Chapter 167: Dance, Dance at the Scoundrel Theater
No Face: "In this game, once NPCs are in the mix, they're way more than just set dressing—they're a serious pain..."
Is this what they mean by technological progress elevating realism into a threat? Fancy plushie dolls strewn everywhere, explosions bursting, chaos and screams—and through it all, only Pencilgon's laughter rings out eerily. Pitiful ordinary citizens. If even the police they should rely on get blown up equally, then the last thing left to depend on is a hero. Help us, hero. Help us, doctor. We heard... we heard you'd save us...
No longer are those people; they're a tidal wave of flesh pinning the hero in place. A villain can mow them down without hesitation, without mercy, without pity and trample them underfoot. But a hero can't. Even if they could, it wouldn't be heroic. So they stop. They hesitate. They let them slip past.
Amid the cries for help, there's a voice saying, "Pick this up."
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "Eeeeek!"
Sasa-Fishcake-san's shriek blasts through the mic at full volume. On screen, the bomb-rigged NPC planted among those begging for help detonates, sending Dr. Sandalphon and everyone else flying through the air.
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "Hahh... This certainly isn't a fighting game anymore... It's more of a simulation game, I'd say."
That's precisely why the ogre laughs. The devil laughs. Pencilgon laughs, pulling off atrocities that would make even such fiends turn pale. From the audience seats, cries of "Notice it!" mixed with screams are hurled toward Dr. Sandalphon, but those pleas never reach him. While Lucas is stuck in a game of "Can't Attack Warriors," only we third-party observers can realize that, inside the helicopter from which the cameraman and reporter were already... persuaded to disembark, Pencilgon—having plastered a bomb onto the pilot—is elegantly looking down on everything from the sky.
No Face: "I mean, since yesterday, I've been tagging along with her, checking the flight paths of helicopters and all..."
As if to say "Don't you dare underestimate a one-note extortionist," her methods of manipulating and steering NPCs are villainous beyond belief—a scoundrel proving through live demonstration that the previous match's Yugdraia atrocities are child's play compared to her. If her face and name aren't known, she's practically invincible. Infinitely close to human, yet decisively NPC—that's exactly what makes them so easy to control. The fact that she can not only spout that but actually execute it... honestly, should this really be broadcast worldwide?
No Face: "Ahh, man, her final boss switch is fully flipped now."
Inside the helicopter, Clockfire lets out a great roar of laughter—the phrase "roaring with laughter" fits perfectly. After cheerfully waving at the pilot and jumping out of the helicopter, a few seconds later the cockpit naturally explodes, and the mass of metal plummets, spewing smoke and flame.
Within Chaos City, which has gone past terrorism and is now becoming a natural hazard, Dr. Sandalphon—having barely escaped the NPC bombings—spots Clockfire on a building rooftop, waving at him with a smile.
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "Lucas has entered the building! In response, No Name is... not intercepting! Ahh! She's taking the elevator! She's just casually riding the elevator down!"
???: "Watching from the sidelines, Lucas climbing the stairs looks almost comical..."
I'm starting to feel actual pity for the skirt-chaser being toyed with so thoroughly, but Pencilgon is steadily burning through the time limit as if to say "I will execute my own plan to the letter." And the reward waiting for Dr. Sandalphon after climbing all the way to the rooftop: Clockfire, having already descended the building, waving up at him from the ground in an absolutely infuriating taunt. Surely, there are very few people who could maintain calm judgment after being made such a fool of. Even if you keep your cool, noise runs through your thoughts. In prioritizing cornering her by the shortest route... carelessness bores a hole in your actions. And she's not kind enough to overlook it.
No Face: "Time is nine minutes forty-three seconds... That's a stalling performance worthy of practicing what you preach."
This game has no fall damage. Having jumped recklessly from the rooftop to corner the scurrying Clockfire, Dr. Sandalphon is greeted by Clockfire waving her hand and going, "C'MONNN!"—and by a decoy bomb gauge move, an exact copy of herself, that the tailcoated madwoman had been cleverly hiding behind her back. After that, it's simple arithmetic. Take 100 and 20, subtract 30 from both: which hits zero first?
No Face: "See?"
Nu2meg: "I mean... you say 'See?' but..."
When NPCs with a certain degree of free action get involved, her annoyance factor... jumps several times over. The key point is that it's "annoyance," not "strength." If she'd simply gotten stronger, it would be easy to deal with—just raise your expectations of what the enemy can and will do. But when annoyance doubles, it shifts to an entirely different problem. Like Lucas earlier: approaching Clockfire—a character loaded with trap moves—via a fall that greatly limits your movement options is the height of folly. If he'd been thinking clearly, he would've realized it was an ambush using the real body as bait. But the endless harassment using NPCs as cover, the stress of having so many actions rendered pointless, and above all, the infuriating taunts... The combination of these gives birth to rash actions, to carelessness within the margin of error. She doesn't miss that gap. Before you know it, there's a blade pressed against your throat.
No Face: "How do I put it... her gaming style is 'Demon Lord.'"
Nu2meg: "...That's a disturbingly apt description."
She imposes countless hardships, and only by clearing them one by one are you finally permitted to challenge the boss. Truly a classic old-school RPG. The weakness: corner her in a room and beat her down in a gang.
No Face: "Now then, from here on, she's really going to show her true colors."
Nu2meg: "That wasn't her true colors yet?!"
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "That wasn't her true colors yet?!"
Guh—Sasa-Fishcake-san came over here with her mic?! Crap. What I was going to say here was, "Since she's going to stage a more dramatic loss to stall for time," but I can't exactly broadcast that on a worldwide scale. I mean, I'd rather the camera not point at me, and—ah, damn.
No Face: "Er, uh... well, as you can see, she's—uh—how should I put it... she abandons efficiency and prioritizes efficiency for the sake of presentation... ahem. Well, you know, once you step onto a stage that woman's built, I think it's pretty damn hard to make a mid-show exit. Yeah."
S-stop it! Don't look at me with those eyes, Natsume-san! Don't speak with your eyes saying "Ah, this guy sucks at talking in front of crowds"—I mean, you're not wrong, but still! No, calm down, calm down. It's roleplay. Roleplay. Pumpkin Mercenary is cynical, cool No Face. He wouldn't get flustered just because a few tens of thousands of people are watching. Probably!
No Face: "More importantly, in the first place, this game has quite a few villain characters who clearly aren't designed mainly for direct combat. Yeah. I don't think they're recommending you go that far off the rails, but, uh... I guess they're envisioning behind-the-scenes maneuvering?"
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "How do you mean?"
I fired off a telepathic "please take over" at Natsume-san! She blatantly ignored it. Damn it!!
No Face: "Villains fill their gauge by causing damage to the city, but it gets harder to fill as the match goes on... And conversely, the later it gets, the easier it is for heroes to resolve the 'damage' the villain caused, so their gauge fills more easily."
To put it another way: the villain is a pencil, the hero is an eraser, and the stage is a blank notebook. In the early game, the villain can scribble whatever they want into the blank notebook, and the hero has to wait until the villain dirties the notebook. The hero can't even function without a villain—it's a clever way to incorporate that into the system. But a notebook eventually runs out of space to write, and the more pencil marks there are, the more the eraser gets to shine. That's the simple explanation for "villains have the advantage early, heroes have the advantage late." At first glance, it seems like villains have the upper hand, but from a villain's perspective, it actually has a lot of pretty troublesome problems.
Originally, to a hero, a villain is "an evil to be vanquished and the reason for one's own existence." Defeating enemies is the hero's role, their raison d'être. But to a villain, a hero is nothing more than "an obstacle that appeared in the middle of achieving my goal." There are villains who eventually make defeating the hero their reason for living, but fundamentally, confronting the hero is just a detour. The essence of a villain is scheming and accomplishing wicked things.
And this rule applies in this game, which strives to be as faithful as possible to American comics. Meaning: the situation of "direct confrontation between hero and villain" offers very little benefit to the villain. Heroes raise their Heroic Gauge by helping people in trouble and fighting to defeat villains, but villains don't raise their Villainic Gauge that much just by fighting the hero. A villain can only bring things to a fair situation by building up as much gauge as possible before the hero arrives. Conversely, if they can't build gauge, the hero gains the advantage the more time passes.
No Face: "...In other words, the better play for a villain is to take actions that 'avoid being found by the hero' as much as possible. You know the Tortoise and the Hare? The fairy tale? It's kind of like that."
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "I see... So the villain is the tortoise and the hero is the hare. How much distance can the tortoise cover before the hare starts moving? And if the tortoise doesn't run for dear life, the hare will catch up and overtake them."
No Face: "That's... about right."
Sasa-Fishcake-san moves away, and once the camera's gone too, I let out a huge breath. That kind of speech is Katzo or Pencilgon's domain, not mine. I'm more the type for... charging in without thinking. Which is exactly why they taunt me as a cannonball projectile—dammit.
And while it looks like she's building gauge effortlessly, Pencilgon's act is actually a pretty tightrope walk. It looks like the situation is moving exactly as she wills through her manipulation skills, but the counterplay for what she's doing is honestly pretty simple.
Sasa-Fishcake-san: "And now Round 2 has begun... Oh! Lucas, this is—!"
As expected, he saw through it. On the screen, Dr. Sandalphon is completely ignoring the NPCs begging for help, sometimes even shoving them aside as he searches for Clockfire.
By the way, damage to the city carries over between rounds. So while it looks like she has room to spare, Pencilgon's fight is actually running on fumes.
Professor Clockfire says: "Now, kids! Let's use our NPC ammunition wisely!"
Comic: "Hydrohands"