47 — this is Diana from Agency. We’ve been monitoring the small tracking device in the late Hayamoto Jr.
We managed to track down Hayamoto Sr., thanks to your fine work. We’re quite excited since Hayamoto hasn’t been registered in public for more than 15 years.
He emerged at one of his castles in central Japan. This makes it a very tricky assignment.
You must make your way through some very tough security and bypass a lot of electronic surveillance in order to access the castle undetected.
You might need to take out the power grids to the alarm units. The whole area is studded with tripwires, guards, substations, alarm units, guard towers, etc.
Strategic planning is extremely important — all their systems are on high alert, so consider your moves there. Your equipment is hidden in a truck just outside the entry gates.
When you get the equipment we’ll brief you on the position of alarm units as well as guard movements.
47 — I repeat: Find the truck with equipment, wait for our briefing, get to the castle undetected, and take out the castle alarm before entering.
-Mission Briefing
Objectives
- Locate the secret passage.
A controversial mission for sure, and is often cited as one of the worst missions in H2SA. Do you agree? Any good memories, or bad ones? Share them down below
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I know many dislike Hidden Valley, but I certainly don’t consider it the worst mission in the game. However, it does have some major flaws - and for those reasons, I understand the hate.
Probably the main mission from a design perspective is that it’s just so damn long when played properly. You hide in a truck, you slip out at checkpoints so you can sneak around, and then you repeat. They probably could have cut it down to doing this once at the start of At The Gates to replace the long snow walk there, and merge those two levels into one.
I do like how you can go above ground, which is actually easier if you’re handy with the anaesthetic, but even that is a long trek.
The unforgiveable sin though is the AI that has enemies walk in front of the truck, thus bringing the whole level to a halt. And to make things worse, the dead body ruins your rating. Sure, the rating isn’t a big deal when playing casually, but if the trucks aren’t working then this level becomes far more of a pain.
If they ever remade the game, this is probably the main level I’d want them to fix. Even if they didn’t merge this level with the next, it at least needs to be fixed.
But despite those problems, I think the level is fine. It’s ok if you hate it as I won’t defend it, but I never find it a chore to play through either - unless I get continually unlucky with it…
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Only thing I dislike is the inconsistency with the pair of guards in the middle that can discover you in the back of the truck. Outside that, I have learned is very doable SA/SO and dare to say easier that way than attempting to use a ninja disguise.
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I saw a SA/PRO speedrun of this mission the other day which involved running past all the guards and sedating them as they came to check for your ID. At one point an entire row of guards approached him and he sedated them one after the other as they checked for ID. Was funny to watch but also really cool
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Yeah, it’s a cool strategy and fun to do too. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t mind it so much. The RNG can be a pain, especially with random alerts, but it’s a pretty stress-free level aside from that.
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I really like this mission just for the aesthetic quality. I agree that the truck glitch is really annoying. When I was making my video on this one I found a few tricks to decrease the odds of it occurring. You do make a good point about how this mission could have been combined with At the Gates. The concept of snowy Japan with a vast open desolate hidden valley full of ninjas with lasers, the underground tunnel and the way the truck sounds and its red brake lights, the night vision underground, and the cool moments of tension like when the guard at one of the checkpoints casts a huge shadow on the wall as he passes, the whole thing is so unique and creative.
My approach for perfect SA/SO/AZ with no anesthetic required is here. I believe this is the most likely canon approach because it logically is the easiest way to avoid detection, and because it gives you both the above ground and underground experience, which allows for interesting cinematic contrast. You literally just alternate between above ground and underground after the initial entrance. You go back and forth. This seems like the most definitive approach to me.
I believe this is the only video online that shows this method, at least it’s definitely the only one that does so with a cinematic visually realistic playstyle. This one and at the gates the next one are when I started to really increase the quality (especially at the gates). It’s starting to look like I won’t finish Shogun Showdown in time for the discussion thread on that one!
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Agree with pretty much everything you said.
I used to play through partly above and partly below, similar to you, but now I just play above ground as it’s far less stress with the random alerts!
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