The Let's Play Archive

Chaos Rings

by ivantod

Part 95: There's no Time to Waste! (Shadows)





As I've mentioned previously, it's time to get our characters' ultimate weapons, finally! It's not going to be easy though, there are some fairly tough boss fights that we'll have to do in order to accomplish this. So, no time to waste, let's get started.



Actually, all of these are fights against "dark" version of our characters; but the quest descriptions are quite funny as you'll see. I'll do all of these with Darwin and Marie and they will always be around the recommended level for the quest, maybe a little bit higher just to be on the safe side. Believe me you DO NOT want to do these with underleveled characters!







There they are. They have funky names.



And here is a spell that is absolutely essential if you want to survive these fights. It's the ultimate spell on Marie's Sopia, and if she doesn't have it, you better go and do some grinding until she gets it. Basically it allows a character to be automatically revived after they die--it only works once, so you have to recast it after that. Hence, most of the time, all that Marie will be doing is making sure they both have this active on them at all times. The good thing about this spell, also, is that if you input actions at the beginning of a turn, and then your character gets killed and revived by an enemy, it won't actually cancel their action--they will still execute it after revival. This is totally awesome and an absolute life saver.



In any case, this first battle is not too bad, but be aware that the Shadow characters have all the same abilities as normal ones, including being able to use their limit breaks, such as ShadowMarie is doing here. Note that ShadowDarwin won't actually be using Godslayer here, though.









Yep, that's why are putting Regenerate on.



We are definitely going to focus on ShadowMarie first, as she is a bit squishier than ShadowDarwin.



She also heals at the end of the turn, but that's really neither here nor there.





More annoyingly she can heal both of them, and will do so often.









But anyway, soon enough she's gone.











ShadowDarwin also likes to use his own Collbrande, but...





...not long after he dies of one too!



Here's our reward.



Marie's ultimate weapon, La Divina Commedia.


 *  *  *




Next up is the fight against ShadowOrlando and ShadowAraki. This one is waaaay harder, mainly due to high damage output from Araki.







Here they are.



Absolutely essential.



One way to do this is to run a few Necrosis spells first, because of ShadowAraki's high HP (around 50000 HP) it will help a lot. I won't even do Collbrande until damage from Necrosis goes down.



As with all of these fights, limit breaks are the biggest problem...





especially those which have a chance of causing insta-death.





This still works fine.



Look at that damage!



This is the other essential spell that Marie will be using when she's not casting Regenerate...



It's a full heal on one character. Basically her first duty is to make sure both characters have Regenerate, and otherwise she'll be casting Healing Hand. Unfortunately she won't get much of a chance to attack in any of these.



Here is something. Take note of Darwin's HP.









And look at it now. It seems like only the last hit actually registered--there is definitely a problem with damage calculation for multi-hit attacks, but I'm not exactly sure why. But it does seem to work both ways equally.



Anyway, eventually I do manage to get rid of ShadowAraki (he should absolutely be your first priority--ShadowOrlando is not nearly as dangerous).



And a bit later, Marie sorts out ShadowOrlando.





Here are our rewards.





Ultimate weapons for Orlando and Araki.

But I have a question here. How come in the previous fight we only got a weapon for Marie, but not one for Darwin, what's up with that? Not sure I want to know the answer.



 *  *  *




Moving swiftly onwards, next up are ShadowLiHua and ShadowConor. Personally I think this quest description is absolutely hilarious.







This battle is much much easier, mainly thanks to the fact that even here ShadowConor is still completely useless.







He will mostly spam this, which I guess increases their parameters a bit, but that's not a big deal, just keep casting that Regenerate.



What are you watching, ShadowLiHua? Actually, all enemies have a small chance to sometimes skip a turn, and that's what she's doing here.



Don't forget about the limit breaks!







Yeah this will kill Darwin. But that little circle next to his picture at the bottom means he's got Regenerate on, so hell just shake it off and get straight back up.



Anyway, this one is not so interesting, and ShadowConor is quickly dispatched.



ShadowLiHua still has no resistance to magic, so...



...yeah.





Anyway, the rewards are here.





Li Hua and Conor get their ultimate weapons. So now I'm really wondering about Darwin. Perhaps there is one more quest?


 *  *  *




Indeed there is. This time it's ShadowDarwin2 and ShadowLessica. Unfortunately, this one is really quite difficult and needs some special preparation.



First of all, we are going to equip Gigas Sopia on Darwin, because we want to be able to use the Sacrifice skill (I will explain it in a moment).



Second, speed is important. It is absolutely essential that both of our characters get their turn before either of the enemies. This will ensure that we can clear up any damage from previous turn (or cast Regenerate) before the next attack. Therefore Marie gets Speed Booster...



...and since I don't have another Speed Booster, I actually equip on Darwin a weapon with slightly lower damage, but which gives him enough of a speed boost to be able to act before the enemies.



Now we're ready (more or less).





Well... here we go. I'm not kidding, this one is really tough if you fight normally. Also note ShadowDarwin's name. This is important.



But we're not going to fight normally. We'll use Sacrifice, the ultimate skill on Gigas Sopia. What it does is deal huge damage based on your HP and leaves you with 1HP remaining. The reason why I am doing this will be obvious shortly.



In our case, it does around 20000 HP damage to ShadowDarwin, which is pretty awesome because he has around 50000 HP, so two of these plus a Collbrande should dispatch him.



And here is why I am doing this. This ShadowDarwin is the post-Amon version, and he is able to use Godslayer, in addition to Collbrande--and he will use them pretty much every other turn, I am not kidding. In fact, he will always use it on the first turn!









And basically, this is the reason for using Sacrifice. You really, really, need to get rid of ShadowDarwin as quickly as possible and none of the other attacks do as much damage (not counting limit breaks, but they seem to be a bit unreliable so...). Letting him survive will just expose you to more and more of his high-damage attacks and you will not be able to keep up.







So, one Collbrande attack when you can catch a breath...



Don't be shy about using Marie's limit break--it heals both characters for almost full amount! You just need to survive until you are in position to use Sacrifice again.





And here it is. With this, ShadowDarwin is gone and the battle is pretty much over, as ShadowLessica is not nearly as dangerous.





So a well placed Collbrande...





Here are our rewards.





The ultimate weapons for Darwin (finally) and Lessica. Now everybody is taken care of, so I guess we are done with Shadow quests?


 *  *  *




Not so fast. There's one more actually. But who is this "sketchy looking pair"? Let's talk to Piu-Piu, he may provide some insight.









Uh, what do you mean by this?



Well, let's see what we've got here.



Seriously? But don't worry. Despite being at the highest level of all Shadow fights, this fight is kind of a joke. Don't get me wrong, you can still die, but it's not really a serious serious fight. You'll see.





I'm pretty sure this line is attributed to the wrong character.



























Wow, does he talk. Note how he's referencing the stuff from post-game Chaos Rings Omega (Piu-Piu's collectathon) where he and Alto are the main antagonists! But I'm kind of worried about the opening move for this fight, so...





...we re going to do this, just in case.























I guess that was a good idea, looks like.















Yes, she quite literally runs through Marie!



Oh, yeah, before I forget, they have quite funny names here.



In any case, for this fight, I decide to try out Empathy Attack, the ultimate skill on Araki's sopia. It simply deals the more damage the less HP you have. So for this, I will only keep Regenerate on Darwin, but won't be healing him so that his HP is kept suitably low.













That's not bad, and we manage to finish off ShadowGarrick!



A few more and...













The reward for this one is a Black Diamond accessory.



It gives you some boost to speed and luck.

Below you can watch this fight in video format, it's worth checking out for funny looking moves and funky music!

VIDEO: Shadow of the Omega (make sure to switch it to 720px HD for much better quality!)

So that is all as far as shadow fights go--I found them to be slightly hard, but fun to do, especially since, as we've seen, there are a few different strategies you can use really, as long as you took care to max out all Sopias, there are a few useful ultimate skills.