Part 30: Vesperia
27. Vesperia
This time around we start off in a room that's eerily reminiscent of the Sealed Cave, but has nothing to do with it in practice. Instead, it's full of enemies that take almost no damage from physical attacks.
To the extent of every single fight here consisting of Flans. The Dust Mousse is one of two new types for this floor, and is categorised as an Undead as well as a Flan. Appropriately it has a weakness to
It has more than 10,000 HP though so Meteor's not as useful as it sounds. Go figure.
The Golden Flan is the other new one, and it has no weakness at all. It's also a bit hardier than usual for a Flan, and will drop a Golden Apple if you feel like grinding in here forever.
In this formation stolen from the Master Flan fight, the Golden Flan is indeed untargetable with single-target attacks until we deal with everything else first. Or we could just drop a Bahamut and hit it instantly.
The next floor also attempts to make you think its something that it isn't. It looks like another simple lunar area, but this one's a bit more special.
It also, unfortunately, happens to be the place where we can run into the Magic Dragon.
It, uh, it's kind of a dick to be honest.
More importantly, in the middle of the room is a lot of treasure chests. They're mostly consumables we'll hold onto until we need them though.
Well, except maybe this one.
Our last floor is an enemy-less variation of the Antlion's Den. Rather than start in the middle and work up, we're already at the top and can easily leave. So of course there's something in the middle.
It's just Sylphs that give full healing, but considering the timing of it I'm not one to complain.
And they give you a Megalixir the first time, too. That's kinda nice, all things considered.
The next trial's up, and this one is for Kain. Because at least one of them has to be, this one decides to be awkward about it.
You are, normally, not allowed to use anyone but Kain for any part. This is a non-issue for our purposes, but you are intended to solo this one anyway.
We're also limited entirely to the main area of Baron, the Inn, Rosa's house and sometimes the tutorial area that houses the Devil's Road. All the other buildings are locked the entire time, and trying to leave Baron either has the game tell us off for it or just loops us back to the entrance.
It's basically a murder-mystery setting, which sounds amazing in theory. The execution leaves a little to be desired, but I like these kinda things so I'm a bit more lenient on it than I probably should be.
The first day is dedicated to talking to witnesses, and other people to see what we can learn about the initial crime.
By all accounts, the perp is most likely to be Kain. There's a pretty obvious route this trial could easily take at this point.
Fortunately, even the trial fakey version of Cecil is willing to stand up for us. None of that bullshit trial sequence from Chrono Trigger here, thank God.
Also to try and build suspense, they have the Captain of the guard who is also in charge of the investigation turn up. He promptly proceeds to be a dick, and will never act like a dick again.
Next day, the weapon store owner guy has been brutally murdered by a lance user. Said lance was also conveniently stolen from the weapon store in the first place.
It also decides to now spawn in our room in the inn. Just because.
Might as well take it, and hand it over to the soldiers. And so ends day 2!
...What, they can't all be stuff beyond a giant glowing neon sign of "Kain is being framed."
Day 3 is even less full of stuff. Rosa is missing, no one has seen her.
Like, at all. She just straight up vanished.
Kain just decides to spontaneously wake up in the middle of the night this time, having had a nightmare. I guess it just adds to the drama or something?
But, hey, we're still awake so why not look for Rosa while we're up and about anyway? Not like we've got anything better to do.
She just turns up in the area where the dancer is normally. Of course, no one thought to look here by the sounds of things and she's not here until now anyway.
Not that it makes a difference, since she doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
If we go back to where we found her the next day, there's a... wound... in the ground? And it just happens to have been made by a lance. And the lance the soldiers had has vanished.
Oh wait, it's back in the Inn again. This time, though, Cecil isn't around to bail us out...
So of course we're immediately placed under house arrest. You can probably guess how long this lasts.
Mere seconds, because that's how long it takes for Kain's hitherto unmentioned schizophrenia to kick in and tell him to murder people. But it's fine because his hallucinations have already done it for him.
Well, okay, this guy did it. He's not the person who was talking to Kain, though...
So, who's our perp?
A random guard!
Scooby-Doo ain't got nothin' on this reveal. Dude doesn't have a name or anything.
But it's okay, really, because we're not done yet. See, Kain's schizophrenia's playing up again and now the lance is telling him to kill Cecil. We could actually go and do that, even.
Like, Cecil's right here but he runs into the Devil's Road before we can catch up. Alright, sure, let's just follow him to do what our hallucinations say.
It's at this point, I finally remove Kain altogether. I didn't do it earlier, because the game probably would've gotten mad at me for it.
Also Rosa's been kidnapped again, and used as bait to lure Cecil into a trap. What a surprise!
Surprisingly, we don't actually have a Lunar Eidolon for the antagonist, maybe. It's been Kain's shadow all along.
This is a bit misleading. The choice is really "kill Cecil or fight the boss," and choosing the former is obviously wrong. You actually do kill Cecil, and then you're booted out of the trial with no reward and are unable to ever do it again.
Sod that, let's fight a boss.
[Music: I'll Face Myself ~ Battle]
He has 100,000 HP and the fight normally doesn't last long enough to actually win like that anyway. You could potentially hit him with Tornado one way or another, but that's not a good idea either.
Not because he counters everything with a physical attack, mind you. He doesn't attack at all if you don't, though.
No, the real reason is that attacking means you do not get to fight the Lunar Eidolon in this trial.
So we rely on the good ol' fashioned technique of "do nothing" that we were meant to use against the Dark Knight, and did use against the King and Queen of Eblan.
After a little while, Dark Kain decides he's had enough of this crap.
He promptly jumps right outta here, and never comes back down.
He IS kind enough to leave behind a little present, though. And that present is a little bit more than an explosion, mind you...
[Music: Fighting of the Spirit ~ The Unholy Wars]
No, he leaves behind Lunar Bahamut too. That was generous of him!
It's really kinda obvious that you're meant to be fighting Bahamut in a one-on-one duel, considering most of his stats are awful low. His strength is a fair bit above average for one of the fights here, but that's the only outlier.
Somewhat unrelated, but the music doesn't change in-game. The regular battle theme plays the entire time. Doesn't even get boss music or anything!
Despite his reasonably low magic defense, Flare doesn't consistently hit him for 9999. And much like Dark Kain...
He counters all damage you deal to him. But, that's all he should do that is able to damage you.
All of his own turns are spent counting down from 3. Ordinarily, this might actually be threatening and pose a problem for us.
...Except, the game just handed us a Light Curtain right before we got here. Not the smartest thing it could've done. We don't even need a Lunar one for how long this fight's going to last either.
Of course, once he's counted down fully he throws out a Mega Flare but that's the only attack he does of his own volition. And it's still reflectable when you're on the receiving end.
He doesn't hurt himself that bad with it, but it's a little over 10% of his max HP so it adds up pretty quickly.
Not that he even gets to do it more than maybe twice total, anyway. His 50,000 HP is really low and our Bahamut deals a consistent 9999.
The Light Curtain never even got a chance to wear off. It's also worth remembering that Bahamut drops the Grimoire, not Dark Kain; if you needed another reason to not hit him with Tornado, there's that.
And our reward for beating is is some neat gear for Kain. If we were using him, this would actually be really good.
But we're not, so oh well!
For what it's worth, the reward for beating this trial in full more than the once is a Megalixir. Would be arguably worth it, were it not for needing to slog through a lot of the Lunar Ruins first. And then the trial is pretty lengthy too.
Next time: fly with the lightning quickness?
Optional Bosses Fought: 25
Optional Bosses Killed: 25
Success Rate: 100%