Part 39: The Sun

The HAARP... And More
Hey, remember what I sometimes say about videos? Yeah, that goes like quintuple for this one. Watch. It.





That is an... interesting login ID.





















Umm... I don't think that's going to go well. Might make this a bit more difficult, even.



Naturally, the inside of the HAARP is now completely ablaze as well.





And then Sera and Serph die of smoke inhalation. The end! No moral.






























....Oh, okay fine.



They just become Force Ghosts instead.







To The Sun









Both Sera and Serph enter the same point at the same time, of course...



But only one being emerges.



At least at first...









I can tell... We're not alone! You're all here with us!

Seraph



Welcome to the very blatantly final dungeon, and the only place we are stuck in forever. Which, uh, makes sense on account of the whole "being dead" thing.



Doesn't quite look like I expected the Sun to look like, though.







Seraph? But I'm --
Seraph... Take a look at your new self.



Eventually, your minds will become one, just as your bodies have.



Your journey is about to end.





Also two antagonists and one guy we actively never met.





Open your consciousness. No truth will be hidden from you.



See ya around, Schroedinger.



Let's go.
Let's do dis.

There's two ways for things to go from here. Because we jumped through a couple of hoops across both games...



Heat...











And with that, the Embryon are back together one last time.

By default, we'd get Roland here instead of Heat. A bunch of choices across DDS1 and 2 can change this, though, and you need to get them all right. Whether you think it's worth it or not really boils down to which one you prefer, though.



Anyway, time for our last little DDS1 important bonuses.



Just having important data period will give us Lupa here; deciding to NOT betray the Maribel when Gale proposes his plan way, way back at the start of DDS1 also gives us Jinana.



As you would probably expect at this point, Lupa's reward is the better of the two by a mile.







Angel steps up here because we basically told Cuvier to piss off back at the Karma Tower. No import data required this time around.

Angel...





Now go... Sera, Serph.





End

Nirvana



So, whew, that's a lot to take in at once, huh? Let's take this chance to talk to everyone in the area.



Our party members (and also Roland, because he was a potential party member) have actual character models. Everyone else is just a blue flame. With their model super-transparent and hard to see inside it.

Argilla... Did I make the right choice?



Thank you for guiding Fred and Roland. I hope that my power will aid you now, in your time of great need.





I gotta say, it's nice of David to just hand us the +4 Magic gem for nothing. Probably not something you'd expect to get here at least.



I was able to comprehend metempsychosis once I felt David's consciousness within me. However, I never thought I would encounter you in such a form... The data of all things travels endlessly between here and earth, in a cycle of reincarnation. The fact that you two were able to become one seems to signify something outside of that cycle... Let us ascertain the meaning of this, Sera... Serph...



Metempsychosis is some Greek philosophy thing, relating to reincarnation.

I was so mistaken... Seraph, please calm God's anger and guide life along its new path.





...It's kind of embarrassing to see you guys so soon after, though.



Oh well! It's still good to see everyone again, ja?

Oh, Cielo... at least you're self-aware of how ultimately pointless your suicide run was. I know it was blatantly just to get him to die so he could be here, but it was still redundant. Could've killed him in the explosion at the HAARP or something. Would've made more sense too.

...Moving on.



I never wanted you guys to get this close, though... At least you're kind of cute, I guess. Don't worry, Sera. I won't hurt you, anymore.



The big sphere thing here is just our new Large Terminal for the final dungeon. Machinery wouldn't really work here.

Wait, hang on. That guy in the background...



Johnny...



As nice as it is to have a shop here, I'm not sure if it really had to be like this.

Also the Manjusaka sells for a decent amount, alright. It's one I would hold onto if I wasn't at top-rank already, but, well, that got done earlier than I expected. It's still not the best one either!



In business and in life, real value is determined by a single word...



I'm sure that they're proud of me.



Yeah, sure. It was fun while it lasted, Roland...

OH, RIGHT. Uh, we kinda don't have much of a used party right now. Running around with just Seraph isn't a great idea.



Argilla might have the same skills as when she left, but at least her level's rocketed up to be equal with the others. Helps make her usable, though the skill deficiency is an issue but we can deal with it.

Mostly because that magic is fucking bonkers, jesus.



Heat just takes Roland's mantra grid from when he left. Their stats aren't really going to be that dissimilar either; Heat's even sort of learned from his mistake before and is willing to not let himself get destroyed by magic quite as badly now.

Still probably going to either give him the SP Magic Ring or maybe the Hee-Ho Ring if it matters though.



Seraph's a bit different. They just take every skill that both Sera and Serph had. Their stats are also just taken directly from the two as well, though it doesn't average them or anything. No, it takes the highest for each stat.

Also apparently fusing two people with a Fire weakness creates one with no weaknesses.

Seraph is OP, please nerf.



For obvious reasons, Gale and Cielo are completely identical to when we last saw them all of ~10 minutes ago in-game time.

I'm thinking this makes a good party for the first part of the Sun.



Oh yeah, first part. The Sun is freaking gigantic. If you thought the Karma Tower was oddly long compared to every other dungeon before and since...



It's about to get dethroned. And it won't even be a close competition.



Also for this cutscene, Seraph has precognition beyond "hey there is a thing through this door."



Granted in this case, it's just a Kingu but hey its the thought that counts.



Because now Seraph gets to tune for the first time.



And it's kind of a nice difference to before.



Ardhanarishvara, generally just shortened to Ardha. The androgynous result of the combination of Shiva and Parvati. Half-man, half-woman, Ardha is the synthesis of all masculine and feminine energy in the universe.

There's a little more to it than that, but for now let's just murderise this Kingu.

Heroic Battle



Nicest thing that can be said in Kingu's favour is he has no weaknesses and repels death. On the other hand, just about every spell he has is death elemental.



He does not even remotely resist Expel, so let's just take this opportunity to try out Argilla's new toy. Seraph Lore is going to get a lot of use here.



As you would expct for the move we got from Jinana that is explicitly her unique spell...



It deals 80% of everything's remaining HP. It's pretty good, but kinda costly. Worth it though, especially when... you'll see.

Nirvana



That dealt with, we can take the elevator to and fro freely now. This area's where we can buy Impel Stones if we need any. That might be a good idea sometime down the line.



There's also this guy. Remember he is here.



For now, let's explore the... 2nd Layer of the Sun. Sure, why not. We'll go west further. Damage-floor dead ahead, so we'll take that turn I think.



This lets us get some Quick Data from... a flower. Actual flowers are our new regular treasure chests. We cannot pick them after opening them to sell to Johnny, sadly.



Following the path around that way leads to a dead-end, so we'll pop a Core Shield to continue onwards. That's a hole in the ceiling, so that makes me worried about invisible pitfalls on higher floors.



There's a one-way door to the east of here which lets us skip back to the other side without dealing with the damagefloor. That's nice at least.



These weird looking organic... things are effectively staircases. And there's lots of them too. Going up!

Battle for Survival



Lots of new enemies here, so we'll start with an old, familiar face. Still weak to instant death. We still have an Al Azif. Horus still drops Magic Data. Still comes alone too!



Cu Chulainn is a bit nastier than he was before, but that comes with the territory of being upgraded for the final dungeon. Weakness to Nerve makes him easy to shut down at least. Resisting just about everything but Earth is a mite annoying but whatever.



Skadi has the unfortunate pleasure of being the sole thing on this layer with a weakness to a normal element. As opposed to some ailments, expel or death, yes.



Girimehkala is not too different to before, in terms of how we deal with him. His skills are a bit nastier, but nothing too major. For the time being, we just blast him with a Seraph Lore and kill him immediately afterwards. We'll be seeing these guys again later though...



And lastly, for the entire layer, we have Athena. She's weak to Death and can't put up a barrier to that. She normally comes with a couple Cu Chulainns though, so we can't just throw the Necronomicon at her.

Still not really much of a threat though.



Oh right, Seraph doesn't use guns any more. Instead, opting to fire pure life force at things telepathically. It's kinda cool.



To say these things are meant to be rare, they're actually really easy to get. Skadis even drop them!

Nirvana



So, second floor. We have a door straight ahead, and a damage floor path to the east.



The damage floor leads to a dead-end. There's nothing here but a waste of our time.



The door is one-way only and leads to... another damage floor. I'm beginning to sense a theme here.



Hm, what's that? Looks like a pillar of light at the end of this part of the path.



That would be a hole that lets us jump down to the previous floor. It's also our only way out of this area.



Before we actually do that, though, the other part of the path lets us pick up a free Soma. We might be able to sort of sometimes buy them, but free ones are always nice to have.



Nothing else on the west-side, so we'll head back to the starting room and go to the east instead. This damage floor right here is completely pointless by the way.



We can take it to get to this Purple Crystal... or we can just walk around it and get to this Purple Crystal. I know which one I prefer.



There's obviously stairs also in that area directly ahead of the entrance, so we'll take them. Brings us to a crosswalk, and south lets us pick up some Ice Walls.



...There's also a door that leads to a hole. It's a one-way door. The hole drops us in front of the purple crystal.

Battle with Rare Devil



At this point, we run into Jack Frost for the last... two times. Surprisingly quickly for that matter. Kinda expected to need to spend some time getting this done. We'll cover the questions and rewards later, when they're actually relevant.



...Man, the game is just throwing rare shit at me now. What the hell?



Hello, easiest $750,000 I ever made.



Thanks to getting Zandyne on someone at last, we can finally get Esoteric 6.



New Banquet is a Fatal hunt skill that only works at Minimum Solar Noise. It will never succeed at any other time, and it has a good chance of still not working against scared stuff at Minimum Solar Noise. Don't even bother.

Leech is both HP and MP Thief rolled into one. Irritatingly, it is Mute elemental. So its completely worthless.



But hey, we got money now. We can grab that ring from the Golden Box at last. The Variable Ring is... a gigantic piece of shit that you should never use.



When it says "randomises" you might think that doesn't sound so bad. The hard coded max number of press turns is 8, discounting halves of course, so this thing plays right to your advantage right? Pfft, no.

It randomises between 2 and 4 press turns. Every single round. Only reason to get it, is because we're going to need it later. I keep saying that because its true.

Nirvana



We'll go north from the crossroads on the second floor.



Path upstairs to the west here, so I guess we'll cross the damage floor fi-



okay this is just getting silly now

So if you run into Jack Frost after finishing his quiz, he gives you free items. Medical Gear, Great Chakra, Soma etc. Pretty neat but I wouldn't count on it!

Naturally then, he appeared twice to give me Medical Gears.



Anyway, crossing that damage floor brings us to another path upwards. The damage floor to the south just leads back to the four-way intersection.

Taking this path up, I guess.



Two doors here, one to the south and one west. West sounds good.



Another split in the path; north brings us to a way up to the fourth floor. South it is then.



A giant damage floor here. We'll ignore the bit to the south right now, and go west instead.



Entirely for the sake of grabbing this. Not sure it was worth it.



At least from there, we can go around and get to the life terminal equivalent.

Remember that door to the south in the first corridor here?



Another one-way door that forces you into a hole down a floor. Which is fine, we want to be on the second floor now anyway.



Gonna take that other way up to the third floor. The path west here leads to a dead-end, so we'll take this door.



...Ugh. What is even the point?



So, fourth floor it is then. Damage floor south, so no thanks.



On the way down here, there's a walled off intersection leading to another hole.



Surprising hopefully no one, the red glowy thing was a small terminal.



Another intersection; two holes and a door south. Hole to the north here drops us somewhere we've been before, but the map is mostly blank below the eastern one.



And for good reason; it drops us at that semi-pointless part of the third floor, albit on the openable side of a one-way door.



This entire area is here so we can get this one flower. It's nice money but kinda weird and pointless.



Going back to the fourth floor again, we'll take the door south, end up on the fifth floor and that door looks pretty different.

Epic Battle ~ Prelude



Hey, that's a gold container in the backgro- oh right, focus. There's a guy right there. He looks... familiar.



Oh, that's right. He was the first boss we ever fought. Good times.



Let's be honest; once we got to the Sun and everyone else turned up, you saw a Megaman style series of boss refights coming.

Boss Redux ~ Asura Hayagriva

Big Battle ~ Enemies Reborn
integral just nebulously calls it big battle. the dds2 stand alone ost calls its enemies reborn. it's a cool remix of the dds1 boss theme. pro click would recommend.



Unfortunately, this cool idea is ruined by Hayagriva being, well, Hayagriva. He's pretty much unchanged from before, save for having a lot more health now. According to the MegaTen wiki, it's about 3500 so sure we'll say that.



You should not be surprised to discover that the dude who used nothing but Fire before still uses nothing but fire.



His tiny plethora of a whole 3 moves is mostly unchanged too. Only difference is that instead of Void Ice he apparently has Drain Ice.



I say "apparently" because he should never get a chance to use it.



So, uh, yeah. Hayagriva's still a gigantic pushover. What a shocker.



He even gives the same drop and everything. Doesn't even give enough AP for anyone to learn anything new. How disappointing.



The gold container was yet another Manjusaka. Shame it's a bit of a trek back to Johnny at this point though.



Oh well, we'll worry about that later. Next time, we'll deal with the third layer that comes second.