Let's Play Shadowrun (SNES) Part 12: NEVER DEAL WITH A DRAGON
Most excellent; our own personal helicopter pilot. All I did was mention "Volcano" and away we go...
Alas, we have finally made it to the famed Drake Volcano.
I'm not sure about how I feel about descending into a dragon's volcano lair (or a dragon's lair for general, for that matter... sixth world dragons are not to be trifled with), as I am partially anticipating a fiery death on my part, but we've come to far too stop now.
Actually, now that I think about it, a bit of grinding to raise my karma-based powers seems like a great option right now... And luckily, with a bit of street samurai muscle with me, the ghouls go down like hot cakes.
Well, we've got all of our current magics leveled up fully, so we should be able to inflict some serious pain (or heal up) as necessary.
As they same... Flame on!
Heh, I love this little cutscene. As the freight elevator descends, Jake "bounces" around on the floor. Unsure if this was intentional or some sort of strange programming side effect, but I find it hilarious.
Ugh, these Troll Deckers are tough, but the Scientists somehow manage to be even MORE annoying. Once this alarm gets tripped, there seem to be more of these hardass Troll Deckers out in full force, and if you are not careful they will wipe the floor with your bloody, lead-riddled corpse.
Nothing like some computer hacking, especially when you are inside of your enemy's home base.
That's what you get for hiring a street thug trash gang that is too busy slotting BTLs and doing Novacoke to bother performing a proper hit on a shadowrunner. Total amateurs.
Also, I heard they hang out near a radioactive waste dump, and their gang name is horribly stupid. Now, The Skull-Basherz... There was quality 2050 gang naming.
Never go full retard.
You know, it'd be cool if you could find messages from people like Captain Chaos and Fastjack hiding in these phonebook nodes...
Honestly, sometimes I think it is better to just run past these sentry-wielding crazy ass scientists. It saves yourself from all sorts of unnecessary headaches.
I think you get the idea... More and more hacking is required as we descend into the Volcano... And it is requiring a lot of healing magic to bring my health bar back up after the damned IC hidding in the tiles are done whooping on me.
I mean, it's a balancing act. It's sort of like minesweeper, where when you hit a tile, you get a warning of how many IC are adjacent to you. But if you attack an empty square, you hurt yourself. If you attack a square with an IC on it, and it doesn't kill it, you hurt yourself. If you move onto a square with an IC, you hurt yourself. You can only walk onto an empty square or attack and destroy an IC on a square to be safe and take no damage. It is nigh impossible to navigate a system, even with fully upgraded stats and gear, and take no damage.
And this is the beginning of the game raining money upon us. Yay for more free nuyen!
Aneki, eh? Who the hell is that? Aren't they those people with the giant glass building over by Dr. Maplethorpe's office?
[Editor's Note: To be fair, Aneki is undoubtedly a reference to Inazo Aneki, who is the founder and CEO of Renraku, one of the AAA mega corps in the Shadowrun universe. The Genesis game gets more mileage out of the whole mega corp thing than this version does. But still, you're dealing with a big "player" in the Shadowrun universe, something not left up to amateur runners -- unless they have an obvious death wish, of course.]
Yes, yes... It would be a shame if I got her number... *cough*
The irony is almost too delicious. However, there is no vidphone to be had at the moment, so contacting this Akimi person to discuss her [very, VERY overpriced] business will have to wait.
Money, money, money!
Oh my, I'm priority one? It's fun to be on the top of somebody's hit list. Especially when everyone in their employ is incompetent as fuck.
Also, terminals that come up and say "computer" but are unable to be jacked into with my datajack/cyberdeck combo? For shame, teasing me like that, game.
Oh snaps, maximum security! This actually might suck, as I am pretty worn down right now, and running low on mana... And it is a long trek back up to the surface.
Also, it doesn't help that I have managed to set off the alarm on every floor I have hit so far...
Wonderful. I fight my way past a bunch of sentry guns and troll deckers, to go into this top hallway that is chock full of this strange Naga creature.
Wow, a golden Naga. Well, it is trying to kill us, so we may as well shoot it to death.
However, for the easiest free karma in the game, run to the room at the end of the hallway, and don't pick up the serpent scales. When you come back out of the room, the gold Naga will be alive again. And the best part is, any shadowrunners you have with guns (Anders, Frogtongue, Steelflight, etc.) will manage to shoot the thing before it's HP is loaded from memory, and effectively one shot the creature for a free 7 karma. Notice that I am now rolling in loads of both karma and nuyen!
When you're done, pick up the serpent scale (which will cause the gold Naga to no longer respawn), and get back to it.
Mmmm... Delicious maxed stats, combined with all spells in the game (even though I feel that Armor is fairly worthless, especially in the face of Freeze and Invisibility).
This is what the Armor spell does. It makes a spinning shield that floats around your body. What could be better than that?
Oh yeah, Freezing your enemy in place, or possibly being Invisible so they can't shoot at you AT ALL?
Hot damn, hand grenades and freeze spells that drop from the ceiling? We must be getting close to a boss...
Oh my god, it's a dragon. So this must be Drake... Hey, wait a second, what's that smell of burning flesh?
Oh god, I'm on fire! I'm on fire!
HOW'D IT GET BURNED!?
Seriously, Drake's fire attack is like getting beaten with a sack full of bricks. It would take like 15 seconds for him to fry me, or any of my party, to a golden delicious crisp with it.
Okay Jester Spirit, we went through all of that hassle to get our hands on you, why don't you make yourself useful before we all end up fried?
Once The Jester Spirit has softened Drake up for us, all we have to do to wreck his shit is to cast Freeze on him and shoot him until it wears off. If he's not quite dead yet, cast Freeze on him again, and continue to hammer him. Before long, he will go down for the count. It really shouldn't take more than 2-3 full freeze spells to put this dragon down for the count.
Drake may be powerful, but he's definitely no Dunkelzahn or Lowfyr, that's for sure. But just remember folks, Never Deal With A Dragon. They're like supernatural mind benders with inhuman stats and natural armor, and their mere intellect would crush you in their sleep.
I think he just... Turned to stone?
...Hey, wait a second. Is that a door to our left?
Hey Drake, nice job of not killing Pushkin while you had the chance (though, that sucks for Raitsov, no doubt). Maybe you aren't the sharpest dragon of the bunch.
Though Drake definitely had his feelers everywhere. If you made the unfortunate mistake of hiring the worthless mage Spatter from Jagged Nails, you'd find that about halfway up Drake Towers, he turns on you because he works for Drake (and if you kill him there or not is irrelevant -- he will never come back to Jagged Nails again).
These Aneki folk definitely sound like bad news. And they seem to be the next obvious thing that the story is pointing us towards. So I can take a wild guess at where we should head next. But Dr. Pushkin here would be well served to knock off the "earth is doomed" mantra he is spouting here; there is no need to be so melodramatic.
Once you ask him about "head computer" he figures out that you're the courier. Also note his terrible misuse of "you're" instead of "your". Some genius scientist this guy is. Though how Drake managed to take these most of these guys out while our Mr. Armitage has pretty much managed to one man army them back to their own penniless stone age, I have no idea.
At the conclusion of this riveting discussion, you somehow teleport back to the helicopter (-- not that I am complaining, it would be an awfully long trek back up if you were to hoof it) on your way to Drake Towers. As a reward for saving him, Pushkin will also give you a password for Aneki's computer system, which seems to lend even more credence to the idea that going to their Seattle headquarters is our next objective.
[Editor's Note: It stands to reason, that if Aneki was really planning to push their new AI onto The Matrix, that if anybody in-universe got wind of it (say... the UCAS government, or any other Mega Corp like Ares, Mitsuhama, Fuchi, etc.), they'd all be up in arms about it. And with good reason...]