One Sword Man: Let's Play Valdis Story: Abyssal City!

Nah, it just doesn't want anyone playing Reina or Wyatt to enjoy it. The other two get to cheese it and attack directly.

There are ways to attack it directly with everyone, I believe. Bolt Shackle is excellent for physical characters.

Sneaking normal attacks in while avoiding the orbs is difficult, though.

The truly baffling thing is that Teachings of Life Blade works for the damage the reflected orbs do if you have it on.

Yeah, this was the problem for me. I was able to attack it directly as Wyatt, but every time that I tried it ended up being less effective than just doing the battle as intended.

PART 21

HAMMER DUEL
THE EYE OF ALAGATH
GRAND ASSASSINS
Fanboymaster, aturtledoesbite, Rebelfire

In which Reina Gaius, secret goddess baby, takes on some bosses Wyatt was too impatient to fight.

NOTES

• MY TURN. For the four bosses we didn't clear, I'll be playing using my Luck Reina file. It's pretty self-explanatory how it works, and about as strong as BEAT's Wyatt file, maybe a bit stronger since I took the time to S rank every boss before this point.
• I HAVE A LAUREL CROWN. This is mostly as a joke, and I lose it anyway about halfway through one of the new areas...
• TAINTED LABORATORY. Y'know, because the Abandoned Gardens didn't have enough poison for you, this area just flat inflicts the status effect for existing in it. Breaking the generators shuts off the toxic flow for that area, and you have to break all three to get to the boss.
• NOT SURE WHY MY AUDIO IS WEIRD. Gonna assume that it's because of OBS being a newer version, and using my recording instead of BEAT's.
• TAMAHAGANE. For most people, this is the only real reason to come to this area. The boss does not drop an actual reward that is usable for almost all players. (Unless you S rank it.)
• BEAT ENJOYS THE SWITCHED PERSPECTIVE. Now he gets to sit back and give directions that are obsolete by the time I hear them, while I am frustrated by there being six birds at once.
• RAGANO FEELS LIKE A REFERENCE TO IJI. Anyway he's not a very hard fight despite splitting between poison and stun, since he has very little direct offense. S ranking him grants multiple Luck points, so it's not a bad idea for me and it's actually in the realm of reasonability, but I'm just here to fight the bosses and get this done.
• FINE BLADE. Like the Sacred Resin from Abbigail, this is used for super secret and is therefore a waste of time.
• BACK TO THE HALLOW. Ragano is a boss you could easily fight during regular play, like Abbigail. However, the next boss, and the two after that, require you to have the Divine Key to even attempt to face, and you also need to know exactly what you're doing before going in. With that in mind...
• THE EYE OF ALAGATH. Using her eye severed by Moira as a focus, Alagath projects an avatar into the Hallow to fight us head-on. Being a god, we can't do any kind of reasonable damage to her unless we've entered Focus Mode, in theory. This is easier for me to do than most since I'm running Fate Roulette, but it's still a stupid thing.
• TEACHINGS OF LIFE BLADE SHOULD BE INCREASING MY DAMAGE. This, of course, assuming I bothered to get it. As it happens...
• I TOTALLY FORGOT TO GRAB TEACHINGS OF LIFE BLADE. So uh... enjoy that for the next few videos, I guess.
• THE EYE OF ALAGATH ISN'T THAT HARD. She can cloud up the arena with a lot of junk, the arena is constantly dealing damage due to cold, and when she actually hits you with her hammer, she hits HARD, but she's very easy to disrupt and her attacks do fairly low damage overall.
• LEGENDARY CHARGE. You can disrupt her charge by dealing damage. Should she actually pull it off, she gets a really high regen effect, but that requires you to basically be incapacitated while she's charging. And hey, if she does heal and you have access to dark magic like I don't, just land a corruption effect to block the healing. Oh and she doesn't take damage while charging, largely because screw you.
• B RANK. I am very glad I made the decision I did here. Of the three superbosses, the Eye of Alagath is the one I killed fastest. Make of that what you will.

INFODUMP:

I didn't realize that you could de-spawn those disappearing blue platforms by bashing your head into them repeatedly. That would have saved me a lot of trouble a couple of times. >_<

They did that in the AGDQ speedrun of this game. They also used the assist character to do the same thing.

PART 22

DEATH METAL
THE EYE OF MYRGATO
KIDZ BOPPERS
Fanboymaster, aturtledoesbite, Rebelfire

In which Reina Gaius, Life Blade school dropout, listens to some death metal.

NOTES

• UPGRADING THE MONK'S ROBE. This is mostly because my existing build requires me to maintain a dark alignment, which is really hard to do if I'm using the Great Gavel. The Monk's Staff is a LITTLE easier to work with, but in either case I'm using a bunch of dark magic, and the next boss resists all three dark magic types.
• THE PIT. Another area we never need to visit in the main game, and home of the next bonus boss. You can't even attempt to travel it without beating Gernot, but again, don't even bother with this fight until you have the Divine Key and the Teachings of Life Blade. Let this fight be a cautionary tale.
• THIS DAMAGE IS NUTS. Fighter's Bandages and Monk's Robe together for pure unarmed destruction. Imagine how much this would do if I'd remembered to get Teachings of Life Blade for...
• THE EYE OF MYRGATO. Generally tougher than Alagath, if only because it's much harder to disrupt her attacks and she moves around the arena constantly. However, most of her attacks come from her specifically, so I'm not in very much danger and can just parry my way to safety.
• IF I WAS SMART I'D BE USING LIGHTNING MAGIC. Myrgato zips back and forth from the sides of the stage, so using Bolt Shackle from the center to drag her to you is usually the way to go. However, I was trying to get freeze to stick, so I ran with the ice soul instead. I don't think it has a chance of actually working though, but I tried, damn it all.
• THE MYSTERY OF KIDZ BOP. I don't know if it has a Z in it, but it FEELS like it should and I'm not about to go actively looking into Kidz Bop.
• TURTLE NOTICES THAT I'M NOT ACTUALLY DEALING DAMAGE IN FOCUS MODE. The fact that I am regularly breaking 150 damage with my punches was enough to convince me that I was doing fine, but that's not because of Teachings of Life Blade, but instead the dual combo of Focus Mode's innate power boost and the Monk's Robe's additional power boost. I'm pretty sure my base attack in Focus Mode is around 200, which is frankly terrifying, and the fact that we're not doing MORE damage tells you what an ordeal it is to try to fight without Teachings of Life Blade.
• MORE ATTACKS AT LOWER HEALTH. Y'know, the usual. This includes a big-ass tornado effect, but me running a parry build, I love tornados. They're the best way to heal.
• I STILL WIN WITH AN A RANK. The fight still took almost a solid 10 minutes. I should've listened to aturtledoesbite and actually checked whether I had Teachings of Life Blade, but I am unsure if it actually applies to the last boss we have to face.
• MANA CRYSTAL MINE AGAIN. Leaving the Pit this way gets back into the Mana Crystal Mine. This is one of two ways to get Ben McSteely, Sir Pancakes, or the Dreadnaut Armor if you missed them the first time.
• I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANCIENT COINS. Once your Luck is high enough they'll just kind of appear whenever. A Pure Luck build will be swimming in them.
• HALL OF THE FALLEN. This is where the final bonus boss is, but we're saving that for next video. The enemies within will self-revive after a while unless you spend time doing the mana key stone thing next to them, and all of the rooms lock until you defeat all of the enemies, so even getting through is an ordeal. The closest save statue is in the Engineer's Palace of all places, so that's weird.

INFODUMP:

So I've actually been replaying this game! I'm nearing the end of a Gilda Run.

A Gilda run in which I actually listened to the mad demons inside my brain and S-ranked every boss. WITH THE LAUREL CROWN. (Except the two "eye of" bosses because fuuuck that (I still S-ranked em tho (Just not with the crown))).

These are my endgame stats.



So yeah

EDIT: Just killed the final boss in 32 seconds.

now equip the watch that gives the other stats a bonus based on luck

including int

which will then give your other stats an improved bonus

including luck

PART 23

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
LEILODIN GOIBNIU
GHOSTLY VOICES
Fanboymaster, aturtledoesbite, Rebelfire

In which Reina Gaius, who really ought to be fleeing the city by now, fights the first Goibniu.

NOTES

• BARKLEY 2 TALK. I want to believe.
• BACK TO THE HALL OF THE FALLEN. Everything I said in the last update still applies. This is not an easy area.
• HANDS. They grab you, slow you down, and drain your MP, but that's about it. Mostly an annoyance, but that's all they have to be considering how mean everything else here is.
• SHADOW WYATT. Oh yeah this area has a miniboss. I don't really know WHY, or why that miniboss is one of the four playable characters, or why they have roughly a hundred thousand HP or so. But they are.
• THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL TEACHINGS OF LIFE BLADE APPLIES TO THIS GUY. So why are my attacks doing such awful low damage to this guy when I could even fight the lesser Goibniu ghosts around this area normally? And this isn't even the real boss.
• THEY STILL HAVE RIDICULOUS DEFENSE AND ACCESS TO SKILL CANCELS. This is stupid.
• I ALMOST BACKTRACK TO THE ENGINEER'S PALACE SAVE ROOM. Of course, even stepping back one room in the middle of aturtledoesbite informing me of one ahead means fighting more ghosts. They're just lucky that they're right.
• LEILODIN USES THE SAME ENTRANCE AS THE SHADOW MINIBOSS. Leilodin is much, MUCH harder. For starters, her basic form has access to a wide variety of status effects and attacks. The one that throws me off of my game the most is her stomp, largely because that leads into a vicious combo attack and the stomp can't be blocked, and thus can't be parried.
• LEILODIN ISN'T AFFECTED BY TEACHINGS OF LIFE BLADE EITHER, I THINK. Her base defenses aren't as high as those of the goddesses, but that doesn't matter because they're still high enough, and her HP is high enough, that she can take a severe beating and not even blink.
• RECKONING. This is the associated status effect for divine attacks, which both Reina and Leilodin have. In short, it increases the damage from further divine attacks drastically. Like burning, but different.
• FAOLAN'S MAX LEVEL DAMAGE CAN'T BREAK PAST LEILODIN'S ARMOR. But honestly, if you're using Faolan it's not for the attack, but for the MP regen.
• AI LOOP. Yeah I stall out from cold damage and the Jester's Watch doing this. Don't care. It was funny.
• SWITCHED OUT THE JESTER'S WATCH FOR THE NECROMANCER LEXICON. This drastically cuts out damage output (by about 40%) but gives us actual survivability and lets us ignore status effects. This would be much more tolerable if it didn't mean I literally cannot score an S rank even if I play superhumanly.
• FINALLY HIT PHASE 2. Phase 2 is she summons a lion. The lion can pin you down and inflict bleed. It has lots of health but CAN be defeated. Of course, the problem is that attacking it means not attacking Leilodin (who is otherwise completely unchanged).
• NECROMANCER LEXICON DOESN'T BLOCK BLEED. I don't know why either. We're literally unkillable though, so whatever.
• THIRD PHASE IS EASY. Leilodin alternates between one of her dangerous area spells during which she is invincible (and therefore you have no reason not to spam skill cancels or parries) and a three second interval of her shrinking down, not attacking, and being vulnerable. Reina can use her parry to heal indefinitely here.
• SOME MORE SUMMONS FOR GIGGLES. Kill these first, to avoid the risk of being attacked on both sides.
• I BEAT LEILODIN WITH A TERRIBLE SCORE. Valdis Story has the audacity to tell me that I did a bad job at killing its terrible boss on account of taking 15 minutes to do it. It can say what it likes, I'm happy with who I am.
• OUR REWARD FOR BEATING LEILODIN AT ALL IS ACCESS TO SLAEGGA. Leilodin's husband is the craftsman who makes the golden weapon for your character, or the Goibniu Warrior Markings instead, each worth an instant level that exceeds the level cap of 20, but each one costing 2 Tamahagane and some other crap. I'll discuss him and the golden weapons more below.
• THAT'S IT. WE'RE DONE. We out. Peace, homes. I haven't showcased Arena Mode but I don't care enough to do so.

INFODUMP:

Wyatt's Golden Shell accumulates energy as you block attacks, which gets expended the next time you hit to boost damage.

Which makes it actually not useful for parry, since you burn the energy as soon as you get it.

EPILOGUE BONUS POST!
MOSTLY CUZ THAT LAST POST DIDN'T QUITE FEEL FINAL ENOUGH
Huh. Well that was a game.

Funny story: the main reason I got this for BEAT was to stem the tide of awful anime VNs he'd been gifted and subsequently roped into showcasing. I just saw it on his Steam wishlist and said "hey this is really fun you should play it as an LP". This was, as you can see, mostly a bad idea in a vacuum, and it probably didn't help that I said it was like DMC... without actually knowing what DMC was like. My bad. We even tried this much, much earlier once already, but BEAT stalled out on Treu.

A GOOD GAME THAT MAKES SOME BAD CHOICES
Don't get me wrong, the game is still really fun once you know what you're doing. Hell, during this LP, BEAT did multiple playthroughs on the side, where he could enjoy the game at his own pace while knowing more about it. And I'll probably come back to it later down the road to attempt some God Slayer runs, since those add an extra scene to the credits. Make no bones about it, Valdis Story is a fun game.

But that doesn't change that you need to know exactly what you're doing in order for it to be fun, and even then there's some parts that you just wade through just to get past them. BEAT's assessment of the game as a "guide game" were remarkably spot on. Hell, even his pure Str start wasn't guide enough for what he was trying to do, and that's a hell of a lot less intuitive than just boosting each stat as you feel it's needed throughout regular gameplay. The weird part isn't that these things are accidental leftovers that the devs missed, but legitimate design choices they included, like the controls being the weird mess they are, or status effects figuring into every single elemental attack in an action platformer, or boss fights rewarding you, but only if you do them perfectly.

CAN WE FIX IT?
Whenever I come across something like this in games, where an overall good or even average experience has a number of very clear points where things go wrong, my first instinct is to try to fix it. So naturally, I find myself wondering what about the game here I'd try fixing up, if I had the capability. There's a few very clear offenders to keep in mind, some of which the devs even actually fixed (like towns vanishing being tied to in-game time).

• Axe status effects. Just get the hell rid of them. Status effects work in an RPG where you have a team, where one of your team members being unable to heal, or cast spells, or flat do anything at all serves as only a minor impediment you can work around, instead of a sole playable character in realtime. The only way they could work here and not be awful is to drastically limit what they can do. Probably the most reasonable status effect in this game is corruption, because almost everyone playing needs to be able to heal, and cutting that off even for a short time is a threat, but one you can play around.
• If you must have rewards for S ranking bosses, grant the player a way to replay bosses that doesn't require making a brand new file, if only so they're not permanently missable. And even if you do this, don't shortchange the player on XP just because they didn't get a good ranking. "Fucking insulting" is exactly right for what BEAT was awarded for clearing Jahzracht.
• I don't have any real beef with skill cancels as they are, honestly. Being able to dodge everything is very powerful, and the game is pretty good about rationing skill cancels out. What I do think should change is that your character should have a bit more leeway in ignoring being hit. So, so many times, all it takes is one overly-generous hitbox to disrupt your entire plan and set back your character by a third of their healthbar. I-frames are good (and the parrying mechanic is pretty nice about it) but I'd still like to have a BIT more stun immunity, especially in midair.
• Make assists scale with level, rather than having their own individual XP curves. Lots of things already scale with level, why not just have assists do the same? It's not fun to spam them every time they're off cooldown just to make sure they reach a level cap you don't actually know for sure at any given point in time. For extra fun, let us summon assists in towns for bonus conversations.
• Indicate to the player what items are actually limited to treasure chests and which ones they can get by farming enemies. Or at least, do a better job of it than the Lore section of the menu, which lists some (but not all) of the potential drops you can get from each enemy. The entire golden weapon thing is a giant suckerpunch meant to punish a player who has the audacity to fight Leilodin without looking up literally everything about how the game works.

WAIT, THAT'S ALL? THAT WAS SHORT
Remember when I said the Steam forums for the game are stocked to the brim of new threads saying "this terrible thing is terrible" and then a slew of posts by apologists who think it's fine the way it is? Because there are a lot of people who played this game blind, learned things the hard way, and still enjoyed it, if not completely, at least enough so as to ignore the game's clear shortcomings.

The only difficulty higher than God Slayer in this game is Goibniu Mode. You do not get saves or retries on this difficulty, and have a limited amount of full heals at the various goddess statues. Aside from that, everything in it is exactly the same as God Slayer. Bear in mind that I've gotten to only the Abandoned Gardens (home of Teleporting Punching Bag) in my own God Slayer run, and I've had to retry both bosses I've faced at least 25 times each just to get the S rank. People run this game on Goibniu Mode difficulty and get put on global leaderboards for it.

I don't want to really wreck Goibniu Mode for those that enjoy it, honestly. Being rewarded for playing well is not an inherently bad thing, and frankly if a game wants to go THE OFFICIAL INSTAGRAM OF CHAINSAWS difficulty, and players still enjoy it, that's fine. But I don't think it needs to come at the expense of punishing new or unskilled players for winning, but not stylishly enough.

CREDITS:
HATEFUL SKELETAL WARRIOR:
BEAT: Number one Lozzo superfan, bleedmaster, and an overall excellent sport for helping me out with this project.

GUEST VOICES:
MorningSong: Teaching us about henotheism!
Fanboymaster: BEAT is doing recordings, so of course he's gonna show up to back his pal up talk smack about how he's doing.
Heron: Does not hate sewer levels by default.
Rebelfire: The quiet type.
CaliScrub: At least he doesn't have to voiceact everyone this time!
aturtledoesbite: I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO YOU.

THREAD POSTERS:
All of You: I'm sorry I don't have the patience to go through the thread and list all of you, I'm really thirsty, but thank you all so much for posting in here!

YOU:
YOU: YOU

Valdis Story is a great game hidden deep within a really bad game.

I find this pretty funny, given that this is the one status effect that I hated. The others were all troublesome at first, but honestly didn't bother me much once I learned to deal with them (which is often as simple as buying a dirt cheap elixir or putting on a certain piece of gear, or just learning to dodge/block certain attacks). Corruption is just awful, though. My build was based around doing a ton of healing all the time, until the last couple of bosses decided "nah" and it felt like my hands were tied behind my back, and I hated it. And the only piece of gear that I had access to that could have blocked it would have taken up the same gear slot that gave me most of my self-healing. Also, triggering Focus mode and having the healing blocked is a real buzz-kill. At least Kantae ignores Corruption, thank God.

Thank you both for the excellent LP and rest assured knowing that due to the commutative "Talk shit = Get hit" principle when BEAT next sees me the force of the blow landed upon my head will be so powerful it will send my limp corpse hurtling into a star cluster from beyond time located in the baby boom galaxy.

He will punch the flesh from your skeleton and set you free.