The averting of the Bethla clash naturally involved shops opening up more of their stock, including this crazily powerful rod! It certainly tempted me to switch someone over to Oracle-ing. Too bad every character is more or less set on achieving their final forms now.
I redistributed Orlandu's gear, but the Excalibur remained a frustratingly hard item to utilize, as it could only be equipped by Knights, and the sword equipping passive did not permit equipping it! I didn't want to switch anybody to that class, it was an exceptionally unattractive class, being completely superseded by the Lancer and the Samurai, and being tied down with a rather uninteresting command, at least, with its weapons of choice. In the end I decided to forego using it and just keep it in reserve, pulling it out only if need for it arose.
Revier's team passed by a dilapidated trading city, where a woman resembling Aeris sold him a flower, and sighed at her miserable life, hoping to escape it someday. Ahead, they ran into some brigands foolish enough to ask them for a "toll", and even more foolish to attempt killing Revier for his bounty! They were pretty easily dispatched, though the time mage starting so close to them made him go down quickly and contribute very little to the battle.
Of course, that got fixed by the next battle, as he picked up Auto Potion too, making him quite survivable despite his comparatively low HP. There was another forgettable battle against undead on the lake enroute, and then they arrived at their destination, Limberry.
Elsewhere, the plot kept unravelling itself, as it was revealed that Dycedarg had indeed poisoned his father to usurp control of the family estate! The cabal leader, after confronting him with his embarrassing crime, gifted him one of the stones for safekeeping. Huh, that was weird. Maybe the cabal really wanted to sell him on their scheme, so that he wouldn't suddenly turn on them. Also Zalbag caught all of that! Oops!
At Limberry, they found the front gate strangely deserted. It turns out, Elmdor had set up a trap for them! The trap had them confronting his two assassins and a bunch of demons with powerful status inflicting spells. For a while, I had little luck progressing, as the enemy team simply kept killing off the party too fast! Eventually I decided to focus all my damage on one of the assassins, as they were, by far, the strongest and most bothersome units on the field, what with their stop and instant death moves. This killed the assassin, which won the fight! Umm, alright. A bit anticlimactic, but I guess it wouldn't be too reasonable to expect you to fight the entire force off, heh.
It is revealed that the cabal have been getting desperate - their grand scheme had failed, and their numbers have been dwindling, thanks to Revier's exploits. They gave Dycedarg the stone because it resonated with him. Now, they are planning to invoke their master through Alma to aid them in unleashing hell upon the world. All they need to do is find a dead city from the past...
The next fight is against Elmdor himself, and he's certainly a powerful customer, with the ability to teleport just about anywhere, powerful katana aoes, and worst of all, an ability that gave him ridiculous evasion against all physical attacks! Even gunshots and jumps!
Fortunately, I did have strong non physical attacks, with Holy on my Time Mage and Flare, recently learned, on my Black Mage. Two consecutive casts of these nukes, and bam! Boss fights are certainly going to be hilarious now, lol.
The final battle of the castle was against Elmdor's demonic form, and he proved to be surprisingly tough! His aoes inflicted death clocks, sleep and stop, and he often followed those up with an aoed flare, making it hard to last very long against him! He also had an enormous amount of HP, so the strategy earlier didn't work, and he was too fast for Revier to jump on him, considerably cutting into his damage!
I eventually figured out a way past him. Enemies curiously placed little priority on attacking characters with death clocks, and with Angel Rings on, they started with Reraise, which cancelled out the clock when it counted down! This, along with some optimization, gave me an avenue to attack him with my wizards, as long I was careful to keep them out of serious danger.
That did the job, and one more demon breathed its last. Revier and Meliadoul, the knight who had tried to avenge one of the cabal leaders' deaths earlier, discuss about how these demons seem a far cry from the legends around them, being fairly vincible to human ingenuity. Mayhap they knew they weren't very powerful, and so needed the stones to invoke a greater power. Meliadoul also forgives Ramza, as she saw with her own eyes that his struggles against the demons was real, and they had insidious designs of their own. As apology, she even joins his team, and points him in the direction of the next stone - the very same one gifted to Dycedarg! Boy did this get awkward fast...
And that does it for this session! It's pretty clear that the game is wrapping itself up. It's a little disappointing that the plot is choosing to end all of the intrigue with rather hamfisted, clear cut villains with no interesting plans or motives. As for the gameplay, while there is technically some progression left, most of the important milestones have already been hit, and there aren't many places left to meaningfully visit. Time to end this soon, I think. See you later!
Comments
Post a Comment