Part 30: Level 24

Featured music - "A Big Problem" and "Mystery Metal" from the Descent Redbook Soundtrack, "Crush" and "Untitled" from the Descent II Redbook Soundtrack, and "Last Boss" from Gradius Gaiden by Konami.

It is the end of everything you have ever known.

But not really.

The final level of Descent II is on its own world, Tycho Brahe, but uses the same ALIEN2 texture set as the mines on Puuma Sphere. Tycho Brahe's map resembles the planetoid scene in the FMV, as you can see:



The mine is composed of three loops and at specific points, sections will be closed off to you once you fly past the point where a trigger will create a wall. You will never get permanently stuck in the mine, but reaching all of the earthshaker missiles can become impossible. If you missed getting into Secret Level 6, there is a teleporter that will take you there and allow you to get a few more earthshakers. And you will need as many as you can get to fight this guy:



The final boss is not an easy fight. It is invulnerable to energy weapons and can only be damaged at its weak spot. Shooting it anywhere else will repel your attacks and the boss will generate robots. This boss is armed with earthshaker missiles and is extremely dangerous. Avoiding earthshaker bomblets is very difficult because of how large their blast radius is. The boss's chamber is large enough to allow you to get away from the seeking bomblets and there are walls that you can use to avoid the explosion.



There is a way to make fighting the boss robot much easier. As long as you've been hoarding your earthshaker missiles, you can fire them at a wall behind the boss and let the bomblets seek the boss. They will hit it from behind as long as the angle of the bomblets and the orientation of the boss are correct. There are enough invulnerability charges around that you can fight it head-on like I do in the video without getting killed. If you do not have enough earthshaker missiles to destroy this robot, you will be in for a very long fight. Strafe the robot and try to fire at its back as much as you can and keep the wall between you and the robot so you can shield yourself from its earthshakers.

We'll see you all again for Descent II: Vertigo Series.