Exit Fate Part #42 - Sun, Moon and Star

Part 42: Sun, Moon and Star

Welcome back. Last time on Exit Fate, we recruited a whole bunch of people, then got ready for our assault on the next target in the war to retake Kirgard, the Shiva Passage. Harvey explained to us that due to the unique defense system of the fortress there, we would need to form four teams in order to capture it. There's not much to do now but launch the attack, so let's get to it.

Watch and learn, boy.

Ready in body and spirit.

Yes, sir!

But of course.

Well, what are you waiting for?

What? Do I look like a soldier to you?

Hmmm.

Sure thing, mate!

Ha ha ha! Excellent!

Don't underestimate this old man.

This could be interesting.

I'll help you, Daniel.

That's the spirit!

For all my people!

Of course.

Oh, are we going on a trip?

I'll honor you with my presence.

If that's your decision.

Arf!

Count me in.

Uhh, are you sure about this?

Let's get this show on the road.

Fade to black...

Music: Shiva - Wild Arms 3, "Fate Breaker"

And with that, we have control. This section handles a lot like multi-party sections in Final Fantasy, in that we can switch between our four parties at any time with the push of a button (provided there isn't a bribe on screen). Also much like its Final Fantasy counterparts, this section will require us to use each of the parties in order to help the others progress. Harvey is selected for us at the start, so let's see what we can do with him.

The first thing we do with Harvey is head north and run into a locked door. This isn't locked due to the door system that was mentioned last update--it's just never going to open at all. We'll have to head elsewhere.

Of course, this being an Exit Fate infiltration, there are still enemies everywhere that we have to fight. The encounter rate is markedly lower for this area compared to the rest of the game, and the enemies are somewhat less difficult than what we've been facing. But considering that this four-party section has likely blindsided you and you're going in with several unprepared characters, this area can still provide quite a challenge, especially for each party's first battle when everyone is still underleveled.

The Pandora's Boxes up front here will happily spam every second-tier attack spell in the book. But while we'd normally expect to take 200 damage or so from these spells, the enemies here can't break triple digits with them.

The Almenga Summoner in the back, on the other hand, will actually skip her turn at the beginning of the battle. It isn't until one of the Pandora's Boxes dies that we get to see her ability.

Yeah, the summoner will spend all her turns casting Restore if one of her allies is dead. This is quite annoying because her allies are always positioned to defend her from physical attacks, but the Pandora's Boxes are revived with a minimal amount of HP and will likely go down again in a single hit.

The summoner's HP is quite high for a regular enemy, but considering they don't attack, they're not much of a threat once their protection is gone.

And here we have the first set of many, many level ups. Joe in particular has gained 18 levels from a single battle.

Anyway, it's not much longer until we run into a roadblock. The door ahead is locked, and there's a funny symbol on the ground in front of it. We'll just have to switch parties and see what we can do elsewhere.

We switch to Daniel and run into a locked door almost immediately, this one with a different symbol in front of it.

The door to the right, however, contains a switch surrounded by the red symbols we saw in front of Harvey's door. You've probably already figured out what this does. Before we pull it, though, we'll switch to the other parties and see how far we can progress with them.

Jovian also quickly runs into a locked door, but this one is a side path rather than the way forward.

Before we can explore the rest of Jovian's area, though, we run into a manticore.

Manticores possess the Paralyzing Spines ability, whose effects should be rather obvious. Those two Nerveheals I bought way back when to deal with Boris continue to come in handy.

They've also got a decent physical attack, but again, you can see how the difficulty has been lowered here. The Catoblepas in the Magma Caverns was doing over 250 damage with every attack, but the Manticore here can't even do half that.

More level ups.

Jovian's team continues on but runs into another yellow-symboled door. Time to switch to Ayara.

Ayara's area is by far the smallest of the four parties', but it's still quite important in figuring out the overall puzzle of the fortress.

We run into some new enemies here as well in the form of these Parasites.

Parasites have a fairly mediocre physical attack...

... but like the Brain Leeches before them, they specialize in abilities that cause Mindblow (

)...

... and Amnesia, though this one didn't hit.

Also like the Brain Leeches, their HP is very low and we can take them out in just a few hits.

More level ups. Moooore.

We find a side path to a green-symboled door, but this one is open.

Inside we find the yellow switch. Let's try using it this time.

So, as Harvey mentioned, we can change the set of doors which are open using these switches, but only one set can be open at a time.

The problem here, though, is that pulling the Sun switch will leave Ayara trapped in this room behind the Moon door. So let's explore the rest of the area before we pull this.

As we leave the room, we run into a fucking tiger.

Mountain Tigers have a bit of punch behind their attacks, but they're very slow and miss more often than not. They're not really a threat.

Oh, and we also run into some Almenga soldiers.

It becomes obvious after Reod's very first move why the soldiers here have all the beasts around to back them up. That said, the soldiers aren't entirely unthreatening, as they're very quick, deal a good 90 damage with their attacks, and come in large groups. If you face them with a slow party (which is likely to happen here at least once) they can KO one of your frontliners before you even get a turn.

Anyway, the only other thing in Ayara's area is a Star door.

Both Harvey and Ayara are being blocked by Star, so we have Daniel pull the switch.

Ayara goes first and we continue exploring her area, where we find some treasure.

We also run into a group of soldiers led by an Almenga Captain, but aside from slightly higher HP and access to a weak-ass Column Strike and Frostwave, these guys are basically the same as the grunts.

The right side of the room brings us to a locked door with a switch in front of it. The switch doesn't seem to do anything, and if we leave Ayara here she's likely to get stuck when someone closes the Star door behind her.

So for now we're going to have her hang out in front of the Moon door instead, in case we need to pull the Sun switch behind it later.

We switch to Harvey and head through the open Star door ahead.

Immediately to the left we find a Moon switch room. I go ahead and pull it, since it will allow Ayara to pull the Sun switch and unblock Jovian and Daniel's way.

To the right, we find a Titanium Bracer (+8 PDF)...

... and a Star door leading onwards.

At this point I switch to Ayara and pull the Sun switch.

This allows Jovian to enter a side door with some decent treasure...

... and continue onwards, only to run into a Moon door.

There's also a path to the right of the Moon door with a Flame Ball...

... and nearby, a Star switch. Daniel is also standing in front of a Star switch, which means he can now move ahead without worry, so let's switch to him.

Daniel moves forward through his Sun door.

He then runs into a battle, and at this point I realize that this is actually his party's first, as Deke and Derek get KOed almost immediately. Apparently Derek just collapses into a pile of bones when he's knocked out.

We rectify this "underleveled" problem rather quickly, though.

Daniel has two paths here. We first send him to the north, where he runs into a Star door.

Jovian takes care of that.

There's some decent treasure behind it. The Opal Amulet goes to Midian for now, since he was back under 25 MP+ after I stole all his amulets to give to Reod. Now that he can cast Eclipse on the first turn again, the battles will become a lot easier for Daniel's party.

Hell yeah. That's more like it.

We then send Daniel back to the western path to grab a Gold Dust.

Following that, he continues upstairs and finds... wait, an open Moon door? I thought Star was the open one right now. Looks like we've found another bug.

Beyond the Moon door is another split path, with the northern direction taking us to another locked door with a floor switch in front of it. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

And in any case, the Moon door bug doesn't really matter, because to the west Daniel finds another Star switch, which means Jovian can move on again...

... and to do that, Harvey needs to pull the Moon switch anyway, so just pretend he pulled it before Daniel hit that door.

Jovian continues through the Moon door and runs into a Sun one.

Ayara takes care of that...

... and Jovian makes his way to his own floor switch.

Next, Harvey pulls the Moon switch again...

... which allows Ayara to leave her room and hang out in front of the Star door.

Then Daniel pulls the Star switch, and Ayara makes her way back to the floor switch she found.

Daniel goes and sits on his floor switch as well.

And finally, Harvey makes his way through the Star door at the end of his path and steps on the floor switch, opening the doors for all four parties.

We're still not quite done yet, though. Harvey continues through the open door...

... and finds the supply room.

We'll place an explosive charge here and set it to detonate once we're already outside.

BOSS FIGHT: Mahadevi

Music: Boss Battle - Wild Arms 2, "Battle vs. Solid"

What, you didn't think we were going to get out of a multi-party dungeon without each party fighting its own boss, did you? Mahadevi is the boss for Harvey's group, and he's probably the most annoying of the lot.

His physical attack is pretty laughable, but that's not why he's annoying.

He's also got Flame Dance, which is a bit of an odd attack in that it seems to be able to change its area of effect at will. This casting is being used against a column, but later in the battle he used it against the entire back row.

But it's not long before Mahadevi uses his most debilitating attack, Nova Flare, which deals moderate damage to the entire party and has a low chance of inflicting Berserk. I've only got one Clearmind, so this is a real pain in the ass.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, he's also got another ability that causes Blind, though I missed the screenshot of it occurring.

In any case, before we start beating on the boss, Joe grabs the Fireball spell he's carrying. All of the bosses here have second-tier attack spells as steals.

I think the main problem I had with this boss was simply that I just didn't have a good party setup for him. My heavy hitters were both fire-aligned, the same as the boss, and my mages weren't the ones I had wearing a bunch of amulets, meaning that they spent most of the battle restricted to first-tier spells. That made the battle drag on a lot longer than it needed to, which meant a whole lot more annoying statuses.

But in the end, I manage to take him down.

Music: Boss Battle Won - Chrono Cross, "Victory (A Cry In Summer)"

Sadly, none of the bosses here have any interesting items to drop, just a bunch of cash.

Music: Shiva - Wild Arms 3, "Fate Breaker"

Well, never mind. We'll finish things up now.

Now we'll have to wait for the others.

Next up, it's Daniel's turn.

BOSS FIGHT: Indra & Elder Summoner

Music: Boss Battle - Wild Arms 2, "Battle vs. Solid"

Indra is a much more reasonable boss than Mahadevi. He's backed up by an Elder Summoner, but she's exposed, so this won't be like the summoner battles we fought earlier.

Marcello nabs a Thunderbolt from Indra to start things off.

Fortunately, the Elder Summoner doesn't know Restore, but she still will spend the entirety of the fight healing and buffing the shit out of Indra if you allow her, so she is the priority target.

She doesn't have all that much HP, so she goes down pretty quickly.

Once the Summoner is gone, Indra himself isn't really all that threatening. He's got a few decent attacks, such as Aether Spire, which deals moderate damage to a single target and has a low chance of inflicting paralysis.

He also has the rather flashy Thunder Twister, but its damage isn't that impressive. We can heal this with a single Mend-All.

His only really threatening move is Thunder Staff, but he doesn't use it often enough for it to be a major problem.

He doesn't inflict nearly as many statuses as Mahadevi, so we can focus on dealing damage and we take him out without much trouble.

Music: Boss Battle Won - Chrono Cross, "Victory (A Cry In Summer)"

Moving on.

Music: Shiva - Wild Arms 3, "Fate Breaker"

Let's hope the others are doing fine.

Jovian is up next. There's a treasure chest on the path to his boss, which contains a Titanium Orb (+8 MDF).

BOSS FIGHT: Nandi

Music: Boss Battle - Wild Arms 2, "Battle vs. Solid"

Nandi is another fairly straightforward boss. He's backed up by three Almenga Soldiers, but they're barely even worth mentioning.

Unlike the previous two bosses, Nandi mostly focuses on physical attacks. He's got a decent amount of power in Skewer.

He also will occasionally use Trample to hit everyone.

And... that's about it. Not exactly the most exciting boss.

Have I mentioned that Jovian has been tearing shit up with his relation boosts? He makes this battle end much faster than it probably would normally.

Music: Boss Battle Won - Chrono Cross, "Victory (A Cry In Summer)"

Next!

Music: Shiva - Wild Arms 3, "Fate Breaker"

All right, we're all set. The rest is up to the others.

Finally, we've got Ayara.

BOSS FIGHT: Kama

Music: Boss Battle - Wild Arms 2, "Battle vs. Solid"

Like Nandi, Kama is backed up by three Almenga Soldiers, but...

... yeah.

Kama is probably the easiest boss of the bunch with our party setups, since he's all about blocking and weakening your magic, but Ayara's group is almost entirely physical-oriented. He's got Stunning Mirage, which deals some heavy damage and inflicts Mindblow...

... as well as Fragile Touch, which inflicts Amnesia.

He's also got Photon Beam, but that's nothing this party can't handle.

And those three attacks are all he manages to get off. We cut him down quickly.

Music: Boss Battle Won - Chrono Cross, "Victory (A Cry In Summer)"

I'd say it's about time we got out of here.

Music: Shiva - Wild Arms 3, "Fate Breaker"

Let's finish up before anyone else finds us...

Everything's ready now! Let's hurry and get out!

Fade to black...

Music: None

It came from the supply depot! Everything's on fire!

What!? Our entire food storage is in there! We have to let the commander hear about this immediately!

Dead!?

Those intruders... Did they do all of this!?

The enemy is right outside the gates, and we can't get them to close anymore!

They sabotaged the gates too?

What should we do now? We can't hold out against them, can we?

We can't possibly fix the gates in time. If we hurry we can throw up a makeshift barricade, but they're already on their way... it won't last long. On this short term, without the commander... it'll be chaos no matter what we do.

Let's retreat. If we head north, we can meet up with reinforcements and push them back again.

Impossible. The back gates have been sabotaged too. They won't budge.

Fade to black...

Music: Kirgard - Suikoden V, "Harbor Town by the Lighthouse"

I'm surprised myself. They surrendered before the attack was even launched. Well, it's not like they had much of a choice. We just overestimated their determination to fight.

Clearly these weren't their best soldiers. We shouldn't become overconfident just because of one victory. But that aside, did you find out anything from talking to their officers?

They were all pretty tight-lipped, I'm afraid. Despite surrendering, they're still unwilling to cooperate with us.

Ash... I don't know that name. He can't be one of their generals from the last war, then.

Those generals were still serving Emperor Sigmund. There may have been a purge in the ranks when his son took the crown. But anyway, as expected, Ash is in St. Reinard along with their main garrison.

We still have a long way to go before we reach the capital.

A lightning strike will catch them unaware and give us easy territorial gains. Any land we win here would cost us twice the effort if we waited.

Hmm, I agree. There's no fortresses in south of the river, and there shouldn't be any fortified encampments.

Elsewhere...

Music: Brunhild - Final Fantasy VIII, "Find Your Way"

So? Why are you bothering me with something insignificant like that?

They are different from the others. I thought they could prove useful. Although their sanity is in question, they are powerful. And more importantly, they're completely focused on a single purpose. It seems they've dedicated themselves entirely to the purpose of fighting against Daniel Vinyard, to the extent where they'd sacrifice anything to defeat him.

Get to the point, Brunhild. What do you want from me?

I don't need anything. I am only here to inform you.