itch.io

Finished one "ending" on my other laptop while the potato is heading off for repairs. Yes, having it fixed is still more practical for me than buying a new one.

First off, the difficulty in the school is BRUTAL. It forces you to fight multiple Gatekeeper bosses solo, which doesn't look doable unless you had the Purge skill beforehand, because you know Rage? The skill that lets you do double damage? They have two buddies that come out in the middle of the fight that buff them with it. And not even Ninja Star + Evasion + Tank will save you, they can hit you through 35% accessory evade + a 65% evade buff AND kill you through 80% damage reduction. And you will probably spend the whole battle struggling to keep those buffs up.

You can get Purge from the cutscene between the end of the Haunted House and the start of the school, but if you don't have any backup saves, gg.

Oh, and if you needed to make money for whatever between the dungeons, remember that paragraph I struck out in a previous post? Turns out the only moment you have with free roam is the one chance you get before the first dungeon, and boy, do you need it.

If somehow you manage to make it through the Gatekeepers, the boss will start to chase you. If you loved the insta-gameover bullcrap in the haunted house, you're in for a treat, because this is more of the same and the boss can even corner you while you're saving, so that when you load, it's SITTING RIGHT BESIDE YOU raring to send you to the game over screen again. And again. And again. You can actually escape that if it happens, but it was so traumatizing I can't remember how I pulled it off.

If you manage to get past that, Ronin and Arnie are waiting to join your party outside. Arnie shows up even if you refused his help in the haunted house. And just like in the haunted house, he comes with no equipment other than a shotgun. Which is actually better than that mooch Ronin, who previously joined you naked and refuses to wear a costume to cover up.

I'm not sure how you get the bonus from the haunted house, and I'm pretty sure I don't care to go through that BS a third time just so I can find out, but simply telling Arnie to sit tight isn't it. And having Arnie in your party at that point (iirc) gives you a dialogue choice to not blow it sky high, not that I took it.

Oh, and the cutscene after your escape throws out an error that freezes the game if you happen to have resized the window. And guess who thought the window was too big for my taste. I swear this game has the cheapest game overs.

Going back to the school, once you pick up your flunkies you can go back into the room the boss is camping and lead it through a merry chase through a DARK area as you do the puzzle that lets you pull its heart out of what looks to be a fusebox. Which is in a tiny room that it can follow you into. And as a bonus, it even has a savepoint you can use to corner yourself into getting camped again. Fortunately, your flunkies are immune to deathtouch and you can use them as shields to somewhat block off the boss. Though I'm pretty sure I just got lucky and ended up in a configuration that let me slip though despite having saved the game with the boss already bearing down on the 1-person-wide corridor that was the only exit out of the room.

And I thought the haunted house was BS. Turns out it was the game's idea of being nice.

After you take the heart and run, you get a scene outside. And you can FINALLY fight the boss without it instakilling you with a single nudge. Except it won't stay dead. Each time you kill it, it waits for a short while and then attacks you again. If you have the resources, you can farm it for the lulz. But that really is the final boss, because once you complete the next objective, it's a non-combat zone until the credits. You get a cliffhanger, you never find the COVID UMA or discover why the game's title references the lungs. After the credits you can make a clear save you can't load.

I'm going to leave behind links to a couple of saves. File1 is at the beginning of the game before the first dungeon with some farming done, and file8 is just before entering the haunted house with the carnival stuff bought. Should make this game a bit more tolerable to those that are already sick of its jackassery.

Before you insert these files into the save folder, you need to save in slot 1 and slot 8, otherwise the game won't detect them. Then delete the throwaway saves you just made and insert the saves from the links below.

file1 - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cerkw4k0k8ca8pznjtq6k/file1.rpgsave?rlkey=rrlc4b3...

file8 - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0zpl7cfpros1bd01b6gdi/file8.rpgsave?rlkey=eb0jm7w...

Edit: The icons for the throwaway saves are still going to display on the save menu until you load and save over them.