Nefarious - Part 4 - Ogrecooked!

Channel:

Overhazard

Subscribers:

37,300

Published on October 30, 2019 9:30:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KbgBsNPio

Game:

Nefarious (2017)

Duration: 24:12

390 views

9

Three princesses down, and two more to go--Crow's next stop is Sukochi, capital of the Ogre Kingdom. This one is a little different than before though, as according to Becky, Princess Tephra IS the villain, ruling the Ogre Kingdom with an iron fist. You'll see it as Crow makes his way into and through the palace, but due to her notoriety, various heroes have risen up around Sukochi to try to stop her, but she's still sitting on that throne. Can Crow succeed where the heroes of the kingdom have failed? He's certainly proving himself a more capable threat than Mack thinks he is...

...Of course not. She is invulnerable to Crow's punches and grenades, and her large size and strong arms allow her to pick up Crow by the neck and toss him somewhere else. If "Sukochi" sounds vaguely Japanese (and I honestly don't know if it means anything in Japanese), that's because this kingdom of volcanoes and magma takes its look from Japan's Warring States era, though with a few bits of modernness to show they're not behind in technology. Something about Gashi-Gashi illustrating for games that have a Samurai-Punk setting in them...

I had a lot of failures here. I personally found this stage to be a difficulty spike from the previous stages, and honestly, there are plenty of stages later on even harder than this one (as would be expected of a game and its difficulty curse). Enemies here are packed quite densely, there is a Noh mask equivalent of those screen-following police drones that manage to be even MORE annoying, oni enemies need a lot of hits to take down while the ninja enemies are fragile but fast and appear in quantity. (Conservation of Ninja, I guess.) Later on, there will be enough spike balls flying around to make you think it's Sonic Unleashed and tricky platforming...but not in a good way, since, as some of you may have noticed since the start, this game's physics are slippery and floaty, a bad combination with the new ability Crow gets for the latter half. The stage is also quite long.

Now, if you haven't seen the video yet, you may wonder how Crow gets an ability if Tephra is beyond his capacity to kidnap. Well, as it turns out, he doesn't have to kidnap princesses to harness their royal energy. It's called "royal energy" and not "princess energy" because a prince will do just fine! As it turns out, Tephra's younger brother Malachite is not a fighter and keeps away from battle, so he has average (or possibly below-average) strength, making him a much easier target to kidnap and bring to the Sovereign. Conversations with him and Crow, as well as his role in the webcomics tie-in, suggests he runs the administrative side of the Ogre Kingdom, similar to Becky's role compared to Crow.

Malachite's ability he lends to Crow changes Crow's grenades to giant black snake fireworks (which still detonate). They have the trajectory, bounciness, and detonation time of Crow's regular grenades, but with the added ability of forming temporary platforms in their wake. The rest of the stage was built with this in mind, requiring Crow to make his own bridges across otherwise unnavigable terrain, then crossing those bridges before they disintegrate. To make it extra tough, it seems, this is where those spike balls are kicked into overdrive, and I deplete Crow of his HP a couple times trying to get the collectible items.

The boss here is not Tephra, but a trio of RPG heroes: Crosh, Fallon, and Rosstin. Accordingly, the boss battle is turn-based. Crosh is a brawler type, Rosstin is a red mage type, and Fallon is a cleric type. I wasn't sure what the three of them were capable of at first, nor either of Crow's abilities, but it's very simple, and I knew I HAD to be able to do this in one shot or I couldn't live with myself. Once I learned Fallon has a revival spell, though, I knew exactly what to do, and Crow has more than enough HP to defeat the three of them and bring Malachite onto the ship.

There is just one more princess (or prince) to go, but Crow's taking a detour first. It seems his empire is running low on money, and he needs to get some funds from somewhere. No one's going to willingly give a villain money though, not even by begging, but Apoidea has an idea. Some sunken treasure lies in the Heartless Abyss, and Insektia is also running low on money. She has the coordinates, and Crow has a submarine capable of reaching it. And hence, there will the next stage be.

Tephra is named after the bits of rock spewed out of an erupting volcano. Malachite is a type of crystalline igneous rock. Kaptain Man, the local corrupt hero, is named after the kappa, though he appears more of a tengu, and he doesn't seem to be based on any video game hero in particular.