Mars and Chronos acquired

One of the many, many good things about the weekend is the amount of free time I have compared to the weekday.  I went on a little bit of a Demon Gaze binge and made some real progress.  I also took screenshots!  Yes, the blog will have pictures too!  As for video...let me get back to you on that.  I have to wonder whether video of a turn-based RPG would really be interesting, though.

Anyway, you how they say that red wine is good for the heart?  Have you heard about the medicinal properties of beer?

Note the camo cutoffs of my main character, Azamgil.

That's a new one on me.

I had been sticking mostly to the first area of the game; I took a brief detour into the second area and while I was victorious in battle, it was a little bit harder than I was comfortable.  So, it was back to the burnt-out section and Mars.

You may know Mars as the Roman god of war or the fourth planet in the solar system (the Red Planet).  Here, Mars is a she-demon with impressive cleavage related to the fire element who wields a chainsaw.  No, that's not the reason this entry has the "why Japan why" tag, I'll be getting to that later.

Mars is all about offense, though she summons these drones that block attacks for her and soak up damage.  It took more than a few attempts to beat her, and that was after I did some grinding to get Azamgil and Deslocke to level 6 and Lady Une to level 4.  In the end, I did defeat her and was able to make it back to the inn and fulfill the quest which netted me a nice 1000 GP reward.

There were a number of inn quests that had to be done before getting the Demon Key for Mars (that allows you to summon her and get her bonuses while exploring).  I also checked in on my party members in their rooms.  While Deslocke was fixated on the furniture I gave him, Lady Une, well, this is what Lady Une was up to:

This is clearly after she shoved General Septum off the plane and shot him as he was falling.

Sorry for the blurry picture, Annie Leibovitz, I am not.

Eventually, sidequests were finished, and there was a terrible one with the catgirl maid who has an unhealthy fixation with the inn's manager (one of the many reasons this entry has "why Japan why" on it).  Let's just say that I could have put up a picture of her sniffing the manager's panties, but I did not.

The next area's demon was Chronos, who is an earth based she-demon that focuses on defense.  The area was a cemetery, so, unsurprisingly, there were many undead creatures around.  Undead are annoying in this game because if you don't have a healer to use the Holy Weapon ability on a character or have a weapon with the Holy trait, your character does half-damage to the undead critters.  I was able to manage my way around this because I equipped Mars who gave me a +20% boost to physical damage my party dealt.  Still, I knew I was going to need a healer eventually, so I did a little bit of grinding to get the gold I needed.  Enter, Miriya (a Macross callout), the newest member of my group.  The higher rewards from the area plus some of the equipment I had saved earlier made her progress pleasantly swift.

After clearing all of the Demon Circles, I figured out the area that Chronos was in, but I needed to do a few quests at the inn before I could progress.  During this time, I found out that elves carry grudges for the stupidest things.

It may be difficult to see, but he has the H Scrabble tiles on his shirt's arm.

That's a reason to steal someone's only remembrance of his mother, right?

I think you also know that you're in the wrong when the aforementioned catgirl maid starts telling you that you should stop what you're doing.

Elves do start off with pretty low VIT in this game.

During this time, there's some fanservice for the ladies, as said elf gets in his "birthday suit" which translates to English as "red loincloth".

Anyway, after a lot of silliness and facepalms, I was able to get the weed killer I needed.  The trip to the dungeon did provide a quandary; to get to Chronos, I needed the abilities of my first demon (who basically detects secret doors), so I had to give up the offensive boost of Mars for a bit.  I solved this by running back to a Demon Circle and swapping back to Mars before going in for the Chronos fight.

Chronos summons the same annoying damage sponges, only with an earth element bent.  Still, the fight was easier due to my character's higher levels and Mars's offensive boost.  I beat it on the first try.

Going back to the inn, I had some more story until there was a big enemy outside of the inn.  I went and had a tough fight with a hydra's head.  I barely survived it (only had one character left) and then it was immediately followed by a fight with another one of the hydra's heads.  I died pretty quickly, and that's when I decided to stop and take a break.