As Shou continued his journey the SovKahn started talking to him. He summoned the first 2 bosses for you to fight is sequence, which was quite annoying. After many more struggles and unfair fights I reached Atavaka, who is of course Isamu. This battle is so far the worst in the game. Atavaka teleports all over the place and can juggle you on his own. There is no strategy here. Just the usual activate Fatal Sync and hope for the best. When I finally won Shou and Isamu had their big gay reunion and Isamu dies. This is supposed to be emotional and stuff, but by the end of the fight I was so frustrated that I didn't care for these cringe clowns.

I collected all the crystals in the Castle in case there was a boss battle and another reset of the game. Our heroines reached the Prison's End and found Usamura-san at the edge of the world starring into whiteness. He explains that this world was created by a girl's wish as an escape and eventually started falling apart. Cheshire is the first who he saw there. Eventually more girls started to arrive, who were lonely or without friends. When Alice reaches the Castle the world starts dying and Usamura-san rewinds it. He also tells you that he took away Mad Hatter's memories to make her feel welcome in the world. This reveals a new area (Sky over a Meadow) where the girls can visit and find her hat to restore her memory. You access it via a previously inactive bouncing mushroom.

This stage is pretty annoying since most of its battles are on disappearing clouds, so you have to constantly jump around. Eventually the duo finds the Hat of Truth, but distortions begin to destroy the world. Your rewind clock is not working, so you have to use the one in Usamura's house. Suddenly the girls meet one of the King Cards, who offers them assistance. You now control him for a while - he one-shots every enemy and is seemingly invincible. Then another loop is triggered and this time when I reached Mad Hatter I gave her the Hat of Truth. She then remembers that all the girls here are from different worlds and asks you to also help Humpty and Dodo by getting their memories back.

The next boss I encountered is the Neatherfeather - a bird which shoots lasers at you. It's an annoying fight since you have to jump to actually hit it (with the whip attack still being the best), but that leaves you vulnerable and you take damage right after. Dodging the charging lasers requires some quick reactions. One thing I noticed while watching the recording of this battle is that the attacks barely have audio ques, making them even trickier to avoid. I used the tornado spell as well, since it's the only decent one to deal continuous damage to airborne enemies. The reward for defeating the bird was the Anemo Wings afterimage which gives you longer dashes and summons a small tornado as a projectile when you do it mid-air. Also another mysterious key which I have no idea where to use. The amount of items this game throws at you is very annoying.

Then I reached the Heart of Veins - a area with a bunch of floating islands and wind streams which you use for travel between them. There I stumbled into Loss The Broken Wings. It's another bird-like boss, but this one has a lot of spears. Loss' attacks are very fast and far reaching, so it's best to do a single hit and then run away from him. He also throws a ton of large projectiles, so sticking to either wall is the only way to avoid those. After you reduce his health to 50% he'll start diving into the ground leaving diagonal whirlwinds limiting the space you can dodge his attacks The best strategy is to be near the centre of the room and slowly move in either direction, so you can hug the wall after he's done. This fight was extremely annoying, so much so that I had to refill my health potions to survive. At least the reward is decent - you get another feather of the Windwalker, unlocking a triple jump.

Penny easily escapes prison into a stage filed with lava and fire. The only thing to keep in mind here are the heated metal pipes - you have to ride your yo-yo on them to not take damage. After several of those stages Penny has to face Judge Rufus. You have to avoid lightning falling from clouds, then you have to climb some books, activate 3 platforms and hit Rufus. He will drop his hammer, which you will then have to take and destroy the pivots holding the some weights. Repeat the process until all of them are destroyed. This tips the scales of justice and Penny is somehow proclaimed innocent. Then Yo-Yo bites on Rufus' book, who catches it and offers Penny a deal to go free if she lets him destroy Yo-Yo. This is a pretty reasonable offer considering that Yo-Yo is the one who committed the crimes Penny is chased for, but of course she refuses.

Several boring samey levels later Penny returns to the gala, where Emperor Eddie bombs. I really feel for this guy. He tries his best to keep his country together. Taboo teleports Penny in front of him to improve the show and a fight starts. It's a fairly easy battle. He would throw stuff at you and charge, but a singe hit is enough to put him out of the arena. The battle ends with a QTE where you spin Eddie around and throw him out again. He then has a moment of self-reflection and remembers the good old days when he and Taboo worked together. Then the arrogant cunt appears in front of him and creates a giant version of Eddie with her cosmic strings to attack you. That's pretty mean act to have, especially considering Penny hasn't done anything to her. In any case this is an annoying platforming challenge where you ride an energy road and avoid balls of penguins. Then you fly and have to avoid more balls until you reach string Eddie's head and unscrew it. Then Penny, Eddy and Taboo land on the stage, bow and the game ends. After the credits Rufus pardons Penny.

Penny's Big Breakaway is not a good game. The controls are awful and you constantly have to fight against them with a 25% chance to pull off the wrong move at a critical point. The levels are very samey with minor differences. The side quests inside them are terribly designed, made so that you can easily fail them in order to replay the level. The story had potential - a world where performance is everything, but the characters are mostly bland or annoying. Taboo is a cunt and Eddie is the only sympathetic character. Penny herself is in the bland category with her being quirky being her only personality trait. Ultimately it was boring. The devs were trying so hard to re-invent the wheel that they made a platformer which is not fun to play. You do get content in terms of challenges which can unlock gallery items, but I can't be bothered. There are much better platformers out there - don't waste your time with this one.

At the end of a factory-like level you face the Great Unclean One - one of Nurgle's abominations. It's a giant troll-like creature, which spews acid at you, has a giant sword and a giant bell it rings when you get close enough. I found the Vengeance Launcher to be pretty effective in this fight for its strike and retreat capabilities.

The Deep Vault was a big level with many portals and after it you reach Heresy Lurks. There was an annoying section where you get killed by the falling ceiling and it took me several tries to understand what was happening. You basically have to learn where the exit is and rush there. After that you use jet-packs to jump between buildings filled to the brim with Chaos Marines. To top it all off you have to fight the Traitor Psyker at the end. His move set is pretty much the same, but the map is smaller meaning you have to constantly deal with the stronger enemies he summons. Since this is basically a survival challenge it's best to focus on the Sorcerer. The best strategy I've found is to shoot your best weapons (basically the Meltagun) at him as you approach him and then deal some damage with the chainsword. Then retreat, reload and repeat. When you defeat him he teleports away to your ship and uses the fragment to alter the Warp-drive to summon more daemons. It's your task to stop him.

2 more of mys missing spirits' battles appeared on the Spirit Board. The one against Rauru was much easier, but I got the reference since I played Tears of the Kingdom. Basically you first fight all the Sages including Zelda and then finally Rauru (represented by Mewtwo).

The other battle was a pain in the ass. I'm not sure who are the Deep Cut people since I haven't played Splatoon 3. What I do know is that the fight was downright unfair. They are of course 2 Inklings and you fight at the Splatoon stage, but they start with that whale assist trophy, which spits water at you pushing you off the edge. I tried avoiding it, but it doesn't give you enough time to react. I tried multiple times and eventually I equipped a spirit, which starts me with a Franklin Badge giving you projectile reflection, so you can survive until the whale goes away. Blocking also helps a bit, but the 2 Inklinks will attack you in the mean time. Hugging an edge seems to work, but it's tricky to pull off. In any case this finally allowed me to defeat them and get their spirit.

The missing spirits from Smash Bros Ultimate were finally added to the pool, so I was quite happy to see this one on the Spirit Board. I don't know much about these characters since I haven't played Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but the battle itself was pretty easy. A giant Dark Samus appeared after I killed the first two fighters and she was more of a pain, but a nice placed super evened the odds.

Tried the demo for C.A.R.D.S. RPG The Misty Battlefield. It's a mix between a SRPG and a deck builder game. Each of your units shares the same deck, but there are also cards which are specific to the archer, which help him deal more damage, but are unusable by the rest. Logic dictates that such cards should be avoided. During combat you get to use cards with different effects. Red ones deal damage, blue ones create a shield, green heal and there are other special ones which have more specific effects. Each card has a cost and you have 3 action points to spend during each turn. You can increase the number of action points with cards like Source of Power, but you have to decide if it's worth it. The combat with small enemies lasts 3 turns and with bosses 5. After it's ended your character gains experience and can level up increasing their stats. In the strategic part of the game you move around your units each with their own range and can attack the enemies within reach. The archer is a special unit since he can shoot from afar and the enemies won't be able to retaliate unless they are also archers. This is unfortunately true in reverse with enemy archers. If you attack an enemy unit first you get the first strike and vice-versa. Once you move all your units your turn ends and the foes can do their positioning. You can find different things on the map including artefacts, blacksmiths upgrading cards and healing spots. When you complete a stage you gain Strategist XP used to unlock permanent upgrades for all your units. Unfortunately all of them lose the levels they gained during the previous combat and any collected artefacts. You get to keep most of your deck, but you have to discard 3 cards after each stage.

So far this has been a surprisingly successful mix of the two genres. The card battles take a bit of getting used to, but they are pretty intuitive if you follow what the next enemy action is. I haven't played many SRPGs, so I'm adapting to that part, but in general it's better to keep your units close to one another due to the numbers advantage the enemies have.

Story-wise it's pretty simple - Captain Vel Dina's unit returns to protect their village from a dragon and encounters enemies along the way.

The next Calamity is Regent Wuguan. He has 3 faces and taunts you as you fight your way through. At one point X questions its existence and does a woman move by preventing Shou from controlling it. This was beyond stupid since it came out of nowhere - their relationship was seemingly good and suddenly it soured. You fight some shadow clones of yourself and then Shou shows X another gay flashback of how he had a fallout with Isamu, who was chosen as the first person to fight the SovKhan. This somehow convinces X to give back control and Shou promises to give up his body to the Slave once his revenge is complete. The story-telling in this game is nearly as bad as its gameplay.

The boss here is insultingly easy. It's a giant monster with some PS1-level 3D graphics. It will slam its hands on the floor and you have to attack them while avoiding the different projectiles it throws. That's the entire strategy. Then Shou kills the Regent and learns that he sparked a rebellion against the SovKhan.

In the castle I found a room where Cheshire was standing in front of a mirror. She asks you if you want to go back to your world and if you choose "yes" you get the same "Where is Alice" ending as before. Resuming from the last checkpoint and progressing deeper into the castle our heroines eventually met Queen Isabella - the Queen of Hearts, who immediately attacks them for trying to get between her and Alice, who she has a crush on. The fight against her is pretty easy - she'd summon monsters and once you defeat them her shield will go down for you to do damage. The most dangerous moment is when she rides a top of a King card, but keeping your distance with Kotora is the way to go. When you defeat her you find Alice in a room behind her. Like most interactions in this game, this leads to a fight since Alice is depressed for some reason and doesn't want to leave this world with you. I guess this is her fantasy.

The battle against Alice is pretty challenging. She throws enemies at you at at one point she drinks a potion and becomes huge. Alice runs around and dives from the air and due to her size she's difficult to avoid. I think it's best to waste your super moves here because you can barely do damage with regular attacks without getting hit. Alice then pulls a gun on you and her shots are incredibly fast. Eventually I defeated her, but she had no idea how our heroines can return to the real world. This non-ending earned me Ending 3 "I said leave me alone".

After the credits roll Usada and Kotora find themselves in Usamura-san's house and when they touch his clock time reverses sending the girls back to the beginning of the game in a New Game+ sort of scenario. You still have all your unlocked skills, but this time around there are distortions, which are basically tougher battles against stronger shadow variations of the enemies you've faced so far. Usamura-san asks the girls to clear all of them. These can be very tough since some of the monsters can kill you in 3 hits with your health fully upgraded. When you clear all disturbances you get a key for the castle basement. One interesting thing to note is that Cheshire is aware that you have used the clock to loop the game. The basement itself has some brutal battles. One in particular was downright unfair where the floor is filled with one-hit-kill spikes, so you have to land on small platforms. The shadow enemies's shield is massive and a single hit sends you to your death. It took several tries before I passed that.

I've explored Albedo Tower for a while but didn't find anything worth a mention. Renee listened in on a conversation between the masked lady she fought before and some sort of a queen/high priestess. They were talking cryptic nonsense about Essentials and the will of God, but nothing came of it.

Eventually I encountered a bird boss called Darkfeather. It throws knives all over the place and would dive into the ground from time to time. Shortly after I defeated it I found Whitefeather - a giant bird of the same race, but he wasn't corrupted. He asks you to find his golden feathers to release him.

Another boss I encountered was Avress, The Everstorm. It's an air elemental which dashes and jumps around. From time to time it will materialise columns from the ground. It's another mundane battle of HP rather than skill.

A portal in Albedo Tower leads to a new area named the Sky Palace. There our duo met Mia, who is another cook looking for ingredients.

Nothing of note happened until I reached the next boss battle. The level design is this game is very samey with only slight differences here and there like ice surfaces or conveyor belts. In any case the boss was a giant robot penguin. The ground is constantly moving away from the boss and you can stop different lanes by hitting a switch. Eventually a magnet will appear, so you have to pick it up and when the field is up around the penguin you have to use it and deal some damage. The robot's attacks are fairly easy to avoid by circling him. Overall it's a really easy fight, but after you win Penny gets captured by dropping a cage on herself. Lame.

I found a new weapon called the Vengeance Launcher. It launches explosive rounds which attach themselves to surfaces and enemies and explode after a couple of seconds. It's great for shooting at stronger enemies and immediately moving behind cover. In this cave area I had to fight an Ancient Ambull, which is a meaner version of those daemons which charge at you.

In the next level I added another weapon to my arsenal - the Meltagun. It's incredibly powerful and its blasts travel through terrain. The only drawback is the limited ammo, so this one is best saved for tougher enemies or bigger crowds to hit at once. In fact it was very effective against the Lord of Change who I had to fight again.

The Hidden Sin stage was vast and labyrinthine, but I somehow stumbled upon the Volkite Caliver. It fires a laser, but it's best used against single targets since it deals continuous damage over time. I had to fight another Lord of Change at the end. I wish there was some more boss variety in the game.

Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife is another one of those sliding puzzles lewd games. The art here is definitely AI, so if you want to play a meta game just look at their hands. That being said this one does have toplessness, so there's that. The puzzles are pretty easy, but they do get a bit trickier the busier the backgrounds become. Overall this is a cheap game which should only be bought on sale.

A flashback of Isamu and Shou arguing pretty much confirms they are gay. Gross.

The next Calamity you have to face is Uriel. He is a giant centaur-like monster. In all encounters with him you just have to run away. Uriel thinks the SovKhan is his father and a god, but I didn't give enough of a shit about the story to check if he's talking about his biological dad. The game does this stupid thing where it gives you exposition as you are trying to survive and you miss a lot of the story. X apparently first wanted to be perfect like Uriel's biomecha, but then she learns that he ideal is a mindless machine and has some sort of existential crisis. Anyway the way to defeat Uriel is really dumb - you just destroy some containers while trying to survive enemy waves. Some new cheap monsters are introduced - one type can grab you while you are hitting them and the other explodes into smaller worms when you defeat it. Like the rest of this garbage game they are incredibly cheap.

This game is progressive propaganda. Your character is gay. The first villain is a patriotic American, the second loves guns and the third is a religious devotee. The way it's going the final boss will be Trump. Not to mention that the gameplay is ass - it's by far the worst hack and slash game I've ever played. I'll finish it, but even at this point it's easy to say to avoid this abomination.

Clearing Dodo's cleaning quest earns you a heart fragment and the location of Cheshire's hideout. There you can ask her to return Usada and Kotora to their own world and surprisingly she will oblige. The two girls return to the library, but their mission of finding Alice is incomplete. You get the "Where's Alice?" Ending number 5. Loading the game returns you to the checkpoint right before you talk to Cheshire.

Found Usamura-san behind an ability-locked door (meaning you have to have a certain upgrade to go through) and he gave you an area clearing quest. The reward is a heart fragment. From time to time Cheshire may want to speak with you asking different questions. I guess this quest ends when you exhaust all dialogue options.

On the gameplay side of things I bought an upgrade allowing me to dash twice in the air, which makes platforming much smoother. Two more useful skills I got are the abilities to see heart fragments and ability crystals on the map. Combine those and it's much easier to develop you characters as you wish.

Eventually I got to fight 2 King Card bosses at once. Despite all the upgrades I had they can still kill me in 2 hits. Thankfully they are slow, so utilising Kotora's gun while staying at a distance is the best strategy. Jumping at them is ineffective. When you defeat them you fall through the floor and into the castle where Alice is supposedly located.

Using the wall climb ability I explored for a while, but I didn't find anything of note. At the Town of the Exiled Renee meets Rosalia again, who explains that the barrier surrounding the cursed town prevented her from leaving, but now that you defeated mastermage Auss she can escape at the price of her remaining life energy. Pretty poetic. Now that I had equipped the afterimage which removes the shitty purple mist I could more normally explore that part of the town, but there was nothing interesting there.

In The Columns area I found Patt - the former assistant of mastermage Auss. He says that Auss actually planned to take control of the people with the ritual she performed, so he tried to sabotage it. This is an interesting alternate perspective, but Patt a bit too shady to be trusted. Still, he gives you a new staff, which has 2 spells, one of which is a burst that drains all my mana. Ifree warns Renee against using this particular staff.

Then I wandered around various areas, but didn't encounter anything interesting.

There weren't any new features or gimmicks in the next couple of levels, so it was a matter of going through the motions. Penny somehow invaded Emperor Eddie's bath and she had to face him in a boss battle. He's pretty easy to beat - he'll charge at you and after you dodge you need to pull on his belt. After a couple of hits he'll start spinning instead, but the strategy is the same. Penny then gets flushed by the penguins and the next levels seem to be in some sort of a cosmic library.

Despite the fresh look the only new gimmick is a torch which you use for candles and fuses. After several levels Penny meets Taboo, who out of nowhere creates a doll version of our heroine and forces you to race her. This came out of nowhere. You have to beat the puppet to the finish line, but also have more coins than her when you do so. I missed on the latter of those requirements because nobody told me it was a requirement. In any case I eventually got it and Taboo explained how she was Emperor Eddie's partner when performing, but her experimental shows became too much for him and she got offended and went into space to perform to nobody. What a woman moment. Taboo suggested that Penny should stay with her, but the yo-yo master actually has friends and doesn't want to be isolated to do pretentious art for nobody, so instead she now has to remove herself from the Book of Law to not be considered a criminal.

The Sanctum Magistratum level is a cathedral engulfed by the Warp. Here I discovered that the Plasma Gun actually has rapid fire, but after the magazine is depleted it requires some cooldown before it shoots again. I also found a new secret - the Vortex Grenade. It's single use, but it's incredibly powerful and has a huge area of effect. The level itself if full of portals to the point where it's confusing. I think the correct path is seeking a red emblem at the top of the portal, but at one point you have to fall down and walk on the side of bridges.

At the end of all that you face a traitor psyker. He teleports all over the place and it's a bit annoying since you can't really do a lot of damage at a time and have to run around looking for good spots to shoot him from. Much like the previous boss he summons minions to get in your way. His main attack seems to be shooting lasers at you and they are tricky to avoid, so you have to be constantly on the move. When you defeat him the Sorcerer unfortunately escapes and you continue your search for the fragment in the Corrupted Canyon level. The new bige enemies here are the Bloat Drones, which fly around and shoot rockets at you, but thankfully they are quite slow.

Pretty Girls Escape Plus has the same mechanics as Pretty Girls escape. You destroy coloured blocks if they have more than 2 squares next to each other and the goal is to get the girl's portrait to the exit below. You can also shift all the blocks left or right. Each level has a specific challenge like destroying a number of blocks or completing it in a certain amount of time/moves. Completing those earns you points to buy new costumes and backgrounds for the diorama mode. The more you progress the more gimmicks appear in the levels like key blocks necessary to unlock the exit, destrictable boxes and black blocks which are indestructible.

After some struggle I reached one of the Calamities - Thorman the Iron General. He's a patriotic American dude who wants to use the power of the biomecha to restore the United States, which no longer exist in this universe. He's giant and swings a huge blade around. The strategy is just like the regular big enemies - hit him until he breaks, preferably while in Fatal Sync. Using the forward EX moves while he's charging at you may help avoid some damage. You can't juggle him at all, but when a break happens, he falls on the ground, which is when you can do some regular combos or even a charge heavy attack. I'm not sure which is more effective since there are no health bars. In terms of damage he may actually be easier than the regular heavy enemies since they can't be damaged once they fall onto the ground, but his combos are faster, so pick your poison. When you defeat him it's revealed that he's some old man on the inside of the armour. Thorman begs for his life, but Shou murders him.

You get another flashback with Shou and Isamu. They train together and Shou seems to be the better fighter. The way they talk to each other is kind of gay, but I do hope they don't go in that direction.

Then you have to deal with the Second Calamity - Enyo. She really likes her guns and will shoot at you during the levels. It's quite annoying, but at least you can use her bullets to damage the enemies. In this stage enemies with guns start to appear and they should be priorities to get rid of because there is no way to block the shot from what I could tell. Here you also encounter the Heavy Trooper, who wields a hammer and has this annoying charge which grabs you and slams you into the wall. It's really fast and you need to do a double jump to avoid it, but due to how slow your jump is, you need to be somewhat far away from him, which will be rare since you have to be close to hit him.

Eventually you face Enyo. She is apparently not too loyal to the SovKhan. She is flying and she never lands, so you have to do areal combos and perhaps the down-heavy move to reach her. This is a problem because while you are in the air Enyo has a spinning move which damages you. I can't say I have a viable strategy here. I think I just got lucky since it really depends if you can continue your combo once she breaks. The moment Enyo falls to the ground you have to repeat the breaking process. It's really stupid since you have limited moves in the air and you cannot continue the combo and your jump is too slow to catch her into a new string as she's falling. When you defeat Enyo her gun jams.

I randomly discovered Humpty's house and she wasn't too mad at me for attacking her. She apparently lost her memory and sends you on a quest to get her gloves back from Dodo. Cheshire then gives you a key which unlocks a door to the library at the top of the mansion where you find Dodo. Because I levelled up speech you don't have to fight her and she gives you a shrinking potion. Dodo herself gives you another quest to clean up different parts of the mansion, which basically means defeating enemies at a certain spot. After getting her gloves back, she gives you the watering can Usamura-san needed. He upgrades your speech as a reward or more accurately - unlocks the upgrade which you then need to purchase for a red crystal.

Using the shrinking potion our heroines proceed on the path to the tea party. On the way they meet Yamane and March Hare who need the enlargement potion to bring some logs to form a bridge in order to reach Mad Hatter's tea party. When you find the potion Cheshire steals it from you and you have to fight her again. Then you get back the potion, build the bridge and reach the Sea of Black tea, where you have to fight enemies on a boat. Finally you get to the tea party and everything is going great until Mad Hatter asks you if you've seen one of her hats. I tried giving her the Weird Hat, but she wanted another one and got paranoid and attacked. The fight against her is pretty easy. She will attack you with her sword and occasionally summon cup enemies and throw her hat. Staying at a safe distance with Kotora is the way to go. After the fight Usamura-san appears and vouches for our heroines, so Mad Hatter gives them a key to the Castle Gardens.

I didn't find anything of note while exploring the desert area. Then I somehow got into an icy cave, where I encounter Izotz The Frozen Knight, who wasn't frozen, but rather very hostile and aggressive. He has tons of attacks - he'll lunge forward with the sword doing multiple stabs or he will do a jumping combo, so it's a rather unfair 50/50. Same with his projectiles - he can send a large energy wave, which you can't jump over, so you have to dash away from it or he'll throw some knives which you have to deflect - another unfair 50/50. He also stomps the ground from time to time. I don't have a good strategy against him - he's too fast, so I just outlasted him by downing health potions. He drops a Stream Crystal and I have absolutely no idea what it does.

Using the manta ray I reached a new area called the Whispering Forest which was filled with mutated creatures and plants. It also has some annoying platforming sections where you have to hit switches to activate a time-limited mushroom to jump on. A boss monster here was a bug-man called Failure. It flies around and shoots 2 different types of projectiles at you - bubbles and homing spears which then remain in the ground as an obstacle. It also zips around frantically and from what I could tell this is unavoidable since there is no pattern. At the end of that Failure will crash into the ground summoning claws from the floor. When you defeat it you get the Agile Claw afterimage, which allows you to climb on walls.

Another monster I fought was Gongor The Eldritch Fusion. The problem here was that it was located in an area of the map where it had that disgusting purple smoke everywhere, so I couldn't see it. From what I could tell it bombards you with orbs and from time to time it will use its tentacles on the ground. Gongor also creates portals and passes its hands through them, but I couldn't see shit, so I have no idea how to avoid them. In the end I beat it like all the other bosses - I outlasted it by using healing. The design of the boss battles in this game are awful. There doesn't seem to be any viable strategy for most of them due to your own limited move set. In any case you get the Eye of Gongor afterimage, which cures petrified targets, but I have no idea where to find those.

Then I met a robot called Meditator 00, which opened up a portal to another area. Then I used the wall climb to find new items I might have missed. One important thing I learned is that the passive afterimages have to be equipped and you have limited capacity depending on the number of Divine Seeds you have found. Also even if you pick them up and have a space they are not automatically equipped and you can only select them at the save point trees for some bizarre reason. I have a passive which removes the stupid purple fog, so that will make some areas easier to move around. Shame that I had to fight a boss basically blind before learning this terrible design decision.

The levels continued to be the pretty standard deal. I found a new power up called Whirling Wafer, which allows you to fly for a bit when you spin the right stick. Then I reached the first boss fight of the game against Sheila - a sea captain who is understandably upset with Penny for cutting in line and stealing her chance to perform. This was actually somewhat enjoyable despite the clunky controls. You have to ride your yo-you on the water and reach Sheila's ship. There you have to screw in 3 screws while avoiding her attacks. Each iteration makes it more difficult to reach the ship since she shoots stuff at you. Sheila is thankful to Penny for fixing her ship and forgives her.

Picking up a Hot Rod Pepper gives you an enhanced ride ability which allows you to travel up some walls. This is useful to get some special coins, but if you don't know where they are you can miss your opportunity to get them.

Several stages later I faced Mr. Q - a court magician for Emperor Eddie. The explained how the ruler previously had a partner, but lost her and now nobody knows how to bring her back. Mr Q will throw an energy ball, which you have to reflect back. I found using the right stick to direct the yo-yo to be the best way to catch it. When you do this several times his head will fall off and you'll have to put it in a hole similar to snooker. Then will will go wild and start dancing around and do a stomp attack, so you have to dodge him until the energy ball deflection game starts again. It becomes harder and Mr Q will have 2 and then 3 heads to dispose of with more obstacles in your way to do so. When the fight ends Mr Q tells Penny that her yo-yo has a Cosmic String created by the Taboo Artist, who she's now on a quest to find.

After clearing some lava-filled levels Penny witnesses a conversation between Judge Rufus and Emperor Eddie, who now plans to cancel the show because he doesn't want to perform due to his humiliation, but that's an impeachable offence, because the Gala is one of hte most important events in this world.