7th Dragon 2020 ~ Sympathy for Chisa Inomiko (an LP EOV Anniversary Project)

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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There is one other hint about a greater force than the Imperial Dragons existing, that being the early cut to Mizuchi practically screaming to the heavens about how she has surpassed the Imperials and shall join her new kin

But Natsume has gone absolutely bonkers so its easy to ignore

Nice work Kinu in finishing this out~

Though a question remains: Who or what did Mio superimpose upon in Iorys? Unlike Chisa she was thoroughly Herself in that world, rather than a gestalt being.

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Part 48: Opus 13
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It's the postgame! It's finally time for Satsuki to unleash her true ultimate power.

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Ah, welcome to a 7th Dragon post-game. All the randoms are dragons and the dragon symbols themselves are souped up. Always a difficulty spike in every 7th Dragon game because this is when the game goes from not that difficult to absolutely skull crushing.

That being said this is probably the easiest post-game in the series (barring certain very vicious moments) because it's not quite as vicious as the others. While the random encounters are dragons... they're more souped up random encounters if anything. They don't have the trait of being able to attack twice per turn, and their stats aren't too high. Their HP tends to average around only 1200 which your party should easily be able to deal with by this point. Though they are resistant to ailments like real dragons, and aren't super susceptible like main-game randoms. Everything I've said in this paragraph applies to none of the other post-games. :shepface:

The actual dragons (as in the symbol encounters) are souped up dragon fare and can munch you down. The bosses don't respawn in any of the post-games, so it's essentially a checkpoint. But yeah you'll have to clear out the Bloom wall dragons again if you haven't reached an actual exit point.

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Part 49: Bang! Bang! Big Hornes Explosion
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It's more postgame! It's more boss fights! It's more Big Screamo!

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That fucking Shield Dragon V + 2 Little Dragon Vs formation is what I had in mind when I said certain vicious moments. That's by far one of the toughest fights in the entire game and it's quite infamous for its difficulty spike. Why not just lure the Little Dragon Vs away? You can't. People have tried. It's tied to the Bloom wall, so you can't just get into a battle to get them on you. Their hitboxes are unreachable too, so sniping them before taking on the Shield Dragon V isn't an option.

That sure is a rude move on the part of the game, yeah.

Also jeez of course the hacker weapon is last.


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Selfish deed is not freedom
Can't justify


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Youka Fudoji's Reminiscence, II ~ Smile Venomously

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Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see


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Youka Fudoji's Reminiscence, III ~ Bad Fortune Flower


Y'all can have the superboss in two days and then 2020-1 is actually over.

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Can you ever really escape 2020 though.

Ah, well, it's not like they have a 2020-III to go through, imagine how terrible that would be.

Had to make an account just to express how much I enjoyed this work. I found this when I was just scrolling looking for something to read and I binged through all of it in a couple of days. I had recognized your profile pic for being a collaborator on the EO5 lp and it was surprising to see a sequel to that and be able get to enjoy the characters of Mio and Chisa (how could you do this to her, lol) as well as all the newcomers. It really is fascinating seeing what people can do to use a videogame lp itself as a medium to write their own stories while being congruous with the events in it and I grew really attached to all of them by the end, especially with the reminiscence sections. All this to say is I'm eagerly looking forward to any future work you do.

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Zenox wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:57 pm
Had to make an account just to express how much I enjoyed this work. I found this when I was just scrolling looking for something to read and I binged through all of it in a couple of days. I had recognized your profile pic for being a collaborator on the EO5 lp and it was surprising to see a sequel to that and be able get to enjoy the characters of Mio and Chisa (how could you do this to her, lol) as well as all the newcomers. It really is fascinating seeing what people can do to use a videogame lp itself as a medium to write their own stories while being congruous with the events in it and I grew really attached to all of them by the end, especially with the reminiscence sections. All this to say is I'm eagerly looking forward to any future work you do.
Thanks a lot for the kind messages! Seeing stuff like this is always really heartening. With that said,

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The Year Between, I ~ A God's Beast


"Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things.

I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's "Open Sesame":

Once upon a time..."

-Jean Cocteau, La Belle et la Bête

(This interstitial story will be released in four installments, after which the LP of 2020-II will begin. Thank you for your patience.)

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The Year Between, II ~ Heavenly Town


You could call it a sort of denouement, but it's not one that gives satisfying answers.

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The Year Between, III ~ Unbearable Atmosphere


Everything's okay, right? Everything's okay, right? Everything's okay, right?

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The Year Between, IV ~ Reckless Blade


This concludes The Year Between. Next will be the beginning of 2020-2. Thank you for your patience.

Ah, I thought that something was off with how innocently Chisa told Raquel's backstory to the whole group way back when. Well played.

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Part 51: A Small Journey
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The date is September 1st, 2021—the beginning of the longest month for Murakumo Unit 13.

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2020-II massively upgraded the back end. There’s been quite a few improvements from 2020. Loading times are like non-existent in this game, and things just flow so much faster it feels so good. You get in and out of battles with minimal downtime. A damn shame VFD was a complete downgrade in that department.

There’s also been some little tweaks like actual turning animations for your party when walking around on the field. NPCs will turn their heads toward you as you approach.

Oh and because of the improved loading times, music can now transition into battles if they wish to set the scene properly, instead of having to hard load a song. There was an issue in the first game where Rival Arrival played in a cutscene after beating Niara… and then had to restart the song in the battle to finish him off afterwards because of how the game handles loading.

Also Rushing Life is a great new battle theme.

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Part 52: Sunny Spot
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The daily grind's not a thankful task for a lot of people.

Well, that carpet is... I guess it's not the worst looking carpet I've seen recently but I suppose it doesn't look great, no.

The mandatory sidequest in the Kokubunji Searsand is... well, it's still 7th Dragon random encounters we're talking about here so it's not really harsh enough to be considered more than generally impolite but it still pretty much exists to troll anyone who picked a Psychic for their party. (Honestly it seems pretty questionable as a training exercise too but I don't work for a secret dragonslaying organization so what do I know)

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Part 53: Thousand Wings
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The Prologue is over. Welcome back to the world of the Dragons.

Ah, time to be flooded with pricks.

Oh yeah the dragons making a comeback sucks too.

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To elaborate on "accuracy is a real mechanic now" in the previous update, in 2020 missing attacks would rarely happen. Blind is commonly a 25% reduction in accuracy, with a few versions going to a 40% reduction. However the solution to being Blinded basically amounted to "use a skill." Skills usually had 150% or more accuracy, making them completely unaffected by most forms of blind. This is no longer the case in 2020-II. Many skills had their accuracy reduced to 100%.

As for this one They basically channeled DS's prologue and introduction here. Which was a nice way to reflect on the world you actually saved since you basically went in media res (not entirely) back in 2020.

Also the music actually being able to transition into battles now helps set the atmosphere nicely. Like hearing Ever Building Rage blasting as 201 appears then initiates the battle.

Fun fact, the Bluegrass Nymphs are also upgraded in the tower. I have no idea why that enemy kept both the entirely same name and model. Considering seeing Dark Rabis and the demonic appearance of the new Wyverns is a lot to clue you in that something is wrong.

Something I do wish to note is that the first 2 dragons in 2020 had a 100% chance to land D-Depth so you could use your Destroyer's skills more easily. Not so in this game. Dragon 201 and 202 instead only reduce that down to a 30% chance, so you'll need to use Jab to reliably land D-Depth. Which thankfully by this point you have access to.

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Part 54: Flapper Girl
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This begins Chapter 1. It's a very America Moment.

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There was a tip in 2020 where an NPC tells you the first 2 turns of a dragon battle has the dragon behave the exact same way every time. If you make a note of that, you can counter dragons easily for more of that type. It also worked on bosses as well. I actually had a look through the games' AIs, and that's not quite the case. The AI for a lot of enemies in the game in general is super rigid with very little RNG involved. They only tend to change once their HP gets lower, which is probably why the tip was so vague about that.

The reason I bring this up now is because that tip no longer applies to 2020-II. Dragon behaviors and boss AI now involve way more RNG and are nowhere near as predictable as they were in 2020. A dragon that behaves one way won't necessarily mean another of the same kind will behave another way. And if you're having trouble with a boss, taking note of its behaviors won't help you as much as it did in 2020.

If you're wondering about VFD, it's about half and half. Some enemy AIs are rigid and predictable, others are very random.

Ah, yes. "Help." You'd think the the dracopocalypse would've sorted out certain attitude problems but nope, 'murica gonna 'murica.

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Part 55: Over the World Wall
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The first Imperial Dragon of 2020-2 makes its appearance.

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I got around to playing 2020-II in the year of 2020 and scenes with SECT11 like that made for a very surreal experience I gotta say.

As a reminder, this was a 2013 release.

If you somehow kill Tiamat, it doesn't have payout data, but it bizarrely awards 1 Dz. The thing has 5950 HP and is level 40 with massive fuckoff stats (Fomalhaut starting off strong) so good luck with that.

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Part 56: A Warring God
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Here, let me take a sip of water before I see how long the boss fight in this update is.

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Yeah that about sums up the Tiamat experience. This thing is a fucking asshole. There's not really a trick to it or a reliable way to speedkill it. You're in for a long slugfest of a fight. The fastest kill I've seen lasted 14 turns, and that ended up with a party member dead.

The closest thing to a reliable strategy I've seen on Japanese guide sites recommended you save your EX for its final phase so that you can burst it down and potentially skip Dimensional Tear, or have it not come out too often.

They also made sure to cite "Don't worry if your party members die instantly after being revived, that's normal." and "Expect to run out of items by the end of the fight."



SECT11 did weaken it considerably at least.

For comparison, this is Warcry's stats from 2020.



Yeah Tiamat's a lot stronger statistically.
Wounded Tiamat (LV. 17/14)
-Crystal Breath: Non-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 1.2x damage.
-Dimensional Tear: Non-elemental Claw attack to one party member. ATK-based. 1.8x damage. 99% chance to inflict Paralysis for 5 turns. Paralyzed targets have a 50% chance to not act.
-its time to take a deep breath: Telegraph skill.
-Typhoon Howl: Non-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 0.4x damage. 40% chance to inflict Paralysis for 3 turns. Paralyzed targets have a 30% chance to not act.
-Dragon Fang: Non-elemental Fang attack to one party member. ATK-based. 1.2x damage.
Tiamat's skillset is rather basic compared to the later bosses. It just comes at a point where your party barely has any skills and equipment. Also its stats are a lot at this point in time. Dude just utterly kills you, and its desperation move Dimensional Tear can burn through your revival items.

Quite a few players cited this fight as luck based or an utter bloodbath. For the former, wearing defensive accessories can help lower Tiamat's ATK enough to survive Dimensional Tear. At the cost of massively horrible action economy due to the constant paralysis. For the latter, you can give your party paralysis immunity and let Tiamat's attacks shred your party to pieces and constantly have to be on the ball healing and reviving (more often than the other setup). So it's basically pick your poison here.

For comparison, here's Warcry's skillset from 2020.
Wounded Warcry
-Searing Firesphere: Fire-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 0.75x damage. Cannot miss. 55% chance to inflict Burn for 3 turns. The Burn ticks for 5 damage, multiplies ATK and MAT damage dealt by 0.9x, and multiplies ATK and MAT damage taken by 1.05x.
-Giga Break: Non-elemental Claw attack to one party member. ATK-based. 1.5x damage.
-Typhoon Howl: Non-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 1.25x damage. 0.75x speed. Cannot miss. 65% chance to inflict Paralysis for 3 turns. Paralyzed targets have a 35% chance to not act.
-Gather Power: Telegraph skill.
Tyhpoon Howl is Warcry's special attack instead here, telegraphed from Gather Power. While Giga Break is his desperation attack.

Tiamat is basically a massively upgraded version of Warcry.

Not helping matters is that 2020-II AI is more randomized (with predictable actions on certain turns.) So while you can take notes on Warcry and have an advantage if you fail and try again, Tiamat isn't as generous. What you may thought of as a safe turn before can end up containing a deadly move in your next attempt.

A funny bit of trivia. There was either a point where they changed Tiamat's animations or typo'd weird. As Tiamat's biting attack counts as a Claw attack. Tiamat's claw attack animation counts as a Melee attack. Not that it matters now as the Destroyer attack counters aren't available yet.

There really isn't a -good- setup for Tiamat, no, the only saving grace to her being a massive stat pile compared to Warcry is that you're also going to be somewhat higher leveled and even then, well, you saw what you just saw. As I recall my first playthrough against it took... at least 18 turns and about as many retries as my fumbling against Niara. Later attempts at it went more smoothly but really not that much more smoothly, as was pointed out, one way or another you have to spend a lot of time in triage mode and you're gonna want to use that carryover stuff because this may well actually be the hardest boss in the maingame.

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Part 57: 15 Acres of Broken Glass
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Oh hi, yo, minna! It's Sharon in the Morning!

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Overexposed is one of those skills that I glimpsed at, couldn't make any sense of the text (this was before the translation patch), and proceeded to ignore completely. I'm not sure I even recall the JP wikis documenting it at the time, they were pretty spotty on things that weren't damage mults.

Also of course Berserk Pitch is bugged. Why wouldn't it be bugged.


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Accuracy is an actual mechanic now. It wasn't just Samurai hit with the accuracy nerfs, it was all classes, so the game doesn't have an anti-Samurai bias in case you were thinking that. Fortunately this doesn't mean everything is miss central, just that whenever evasion and blind come into play, they're actual things to take into consideration now where you could ignore those in 2020 before.

Unfortunately the breath skills never got their bugs fixed, but not like that would help them be that good anyways.

Nothing super game changing with Samurai here, but being able to set up Windy Canopy with Idols is very nice.

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Part 59: Turismo
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Emille says the funny line in this one.

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Part 60: Soaring Dragon
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It all starts with this... a capsule containing the ultimate power!

In fairness punching out Shouji and Izumi for willingly engaging in superdickery during the dracopcalypse is morally correct.

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