Part 26: Snap Snaps

Welcome back! Last time, Euchre ascended the game's final dungeon, Tartarus.

Music: Heading Into Darkness



This time, he'll be facing off against Dr Snap at the peak.

Music: Ace Of Spades



You were supposed to be guarding the entrance for me.

Silence! You underestimated my master's strength.

But of course. I'd quite forgotten about Euchre.

Where is the Mark? I know that you have it!



I'm so glad I took the Mark from you when I had the chance.



Exactly. We shall turn this world into a paradise for monsters! I couldn't have done it without your help. See? Look what you've done to the sky!



MUA HA HA HA HA HA!

I'm not an expert, but this plan seems more than a little bit ill-advised. Then again, Dr Snap is clearly unhinged.



Time to take your medicine!



And then Dr Snap fires his laser. This time, though...



...Euchre's ready for it.



Ah, Trump's work, no doubt. I do hope he enjoyed reading my research notes. Bah, it won't stop me! I'll show you TRUE power!



Trying it again? Really? It didn't work the first time. What are the chances that it would work now?



Unfortunately, quite high. The baryon sphere wasn't built to handle such a large amount of dark matter...



..and it shatters. That's not good.



Oh, how boring. And I only used a fraction of the power available to me. Now, let's try this again, shall we?









...

I think the darkonium sphere might have stopped working too, though. Thank goodness.



Well, not to worry. There's lots more where that came from! Thanks to our good friend the Incarnus, I can call upon an ENDLESS supply! Why don't you play with my friends here while I refill my sphere?

Music: Scout Battle



Snap's delaying tactics involve throwing two monsters at Euchre: a Buffalogre and a Mohawker. This shouldn't be much trouble, right?



Just like usual, Wildcard uses Psych Up to get temporarily stronger.



To supplement that, Poppet casts Oomph on him. This combination has made Team Euchre unbeatable so far, so it should help here too.



There's one slight problem with this.



Snap has been studying Euchre's strategy.



And he's copied it.



Thank goodness he isn't very good at it, then. The AI seems to be unaware that it's not really worth using Psych Up just once, so the Buffalogre is unlikely to get beyond 5 tension. Despite that, this almost takes Li'l Green down, so it still pays to be very careful.



Unsurprisingly, that makes it the priority target here. It goes down soon enough, but not before taking somewhere around 1400 damage. It's pretty bulky.



With the Buffalogre defeated, the Mohawker is much less of a threat. This attack is fairly notable, funnily enough; it's probably Boulder Bash, one of the abilities in the Cluboon Skill.



Wildcard, being a Wulfspade Ace, takes more damage than usual from it.



Other than that, it has Helm Splitter, so that's another ability to watch out for.



Overall, though, it's significantly weaker than Snap's Buffalogre and can be taken out fairly easily once it's alone.

Music: None



Speaking of the Buffalogre, it drops a seed that will never get used...



...and its counterpart does the same. Now what?

Music: Ace Of Spades



Well, Snap's been recharging his darkonium sphere, and that battle took a while. This might be a small problem.



Hm?





A stream of dark matter comes down from the sky and envelops Snap. Hey, at least it stopped him from attacking Wildcard again.

Music: None



Eventually, though, it disappears.





It looks like Snap has finally snapped.

Of course! Dark matter has the power to transform humans into monsters! What an amazing discovery! Incredible! I must share it with the whole world!



See? Your own monsters are growing stronger, thanks to the dark matter. Soon your Incarnus will once again be transformed. And then we shall all be monsters and live happily ever after!



WAH HA HA HA! Why so hostile? We used to be SUCH good friends.



But if you insist on getting in my way...THEN I WILL DESTROY YOU!



It no longer deserves our mercy!

And so the final battle begins.

Music: Fight Against Milayou



Dr Snapped is backed up by two companions: a Tortured Soul and a Hell Gladiator. They're pretty decent and need to be taken out quickly.



First off, Wildcard is going to be using Psych Up, as usual. This turned out to be a mistake.



Kaboomle is the tier 4 Bang spell, and it's pretty good.



Like the other Bang spells, it causes an explosion. It's just that this one is the biggest.

No, we don't talk about Kamikazee.



Anyway, since Team Euchre was stealthily fully healed between battles, Li'l Green doesn't have any healing to do. Buff is the obvious option, especially because there will be very little breathing room once the onslaught starts.



Speaking of which, the Tortured Soul starts out with Magic Frailty, trying to make magic attacks from it and Dr Snapped hit harder. It sticks on Poppet, but that's fine.



The Demon-At-Arms is, predictably, using physical attacks. Its first action is Blast Slash.



And, of course, it gets two attacks per turn. This turn, it did around 100 damage to Wildcard. Remember, he has the most Defence out of Team Euchre. It needs to go, and it needs to go now.



And now it's Dr Snapped's turn. He starts by using his favourite ability: Disruptive Wave.



Disruptive Wave is an incredibly common boss trick in this series, and it's kind of surprising to see it turn up so late in this particular game. It does what you might expect from the on-screen text and purges all buffs and debuffs from its targets.



This, unfortunately, includes tension. Disruptive Wave is basically a hard counter to Psych Up, so this fight will be considerably slower than usual.



With Dr Snapped being the final boss and the highest-ranked monster in the game apart from Wildcard, of course he gets Double Trouble. His attacks are really strong, too.



On the next turn, Wildcard goes first and uses Lightning storm in an attempt to take out the Tortured Soul and Demon-At-Arms. It doesn't quite do them in, but it's close.



This gives the former just enough time to attack. This wouldn't normally be much of a concern, but...



...it just so happens that this particular monster has the Trait Poisoner, and manages to inflict Poison on Li'l Green. With how long this fight is, that might actually be a problem.



Before the Demon-At-Arms manages to move, though, Poppet manages to get off a Kaboomle.



After getting hit with multiple heavy-duty spells, Dr Snapped's allies fall, leaving just him left.



Wildcard's getting healed after being the only one who was attacked last turn...



...just in time for Dr Snapped to use Kaboom and take off a bunch of health again.



And then he goes after Li'l Green, leaving him on exactly 1 HP. Convenient!



Next turn! Wildcard will be using Thunderbolt Slash every turn from now on. It's really his best damage option since Psych Up isn't viable.



Li'l Green heals himself with Fullheal because he's on 1 HP, for goodness' sake! He'll basically just be healing whoever needs it most for the rest of the fight.



And this is what Poppet will be doing for the rest of the fight...at least until he runs out of MP, which is very soon. These spells are very MP-intensive, you know - 30 for Kafrizzle and 45 for Kaboomle.



Since nothing interesting happened for a while, I'm skipping ahead. Dr Snapped eventually busts out a top-tier spell of his own - Kazammle. It does around 200 damage, which is unsurprisingly a lot. And remember, he has a chance to use this twice!



In fact, so much damage is getting thrown around that Li'l Green actually dies. And he's the one with Kazing, so he can't be revived.



Or, rather, he couldn't be if Euchre didn't have an Yggdrasil Leaf available. It just so happens that, even though he's never organised his on-hand inventory, he has exactly one.



Anyway, when Dr Snapped is low on HP he'll start using Meditate.



While this is usually a really terrible ability, only being able to heal the user, it does still heal a decent amount of HP so it's decent for bosses to use. Like this one. It's also a nice break from Dr Snapped's high damage output, so that's a plus for Euchre.



Finally, though, Dr Snapped falls in battle to Team Euchre.

Music: None



And that's it! Next time, Euchre will be dealing with the aftermath of this mess, as well as finishing his adventure.