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Then I beat Dario Bossi for the second time. It only took me 03:37:43, and I'm level 21.
Now I have to start grinding for three specific souls in order to get to the best ending. So it won't be a true low-level game. Well I could actually grind for money first to get the Soul Eater Ring so as to minimize the XP I get from grinding for those three souls...
Also finally beat the jungle level (Hyleg's level) in Mega Man Zero 2.
To be fair, giving people a crappy score is more enjoyable game design than forcing them to play through from the beginning or something like that.
Anyway:
Mission, 100%, 20p
Clear Time, 4'49, 15p
Enemy, 44, 15p
Damage, 48, 6p
Retry, 0, 15p
Elf, 0, 15p
Total 86p
Level C
Code Name: Supreme Gunman
The Retry bit is sorta silly, since if you run out of lives, you can just continue from the beginning of the stage. Well, you actually get three choices, and both of the others erase any progress you've made. If you're on an actual GBA, the first one means continuing without turning off the GBA, though, so it's basically continuously keeping at it. But the thing is, if you really want the Retry score, then all you need to do is to suicide a couple times if you accidentally die in a run so that you restart from a fresh Continue rather than a life stock.
Furthermore, the game penalizes discovery by taking points off if you use a cyber-elf. That's a prominent collectible feature, but the game basically encourages you to find them but not use them.
1. The last resistance member to be rescued is in a pit right beneath the boss door. If you so much as touch that door, you will bypass it even if you knew full well that he's there. I scrapped a couple runs because of this. It doesn't help that the game has double-tap to dash as a feature, because twitchily repositioning yourself might cause you to dash into that door (which is what happened to me once).
2. The boss himself is fought on a non-static platform, which splits up and moves around a lot. It is also above a bottomless pit. The controls lock up the moment you deal the final hit...but you don't become invincible. Hyleg himself is rather easy to beat, but the first time I beat him, he got the last laugh since I was using the saber, and I dropped right into the pit.
Also X looks like he's wearing a crown and donned a priest's robe.
Also this game foreshadows Other M in talking about how the Baby Elves are longing for their mother.
See I'd rather that the boss just throw its special attack at me, period. Then I can enjoy getting my ass kicked by it and it'll be more fun.
05:22 - Quint the House Gecko: > past 5 am
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > been up doing various other random shit
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > try paranoia again, why the hell not.
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > no HP healing at all even between little paranoia and big paranoia
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > ran out of MP so i can no longer use bat form to dodge big paranoia's lasers
05:23 - Quint the House Gecko: > immediately that phase, kill big paranoia (and draw seal correctly)
05:24 - Quint the House Gecko: k then
Short-ish parody JRPG/action RPG. References a bunch of games. Apparently started out as a Ludum Dare entry, which won first prize.
Suggestion if/when you play it: don't worry too much about collectables, then consult a guide at the end, after you get fast travel. But otherwise, I suggest playing it blind for the full experience.
Pretty good game overall I guess.
Bonus thought: I think the last boss may have been inspired by some Ys bosses, especially Galbalan and Gelaldy.
First form:
* recommended weapon: Death is obnoxiously large and moves unpredictably, but leaves lots of openings, so you want a fast weapon and some range. A long-sword-type weapon (e.g. Long Sword, Fragarach) is suggested. Punch weapons are too short-range and deal too little damage. Keep a swing weapon, such as the Great Sword, on your alternate set, so when his scythe bursts into a circle of sickles, you can destroy them more easily. Maces/axes have a nice swing arc but are too slow.
* recommended armor: Olrox's Suit.
* recommended accessory: Satan's Ring.
* recommended red soul: You basically NEED Puppet Master to survive this battle, in order to avoid getting cornered. Always stay on the side of the room that Death is not -- watch that center pillar carefully. If you're not careful, he may do a two-swing and force you to dodge to one side, and then if you can't get out of that, he'll almost certainly hit you if he tries a two-swing again. When he finishes that initial two-swing, you should Puppet Master behind him. If you're good at switching you might also equip an alternate stronger soul such as Killer Clown (which you have to have) and deal a bit more damage early on in the battle using it, but you need to make sure you have enough MP to throw a puppet.
* recommended blue soul: none. Bat Company for the second form, probably.
* recommended yellow soul: Golem, as usual. It's basically your only one and it enhances your defense.
Second form:
I haven't figured this out yet, but you might want Bat Company to fly above the skulls.
Edit: I figured out that he heavily telegraphs his most unpredictable attack. So that just means I need to get as far away from him as possible so his spinning scythe doesn't hit me and then focus on dodging the sickles while in bat form, when he does this. His other two attacks are easy to avoid (Bat Company to fly above the giant skulls and double-jumping to avoid the decapitation swipe).
Also, I could say that I'm technically violating least-souls conduct, because I picked up Doppelganger, but the only difference that Doppelganger makes is that I can switch equipment/souls without going into the menu, and going into the menu pauses the action, so it doesn't really make any difference. All other souls I have (all boss souls, plus the three starters and the three required ones to get to Paranoia) are mandatory.
Anyway, I got to Abaddon, the prettyboy locust conductor, at level 27.
He's extremely predictable, but it still took me a bunch of tries to beat him. Probably almost as many as Death.
Originally it seemed hopeless but then I realized that one MAJOR tell for his attacks is to see which way he's facing. He has four patterns and all four of them have a directional component -- which, incidentally, strongly affects how easy it is to dodge them. Specifically, staying behind him is a wise idea.
Abaddon also wins the prize for "most times a boss has killed me after I failed to draw the seal", at 3.
So, now onto Menace at level 29.
I got lucky to pick up a Dekar Blade, so I decided to go through the rest of it. Even with savestates it's tedious; with savestates I just don't give enough of a crap to deal with the tedium of having to set everything up only for a frequent and nearly-unavoidable failure chance within the last 25 floors of this darn thing and thus see like ten hours of work at a time being wasted.
This must be what hell looks like:
Note that this is like level 95 of the dungeon, so all those cyclopes are actually genies who can steal MP and all those goons are potentially demons with instant death attacks. The chariot, ironically, is probably the least threatening thing in the picture.
Meanwhile, I discovered a strange thing. This one goes beyond just translation errors (e.g. a Lich being translated as a "Leech").
In any case, I made it to the end. Set everything up. This was satisfying to do.
That's supposed to deal 1/2 the target's remaining HP in damage, so I'm not sure why it (when hitting a boss that should have max 9980 HP) is dealing over 5000. Oh well. Maybe it's affected by attack power modifications.
Anyway, it's over. Took a whole day's worth of slogging through this dungeon.
Ended up with an impressive haul of treasure, 17 blue chest items (brought in 2 initially) and also recovered 2 of 10 Iris Treasures.
* Gades Blade (brought this in), Fry Sword, Sky Sword, Sizzle Sword, Mirak Plate, Flame Shield, Hairpin, Sea ring, Earring, Water jewel (brought this in), Thundojewel, Earth Jewel, Twist Jewel, Gloom Jewel, Catfisl jwl., Black eye, Silver eye.
* Iris Staff + Ancient Jelly.
I got a bunch of jewels in part because I fought EVERYTHING, which ended with me winning some neat stuff from late-dungeon enemies like the genies.
The final boss's first phase is trivial and boring. Jump and hit target.
The second phase, however, is a mess.
There are these destroyable kamikaze pods that charge at you. They are small targets and have 200 HP each.
The boss also has two parts. A knee and a face. Both have 3000 HP. The face retracts after each hit.
Hitting the two parts isn't the issue. It's dealing with the kamikaze pods. They're small and durable, and they charge you from outta freaking nowhere sometimes because they're just offscreen, and they have a pretty big charge range.
And when you dodge them, you spend tons of time cleaning them up. Five hits from a typical weapon to deal with each of them.
And Soma is slow as molasses, as usual. Except this time you don't have as much luxury to lead your shots.
Oh, did I mention they have a shitton of knockback. Well, everything has a shitton of knockback in this battle.
The game's Infinity + 1 Spear also has a critical art that launches a massive laser that crosses the entire screen, which is super handy in a pinch.
Actually already using the Lance, also.
trading cards from the 2016 end-of-year/holiday/Christmas/etc. sale.
Does anyone need to complete any sets?
I barely had the time to do this once at all with Bahamut so far (you have to do it seven times, four times in the Tearoom and three in the Colosseum, and in the Colosseum you just have to keep fighting until they eventually show up and they haven't yet), and I'm surprised that the "introductory" game to the series has such completely insufferable bosses that take so long and are also seven entire meatwalls.