side of the map with a semi-hidden door.
Cascada: This is about the only other place within the two blocks that exist of the city of Karachi that could be called a mansion, I guess.
Joseph: There’s got to be something here! It’s my battle-forged intuition!
Quick stat check, for comparison later. We walk in, and…
Cascada: NO! NOOO!! AHHHHHH!!!
Joseph: OH MY GOD!
Welcome to Joey Hell. These are exactly the same dolls as the optional boss in Varanasi, which means they do not fuck around. Either you burst them down or they burst you down. It might as well be a coin flip.
Like so.
Nothing but the strongest attacks from now on. No holds barred against this fucker.
This mansion is three floors swarming with Joey Dolls who all spout canned lines from action movies. I’m going through my SP curatives faster than Laura Palmer went through that baggie of cocaine.
Glad I still had a few of these around, but 75 isn’t even two Venom Cannons and it takes at least three to wipe an encounter. I settle into a pattern where I just keep blasting and if there’s ever a time when there’s only one Joey remaining, I spam Absorb Iron until he’s dead.
Second floor.
The encounter in Karachi with the next highest experience yield is 400 EXP by fighting two Fireflies, so at least we’re being duly rewarded for our trouble.
I said “wait, fuck” out loud when I did this unthinkingly. There’s a secret switch on the top floor of Joey’s mansion that only appears if you haven’t opened the chests on the way up. My last save was before I even went inside. I have to kill my way through another dozen or so mini-bosses to get back to the second floor.
Cascada: I WILL KILL YOU AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES
This is a particularly sneaky one because he’s hiding behind the door sprite. If you’re still holding up when you open the door you’re almost certainly going to blunder straight into him.
We reach the third floor after a solid 15 minutes of doing nothing but battling Joey Dolls. Surely he won’t have some kind of fucked up puppet show happening just off camera!
Cascada: What the fuck? Is that my family?
Joseph: …this can’t be good…
They all have only one line of dialogue:
Congratulations on your wedding.
Wedding bells start clanging once you walk into this room.
Joseph: That’s me! And Jotaro! Kakyoin and Polnareff too!
Cascada: …
This is a cameo from JoJo’s resident evil priest character, Part 6’s Enrico Pucci. He’d probably officiate shit like this even without being a doll.
Alright, enough putting it off.
Cascada: I WILL RIP AND TEAR UNTIL IT IS DONE
Cascada: I! CAN’T! EVEN! WEAR! THAT! BUNNY! SUIT! YOU! SON! OF! A! BITCH!
Cascada: FORGET DIO I AM GOING TO KILL JOEY NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES
Joseph: Oh right, I’m sorry! An old man shouldn’t be looking at something like this!
Cascada: If you speak a single word of this…
Joseph: I won’t! I swear!
Cascada: …thanks. None of the others would ever let me live this down…
There’s a different event here for each party member that varies based on your gender, body type, and Stand. I can’t be assed to show off the rest because fighting so many dolls is super tedious and I deserve to at least retain the experience points.
Also, there’s no boss fight against Joey in the mansion. He’s not actually here.
Not opening any of the chests down below is supposed to mean there’s a secret switch under the briefcase. There isn’t. Turns out it’s NG+ only; I loaded that save earlier for no fucking reason.
7SU loves to dance on my grave.
The chests contain: two Bawdy Magazines (distracts an enemy), another Bunny Suit, a Massaging Machine (25%+10 SP, can be used 5 times), and Panties (distracts all enemies).
I hate Joey, which I suppose makes him an effective recurring villain. On the other hand, he’s really just fucking gross. I’ll admit I was kinda just like “yeah yeah perv villain whatever” until I had to start writing silly fake dialogue for Cascada. Attempting to inhabit that point of view even a little shifted me to “actually NendoTairiku probably should have toned this the fuck down”.
We loot the rest of the mansion. The curatives here are mostly variants of previous potions with the extra effect of being retainable into Hard Mode, which otherwise wipes most of your inventory… not that I’ve ever bothered with Hard Mode.
This is a nice get, though. It increases all stats by 1 and your HP/SP by 2. Best to hold on to it in case I need to save edit my item quantities for an emergency.
You can scroll up and compare. Cascada went from 31 to 34; Joseph went from 22 to 28. We should be good on grinding for a hot minute, and we’re flush with cash. Time to suit up.
Joseph: …do you want to get something to eat?
Cascada: You trying to start some shit, old timer?
Joseph: No! I just thought it’d be a good idea to take our minds off that place.
Cascada: …okay. Maybe a snack.
Kakyoin: I’ll have one myself, please.
Joseph: Three mangoes then!
A mango is a tropical fruit, and the national fruit of Pakistan; this would most likely be an “Indian type” mango rather than a “Southeast Asian type”. Mao Zedong once received a box of mangoes from the Pakistani Foreign Minister and gave them to workers at a university, causing the mango to be worshipped in Maoist China as a symbol of the proletariat for several years.
Joseph: Mm! So juicy! This is great!
Kakyoin: I’ve never had this cultivar before. It’s delicious!
Cascada: …Yeah, it’s not bad.
See you again!