The Let's Play Archive

The 3rd Birthday

by The Dark Id

Part 25: Aya Brea Gets Nuked


New Music: Crimson Eyes




Kyle Madigan is now a tri-tongued Twisted dragon. That’s a thing that is happening now in The 3rd Birthday. I bet you didn’t expect this to be the final fate of the lame secret agent man in Parasite Eve 2 – a dragon fought on top of a skyscraper in post-apocalyptic Manhattan. Video games are weird.



Also, you may notice we have a timer at the bottom of the screen. There is just ten minutes until the nuclear missile strike on the city. Do not fret. That is plenty of time, since Kyle is one of the easiest bosses in the game.



Monster Madigan does possess limited teleportation but only about twenty yards across from his current position. It doesn’t break Aya’s aimbot lock-on or move him off screen, making it a rather pointless quirk to this battle. It's also worth a mention that when not teleporting, Madigan moves by spinning his tail section around like a rotor. It looks quite silly.





What is threatening is Madigan’s energy spears. Rolling around like a fool as soon as they’re about to land is usually enough time to employ Aya’s i-frames to avoid damage. But should any of them hit her, it will instantly deplete half of her energy and shred her clothes in one shot.





That’s because we’re not actually meant to battle Madigan on foot. Dragigan’s attacks are tuned to go against an armored attack chopper, not a squish Aya Brea meat puppet. Luckily, a duo of chopper pilots (with a third one tagging in if the battle lasts more than five minutes) have decided to throw away their lives to battle the fearsome beast... which is about to have a neutron bomb slammed into its face. How very brave of them.





Aya takes to the skies for the proper battle against Kyle Madigan. Please take note that the top of the North Shallow’s Tower is now suspended above a portal held aloft by crimson Babel roots amongst a blasted mountainous landscape full of eerie massive demon eyes watching our fight. Funny... I could have sworn we were just in Manhattan. It’s almost like they just used the assets from some later boss battle scenario or something and re-purposed it here. But nah… The 3rd Birthday wouldn’t stoop to such slapdash methods when crafting a climactic battle like this.





As far as battling Monster Madigan goes, our attack helicopter support’s flight path is still out of Aya’s hands. They’re locked into a counter-clockwise strafing run around the top of the tower. Initially, we do need to babysit both of the helicopters as Madigan takes a while teleporting around and flying aimlessly before deciding on which helicopter he’ll battle. If Aya isn’t controlling the craft under fire, it will almost immediately get shot down as the AI makes zero effort to evade Madigan pounding it with his attacks. These guys are sticking around ground zero of a future nuclear blast. It’s clear they don’t have much in the way of survival instincts.



Once Mad Madigan decides on who he is going to fight against, the battle pretty much transforms into a lousy Star Fox-esque rail shooter battle. Boss Twisted’s primary attack is summoning a trio of buzz saws that will fire at Chopper Aya’s current position one at a time.





On top of that, Kyle has massive screen filling super buzz saws that will take up the airspace horizontally, vertically, or diagonally across the play field.



Finally, Madigan can summon energy spears, like he did against Aya while she was briefly on the rooftop. These can either be summoned in a trio, which will all home in on Aya’s current position just like the smaller buzz saw attack. Or he’ll unleash a spiral of spears which extend outward from his position, forcing Aya to follow Madigan’s erratic movements for a bit, lest she get hit by the wall of spears it forms.



As far as attacking Twisted Madigan goes, while all of the above attacks are firing off, Aya should be doing nothing but spamming a non-stop barrage of missiles and the occasionally machinegun fire at Madigan. Missiles have auto lock-on capabilities, so she can evade for days while still pounding away Madigan’s health.



Once Madigan’s health falls to his last health bar, he’ll get fed up that his rail shooter boss career is not to be and will just ram one of the attack choppers, taking it out in a single hit.





It’s probably possible to evade this, even if it has little warning. But eh… He has like five missiles worth of damage until he’s finished. 3rd Battalion AH served admirably in the fight. Once Kyle Madigan’s HP is almost fully depleted, Aya is automatically Overdived back to the rooftop to conclude the battle.



Aya? Is that you?



At this point we’ve just got to finish Madigan off with small arms fire until Aya can Overdive into him. But he does have a bit more to say while Aya is busy unloading a magazine or two into his grill.

I just don't want to hurt you.
It hurts... my soul.
Let's end this.
I just want you to live.





Music ends…





And so Madigan’s soul is disintegrated or whatever metaphysical nonsense is meant to be depicted in these sequences.



Aya is once more transported to the frozen blood sea. It seems like the only connecting tissue between these tenuously linked episodes is Aya gaining a few more memories of her wedding fiasco after a trip to the blood drip ocean.









No, Aya. That’s you and Kyle Madigan feeling very silly you booked such a fancy church in midtown Manhattan only for your entire guest list to be a no-show.











And then someone objected to the wedding. Right. We’ve seen this part.





The SWAT Team firing squad is a new one. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good and reasonable answer as to why the NYPD’s finest would light up a wedding ceremony.



Alright. Well, Aya Brea isn’t taking a bunch of ex-co-workers objecting to her wedding in such a rude fashion, now is s—





Oh. Okay?







Well… I’m sure there’s a perfectly good and reasonable answer as to why the NYPD’s finest would light up a wedding ceremony and then Aya would execute her younger sister afterwards.







The cameraman briefly goes all tipsy drunk as Aya’s emotions run wild. Or maybe he’s just getting hammered because the bombs are dropping in a few seconds. It’s hard to tell the sobriety of anyone working on this production at this point.



Sorry, Maeda. We don’t have time for your nerd shit right now. There’s drama to handle. Possibly monodrama. …Whatever the heck that means.




New Music: Unforgettable Man – Return to Me –


Aya runs over and props Madigan up in the designated Thelonious Cray recovery position…



Aya, is that you?
*pants heavily*
I wanted to protect you. But - the Twisted... They took over my body –
They can do that, you know. It’s totally a thing they can do. Body possession.




[A-A-Aya! The missiles will launch any second! Please! Get out of there now!]
Kyle, answer me!
Heh… Answers? For all this? You’re talking… to the wrong guy…



I found it.



T-Two in the pink… One in the stink… I was one with the universe…
…What?




BARF!

[Th-The Babels! They’re meeeeeeeeeerrrrrging!]







And then Aya Brea and Kyle Madigan get fucking nuked!





But, that’s not quite an open and shut case for the Babel of Manhattan.











Like Maeda said before Kyle and Aya got vaporized, all the Babels buried beneath Manhattan from Grand Central Station to Spanish Harlem and… uhh… They never really mentioned any others. But they were around! And they all team up at once to…







Stamp out the nuclear explosion and form a grand Babel tower. Boy, it’s like that stupid biblical reference actually sort of makes sense now.











The power of the nuclear energy’s blast combined with the Babels come together to form a brilliant light show for the setting of the final area of The 3rd Birthday. But down below, there is still one final detail…



Sleep peacefully, you, the last of your kind who prays for eternity.





Well, they’ve killed off the entirety of the remaining cast. Of course Hyde has to return to fill in as the final adversary. You didn’t think the white suit and hair sporting weird Dad-Boss wouldn’t turn out to be a villain, now did you? He’s even brought a new unexplained Proper Noun with him. Sadly, this Zero is not an angry swordswoman with a flower growing out of her face. It's a term, not a name.



In any case, that concludes Episode 4 of The 3rd Birthday. Tune in next time for the last proper chapter of The 3rd Birthday. There's technically two chapters left. But the final one is just the last battle and a whole bunch of anime bullshit cutscenes. We've still got one more chapter of filler bullshit and Aya Brea's callous disregard for the lives of anyone she isn't well acquainted with, as The 3rd Birthday limps towards its conclusion.






Video: Part 25 Highlight Reel

>>>>> Skip to Post-Battle (You should at least watch this.)





Kyle Madigan Twisted Concept – Seriously, you could just stick this thing in a random battle in an end-game Final Fantasy dungeon and not skip a beat.