Nefarious - Part 2 - Don't Bee a Hero

Channel:

Overhazard

Subscribers:

37,300

Published on October 28, 2019 9:30:01 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxnHU_MMVuU

Game:

Nefarious (2017)

Duration: 20:47

293 views

8

Last time on Nefarious, Crow kidnapped Princess Mayapple to lure the hero Mack over, but to the surprise of both Crow and Mayapple, Mack announced his breakup with her when he appeared. Crow's response was to keep Mayapple on his flying fortress, the Sovereign, until he could come up with something, and out of a combination of the opportunity arising and his frustration at Mack not taking him seriously, Crow decides to start his Doom Howitzer plan, a WMD he's been working on that need a special kind of energy, the kind emanated by princesses. For the weapon to work, he needs five princesses, and Crow starts by taking Becky's suggestion of raiding the neighboring kingdom of Insektia and stealing their princess, Apoidea.

And yeah, I didn't get the description space to speak of Becky, but she is Crow's assistant. She handles the behind-the-scenes work that allows villainy on Crow's scale to function. She is his secretary, advisor, head of his HR and PR department, accountant, and paperwork-processor. Being a bad guy like Crow is not a simple task, after all, something that can't be done by one person.

In the Insect Kingdom, Princess Apoidea is frequently kidnapped by Scorpior, an evil robot that suddenly appeared and whose motivations are unknown. When this happens, Dash the Bee is ready to run on over and save the day. Things are different when Crow gets involved though, who isn't part of Apoidea's or Dash's routine. Nevertheless, Apoidea's soldiers are ready to take on Crow, and that means Crow isn't going to have quite an easy time getting away with it all.

That stage in Metro City was a tutorial. This is the first standard-length, standard-designed stage in the game, and that shows in a large increase in difficulty. That was something I didn't expect, and it's something I severely underestimated. This game pulls no punches, and it's only going to get harder from here on out. That first death was caused by me thinking Crow could get underneath the gears, and I didn't realize it was a bottomless pit. The rest of them, though, was my getting overwhelmed with enemies and densely placed hazards combined with Crow's limited means of reliably attacking enemies in the air. In particular, the bee enemies who fly around in the air and throw projectiles down at Crow gave me the most trouble, as they can attack Crow while being small and hard to hit, as well as their tendency to appear with other enemies to turn your attention elsewhere.

Oddly, it's the part after Crow finds Apoidea and carries her over his shoulder (that power suit is something else) where the game suddenly gets a lot harder, as they throw a lot more of these enemies while restricting Crow's movements. It's not just that Crow's task is completed in the Insect Kingdom that you might think the workload becomes easier, but that except for Mayapple, Crow gets changes to how he functions with each princess he carries. Apoidea's skill is the simplest and most straightforward: she uses her wings to allow Crow to jump higher, which is necessary to get over the huge steps behind Apoidea's throne.

That being said, dying has very light penalties, namely a loss of Lucre, the money Crow uses. Despite that, the deductions are directly proportional to how much Lucre Crow has at the moment, meaning you will never actually run out of Lucre and thus you'll always get to try again without having to start at the beginning, just whatever is the last checkpoint. You do have the option to quit at any time though. Furthermore, the Lucre deducted takes the form of a robot hovering in place roughly where Crow died. If he can pick it up, he will regain that Lucre. (This means deaths via bottomless pits, for the most part, have irretrievable Lucre.) There is only one of these robots, and they'll be at the last place Crow died.

Princess Apoidea, by the way, is named after a genus of bees.

After tearing through the guards and making it out of the area, Dash the Bee finally catches up to Crow, and the boss battle begins. Crow controls a flying machine with a wrecking ball attached to it; Dash, meanwhile, relies on his speed and jumping, making this something like the first boss in Sonic 1, 16-bit, with the roles reversed. Also, Dash, for some reason, can generate towers of what appears to be cookies to get in Crow's way and to provide himself a terrain advantage. This is a pretty tough fight, since Dash is small but can take a lot of hits, but Crow can only take 3 to 5 hits before his machine is destroyed and, as it seems, Crow is not going to fight Dash with his power suit. Nevertheless, I find a strategy, and I clear the stage.

After this, Crow gets a choice between Winterdown in the Dwarf Kingdom and Sukochi in the Ogre Kingdom. I pick the former because it's closer. As it turns out, it's also the less tough stage.