Part 47: Episode XXXII: In Which We Wish for a Better End

Episode XXXII: In Which We Wish for a Better End



Music: Companthem - Gabriel

Fuck this boss fight!

This is the worst fight in Drakengard 3. Gabriel is a very poorly designed fucker of a boss, the boss arena is remarkably terrible, the camera is even more awful than usual, and nothing about it is fun. I guess there's decent music I suppose. But even then it's just reusing a old song from the Prologue! The jerk even couldn't afford a second theme song he's so cheap!



Not even you can recover from a mortal dragon wound.
Then I guess I just have to kill you first! You and your daemon dragon...
Huh? What's that mean?
It means she enhanced her dragon to make it better at fighting you. But when you do that...





Slam into him once he opens his big, fat mouth! If a good smack in the mouth won't work, I dunno what will. Such a pain...





Like before Gabriel's skin is invulnerable to Mikhail's fireballs. And this time his mouth has a wonky ass hitbox that deflects fireballs 90% of the time as well. Instead, we need to wait for the beast to open up and say "ahh" and divebomb it in the throat. Which... has about a 50% success ratio because serious this thing's hitbox is just kind of fucked. Sometimes you'll do a decent amount of damage with a hit. Sometimes it'll do a pixel worth. Do you aim square for the mouth? A bit overhead? Who knows! Just vaguely in the face direction the cursor locks onto and hope for the best since... well bloody good luck manually aiming without locking on.



The real foe of this battle is this godawful arena. It is a large open rectangular football field length area lined with pillars dividing it and smaller rectangular, lower roofed sections on each side. These goddamn pillars are the worst since you constantly need to maneuver through them while the camera is locked onto Gabriel. And by "maneuver" I mean deal with being caught up on 'em, overshooting and ramming into the wall, getting the camera caught on 'em, and all sorts of poorly planned 3D movement fun. Nothing like trying to dive bomb your target only for Mikhail's wing to clip a bit too far into a column of stone and stop him dead in his tracks enough to eat a fireball to the face instead.





Gabriel only has a handful of moves but they all hit for a decent clip. Charging a fireball is the only attack that has any sort of tell, which has 100% accuracy if Mikhail is in front of him and not on the move. Never mind if that means it shoots 90 degrees directly out of its forehead to hit our dragon. The rest of Gabriel's attacks it can just fuck off and do whenever it feels like it with no rhyme or reason beyond it being in the air or it being on the ground.



On the ground, Gabriel has its aforementioned fireball charge shot. If Mikhail lingers on the floor near it, Gabe can also whip our dumb dragon buddy with its tail like a jerk. Somehow the latter hurts more than an orb of flaming fart breath.



When airborne, One's dragon can fire a volley of laser arrows from its back. Unlike the aerial boss battle slow moving and easily destroyed arrows, this is just a great big wall of "fuck you" wherein you have to immediately do a dodge evade or just get lucky at the scatter shot missing. Fifty-fifty chance whether laser arrows will give a hot damn about collision against any of the pillars, mostly siding against your favor.



Other than shedding the seemingly infinite amount of plasma spines on its back, Gabriel can also attempt to counter-dive bomb Mikhail. Fortunately here our adversary is prone to the same conditions of these pillars being some bullshit not meant for two lumbering hell lizards to be tooling around near and can also bonk his head into them and fall to the floor.

Look, I'm no game developer but if you base a final battle arena around the fact that both combatants have to pull a Three Stooges routine to get a leg-up against each other... you might need to take that garbage back to the drawing board.





Now while Gabriel is able to collide with the pillars while attempting to attack Zero and her dragon. The same is not true if he is just flying around the cathedral taking pot shots at Mikhail. Being about three times the size of our dragon, Gabe is happy to just clip half way through pillars while ignoring the entirety of their corporeal form and to spam his own attacks free of consequence. And no getting cocky trying to hit him through the same pillar. Hitbox zoning rules entirely in our adversary's favor



I haven't mentioned it much since it's not particularly been an issue since Dubstep Crab. But remember how Mikhail gets knocked out of the air and has a few second recovery time to get back on his feet and anything resembling mobile again?







If the black dragon decides it's just going to go wild for a bit with aerial attacks, it can easily just go "fuck you" and take off a quarter of Mikhail's health bar in a few seconds. Bosses that can stunlocks. That's always a quality time.



Are you seriously asking me that now!
I mean... It's... just kind of sad, you know? It's sad. I feel really bad for Gabriel.
Really? You feel bad for the fucker that's trying to kill you!?



Now you're meant to dive bomb One and her jackass dragon repeatedly. At least I'm pretty sure that's how they intended you to do the fight. But if you can get Gabe to calm down and cooperate on the floor for a bit trying to hit Mikhail at ground level, it's possible to do a nice chunk of damage.





Mikhail's ground based fire spewing, if aimed point blank in Gabriel's big dopey demon maw, can utterly wreck the nasty thing's HP far more efficiently than anything else. Getting the big guy to cooperate is a dice roll since this boss is a pile of shit. The only way to get it on the ground is getting several good hits in while airborne in a row which good luck. Or else getting Gabriel to bonk into a pillar, the most common method. Or sometimes the AI will just do a butt slam into the ground for no good reason.



Again. Fuck this battle.


Video: Post-Gabriel Battle (You should watch this.)



Waaah!





In addition to being a terribly designed and programmed boss battle, Gabriel continues to be a pile of shit that utterly ignores gameplay defeats in favor of flexing its cutscene superiority muscle. Seriously, you cannot get your health bar depleted twice and just go "nah" the following cutscene twice as well. That's just some bullshit, dragon.

Zero climbs to her feet...





Hold that thought.



I'm going to go with "not so much".



Aaaaaah!
Gaaaaaah!



<pants heavily> Grrrrrraaaaaarrrrrrrrrh!
<DRAGON ROAR>







One has no trouble rolling with her daemon dragon's ability to bend cutscene dynamics to its will in order to finish off Zero and Mikhail. And she started out so sporting prior to the battle.







But two can play at that game as Zero taps into her Cutscene Zone only anime powers to Falcon Punch Gabriel right in its stupid demonic braces. What is even going on with your face, Gabriel? How do you even see with that head gear? Can that thing see?





The wallop in its big stupid mouth, like Zero had earlier suggested, is enough to send Gabriel's trademark Cutscene Bullshit Beam careening off course and bring the roof down on it and One's heads. Great. Now there are exactly zero intact structures in all of Imperial Notspain.





Reincarnate! Even if you lose your memory, at least you'll still--
You know, right, Zero? Why dragons can be reborn? Because they get a "final wish."
Enough! Just hurry up and do it already!



It doesn't take long for Gabriel to recover from razing the roof. Zero goes in for a follow up round of nose punching a dragon.



...This attempt is less successful.



A dragon's wish is a deep and powerful thing...



So now, I'm gonna make mine.



Music: Descendus





If I use my life to wish it... <pant> then I can make it happen... <pant> Isn't that great!?
...No.



No! No, no, no! I am not letting you do this! NO!



It's okay, Zero. If I lose my memory, I won't be me anymore anyway.
No!



No, no... Please, no...
And besides... I had a lot of fun, Zero... I mean, being with you...
Mikhail, no! You can't! I won't let you!
Heh...



Goddammit, dummy... Stop repeating things...













Welp.







You're... not... the only one... who's ready... to sacrifice everything...



I will protect Gabriel... Even if... Even if I forsake my life... as an Intoner!



Come for me, Zeeeero!



I think we can save all arguments about the morality of sororicide with this Intoner sister. One and her dragon need the absolute shit murdered out of them.








Video: Gabriel Boss Battle


Video: Post Gabriel Battle Cutscene (You should definitely watch this.)



One Official Art