#game-review #finishedgame2024 #jrpg #goblin-bunker # Linda$^3$ Again (Linda Cube Again) `="![]("+this.imgURL+")"` ## Data: - Console: `=this.Console` - Play Status: `=this.Status` - Start Date: `=this.start-date` - Finish Date: `=this.finish-date` - Clear Time: `=this.clear-time` - Total Play Time: `=this.total-play-time` ## Tiering: `=this.Tiering` It's Pokemon's creature collecting with Majora Mask's sense of impending doom from a celestial-body apocalypse, with features from roguelike games, with [[Spaceballs]]'s script. And I've never played anything quite like it. This game is really really fun, and if you can get past some of the weird, unsettling, or troubling moments, it's honestly one of the coolest games I've ever played. I admire the things I have discovered. I'm lucky to be able to say that I've found a new game to add to the pantheon of "favorite games" (read games in my "A" tier<=) here in 2024. Most, if not all of the games that have that distinction are games I played as a child or in my teenage years. I'm so fortunate to have found yet another game like that this has me excited to wake up on Saturday mornings. Every weekend I've woken up, eaten breakfast, and then sat myself down to play a couple hours of this game while the world's still waking up, just like how I did when I was a kid. ==[**IF YOU ARE READING MY NOTES AND ARE NOT ME, THERE ARE SOME BIG SPOILERS HERE. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK, I'D REALLY RECOMMEND YOU PLAY THIS GAME FOR YOURSELF**]== # Playthrough Notes - Playing with the English Fan Translation patch, - https://github.com/Eight-Mansions/linda-cubed-again/releases - https://emudeck.github.io/emulators/steamos/duckstation/ - So that I don't try to take a screenshot and accidentally freeze the game again - Keeping handwritten Notes I'll filter into here #gaming/note-taking-game - [[Animal Locations in Linda3 Again]] - Beat Scenario C with 115 / 120 animals, because of some buggy rooms with the Ladybugs. If that gets patched, I'll go back and get 120 / 120 and I think I was on pace to get it at the very least. - Might be for a bit, I'm JUST starting to get burnt out. - Found a patch that did the day after I made this decision and then I went back and got the 120 / 120 ending of Scenario C ## Beastman Necklace Locations - Sandhole B5F - Great Cave flower room - Vacant house in Koshikata - Storage room in OzPort Meat Store, needs the Storage Key - Sanakia (ant hill) ## Misc. Gameplay Notes - Do not use a Fire Based animation move / attack in the following places because it'll otherwise crash the game: - Rose Garden - Yama Pit - In general, having the game crash (or the emulator stop working for that matter) suuuuucks so bad dude. # My Thoughts - [[Preliminary Thoughts Before Linda Cube Again]] - [[Admiring my Discoveries in Linda Cube Again]] ## General Thoughts - Our guy Ken's zoomin all over the gosh dang place - mom staring front facing into the camera, what a sprite! - THEY GOT A BIBLE IN THIS GAME?!?!!? - Never mind, it's an animal bible. - The Amberstoners could totally ADR these cutscenes and give voice lines to the voiced characters for a fanmade english dub. - The fruit selection questionnaire by Dr. Flora softlocks the english patch? - I had to update my version, this is a text overflow error. - READ THE MOTHER FUCKING DIALOGUE FOR EVERY NPC AND PAY ATTENTION AND TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY - Give a shit about the world, basically. - They prepared a "Love Nest" on the Ark but it's just a big pink room with two queen-sized beds pushed together LOL - I initially thought the expensive furniture in the OzPort mall was a commentary on the frivolous nature of things in the times of the apocalypse, but I realize that as I get loads of money in Scenario C, I can actually buy all of these items for the Love Nest on the Ark. - The sounds the ark makes when you deposit animals is a sexual moan of the corresponding gender. Ah geez. - But that's the point. you're fusing the animal's DNA with Ken and Linda, which allows them to grow stronger as you save the animals. (Just like how you fuse DNA when you baaaaaaaaaaaang) - I want there to be a Gen 3 Pokemon Romhack with the exploration gameplay of Linda$^3$. - Imagine playing [[Pokemon Fire Red]] or [[Pokemon Leaf Green]] and you have to catch one male and one female of every Pokemon in the game, and didn't have to fight the gyms, and were on a time table, that would be dope as hell. - I have never played a game just like this before. It's so novel and interesting compared to many plots of other games. This has to be a characteristic of those unlocalized PSX games including [[¥action button reviews boku no natsuyasumi|boku no natsuyasumi]] - I gotta try the English localization of [[Boku No Nastuyasumi 2 Umi no Bouken-hen]]. - Apparently this is one of Hideo Kojima's favorite games (citation STRONGLY NEEDED) - What happens to Ken and Linda if they don't actually accomplish the goal of rescuing every animal? Why do they have to do this in the first place? What's the point of loading all of these animals on the ark in the first place? - Are they acting because their bosses and the government told them to? Why don't they just leave? - In Scenario C, Ken slips on a banana peel and is disabled for two whole season, and in that time, no preservation efforts are made. What happens in Ken and Linda were to straight up die? Would that just be it? - [Ryosuke Horii got hooked on Linda Cube Again](https://dojimasdragongirl.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/ryosuke-horii-interview-part-3/). - The guy who directed Pirate Yakuza and was the chief producer LOVES Linda Cube Again. - Oh my god, the game ends with Rainbows, it really is Noah's Ark. ### A Method to Test the Season Time in Linda3 Again - Start a new game, and get to the overworld by only doing what is absolutely necessary - idle on the overworld for prescribed periods of time, checking at intervals of five minutes - once the season changes, you can be certain that this time interval is the time length the game looks for on specific maps - once verified with a second season, you can then see how certain aspects influence time - Check if a battle pauses the timer or not. (Does) - Check which dungeon maps do or do not impact the timer (Timer runs in dungeons) - Check if certain actions remove chunks of time: - Travelling via connecting flights - Camping - Seems like it's 15 minutes on the overworld that isn't in combat? - Scenario A took approximately 14h 3m to finish, but only 6 seasons - This involved beating Hume at the G Factory. - Scenario B took approximately 11h 54 m to finish, but took like 7 season and I was more intentional with my play ### Linda - Our introduction to Linda is that she's this rowdy goofball of a character who will hit you until you can handle it which is just kinda ridiculous. Funny though. - There's a calendar with Linda in a bikini for the year 1991 - It's Sachiko in 1992 - This is a running gag through out all the years that features all the prominent (conventionally attractive) female characters. - Can you die from when Linda does a cobra twist on you in the cutscene? - Linda is kind of all over the place in terms of how I'm supposed to think of her? I like her a lot obviously, and I want her to be happy at the very least. - It's amusing to me the ways the game designers have found ways to make it so that Linda can't just immediately join you and that you have to follow along with the plot - Scenario B, she has her left arm replaced with that of her dead father, which means we need to find her old arm so she can pilot the ark. - While the voice acting in this game is generally pretty good, Linda's voice actor (Minami Takayama, who also plays Hajime Hinata in [[Super Danganronpa 2 - Goodbye Despair]]) knocks it out of the park - This is especially heard at the start of Scenario B (Linda does the snoring) and then in the second voice mail from Scenario B (Ken, don't look for me). - > "[Linda] has this combination, this dangerous combination, of being an anime girl with capable skills who also knows exactly how hot she is. That is not- uh, that is just not a good scenario for any mediocre dude to get himself into." - [[Tim Rogers]], fukubukuro 0001 - 8:17:30 - And ain't that just a metaphor for this game? Linda *IS* this game, after all. - And she's sweet especially in Scenario C when you find the hidden Swingset in the basement of Nepia near the destroyed ark. - Makes you wonder if the whole population on Neo Kenya was from a previous cycle of Ken and Linda. - I'm so glad that in Scenario C, you've got Linda the whole time, and she likes you too. - It's almost like you've earned her place in your party after the training wheels from Scenarios A and B come off. - You get a lot of these at small camping scenes - The way you can choose the name of your first child and the in the game repeats it (with a weird tts voice) at the end of the game. that's some real [[EarthBound]] shit right there. ## Aesthetics and Presentation - Look at these grimy, rusted sinks - Look at this Walmart / DMV-ass room design - Look at how lived in this world is from the human perspective. This planet is just as inhabited by people, both humans and Beastians as it is by animals. - Eden has these vibrant colors and aesthetics to contrast the washed out colors of the surface, reflecting the lack of human contact. - The technology in Annabis looks fleshy and organic yet mechanical, which makes it look incredibly strange, foreign, and unfamiliar compared to the more common, "Earth-like" spaces. - the ark being made of wood and meat reminds me of [[Haibane Renmei]]'s rooms in the Old Home whenever there's a new "egg" is there. It's the combination of old architecture materials and organic material. ## Gameplay Thoughts ### The Flow of Time - I gotta figure out the time incrementing process on the overworld, I can pause it by pressing the "Square" button, which to me seems to imply that time passes in general on the overworld and that I shouldn't linger there when and where possible. - Does the time flow when I have the map open? - I'll have to time it during an especially long play session, I think. - There's a lady in the OzPort airport who says "talk to everyone early on to learn about the world because they won't be here later" more or less, and then notes "come back next summer and see if I'm still here". - She's totally gonna be gone a year from now (4 seasons later) - She was! - There's also a receptionist who in 1991 says "I'm 22 I still have time!" - She's totally going to turn 25 and have the worst depression about being a Christmas Cake. - She actually found love before turning 26, nice job! - After one year only a few NPCs are gone. Not enough to really notice, y'know? - Playing Scenario B for roughly 2 hours and I ended up in Winter 1991 by the end of it after starting fresh. I gotta assume it's like 1 hour not in a town or paused? - Regardless, the game has to be checking only when there's a screen transition, and not actually any enemy encounters. Maybe the time window is more like a half hour, or even fifteen minutes on the overworld before the seasons change. I'm not going to find out. - this is considering on the default timing. - In the last seasons of Scenario C, the only living creatures left on the planet are Ken, Linda, the animals, and the humans who are ready to embrace death. - Towns are empty. - Money is useless. - The world is really quiet. - invisible time is felt with muscle memory. The stress of a long-term project. ### Combat with Dogs - you use dogs to fight wild animals, and initially that feels weird, but I can appreciate a more realistic approach to "hunting" in this world, even with some of the genetic mutations to animals (squirrels with 3 eyes, etc.) - Oh no there's totally going to be dogfighting in this game, isn't there. - Dogyf Heights -> "Dog Fights". cmon - You can (and probably should?) use Wolves in dog fights. - You can take the dogs to the vet and heal them, which is such a natural "healing" process for these party members - You also have to NAME dogs, which immediately creates an attachment, so it gets painful if you lose a dog or a dog dies. - Oh no that's gonna SUCK. - Okay so if you take them to the vet you can heal them, though I haven't let them be "injured" for more than one season. Given that meat rots, I have to assume that dogs can die for real if you don't heal them - How do I get the Maggots from their wounds? - Can I even get them from their wounds? - There are headstones for dogs at Hospico if they die. This implies that dogs can die. I haven't had that happen yet beyond re-selling a dog to see what would happen. Rip "DOGO" - The dogs sort of just attack of their own free will initially, and will bounce around? Perhaps I had ought to train them. - You can train them to do things in Hospico - You can use Ken's Animal Handling Skills to somewhat control the dogs in specific encounters. ### Enemy Creature Interactions - There's a cross-shaped battle arena where enemies are on all sides. Seems like each one might have varying terrains to some degree. - Gotta be constantly aware of the directions of enemies, though it doesn't seem like "pincer" attacks are things to be concerned with - Nope, they're important because they do more damage if they're behind you or on the sides. This is why the direction matters. - As noted, you can add or subtract dog party members as needed to capture animals. Sometimes it's good to NOT have dogs in your party. - The whole objective is to defeat / capture 1 male and 1 female of each "creature" to store them and bring them back to the ARK, and have a specific number of unique species to leave with the ark. - But you can also use animal for a variety of other purposes as needed - So the rest of these foes I can use to make weapons and gear for example - There are other hidden items that only appear if you rip open specific animals - I cut open a squid and found a Bullion, which I sold later for 6,400 gold. - The butcher was a little too excited to do this in my humble opinion. - Ripping open a female ant gets you a rare ring item that is necessary to get an incredibly strong attack later in the game - But the female ant is also a one-per-season animal so you have to go visit her at least and also she's at the very back of a very cavernous nest. - Ripping open a male stag beetle might yield a fruit which you need to use to get a female stag beetle in Scenario C - Ripping open a Female Anglerfish might reveal an egg which oucld theoretically hatch into a male anglerfish if you're lucky (which is the only way to get them iirc) - Depositing the animals in the Ark gives us small stat boosts and new skills, giving us an incentive to return to the ark when and where possible. - Admittedly, the combat does not get much more mechanically complicated than what is initially presented. But it's the navigation of encounters that's interesting. - No encounter is ever exactly the same. the macro mechanics aren't changing but the micro-interactions are never identical depending on your goals in each encounter. - Your dogs are never *exactly* the same level. #### Finding each animal is its own unique puzzle Finding animals can range from simply encountering them on the overworld, to being as complicated as completing multiple sidequests with non-obvious solutions. ##### Whales To find the whales you have to first learn that whales often can be seen off the coast of the NW region, near the G Factory. You then have to notice that there are islands that appear to appear or disappear during specific seasons, and that this island does not appear on any maps you have. Once you make that connection, you have to find a way to lure the island over, which can work by throwing a piece of meat. The island will then move towards the meat and then you have to fight one of the strongest animals in the game. This is one of the coolest animal captures in the game because it mandates the player pay close attention to the game, especially in Scenario C. You're unlikely to notice this island in Scenario A, and you can't even access the G Factory in Scenario B, so you're likely to forget about its existence in the first place by the time you start Scenario C. What a cool reveal. ##### Giraffes to get giraffes you have to do two incredibly long and complicated sidequests that appear independent of each other. There's the Rancher BB Bronco who collects endangered species and has them cryogenically frozen but he's also on his deathbed and craves turtle egg soup to recover, and then will also ask you to somehow find eggs of a protected species, and then after that will accidentally BOIL the giraffes, forcing you to find a Ribhorn Flower which revives any animal, but can only be obtained from completing a DIFFERENT sidequest which involves finding "Hot Dung" (not Warm Dung, mind you), yes HOT DUNG to act as a fertilizer to revive a garden of wilted Cherry Blossoms so that a young girl can help convince her grandpa that he should leave the planet with her and not die alone on the planet when the meteor crashes in eight years. Then, and only then, can you obtain the giraffe (assuming you can't find it anywhere else on the planet), oh and by the way you'll need to somehow find a second set of this specific species to unlock access to ANOTHER HIDDEN ANIMAL, the female Koi. ##### Crickets To find crickets, you have to just go to the second floor of the Astro ark and listen for a chirping noise. When you get so invested in playing the game you might not take the time to appreciate all of the animals you've gathered over the years until after you've gathered most of them. I was going to use the moment to pause and review the animals I had gotten when I heard the chirping and knew that wasn't normal. What a lucky happenstance! - [[Good things can happen to you when you're not looking for them]] #### In order to succeed in this game, you need to show restraint in your attacks - In other JRPGs, the point of combat is to dispatch the enemy through whatever means necessary. You can do as much damage to any enemy, no matter how strong or weak and you'll get experience for the fight, albeit with diminishing returns as you go. In Linda$^3$ Again, this is not the case; you must actively show restrain so as to not to kill the animals. Remember, the whole point of the game is to *capture and save* every animal species, not to destroy them. If you wanted to kill every animal, you should just let every animal die instead when the meteor comes. - Some of the hardest encounters in the game are the ones where animals have even less HP than those you might find near the start of the game. Encounters thus become a bit of a puzzle in figuring how to do precise amounts of damage. - There's animal that has exactly 1 HP and if you want to capture it *in BATTLE*, you'll need to hit for incredibly low damage - KEEP YOUR SQUIRREL BLADE!!!! - This also suggests that you can use traps to capture animals as well, and maybe you have to with these creatures. It encourages you to consider all of your skills in order to capture these animals. - You can also fling poop to do ~10 damage per foe, this is what poop can be used for, in addition to a sidequest later on. - Just like [[Undertale]], you need to show mercy. #### On Grinding ##### Earthworms are STUPID GOOD for Grinding in the Early Game - Once you're strong enough to do more than 60 damage to an earthworm, they're easily the best things to fight to gain experience and money in the early game. Why? - Earthworms are always found in the same place every time, under slabs in Marblopolis, a place you can visit in every scenario.. - Earthworms have no major strong attacks meaning that lower levels characters / dogs can participate without being afraid of being destroyed. the male ones have some strength, btu the female ones are quite weak, which makes things quite easy. - I went to Marblopolis early in Scenario C just to get a bunch of levels so that when I went to the NW region to hunt some animals I wasn't btfo by eagles or other animals. I also got a bunch of money and good gear from hunting worms for a bit. They really are the best way to go about the early parts of any scenario once you can handle worms - Having Linda use "Cobra Twist" to incapacitate the strongest worm (or any enemy in that matter) is really useful when doing worm hunting. You don't have to worry about the strong attacks, and can use Ken and a Dog or two to take out the weaker worms. the female worms are pretty weak, the male ones are worth taking out first. ##### Catfishes Replace Earthworms for Money Grinding when you're Strong Enough to Handle them - Once you get into your mid-20s levels you can go in the OzPort alley, down to the sewers and fight Catfish. So long as you don't get paralyzed by their elecric shocks, there's pretty easy to take out, especially the male Catfish. - Once you kill them, you can make "Catfish Nuggets" out of them which sell for approximately ~13,050G, which is SUPER useful. - I used this to help pay off Yamada's 60k loan in Scenario C, which then allowed me to get the "Whistle" technique which was CRUCIAL - But boy if you get paralyzed for multiple turns you better hope you've saved recently so as to not lose your haul. - Don't turn them into a Catfish Hammer, you'll make less money than if you make them into Nuggets - The catfish being great for grinding HAS to be intentional from the Devs. - They're in OzPort, a place where time doesn't flow, right below a place where you can heal, buy items, and even process the animals into meat which you can then sell. You can literally do it all without the passage of time. This is the perfect place to try and get a TON of money once you can handle catfish. ##### Eventually you won't need to grind for money at all when you can capture Eden Animals consistently - After visiting Eden and finding a ton of Class A animals (and reach around level 30), you can sell the extras at Nebul and get boatloads of money, and then put the money in the bank. You can then accumulate interest and just ride it out. - Female Pteranodons sell for 6 figures. - White Beastman dolls don't have any practical use and can be sold for 33,000 - But then again, Class A animal trade is against the rules, so is it truly ethical to do this? Am I only capturing these animals from Eden to sell them? That makes me no better than a poacher. - What's the point of money when there's nothing to buy? - see [[Money in the Apocalypse from Linda Cube Again]] - If it's to save all the other species, is it worth it? - How do *I* feel? - I did what I had to do, I guess. In the moment I treated these animals more as tools for capital so that I could afford whatever unexpected expenses came my way... and then I bought a rotating bed. - In the moment I saw these animals not as animals but as objectives, and opportunities. They weren't alive as much as I was. That doesn't sit very well with me, does it? could I have doe it without making all that extra money? By being no different than a poacher? ### I HATE the enemies that aren't Animals - These fake animals / plants all SUCK and I hate them - They have stupid High HP / Defenses / Dodge Rates, making them a pain in the ass to deal with. They keep killing my dogs. They Keep killing me. they suck - I HATE THE ROSES AND THE SMALL ROSES IN THE ROSE GARDEN - I HATE THE ROSES THAT I HAVE TO FIGHT JUST TO LURE LOCUSTS AUUUUGH - I HATE THE ROSELINGS THE MOOOOOOOOOOST THEY'RE NOT LOCUSTS AND THEY'RE RANDOM ENCOUTNERS - I Hate the Fake Scorpions in the Sand Pit. They're just strong enough to cause damage while giving me little to nothing in return. - I hate the Flora Jam dungeon which is full of these animals that are literally pointless. They chase me, aren't collectable and are stupid strong. What the hell is the deal with the Flora Jam anyway? Maybe it's explained in Scenario C, but boy oh boy do I hate that place. - Yeah it's explained that they're Dr. Flora's genetic rejects. She just throws them away in here. - Are these foes worse than fleas? Yes. At least with fleas you need to fight them and collect them. - and you can repel fleas with rotten meat. in your inventory ### Fascinating Game Design Choices #### The Fast Travel System is literally an airport system - You can fly connect when attempting to fast travel, and this actually saves you money. I have to assume that this uses more time though. - If you talk to the right attendant at the Hardia airport you can get a direct flight to Nebul, which saves a LOT of time. I don't think you can fly back though, so you'll want some kind of preparation to go back. - You can eventually buy a free-fly pass, which is actually the best and most important item in the game given that the flights don't actually seem to use up that much time. It just means you can fly direct every time for free. #### You can't be too strong fighting animals - If you're too strong, you're just destroy an enemy rather than capturing it, and you get no rewards. so it makes sense then to have some lower-leveled Dogs to take on some enemies. - This is similar to Pokemon where if you're too strong you'll knock out the Pokemon and then you can't catch it. But in Pokemon you have to get the HP as close to 0 as possible. Here in Linda^3 Again, we can knock animals out past their HP value, and capture them. Hell, we can do that when their HP is CLOSE to 0. - I'm not sure what the limit is here, I'm going to guess if you go beyond 1.5 the animal's max HP, then that would be the threshold to get nothing from the encounter. - Makes for a strategic balance especially if you find these weaker animals amongst stronger foes, animal or not. - this makes every animal feel like they're a puzzle to collect. - Again [[Linda Cube Again#In order to succeed in this game, you need to show restraint in your attacks|you have to show restraint because the goal is to save the animals]]. - A game where you literally save the animals instead of kill the animals. Eat your heart out [[Super Metroid]]. #### You can take out loans from the bank - I didn't actually take out a loan on my first go of it because I found a Bullion in the belly of a squid and got 6400G immediately, which was a good headstart. - funny how that works. - I wonder if the bank system allows me to gain returns on investments if I deposit money. - It does and the interest rate is 3% - I wonder what happens if you can't pay back your loans? Like, how are they going to enforce that? Do bank debts follow us through the apocalypse? Can we escape our debts on the Astro Ark? - You gain interest on your money in the bank. To me that seems to suggest that if you can find a bullion early and then you put most of it into savings, you can get a LOT of money later in the game - Interest rate is 3% - It also means to get started it's worth taking out a loan and then paying it back once you make a lot of money. ### The World - The Eden reveal is so bonkers. You're 30 hours in and then the game reveals there's a fourth quadrant with all these strong animals that you were definitely not going to find on your first playthrough. That's so cool. That's great. And there's no way you were going to get here in Scenarios A or B. - And then you reach Annabis and find Gene - This explains where all the "Class A" protected species come from. Why there are some supposedly extinct animals in the first place it's a place that has been untouched by humans. - the world is confident in itself. It expects your curiosity. If you respect the world and take the care to appreciate the otherwise "useless" spaces, you might be rewarded when you remember one or two little traits. Caring about the world leads to rewards big and small. ## Story Thoughts ### Story Structure: Scenarios - Looking at similarities and differences between scenarios especially at the start. - Scenario B starts similarly to Scenario A, but it's clear that the paths will quickly diverge in terms of major story beats - What this does is it forces me to compare and contrast the story beats, and force my hand with expectations. The game likely expects me to have finished Scenario A before attempting Scenario B, and thus can toy with my expectations in some capacity. By adding and removing new things between Scenarios A and B, the game plays with my expectations and keeps me on my toes. - I expect Scenario C to be like this in full force. - [[Spaces Do Not Keep Consistent Meaning]] - At the start of a second Scenario, I can see "oh yeah, I wasn't crazy there WERE NPCs here". - It seems like in each Scenario, one of the Hospico doctors is the villain somehow. - Scenario A it's Panheim working with Green Pharmaceuticals - But he and Elizabeth are good guys in Scenario C - Scenario B it's straight up Dr. Emori attempting to sabotage Linda so that his daughter can be the female pilot. - In Scenario C he's still weird, but because Nek gets with Sachiko, he's a little more stable? - Scenario C I haven't reached at the time of writing this thought, but I have to assume it's Dr. Flora? - Explains the fucking Rose Garden and the Flora Jam. ### Scenario A: Merry XMas - There are a lot of people dressed up as Santa asking for donations, which might be a scam? There's one in particular with a mask on who calls me "Brother!" - An NPC later says that this dude is the shadiest - Linda says that I should be LVL 3 before I go an see her again, and when I get to Minago some NPC says "Linda says you're a Level 3 hunter!". I was level 2. This told me "You should be level 3 by the time you get here and if you're not you better start grinding" - Linda gets amnesia? I wanted to visit her in her house in Minago, but I was too slow on the overworld - What the hell are all these Santas doing here in Eterna?? - You're telling me I could spend three years of this game in the mines to get filthy rich? This sounds like something that could be fun to try if the timer isn't something I'm terribly worried about. - But when the game becomes a wild Nek chase, after Koshitaka, it's a little trickier - But they do this to show you all the general caves / dungeons / secrets in the accessible world so that when you return to this space in later scenarios you're already familiar with it. - "Masked Santa" killing Nek was a little excessive, don't you think? - So Elizabeth Green was using serum made from Beastians to keep herself young for fifty years or something? and Panheim was in on it? And this is why all those towns full of Beastians suddenly became empty? - Straight up, what the hell was that Hume boss fight. What the hell is this body fusion? How does that happens? - The G Factory leaves a LOT of questions on the table here. ### Scenario B: Happy Child - Jorge Camar? Seems like he'll be important. - Yep, he sure was. - Linda announces that Ken will be the male pilot alongside her. Everyone cheers. She announces they're beginning the hunt for animals. Everyone cheers. She takes two steps down the hallway. Everyone cheers. - And then Linda and Ken effectively get married. Linda's in the Bestian Wedding Garb and they walk down the Minago church aisle, culminating with Linda asking Ken if he'd say "I Do". - Hume gets wasted and Linda's mom says "take care of her". Surely nothing bad will happen. - And then everyone in Minago is killed, fucking RIP. - I suppose I should've predicted this when Linda's mom was presented to us. She clearly cannot be afforded to live in any scenario. - So because Linda is out of commission at first, Dr. Emori (who looks a little too much like a fascist dictator from Germany) lets us bring along his daughter Sachiko for the early stretch of the game. - And Sachiko "PERFECT SUBMISSIVE WAIF", and you're given the option to flirt with her everywhere you go. Her Dad even says to "obey his every order", before clarifying "almost every order" with some weird sexual undertones. - We even get a full-scale drawing of her that pans up to reveal her physical appearance beyond a headshot. - How dare they have me essentially marry Linda only to then pair me up with this "objectively perfect submissive girl" Sachiko, boooooooo game, boooooooo. They want to test my resolve against this temptress. They want me to *pick Linda*. - You can say "you're prettier" when she's picking flowers. - You can swing with her in Hardia where she'll ask if you want to see her panties. - Lady in Ranger HQ asks if I'm already rebounding from Linda with Sachiko. - Sooooooooooooooo the whole mystery is that because Sachiko wasn't selected to be the pilot, she committed suicide herself which made Dr. Emori lose it and make a bunch of clones from her cells, and act as his puppets. He then killed the three members of the pilot selection committee with his puppets and also took out his revenge on Linda, her family and all of Minago. - Like damn. - So the OG Sachiko was dead from the start and you're working with these perfect cellular clones that has been rapidly matured, but perhaps lack the mental faculties to understand thing sthat someone who grew up in real time would understand. - the clones lack a sense of identity and purpose, were made to enact their father's will. - In the end Emori mutates into a disgusting body horror monster as a result of his own dissatisfaction with things he cannot control. ### Scenario C: Astro Ark - Oh THIS is the one where the gameplay takes over. I see. I see. - Ken slips on a banana peel, makes the news, out in a coma for half a year (which mean the game started in Spring 1992 instead of Summer 1991) - Remixing characters - Nek is around, revealed to be Ken's brother has a crush on Sachiko Emori, because of course he does - Panheim and Green are married and travelling the world - Emori is alive and still messy as fuck - Why is Dr. Flora asking me if I'd rather have a flower than can impregnate humans or birth humans???? - This is the mode where now that you've learned where everything is in Scenarios A and B, you're put to the test - There's not a huge guiding story, but there's a lot of (invisibly) timed sidequests, which then unlock more parts of the world, animals, or ways to travel faster - Which means in order to get 100% you have to explore the entire world and help all of its inhabitants. - Put the Blue Beastman Doll in the spot it's supposed to go and TADA A SECRET FOURTH ZONE WITH STRONG ANIMALS!!! - Blue Beastman Doll I have no idea where I got it - Silver Doll in the Holy Hole #### ==oh no this game isn't a chill game anymore== - What do I mean? - I mean now there are constantly things pulling you this way and that. You want to get to certain places during certain seasons with certain prerequisites all so that you can have the CHANCE to catch a certain animal. - Swallows only got to Swallom in the Spring and in the fall, which is a very niche place to get to already and then you get there and find out they're not there because there's a rat infestation and you need to kill 20 rats to get the swallows to appear. And then you need to make sure that you don't accidentally kill the swallows from being too strong - There's a queen ant in Samakia that is the only one of its kind and if you kill it then you have to wait a whole new season for it to appear. And it only has 25 HP or so so you don't wan to have any dogs in your party to make sure they don't kill it by accident, and YOU need to have a way to do very low quantities of damage as well which means you either need to fling dung at it or you need to have a skill that can only be obtained from depositing other specific animals. - You gotta check on Eggs every other season to see if they've hatched into something, and they're kind of a crapshoot. - You'll want to check the auctions and animal salespeople at Nebul every season to see if they have any *actually* interesting animals for sale. - This is in competing contrast to Scenarios A and B where you were likely to get most of the animals you needed just from following along with the plot. i.e. the plot brought you places and then you found animals at these places. Now because the plot is more side quests and theoretically optional tasks, it falls to you to explore the world, remember where you found everything and go and get it all over again. - The game, through Commander MacDonald (Ben), literally tells you that you better be taking notes. - So not only are the story bits Scenario C remixed from Scenarios A and B (Nek dating Sachiko, Panheim and Green being nice old people, etc.), but now the gameplay is too (no story pulls, you decide where you're taking the story). - So in a way, Scenarios A and B are just tutorials for Scenario C. - I think it could be a lot more chill to play on the slowest time setting and just explore the world if I ever wanted to make a very documented library of where every animal is and how to get them. - Then again, didn't I spend almost 10 hours just doing that? I could've done that all through Scenarios A and B if I wanted. In fact, that was the point of Scenarios A and B. ### On Life, Death, Survival, Extinction, and Cycles - One common theme through this game is the conservation and preservation of life. Cycles - The whole point of the game is to save any and all forms of fauna found on this planet, no matter how big or small, how cute or ugly, how functional or dysfunctional. If they live and can reproduce, it is our duty to save and protect them BECAUSE we have been given the means to do so. So long as one male and one female of a given species exist together, the species can survive. - Even Ken and Linda act as this, they are a male and female pair of the human species. - Many people remark that Hume and Gomez have brought three species to extinction, which is presented with contempt. - [[On Celestial Body Apocalypses in Linda Cube Again]] - It's all very absurd, isn't it? - The presence of "The Grim Reaper" / "Shinigami" immediately puts life into perspective, but is not the only existential threat to life on Neo Kenya. - There are NPCs that talk about how sperm counts in male humans are down 7/8s compared to how they were when humans lived on Earth. In vitro fertilization is easily the most successful way for humans to reproduce in this world. - So in a way, humans are already doomed, but they'll keep on trying to find ways to survive regardless - Spurr Marina (or Sperm Lina) - Given that there's a decaying ship in Nepia, it seems almost as if there's a timeloop for the arks, and that the ark and animal gathering is to bring the animals to a new planet to keep these species alive in some way. - Gene is literally trapped in a space between life and death and there's no way for him to survive. He can still guide us to safety by providing us the ark to load the animals, but he's not necessarily alive. He's stuck between life and death. - So he pretends to be God. But is he really? Will he die when the meteor hits Neo Kenya? - The presence of cycles of rebirth is a really common theme in 90's anime and other Japanese media. It was a means of coping with the economy? #### Shoji Masuda says Linda Cube is About Strength in Front of Doomsday - "Masuda was drawn in the direction of Eros, it means the strength of life in front of doomsday. Because he was falling in love with his first child at that time.", [[@Love’s Secret Domain – The Haunted and Intimate World of 1990’s Japanese Game Linda³ The Aither]] - It's clear that Linda Cube Again is about the bravery of folks doing what is necessary in times before the end of the world. - It makes you face your own mortality, and asks you to choose to act much like Ken does. - Chasing after a FREAK because the world's gonna end #### Mindfulness of Life and How Resources we Need are Often Taken From Living Beings - [[Money in the Apocalypse from Linda Cube Again]], In the end I had more money than I needed. - While initially morbid, being able to make gear and tools out of animals you've collected does also align here. It's difficult because in order to make tools from animals, you need to "kill" the animals to benefit yourself. Is this humane? Probably not. But does it serve a purpose for a grander scale? Do the ends justify the means here? the repurposing of life - The idea of honoring a life being given to serve a greater purpose is paramount to this experience - "Itadakimasu" as giving thanks to all natural elements that came together to supply a meal. - We have to give thanks to the animals who will not survive our campaign to save at least a pair of the others. - So when we eat Squirrel Jerky and recover HP we acknowledge that this squirrel has "given" its life to give us strength to continue doing the tasks set out before us, that we will need the strength it can provide us to save the rest of the life on this planet. - when we made a squirrel into a set of leather gear, we appreciate its life and creation and its service in allowing us to save another species of animal in some capacity. - We cannot lose sight of what our goal, to save a pair of animals on the planet, means to those we have to leave behind. ### An Open World that Rewards Your Curiosity - dragon quest 3 for freaks. - I mean that you have to sort of derive the story of your actual hunts for animals on your own. You cannot do it without abstracting the grinding process as a journey across the planet. - watching the transparency aquanauts holiday video, I'm stuck by the way they discuss a world to explore that wait for you to come to it. This is linda cube against same approach: you ultimately are responsible for finding everything and being proactive with your search. But also you're on a timer, so you have to be mindful of your time. You cannot get lost in the world. #### Linda cube Brought out my Researcher Side. - Keeping notes on what I found and where I found it and what i did with it. - you should be able to make a field manual of the fauna of neo Kenya by the end of the game. - because this requires a lot of experimentation and requires the understanding that some things will go wrong if you don't take care to act intentionally. - and sometimes the flip of a coin can dictate the survival of an animal species (anglerfish) - required me to know all my tools and techniques to experiment. ### Discussion of Family and the Familial Unit - Ken and Linda both have a clear parent or parental figure - Nek has Elizabeth, and Elizabeth loves Panheim - in scenario C, Panheim and Elizabeth are an old married couple - Sachiko and her father, Emori - Both villains in the first two scenarios are parents who want the best for their children in the face of trauma - Elizabeth wants Nek to be able to live a happy life like every day is Christmas - Emori wants his daughter Sachiko to be the pilot instead of Linda so that she can feel special. - Ken and Linda themselves end up being the "primary ancestor" of the next iteration of humans on the New planet (they repopulate it). - There's this belief that family should be celebrated because family keeps our society, our species alive. - Sachiko and Nek fall in love in spite of the apocalypse. - The Angela sidequest, letting a woman know that he son is alive and looking for her. - # Favorite Moments / Memories - I love it when people swear - The Eden reveal in Scenario C was so surprising and very cool. MY mouth was agape for a whole minute - The reveal of Annabis and what's all there got me. It's so cool seeing all of these things revealing the mystery of the planet and where the Arks have come from. - I really like the choice they make where you don't HAVE to have beaten Scenarios A and B in order to play Scenario C. It makes the game incredibly replayable if you want to try and play the game for the gameplay and not as much for the plot. - The elusive Scenario D time trial arcade mode - THE WHALE # What were you doing when not playing this? - watching sopranos on Valentine's day - would wake up every weekend morning and play for a couple hours, when possible - Reminds me of waking up early on the weekends and playing games. - Don't try playing this game in bed, it's not a game you can play in bed. - Play Dragon Quest in bed # Relevant Links - Its wikipedia page was made *THIS YEAR* (2024) ![[linda3 wikipedia.png]] - https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/linda-3-1998-saturn-gamerip - https://videogametokyo.com/linda3/ ## Articles to read: - https://www.readonlymemo.com/linda-cube-again-explained-fan-translation-interview/ - https://lparchive.org/Linda-Cube/ (might do a general small play-along)