Holdover (Custom "Plus" Text) Playthrough Part 2: Armor... "Roll" with It
35Remember that this game is a Metroidvania, which means that the backtracking you'll be doing here is fair and necessary to progress through the game as you discover more things that will help you with your progress.
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The main topic of this video is Marie's one-piece swimsuit. Seems appropriate, though also very convenient, for all of the anchored underwater walking she'll be doing throughout this whole game, since she’s the only Fox Eye girl I know who can’t swim, thanks to those ankle weights.
One of the machines you can find underwater during this video gives her some armor... which is a blue swimsuit, instead. I added a lot of "Plus" text to her thoughts on this, but even the original version of that text shows her being very skeptical about the armor's ability to protect her.
But don't underestimate this fanservice. This blue swimsuit "armor" upgrade is another important thing you'll need in this game. It runs down two halves of itself that protect each half of Marie's body once. Taking damage from above will shred off the top half of the swimsuit, while taking damage from below will shred off the bottom half. It is possible for both halves to get torn off from different hazards and leave Marie completely naked in the cold...
Her sprites aren't too detailed to make this too extreme, and if the top-half of her swimsuit is missing, she'll cover her chest with her arms in her dialogue art. Pretty clever there, right? However, know that taking any more damage from an exposed area will kill her off, even if the other half of her swimsuit was still intact. Being completely naked is no different from her sticking with her white swimsuit (except for being much lewder, that is...).
To drive the point home, when you do get that new swimsuit, you MUST run through the laser as you leave the area you got it from, just for the game to show you how it works. It’s also outright impossible to complete the game without this.
But as the note for the "armor" explained, the swimsuit can be repaired at any capsule. This, along with restoring any quick direct damage Marie has taken, herself, isn't much different from Samus finding Recharge Stations and Save Stations, or both one and the same.
Remember that the blue hearts only raise Marie's oxygen meter, but her actual health meter is completely separate from it, and will always stay right where is it: TOTAL FEATHERWEIGHT!
Despite this game putting a lot of emphasis on making Marie drown (as per Fox Eye's tradition), she still dies much faster from anything that makes her bleed.
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Besides the place where you get the "armor" from, there will be other times where you'll have to run through a laser in order to progress and collect those hearts, usually sacrificing the top half of the swimsuit in the process, but sometimes the bottom half, instead. This will only work for lasers that scan as such. Don't try this with robots that shoot you when they catch you in their yellow lights.
There will be times where you have to dodge those lights by ducking underwater from them, but then you'll have to worry about not drowning AND making sure that when you do let Marie breathe again, it's not right when her head is sticking right in a light!
After getting Marie to 02 Level 3, you have to find a machine that temporarily shuts off all of the security lasers, allowing you to run right past them without getting vaporized by them. You need this for a long stride into another room to reach a machine that knows about the Underground Infirmary that contains the medicine that can heal Marie's body a bit more. This machine also shuts off the security lasers there, because even with the timer machine, you won't have enough time to reach the infirmary before the lasers turn back on and there's no other way around them.
I don't actually get to that place by the end of this video, but even when the water looks tight to get through at the end, I do pull this off in the next video.
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The video title is because I still can't get over how Marie looks so much like Roll, not that I have any problems with that. In fact, I love it! I even found some fan art of Roll in a very similar-looking swimsuit!