The idyllic Hirunotsuka with its ithyphallic mysticity. Lots of roads, quite a lot of climbing. Stairs, shrines, a whole ocean. A small cave. What else you'd need to have a fulfilling romantic vacation?
There's a shibito brain about. His minions are four crawlers and a flying revolver shibito, scattered around the route 333 and its stairways.
- MO1: "Drive away Shibito Brain."
- MO2: "Find item dropped by Yoriko. Drive away Shibito Brain."
- Lesser objectives:
- Finding a piece of cloth with Yoriko.
Tamon Takeuchi[edit]
Inventory contains the flashlight and the revolver. Tamon has a total of 9 bullets at the start of the level. You are advised and given the chance to pick up extra bullets during the level, though.
Yoriko Anno[edit]
She's apparently driven insane by the events that happened while Tamon was gone, and now can't keep her mouth shut. This is the level where she's at her most talkative. If you tell her to "Wait," she'll periodically say "I'm totally freaked out, professor!" or "Is this going to take a while?" or the snotty-voiced "Umph, is this going to take a while, professor?" If you ask her to "Run!" she'll say "Professor, help me! I can't take this any more!" or "Professor, help me!" or "No! Don't come near me!" Most of her other comments are carried on from the previous level.
The shibito brain[edit]
The plaintive antagonist of yours in this level. He has a weapon, but he never once uses it.
His behaviour is - weird. Like most brains of his type, he escapes from you if you get close enough or if he gets alerted. But because of the geography in Hirunotsuka, or for some other reason, it's possible to make him do all sorts of strange things, including making him not run away from you at certain places or manipulating his running routes to complete nonsense.
He starts the level from the location of the small shrine. He'll usually stay there until Tamon is close enough or he hears any loud noises (gunshots). Sometimes he simply jumps down to the large shrine without any apparent reasons. If disturbed, he goes running through the various paths of the Hirunotsuka, and eventually goes to rest at either the large shrine, small shrine, the bottom of the broken bridge, the north-west path of the level, or the "house." There he'll again lay until Tamon comes, or enough time has passed. In effect, the routes he takes are quite random, sometimes even turning and running back against Tamon.
His running domain is all of Hirunotsuka. Some of the routes he just takes more rarely.
The brain seems to rarely "phase out." Tamon's presence doesn't bother him at all, and he does nothing if you try to walk against him or even shout at him. Damaging him makes him move, but seemingly lazily: if he's at the large shrine, he takes a short walk to the back door and then may even return to the shrine's porch. This may happen if he rises up to a different elevation than Tamon at the large shrine.
Another interesting thing to do is to follow him around as closely as possible. His mechanism for detecting Tamon somehow makes his running routes highly erratic and senseless. Most likely it's the same thing as making a sidekick "Run!" two times in a row. The alert-independent Tamon-detection mechanism gives him the order to run away from Tamon, but as he physically gets alerted by Tamon he gets another order to run away - resulting in him, instead of running away, running towards Tamon!
He dies of three shots, and after he's down you've completed the level.
The small shrine[edit]
When you smash its lock, you get a cutscene where Tamon shoots it open - you lose a bullet during it. If there are no bullets, you can't open it. If you hadn't smashed the lock with the rock while being Kei Makino, it won't open - the cutscene shows the lock not breaking, Tamon concludes that there's no point wasting any more time with it. If you open it - as you have to, in order to achieve mission objective 2 – Yoriko is suddenly teleported right next to you, no matter where she was previously. (To the great confusion of the shibito brain, if he's still near the small shrine.)
The flying shibito[edit]
This is chronologically the first occurence of this type of enemy in this game. As it's already been mentioned, depending on where they fall down where they die, they may activate some erratic glitches or twitches in their bodily composure. They fall inside a cliff and they twitch and tumble the way down. They fall inside the police car and it coldly spits them out. There's at least one particular spot in this level which provides unique results: near the broken bridge.
The police car[edit]
This is a FPV-location, with some extra bullets inside. There are other options too, "start the engine" and "toggle the switch," but they won't work.
The small cave[edit]
A sinister location in which an altar is situated. Tamon finds an archive examining it. It's also necessary for Tamon to make Yoriko hide in there in order for her to find a piece of cloth which will prove invaluable at Kyoya Day 2 - 20:00.
There's a bug which activates if you're changing elevation while the cutscene where Yoriko finds the cloth activates. With correct timing you can get Tamon to sink in the rock foundations so that only his head is bulging out! This effect lasts only for a moment, then he's suddenly back to normal again.
Other things of interest[edit]
- In this level your sidekick has a problem coming to you if you're standing on a different elevation than her when you ask her to "Come here!" She won't budge, but instead just looks towards you, doing nothing. If you sightjack her, you can see that her vision twitches ever so slightly. Only after you get close enough, or to the nearly same level of elevation, she'll start moving. This happens at some other places with large elevation differences too.
- If you want to have some peace and quiet hanging out with the shibito brain, you can clear the level almost completely of its other enemies. First, kill the flying shibito so that he gets stuck in mid-air. After that, go and lure at least two crawlers inside the small cave (using yourself as the bait). Kill them in there and then lock the door. Voila! Only two crawlers remain.