February 16-22, 2025
I’m so close to the end of Final Profit I can almost taste it. I wrapped up a vast majority of the optional stuff. Just a couple more things to do and then I can beeline the main story. I also got some of my new recording stuff which is exciting. I didn’t get the mics in time though so still no voiceover for now. They’re on their way though! Let’s get into it.
Game Acquisitions
I’m starting to get good at this whole not spending money thing. I think that’s just as much a commentary on the lack of good bundles lately as much as it is my restraint. Either way, picked up some more freebies here.
# of Games: 5
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Game Recaps
I got more Tales of Phantasia time in! My friend and I are still having a good time. I’m glad he’s picking it up, hopefully this leads to co-op playthroughs for the whole series.
Just as I said last time, I started off the week by paying off Faeona’s 10,000,000 coin debt to the Bureau.
It didn’t seem like the petition hall changed after doing this, which is a shame. There is a prompt to hear the next petitioner, so there has to be more to it, right? The room is just empty now except for the guard standing by. Oh well, next up is raising yet another 10,000,000 coin to buy the castle for myself. This is becoming faster and faster to do. After buying the castle, I was granted access to the old palace from the teleport crystal.
Ooh, so this is the rest of that mysterious area under the black orb outside the castle. Refrain and Biz have made up, and I unlocked the last buff known as Relic Eye. Looks like this will be used to find more secrets (25 in total). I’ll definitely use a guide for those. After that, I decided to donate 999 permits to Tinto’s hoard to complete all of those. Another 10,000,000 coin spent!
That Dragon’s Avarice should increase my profits when I sell things to him by quite a bit. While I was in Enterpriston, I decided to wander around with the Relic Eye for a while trying to find secrets. I found one at the permit desk that knocked 10% off the purchase price for them. I wish I found that before buying 999 of them for Tinto 😩 I also finally found a way to get that gold stash in the passageway from the horse dimension portal to the castle.
Not a ton of money there, but I’ll take it and the Relic Eye secret regardless. After that, I headed back to the Capital and bought up the other two publicly traded companies and unlocked their premium stock options too.
Shortly after, I found Tinto’s exclusive hoard which I read about in the ledger but couldn’t find it anywhere.
It looks like he’s wanting one of every item in the game. I thought this would be harder, but I had most of the items already and knew where to get most of the others. I should make quick work of this. While on my property purchasing spree in the Capital, I bought an apartment with a resident by the name of Patron who wanted me to come inside for a chat.
There’s some subtle fourth wall breaking there. It’s implied that Patron is being controlled by another player. I’m wondering if the “Play Test” name was meant to be a placeholder and replaced by the player’s username on the Steam version or something. I did gain yet another customer which is nice. I also bought the farm which allows me to get fruit and seeds much quicker.
You may have noticed in the clips that my level is no longer at 99. I was using the Flow Pix to trigger all the time-based stuff to raise money quickly. As you may remember from a previous post, this costs 50,000 XP to use, and it drained my levels very quickly. I can see how the quadruple XP accessory is useful now. I may need to keep that equipped when I’m running the shop so I can continue using the Flow Pix. It seems to be the fastest way to make money, but it comes at a steep cost.
Anyway, back to the farm. Boat isn’t too happy about it unfortunately, but this doesn’t seem to affect the story. At this point, I’ve purchased every property in the game except for one. The Bureau itself is now up on the market, but it costs ONE BILLION coin to purchase. I think this is meant to be the last thing to do in the game. Now that I’ve purchased every property, I think the next goal is to find all the Tinto exclusive hoard items and Relic Eye secrets. I found some interesting things during my Relic Eye search, including the dimensional entity helping craft battlepass candles.
He gives me the ability to craft battlepass candles directly from my shop. This might be too little too late at this stage of the end game. Back in Faeona, I used Relic Eye to detect past thoughts from Biz’s daughter.
She feels abandoned by her parents since they both left Faeona for what they call the greater good. She wasn’t buying it at the time. Hopefully Biz has since convinced her that what she’s doing is justified. After that, Biz translates a couple messages from faded stone tablets around Faeona.
They appear to tell a story from Faeona’s distant past. Perhaps this is detailing the founding of the city? In any case, this was the last Relic Eye secret, so I’ve officially found all 25 of them! I head back to Refrain in the Old Palace to see if there’s some kind of reward. There isn’t, but Biz and Refrain celebrate making amends and Refrain played a short song to mark the occasion.
I picked up the last item needed for Tinto’s exclusive hoard while searching for Relic Eye secrets, so I went back to the Capital to complete that side quest as well.
Again, no huge payoff, just some money. I’m not sure how I ended up with 43/42 items at the end there. I turned my attention to the last mushroom which I found in Tutetown. I met an interesting individual while I was collecting it.
Something doesn’t seem quite right with him. No matter, I head back to the apple enthusiast and turn in the last mushroom and rejuvenate the last wilted plant while I’m there.
Next up on my list is sensing the last four royalties.
After that, I spent some time raising enough money to decurse the last accessory. 40 million coin! I finally get enough money and head over to the witch to do the deed.
I’m curious how useful it will be for customers to buy other commodities. After this I need to raise even more money (50 million!) to buy the boots of f****** haste to collect the last apple. After working at the store for a while, I get enough and head over there.
You can see I took off the boots as soon as I ran all the way to Enterpriston. The regular boots are fast enough, I definitely didn’t need these. With every apple now collected, I head back to the labyrinth to finish that up.
So this is where the mug comes in handy. They want me to capture orange salesmen as revenge for what they did to one of the apple ladies. Here’s a quick demonstration of what that looks like:
I quickly nab the four salesmen and head back to the labyrinth. I get my bounty, but then something weird happens.
That was just as annoying as the minappletaur trial. At least now the orange salesman will leave me alone. This isn’t the first time someone offered to help by bringing them to the final confrontation. I wonder how that’s gonna work. As I’m following the path back to Faeona, I remember the guy that’s illegally chopping down trees and wonder if I can finally confront him.
I can! And I was able to use the petition hall again. Still no other petitioners though, I hope this wasn’t it. Next to the logger is the secret entrance to the giant apple sphere that I have yet to lift. Maybe now is finally the time?
The last apple chest has been obtained! And I unlocked the minappletaur as a customer. I really am wrapping everything up, aren’t I? The last order of business for this session is unlocking the final customer.
Aww, it’s a cute deer 😊 And with that, I believe every collectible, customer, and upgrade has been obtained. The only thing left to do now is raise the one billion coin necessary to buy the Bureau and mainline the story. Raising the money will take quite a while, so I guess it’s back to grinding. Let’s move on to the next game!
I was really hoping to get my mic setup in time for part 2 of my co-op let’s play but they’re still in transit 😩 At least OBS didn’t lose all my footage this time. In this part, we head to the catacombs, fight a bunch of mummies, obtain the wraith ruby, meet the big bad Dhaos, and travel back in time! Very exciting, unless you don’t enjoy the high encounter rate and huge exposition dump at the end. Give it a watch!
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
· Family Guy Season 21 Episode 1 (all caught up, show ongoing)
· Cowboy Bebop Episodes 7-22 (still watching, show ended)
· Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
· Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 5-6 (still watching, show ended)
· American Dad Season 21 Episode 17 (all caught up, show ongoing)
Looks like Family Guy has started airing again. It’s very similar to American Dad so I likely won’t be talking about it. It’s just more silly and mindless adult humor. Cowboy Bebop continues to be phenomenal. I’m going to be super bummed when it ends. I watched the movie between episodes 22 and 23 when it supposedly takes place. It mostly just felt like a long episode, no significant story beats here. A bit of a bummer there’s no revelations here, but it was still good. Scott Pilgrim continues to be a fun spin on the movie’s story. Only two episodes left, my friend and I will finish it next time we watch.
Conclusion/Upcoming
It was a very productive week. I got my new furniture set up, I played some Tales with my friend, and I’m very close to the end of Final Profit which I started way back in November. I didn’t go to Microcenter this week to try to get a new graphics card, the weather was very cold where I am. It’s warmer this week, I wonder if it’s worth the trip. Stock is rumored to normalize in March, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
You may have noticed that I didn’t watch The Fifth Element like I planned. I decided to swap it out for the Cowboy Bebop movie since the timing worked out. I’ll watch it this week. If my friend gets time this week, we’ll finish the Scott Pilgrim anime. I’ll finish Cowboy Bebop and start the Snowpiercer TV show. I watched the movie with Chris Evans a few years ago and loved it. I’m curious how the show will compare.
For games, I’m once again predicting I’ll beat Final Profit this week. As I said in my last post, the next game is called Lunar Axe. It’s a short hidden object/puzzle adventure game. Hopefully I can beat that one in a couple sittings. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, so I’ll leave it there. Thanks for reading! The next post will be the February recap.
Backlog total: 3,085 (+3)
