Shantae -- #27. Getting Nowhere Fast
2Not so fast:
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Well, I at least THINK we've gotten everything we can out of the forest area between Water Town and Scuttle Town... hopefully... so I'm going to call it and suggest we move along. Don't worry, there'll be other areas to run through a fine-toothed comb, and they'll be far less familiar or well-traveled or... ever seen before!
But before we can worry about that... it's the fields! You know, the first hostile screen of open world that players are likely to visit... and certainly the one more likely to yield to successful traversal. But that doesn't mean it's actually EASY. It's packed full of enemies that like to jump out and surprise you! It's a good thing that back when the project began, I didn't figure out how to run for awhile... because this is pretty dangerous at full tilt!
I like that absolutely every major NPC has something to say about each new event flag, because it'll help you out if you're REALLY stuck... just don't expect people to be happy about the amount of cross-country backtracking this will entail, and the advice will often be terse to the point of being unintentionally cryptic. Or just come across as weird.
For instance, Mimic's directions are indeed technically accurate... but they're presented in such a way that I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of people who are confused by them. You can indeed reach Mount Pointy by going east OR west, and it is indeed the furthest spot from where he's situated... but, in actuality, you can't. There's only the one way. Because it's too steep. We saw this, actually, oh so long ago. When we were going EAST.
What he means is approaching it FROM the east versus the west, despite his original lead-in saying "going" either direction. Approaching Mount Pointy FROM the west is indeed what we tried to do. When we were going East. So, what we should do is try to get to it by GOING west. Approaching it FROM the east.
I'd cut them some slack, because this is just one little bit of optional dialogue you probably won't even stop in for... but we're not talking about just a tiny bit of room for misinterpretation here. And we're talking about the longest discrepancy in travel you can possibly have. If Mimic is located the furthest from the destination geographically, and we weigh the actual distance traveled on foot from one place to the other. The ACTUAL furthest point from just west of Mount Pointy... is the area just east of Mount Pointy!
Besides, it's not like I haven't called this out before. Much of Shantae's overworld experience is going as far as you can until you hit some impassible barrier... and the solution to overcoming it will often be as far as you can go in the complete opposite direction. Then you can keep going for awhile, until you hit another obstacle you can't deal with... and have to cross back over the ever-growing landscape behind you to reach a new extreme dead end.
On the other hand, if you're appraising these statements about the lay of the land critically and haven't thrown up your arms to complain that it just doesn't make sense... the natural conclusion (after you dispel any lingering confusion) is that we're almost out of ground to cover!
...don't worry, I'll be sure to make this as abundantly and painfully clear as I can soon enough!
What this all means for the immediate moment is that we've got a date with some bouncy snake ladies! I'm still immensely gratified by the fact that their most reliably vulnerable state is while they're jumping... and hitting one in mid-air will start her jump cycle all over again, even if she's already airborne. This can lead to some truly efficient and comical slaughter. Y-y'know, in case you forgot they explode into bones when you do this...
One rule of thumb that you may or may not have noticed, because the day and night cycle has been surprisingly merciful towards this consideration... any sufficiently difficult to reach places that don't serve any apparent purpose... MIGHT only yield their secrets at night. Specifically, those pesky fireflies! There's a lot of world to cover, and it'd be a shame to overlook one just because you only ever saw where it lives during the daytime...
I don't want to say that I'm LOST in the desert, necessarily... just... my travel is rather unfocused. And if you remember well enough, you might know that I'm currently traversing the dead-ended end of the desert. You know, where all the (scorp)men live. For some reason.
It's fine, though! I'll just collect the last Warp Squid from the Golem Mine, right? ...that's... totally a thing I can do now. Wait, where was it again? I know I remember seeing one, but I don't know the context or the conditions at this point. How big a place could it really be?!
It... it'll turn up the last place you look, right?!
What have I done?!
I also keep skipping save points before wandering blithely into enemy territory... but, at least there's a lot of 1ups in here!