Previously on The Dunning-Kruger Effect: A Character Study, Shion Uzuki and Corey Feldman basically drove a car across a wooden bridge, streaming a banner reading “FUCK VECTOR AND FUCK WILHELM, OUR BOSS” behind them, and then tossed a Molotov cocktail over their shoulders. Fortunately (for Corey, anyway, as it seems Shion stopped giving a shit long ago), Wilhelm’s strong sense of mysterious overdeterminism had already baked in Shion’s theft of his intellectual property, and somehow nobody is going to be fired over this. Then Shion, Corey, and KOS-MOS were picked up by the Elsa–speaking of overdetermined–so the big happy family could travel to Old Miltia together, and Captain Matthews can kill himself with beer.

This recap is going to immediately derail if I start breaking down the myriad ways this paragraph is wrong, so I’m going to put it here, on display but safely out of mind.

Shion is still standing next to the Elsa’s airlock, where a passing droid looking to win my heart could just give her one tiny, “accidental” shove, but alas. One droid–named MOSCOW MULE, probably after Tony gifted the captain some copper mugs as an ill-considered birthday gift–is even blocking the sweet release of vacuum, as they’re nearing Old Miltia and there is thus “DANGER AHEAD!” When is there not danger ahead when opening an airlock in space? Who is the Mister Magoo dumbass who necessitated thi–never mind, asked and answered.

Could he be standing by anybody other than MOMO while saying this, please?

Back by the galley, MOMO asks Shion what the hell happened out there–a question for which Shion has no answer, obviously–while Ziggy wants to know, “Do you know who attacked you? It didn’t look like the Federation, the Immigrant Fleet, or [U-GEE].” I think I said in the last recap it was the Immigrant Fleet, so I guess that’s on me for knowing they’re all the same and the distinction is meaningless assuming. He goes on, “I wonder who it was. It almost seemed to enjoy toying with you.” I can’t call this interest of Ziggy’s in the mystery pilot of the Hall of Doom E.S. an anvil, exactly, since it is couched as this person being a nemesis of Shion’s. I don’t know if there is a word for foreshadowing when it’s wrong.

Shion enters the galley, ostensibly looking for more of her friends but, in truth, looking to whip up another batch of curry and pour it down the unwilling throats of every man on board. She sadly finds no humans in here, just a droid in the back and four more huddled together near the counter, like they’re discussing what a slut the other one is. Shion speaks with the lone slut, who turns out to be labeled MATTHEWS ROBOT. Oh dear. “YOU BETTER BRING ME SOMETHING GOOD THIS TIME!” Matthews Robot screams. This seems like it cannot possibly be directed at Shion, and yet he’s facing her, and also obviously it would be. Shion turns to the gaggle of other droids, who all tell her about someone named ADONIS, who is in need of assistance. “ADONIS IS HAVING TROUBLE WITH CAPTAIN MATTHEWS’ HANGOVERS,” a robot called GRASSHOPPER says. Jesus, game, we get it, we already knew he was a drunk. KIR (I mean, really) adds his big-shit two cents that it won’t matter if Adonis cracks this nut or not, because “NOBODY HAS HANGOVERS LIKE THE CAPTAIN!” I don’t know if he means that this makes a remedy impossible, or if he’s implying that Matthews is such a prick that even solving his headaches and vomiting won’t fix the underlying personality and addiction therein. This is kind of a heavy problem to put on a bunch of robots with cocktails for names.

Only after talking to the bitchy gossiping bots do I notice a sixth droid behind the bar, the aforementioned Adonis. Adonis takes Shion through the problem: Matthews is a very friendly and fun drunk, but a very mean post-drunk, and keeps blaming and then beating up the droids when he wakes up hung over and finds he has spent the night using Hammer’s ass as a pillow. Adonis is hoping to stop the cycle of abuse by developing a hangover cure, and would like Shion’s assistance in this endeavor. First of all, try and come up with someone less suited to the task of making Captain Matthews a more amiable, pleasant person. While you’re doing an inventory of the entire universe and coming up empty, I’ll jump ahead and note that this entire process is basically a math problem, which seems well suited to droids doing it themselves, and it’s not like Shion will be helping by taste-testing this concoction herself, either. Basically: fuck this backward and forward. But enlisting this dumb human also gives poor Adonis someone non-droid to blame if Matthews hates the stuff and gets out his punishment crowbar, which tracks. The Gullible Sucker Campaign START! jingle ambushes the scene to make sure I know Shion will get Vectorbux and galaxy-wide clout for her efforts.

“THERE ARE ONLY THREE DRINKS ON THE ELSA THAT DO NOT CONTAIN ALCOHOL,” Adonis explains. Okay, that might a sign of trouble. Shion is to take these three liquids–orange juice, tomato juice, and coffee, which are all also, by the way, MIXERS FOR ALCOHOL–and figure out a proper ratio of each to combine into an unfathomably disgusting antidote to Matthews’s nightly party time. “Give him water to drink in between beers and learn to make a good breakfast burrito” is not an option, unfortunately.

It’s upsetting that I even feel the need to say this, but there is no chemistry and barely any scientific method behind this stereotype of a hangover formula: Shion just needs to make the three parts add up to seven, figure out the rest by talking to the droids and figuring out what Matthews does and does not tolerate in his morning acid smoothie, and then feed her trial and error to Boozer Banzai Bot. Adonis casually drops that Matthews Bot was built for him by Professor Hobo, a horrible portent of things to come for me, and also a window into how useless as a test subject the Matthews Bot probably will be. It’s amazing he’s not just a single metal leg with a funnel sticking out of it.

Adonis also casually drops that he leaves it to Shion’s judgment (oh no) how much to trust the stitch-and-bitch bots, presumably because this is some logic puzzle where two of them always tell the truth and two of them always lie. This is, of course, assuming droids can lie, but maybe it’s just that they’re poor observers and judges of character, which is why they entrusted this task to Shion, their human kindred spirit. Anyway. Grasshopper tells Shion, “DESPITE HIS DEMEANOR, THE CAPTAIN ACTUALLY LIKES FRUITY DRINKS LIKE ORANGE JUICE.” I do not know where to begin with that, so I will not. Kir says coffee and tomato juice are on even footing, which is leading to a pretty predictable ratio. Coronation (whew, had to look that one up but it’s also a cocktail, worry not) clarifies, in case I was considering this, that Matthews would never drink only orange juice. I mean, yeah, it seems the issue is he’ll only drink it with vodka, and that’s why we’re in this fucking mess. Try to keep up, Coronation. Finally, Mockingbird (sigh…yup) says, “THE CAPTAIN IS ALWAYS SAYING THAT BALANCE IS IMPORTANT!” Captain Matthews would never say that about anything, so we’ve clearly found the fucking liar.

Shion runs this through the steel trap that is her Ph.D.-sharpened mind, instructs Adonis to mix three parts orange juice with two parts each of coffee and tomato juice, and, suppressing the urge to either vomit or just lean in and throw a raw egg in there, delivers the remedy to Matthews Bot. “NOT BAD!” Matthews Bot bellows in her face. Okay, maybe it is a good resemblance. Shion delivers the good news to Adonis. “YOU DID IT! YOU’VE FOUND THE REMEDY THE CAPTAIN WILL TAKE! I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ANYMORE!” My sadness is currently evenly divided between “the robots needed Shion’s help to figure this out” and “the robots have spent their days worrying about dismemberment over a hangover.” After he’s handed over the reward–a decoder, my life is complete–Adonis adds, “IT PROBABLY SOUNDS STRANGE, BUT THIS EXPERIENCE HAS GIVEN ME CONFIDENCE AS A BARTENDER! NOW I WANT THE CAPTAIN TO COME DRINK HERE MORE OFTEN!!” I think we found the orange juice of this sadness ratio!

Shion hasn’t had enough hot robot action yet, and she can’t hit up Ziggy or MOMO’s mom might gut her with a fish hook, so our heroine takes the elevator to the basement, where more robots are doing god knows what out of Captain Matthews-caused Stockholm Syndrome. The first is KAMIKAZE, yet another droid with a Poirot mustache and a name that’s going to come up in an AA meeting one day. He’s standing in front of a shuttered shop window labeled WEAPONRY, with a proposition for Shion. It sucks, more than the ones she usually gets. “K-2 AND I ARE THINKING ABOUT OPENING A SHOP ON THE ELSA,” he screams politely. “HOWEVER, BECAUSE CAPTAIN MATTHEWS IS DEEPLY IN DEBT, HE WON’T EVEN LOOK AT THE ITEMS THAT WE ARE SELLING! SO, K-2 AND I WANT TO HELP THE CAPTAIN REPAY HIS DEBT AND BECOME RICH! WHAT DO YOU THINK? WILL YOU PROMISE TO HELP CAPTAIN MATTHEWS REPAY HIS DEBT?” This is actually a real question Kamikaze is asking. Shion. Do not sign any documents that have the word “co-signer.” Shion! SHION!

The thing Shion is gleefully signing onto is, of course, another Grifted Sap Campaign quest. It is, per Kamikaze, simple: Shion just needs to give over “ANY UNNECESSARY ITEMS AND ACCESSORIES” to his partner-in-scamming K-2, who will give them in turn to “A BUYER” who totally isn’t a guy with a space van full of extremely real space Rolexes, “AND THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF THE CAPTAIN’S DEBT WILL DECREASE!” While I’m still wondering why the Ks wanted to open a shop to sell stuff to the Captain–would he have been buying from himself?–the final draft concept seems straightforward enough. Unless, I suppose, the amount is just fucking ridiculous, like one million credits. But that would be crazy.

Obviously it is one million credits, which despite the inflation that’s happened in my head since this game came out, is still a lot of fucking money. So much so that Shion cannot reasonably complete this task in a single playthrough of this game. And since I predict that, once this recap is finished, I will never want to play this game for the rest of my life, and might even lobby for all copies of it to be buried in the desert, I guess Matthews is just going to languish in fake debt forever. Tough shit, Daddy!

CHIIIIIIIIIIIIICKS (are scary, even when they’re robots)

The second droid in this hallway is a ladybot who is probably weirdly avoided by all the other bots, and all the human crew to boot. CABRILLO here notices that Shion is carrying a swimsuit belonging to “THE OLD MAN DOWN BELOW.” She…is? Do I want to know, or remember? No. I do not. This poor sweet rose gold baby indicates that the old man in question is some kind of never nude who won’t change clothes in front of other people. “IF YOU WANT HIM TO WEAR IT, TALK TO ME! ♪” And then she offers to go downstairs and wrangle whoever this wrinkly old fuck is into his old-timey bathing suit. One fucking femmedroid on the Elsa and the other droids slot her into the geriatric bedpan-changing job. This is the patriarchy. Maybe Cabrillo would like the opportunity to be dismembered daily by Matthews. Don’t put that glass ceiling over her head!

I don’t know why I’m talking about the old man like he’s a mystery, as if he didn’t already come up. After pointedly not asking Cabrillo to change the old man’s underwear, I send Shion downstairs, into the sub-basement labeled “ROBOT ACADEMY,” to rip this fucking bandaid off. The background music down here is horrendous, even for this game–it sounds like Ready Player One reads. Somehow worse, a massive garage door on the back wall is tagged with an extremely 80s, yet also weirdly legible, airbrushed “ROBOT ACADEMY” sign. This graffiti was done either by a cop, or someone who got a community grant from cops.

Robot Academy 2: Electric Boogaloo (this joke sucks almost as much as that sign)

Worst of all, of course, are the inhabitants of this windowless dungeon: Professor Hobo, mercifully in his “normal” clothes, and poor beleaguered Ass-istant Scott. I think Scott is wearing a cropped denim shirt underneath burlap overalls, which has brought me to a new sadness floor on the day. “Is [Corey] coming by?” he asks Shion. “I have a ton of things I want to talk to him about.” I need to stop speaking so soon. Professor Hobo, oblivious to the desperate cries for help emanating from his assistant’s mouth, giggles with malice when he sees Shion. “Hahaha! Why am I here, you ask? Hehehe. I can’t tell you that just yet, but all will become clear in time.” Okay, Wilhelm. You look fucking terrible, by the way. Shion has nothing to give this belligerent old mushhead yet, so she bails before he can tell her all about the breaking news he just heard on Hannity XXIV.

Guest starring Joe Biden! Hi, Joe!

Basically every robot on this spacefaring debtors’ prison has a quest for Shion, either now or at some point in the future (which means they’re only incessantly foreshadowing it now), and this is what steers me to the bridge, because even Shion coming face to face with Jin again has to be better than being a robot career counselor. On the way, Shion makes a brief stop at the Encephalon plate to use a key she got as a gift from a robot bartender to open a virtual locked door on a dead planet from 14 years in the past–a thing I am writing out just to lay bare how idiotic it still is and always will be–and finds a decoder to a different door and…a robot arm? FUCK ME.

Made the mistake of checking Bunnie’s commentary on the G.S. Campaign missions.

The second decoder is for the door hidden deep in the Amazon warehouse conveyor belt section of the Dämmerhung’s restricted area, which tracks for a key stashed away before the Dämmerhung even existed. And in this chest? Another robot arm! I’m really happy about this. Just ecstatic at my good fortune. Excuse me a moment.

*distant shrieking*

*sound of breaking glass*

*police sirens*

*gentle tapping of wrinkly thumbs on phone screens creating Nextdoor threads about the noise at “that house”*

Okay! Back downstairs to accept my richly deserved punishment for choosing to play this game again. Professor Hobo takes the robot arms he possessed extremely recently and somehow lost to a bunch of treasure chests scattered across time. “I’ll unlock the Type A arm Ether skill, Erde Storm, for Shion! But first, there’s something I want to tell you!” he says. If he gets his face up to Shion’s ear and then unleashes a belch, I would not even be surprised. But this is less about Professor Squatter having anything to say himself, and more a pretext for showing me “fun” cutscenes at the Robot Academy. This is basically proof they sought absolutely no feedback for this sequel.

On my inaugural trip to Dementia Hell, we flash back to Captain Matthews, Tony, and Hammer staring, dumbfounded, at the Robot Academy graffiti wall like they’ve never seen it before in their lives. Guess what, it’s because they haven’t! Scott, who still sucks by association but is the closest thing to a decent person in this game, is horrified. “See, Professor?! They’re angry! They look like a pretty tough bunch of guys, too. Are you sure it was okay to do something like this?” Haha, I guess when you’re a nail everything looks like a Hammer. (I am not sorry.) Professor Hobo waves away the fact that he apparently built a workshop for himself in someone else’s basement without telling them as something they should be grateful for, because a “genius scientist” is “helping them repair their ship.” Citations are needed on that entire sentence. As Scott cowers, a text box labeled “Narration” takes over. I assume this is Shion, then. “In the confusion surrounding the repairs of the Elsa, the Professor and Assistant Scott joined the ship’s crew,” Shion explains to herself, possibly using a Professor Hobo hand puppet. “The Professor even transferred the Robot Academy from the Foundation to the Elsa! The Professor’s next plan went into operation without anyone stopping him, but just when it seemed everything was going smoothly, the Elsa’s captain, Matthews, approached the Professor. What are you going to do, Assistant Scott? What are you going to do, Professor?!” I…what the fuck is happening here? Is this how a stroke feels? Why is this game going out of its way to have no narrative coherence? It was already doing that without trying!

God only knows what Professor Hobo’s sinister phase two is going to be, and I hope he doesn’t tell me. Let’s get to the fucking bridge, already.