The next fight was in a haunted forest, haunted by the spirits of the victims of the earlier war. It's actually a little funny how this was very similar to a scenario in Ogre Battle, Matsuno's very first game. Anyway, it wasn't very hard, though the undead respawning at times did get a bit annoying.
At Barinten's castle, the game cut to a meeting inside. It was revealed that Duke Barinten had already figured out what the cabal was up to, and was threatening them by showing them the stones he had obtained by capturing one of their leaders. The cabal is none too pleased, and uses the stones they still have to transform into monsters and fight his garrison! Well, alright then. Lol.
The battle at the castle's gates was fairly straightforward and easy, with the only real threat being the archer posse at the top. By now my white mage had learnt every spell I had wanted them to, so I transitioned them into a time mage, as, despite my grievances with the class and the class progression, it did have some nifty buffs I wanted to obtain. The thief had also finished granting everyone Move + 2, so I transitioned him into a monk to prepare him for the Samurai class. He had got its prerequisite Lancer and Knight levels already, and was just missing the Monk levels. Sadly I couldn't offset its low HP by using the heavy armor passive from the Knight, else I'd have done exactly that. Ah well, at least this was a nice opportunity for him to learn Chakra and Counter, LOL.
Revier's squad learnt of terrible happenings within, and rushed inside. It turns out, the cabal-turned-demons had effortlessly killed most of the garrison already, and Revier unknowingly walked into a room with demonic Wiegraf alone, who challenged him to a duel! This led to the most infamous and meme'd fight of this game, and for good reason - he had his holy sword techniques, and they did way too much damage for Revier to survive in a straightforward fight!
I tried various approaches, like hitting him with geomancy, shooting him as an Archer, and even combining the Monk's Chakra with the geomancy skills in varying degrees. One of my craziest ideas was to use a Thief's movement and height clearance with a crossbow to keep peppering him, but that was thrown out of the window the moment I was reminded of how crappy crossbows were. Eventually I came across a surprisingly straightforward solution:
Shoot him with a gun! Duh! The Chemist could naturally fire them, and with an upgrade they even did decent ranged damage, enough to end this fight in four shots!
This then led to the next part of the fight, where he transformed himself to his real demonic form. This form was fairly straightforward - he marched ahead of his guards and relied heavily on summons, so it was a matter of killing him before his squad killed everyone. His summons were actually pretty slow and overtly telegraphed, and so they were easily avoided, but his posse could easily blast the team apart with their spells, and it was not very realistic to defeat them all at once, given their HP!
I got a bit stumped here, but eventually figured out a solution, optimizing my time mage cleric's equipment and skills to blast him with a 426 damage Holy! That, along with a jump from a Dragoon, boosted spells from the Black Mage, and an attack from both the Chemist and the Monk was enough to seal the deal.
During all of this chaos, Alma escaped her cell in the castle, and stumbled through the carnage in its halls. Eventually, she met a cabal leader who had turned against the demons and was barely alive himself. He warned her that the cabal's intentions were evil, and that everyone needed to unite against them. In his last few moments, he entrusted her with the stones. But, unfortunately, one of the demons was still alive, and kidnapped her, because she made one of the stones resonate to her presence! Thankfully, she dropped one of them before getting captured, and it went unnoticed by the demon.
The final fight of this act occurred on the castle's rooftop, where Barinten threatened Rafa for daring to "betray" him. He boasts about how she won't be able to get her vengeance on him, because he is more powerful and had violated her already in her past. Yikes!!! Malak, overhearing all of this, finally decides to stop being blindly loyal and rush to Rafa's aid...only to get shot! Revier's squad arrives...only to see Barinten being thrown away by two mysterious ladies, accompanied by the very marquis they rescued in Act 1, Elmdor! It turns out he's part of the cabal's plot too, and wants the stones for them.
This leads to a weird fight where Revier's squad has to protect Rafa against him and his assassins, and they were certainly quite powerful in their own right, with exceptionally accurate abilities to stop and kill people within their vicinity! Thankfully, the fight was quick, as all that was needed to get them to back off was to lower one of their HPs to critical! Well, alright then lol.
Rafa then grieves over Malak's death, and the stone gestures to her. She wishes for his revival, and surprisingly, the stone grants it without any strings attached. The act then ends with some impromptu hints of the civil war heating up, with Dycedarg's faction getting tired of the current impasse and preparing to attack the main frontline castle of Goltana's faction. Revier and Malak briefly discuss that perhaps the stones did contain holy power, and that what power they manifested depended entirely on its owner's intentions.
And that wraps up this session! I enjoyed figuring out how to get past the Wiegraf duel, but it, and the fight afterward, certainly pushed how much the player could be expected to do under this system. They both required very specific solutions, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but does run against the expansive class customization system they have here. Then again, RPGs always tend to struggle with balancing options against difficulty, and these fights were no exception. I'm also surprised Act 3 was so short, with little progress in the story save for some reveals of the church cabal's true nature. The cabal being straight up demons is also a bit too cheesy for my tastes.
Regardless, I still liked my time with the game, and do look forward to how this will all resolve itself. The story is not as good as in Matsuno's earlier works, but it's still fairly solid as a conspiracy thriller, even with some blatant flaws. The gameplay is still pretty good, providing enough challenges and curveballs to keep things interesting, despite one or two battles perhaps pushing the envelope a little too far.
Anyway, enough rambling, see you all later!
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