Part 113: Update CVIX: An Apprentice and the Heaven's Feel

I'm just going to offer a fair warning to the entire Something Awful community right now about this update. There is going to be an ungodly amount of Gio kicking ass in this update. Like, I know everybody here loves the old coot, but holy cow, Gio is going to be doing an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage this update. Makes Rufus look like a goddamn toddler. If you ever needed proof the old folks still got it, look no further than this update. In the absolute shitstorm that are the two battles we'll fight this time, Gio gets KO'd twice. And the second time was only because I wanted to show something off for the thread and would never in a million years have done it if I wasn't recording.

Speaking of this update, this update is all about the divine going down. The gods mean nothing before righteous human might. They will learn to fear mortal man.

I'm both happy and disappointed about this update. I'm happy because Sterk and Gio made for a really exciting round 4, but try as I might, I simply couldn't do it with a team of Rorona and Totori to make for a perfect round 5 and live up to what I wanted to do. Still, I didn't technically lie about what I'd do for round 5 in the last update. I mean, I did say "Alchemists of Arland", and Totori was my second in the final battle. Perhaps not the spirit of things, but... Anyway, instead of four Rorona / Totori videos under Bonus Content, we'll have the entire Gio / Totori run instead. I am now absolutely convinced that is the best team in the game in terms of sheer versatility and power, and they happen to be my favorite characters in any case. Sometimes things just work out, y'know?

Anyway, enough chatter. Let's get cooking. First off, since the first Sterk / Gio scene in Rorona was so entertaining, let's do with another.



Hello, Meruru. The weather is quite fine today.

...

Hm? Is something the matter? Do we look out of sorts?

N-No, it's just that...how can I put it? To have you two together is like...the two greatest escorts ever.

As always, I will fulfill my duties with all my heart and soul. Please tell me whatever you need.





What do you mean by that!? I still have a ways to go, but I'm nowhere near a tiny chick!

Oh! So you have strength enough to disagree. But speaking with your mouth is always easy.

Hey, come on! Stop fighting, both of you!

...Meruru's right. There is no point in me arguing with you.

True...I'm sorry, Princess Meruru.

Well, as long as you both understand. Then shall we get going?



First I was a chick, and now I'm a boy? Listen, are you sure your aging body will be okay out there today?

What are you getting at, lad?

Gh...why'd this get so complicated all of a sudden? Those two seem really serious.



Yes, that will do. But I have no interest in weaklings.

Hmph. I'm not sure you can distinguish the weak from the strong, but...fine. Let's do this.

Please...just make sure you're there to protect me!

Well, Gio did start it, but sometimes the youngin's need to be brought into line. Anyway, let's resume with Makina.



Fourth area is pretty small, with lots of big ol' gears. What these gears are for is unknown, but we've got *quite* the battle coming up here. Just follow these blocks up and around to some stairs, and proceed up.



I can see the light...but it seems Makina's master has a little guard dog waiting for us. But...we're coming in, like it or not.

Stand Tall and Shake the Heavens - Heaven's Dragon



Remember Vanishing Mirage from last game? I was saving it for this fight, and it is also intensely appropriate here. This here might be the longest fight in the game, simply because you have a metric ton of HP to get rid of from your foes, even though it may not seem like it at first.



Like with Tower's Devil, after the first strike hits him, he'll immediately respond with a Vortex, which is a pretty heavy Lightning attack that hits everyone, and you can't cover Meruru for it.



After a few turns, Heaven's Dragon decides the party might be serious and decides to call in some backup. Since this is Makina...



Another Eternity Goddess. Looks like things are heating up, wouldn't you say?



Like with Wyvern from many an update ago, after calling in reinforcements, our scaly nemesis will start circling around the battlefield and strafe you every few turns. It's really not that a big a deal.



Eternity also has a counter attack move, but it is pitifully weak.



I don't think we've seen Doom Trust much. In any case, it's another attack that's pretty annoying, but not worth covering Meruru for. What it does is lower one stat on a target (seems to be random which one it'll do for each party member), and reduce the target's MP. It does no damage by itself, so don't bother covering Meruru on it.

Actually, with an enemy throwing out status effects constantly, it's really not a bad idea to not cover Meruru for much at all. Her going critically low on HP is a good thing, since that means an Elixir will fly right out and clear everyone's negative status effects. Plus, with all those assists saved, using Potentialized items is easier than ever.



I'm not sure what "Barrier" means in this context, but here's one thing the Eternity Goddess does that she didn't live long enough to do when we took her on solo. Votive Offerings gives her back a free 3000 HP (no small amount, but a Gio super move will more than liberate her of that 3000), AND makes it so that if any ally is KO'd (and isn't immediately revived by an Elixir tossed out by one of the alchemists), she'll get an extra 3000 back.

Now, this doesn't stack. For example, in this context, let's say Sterk and Meruru get KO'd by a single attack. She'll only get 3000 back, not 6000. Also, like I said, for Offerings to come into play, there needs to be a party member KO'd and isn't immediately revived. Finally, it doesn't matter who deals the KO'ing attack. If Heaven's Dragon were to swoop around and take someone out with Execution, that would also mean +3000 for the Goddess. This makes it more important than ever to have Guts XXL Heroic Medals.



Even though this is the "official" fight of round 4, I highly suggest watching the video of Meruru, Totori, and Gio in this fight. Holy shit does Gio do a lot of damage in it. I know I said that already, but it seriously bears repeating. He's just an unkillable wall of pain for the Goddess. For some reason, Gio throughout the entire fight had nearly Absolute Critical status on him. Meaning, because of something I did, he was incessantly scoring Critical Hits. Translated into numbers, that means normal attacks were doing almost as much as super moves. Yeah.



Now, I didn't notice this while playing until the above video of M / T / G, but Execution seems to fuck around with the turn order. It gets pretty obnoxious, but you ain't seen shit about screwing around with turn orders until the next fight. Yikes.



And here I was bragging about a Sterk super move doing more than 5000 one time. The highest damage I've ever seen Sterk's super move do is more than 11,000.



Just to prove I'm not making that up. I have it on camera!



Goddamit, and I was so close to killing her. Dammit, Meruru, you're making me look bad!



Son of a bitch!



Just as a note, even though my characters' accuracy is very high, the enemy's evasion stat, combined with the fact Gio and Sterk have Blind on, makes them missing their mark a near certainty. Do yourself a favor and don't do what I did here if you find yourself in this situation.



Luckily, normal attacks are unaffected. I am fairly sure normal attacks will never ever miss.



I don't even give a crap I mostly wasted this Extreme Einzel. I just wanted her dead at this point.



His auto-counter returns when the dragon returns to the field. Eh.



"Armageddon", huh?



Wow...that was pathetic. You'd think an attack named "Armageddon" would be a little flashier, yes? Hell, Meruru didn't even lose 100 HP from that. Weak.



It's a weird day when you find yourself hoping your allies will get attacked. I mean, this seems to be a thing with me and RPGs lately. In Agarest Zero, a game I just 100%'d a few days ago, my dream team was *vastly* more powerful when everyone was low on HP, due to a passive skill that doubles (at least) the damage they do when they have <25% of thier HP left. So, battles mostly tended to come down to fighting the enemy normally, allowing the enemy to absolutely butcher my best fighters with their best attacks, then striking back much, much harder when they got revived.

I mean, it's fun as hell when you're on the ropes and about to be defeated, when a revived, but badly wounded team strikes back and utterly annihilates the enemy. Because of that, and some clever skill combining, I managed to defeat the hardiest enemy in that game, with a massive 2.5 million HP, on a single round of attacking because of those passive skills. Good times.



"Call Deities"? I don't like the sound of that one bit...



Oh, you cheeky son of a bitch. It is ON!

I've heard it is possible to defeat Heaven's Dragon before he can call in his second line of reserves, but I've never done it myself. But just judging from the amount of HP you need to drain, you need to be fighting flawlessly nearly the entire round. Oh well. I have come too far to fail.



Look at that goddamn mess of a turn order. By the way, in case you didn't notice, none of the Eternity Goddesses spawned in this fight will ever summon one of those exploding demons. At least you don't have that to worry about that.

Still, I waited WAY too long to use an Ankh on Gio to clear his status effects. Even though he's still not at full potential, he's *pretty* damn strong.



When the going gets tough, you can ALWAYS count on Gio.



It seems that although both Goddesses will use Votive Offerings, only one of them gets the HP back upon a KO. The other one is just shit out of luck in that regard.



It says a lot just how much that +50% chance to get a Critical makes Sterk strong. That is a lot of damage for a normal attack.



Sweet mother of god, that is probably the best moment in the entire fight. I'll have you know Gio and Sterk survived five attacks in a row, and neither one was KO'd. That is the power of the knight. A power that they cannot hope to understand, or surpass.



Well congratulations. You idiots FINALLY managed to KO Gio. But not for long.



That's one. You DO NOT mess with Gio.



Goddamn. Meruru has the constitution of wet paper. And she again got KO'd shortly after this screenshot.



Never bet against Gio. He did about twice the damage he'd normally do with Extreme Einzel, and completely negated that 6000 the Goddess got back from Meruru's two KOs shortly before.



And that's two. Now Heaven's Dragon is completely out of tricks, and nearly out of HP. This is gonna be a bloodbath, friend.





Your lack of power is not the reason you lost. The reason you lost is quite simple. The power of the gods is considerable, but it is limited. The power of humanity is not. We are potential personified. What meaning is there to the gods when children of men can strike them down? This is but the first step toward a new world.



An absolutely trifling reward compared to how much effort went into that fight, but now only the master of this twisted world remains. Nothing can stop us now.



On the other side, our destiny awaits...



The greatest enemy awaits. When all else has fallen, only one remains. You, plaything of the gods, prepare for your final battle.Ye Shall Be as Gods - Machina of God







Music: Alas de Luz



Just as a note, Alas de Luz here means "Wings of Light" in Spanish, and the song itself is a remix of "Crystallized" from Mana Khemia. I can definitely hear it, but it's a pretty "out there" remix.

Well, the title of "the greatest enemy" is very appropriate here. Machina has 99,999 HP (Heaven's Dragon had about half that), she is ungodly powerful, absolute resistance to status effects (as we've come to expect), and has more than a few tricks up her sleeve. Prepare for a long fight.

On the plus side, there are a few things going in your favor. As you saw from the last fight, that group of rogues loved their status effect fuckery and general dickishness in regards to MP. Machina doesn't play that game. She cannot inflict a single negative status effect, and will never interfere with MP supplies. So, that's one game you don't have to play with her.



First off, it's always good to start off with buffing. Machina, strangely enough, is not particularly fast, and you shouldn't have much trouble keeping up with her. At first.



After a single round of attacking, she's already lost that much HP. Not a bad start, not at all, and can I say how much I love Totori's Time Warp move? In case you didn't notice, Time Warp almost always gives her absolute priority in the turn order and moves her to the top of the list, regardless of anything else going on. You NEVER know when an extra turn can make all the difference in the world, but on the negative side, sometimes it just doesn't work. No idea why that is.



Okay, guarding. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER guard against Machina, for absolutely any reason. Here's why.



She will immediately respond with Wings of Justice, which REALLY hurts, and gives her a metric ton of HP back. I just negated that entire first round of attacking in one blow, and got Gio KO'd, all for you people. Of course I did that just now on purpose, as I already knew she did that from the first time I defeated Machina (with a party of Mimi and Totori).

Point is, no matter how trifling your character's turn might be in the long run, there is no reason to guard at any point. Just do anything other than that, and you're golden. I hope I've made myself clear.



On the plus side, her accuracy is surprisingly crap for being the ultimate boss, and she'll quite frequently miss with devastating attacks. Of course, Totori having that Day-Night Ring on, is certainly helping matters.



Oh man, World Extinction. Now this is a pretty sweet-looking move.



















How cool is that? I think my single favorite attack in the game.



What's not so cool is Alchemy Seal. I just got done with an Infinite Meteor combo, and basically all it does it halve the power of the item that was just used against it. I'm not sure if it affects all items, or the just the one, but still. Why you gotta be like that?



Among her other attacks is Death Scent, a surprisingly very weak attack. Just middling single-target damage that'll loop around three more times against the same target, assuming they don't get KO'd. It's...really quite pathetic. I expected more of you, Machina.



Now that's a little better.



Seriously, I have no idea why Gio is getting so many Critical Hits, but I love him very much for it.



Ah, the first The End's Light. When Machina actually uses The End's Light, it's not actually an attack, so don't bother wasting an Assist for it.



Are you joking? You're gonna have to do a lot better than that to hit Gio. You're embarrassing yourself here.





As far as The End's Light goes, it's a pretty sweet-looking attack with some cool sound effects attached to it, but the real danger is that it's the resident turn order screwball, and will shuffle people around like crazy. This is going to get very obnoxious by the end of the fight, trust me.

Over the course of the fight, Machina will deploy up to four more TELs, but here's the weird thing with this fight: she has one deployed now, and she's supposed to gradually add more as her health gradually decreases. But...for some reason, she didn't. Oh, I have no problem spoiling the last part of the fight, but she waits until she's about 25% HP to use them more often. Something was holding her up, but I'm not complaining.

As far as damage goes, it's unremarkable.



Y'know, I certainly have my problems with Meruru as a game, but I can assure you right now Gio is not among them. Not at all.



So it's come down to this, has it? My allies, onward to victory! Let nothing stand in our way.



I don't know if it came up in this video per se, as I didn't see it happen, but the way this game handles "Guard" is very odd. Basically, as you can imagine, a single powerful strike like World Extinction will almost certainly KO whomever it hits. Simple, right? Ah, but not so fast.

Extinction hits twice. Let's say Meruru gets KO'd by the first. Then, she gets hit by the second. Sometimes, Guard will activate for the second hit, but not the first. That means Meruru gets KO'd by the first strike, then revived by the second. Like I said, very odd, but I know it for a fact this happens with any move that hits more than once. Of course, the opposite may happen as well.



Damn, we're so close. Machina isn't giving up without a fight, though. Will Gio score the killing blow?



Maaaaaaan. Literally, the last TEL bumped Gio down before another TEL and Machina moving again. If I didn't get unlucky there, that would have been the last turn.



Okay, I am really getting sick of this now. This fight is so close to over. I mean, my stock of Elixirs is just fine (I don't know the exact amount, but I have something like 70+ uses left), but I simply am not getting any turns.



...

...

It's over. The game is over. Machina has basically no HP whatsoever, and Totori's super move is all ready to go. I probably could have defeated Machina with Extreme Einzel on Gio's turn, but I got unlucky with the second Slash, and it didn't give him an extra turn. Well, whatever.

It's just as well. Totori has been a knight of the highest honor. A valiant soul, her tiny frame houses the spirit of a true warrior. Aside from Gio, I can hardly think of anyone more worthy of the title of the slayer of the Machina of God. Remember, my previous victory over Machina was with a party of Mimi and Totori, and in that fight, Mimi got the final blow (also a super move). It can only be described as fate, how this battle transpired, and how it shall end. Totori, press the attack, and cement your place in the history of this world.













The last and final moment is yours...






Alas de Luz


Gio and Sterk vs. Tower's Devil
Gio and Sterk vs. Hammer Bunnies
Gio and Sterk vs. Squirrel Trio

Totori and Gio vs. Tower's Devil
Totori and Gio vs. Hammer Bunnies
Totori and Gio vs. Squirrel Trio
Totori and Gio vs. Heaven's Dragon