Metal Wolf Chaos XD first playthrough part 5: I've reached peak America; I'm farming for guns
0After a number of unsuccessful attempts at the final boss last session, I was prepared to face the truth that I'd suspected all along: that this game can be extremely punishing when you don't know how to spend your resources.
Fortunately, racking up more money wasn't too painful, as the last few missions give out quite a bit, and the Liberty Island mission can be cleared rather quickly. That mission isn't so great for gaining metals, but fortunately I managed to scrape through with just enough for what I needed.
My first priority, as mentioned in my previous stream, was to try investing in the machine gun tree, which sure enough, unlocks the very minigun that Richard himself uses, which is extremely good at staggering him, making the fight in Las Vegas far more trivial - although there's still his one last cheap attack to watch out for.
To my surprise, this _still_ wasn't the final mission. I had a hard time getting anything to consistently make a significant dent on the true final boss... until I remembered a certain hilariously low-tier bazooka that Murphagator mentions in his speedrun, that I had skipped over in my own playthrough in my various attempts to conserve resources.
Suffice it to say, this game sure seems to have issues when it comes to conveyance of weapon effectiveness, and also weapon balance. It's certainly worth the playthrough for the voice acting and cinematics, and the script is honestly a bit too frequently on-the-nose 20 years later.