Part 50: Dragons are jerks.

Welcome to Shinryu's Roost. It should be obvious what's here.


The final gimmick returns, damage floors! I hope you've mastered Geomancer.


Every Dragon in the game appears here. I guess it's convenient for getting Dragon fangs.


I never did bother to steal more Ribbons, so now I have two!


And a whole lot of chests.


...really? A Lightning scroll?


Then there's this thing.


A counterpart to the Grand Helm. Like the Grand Helm there's little reason to use it.


Now for this dick move of a fight.



Butz needs to do two things. Once he does them he's good.



Lenna will not be doing much in this fight.



Kirile will be Dragon slaying tonight.



Faris will be doing even less then Butz


Here we go.

Boss Fight: Neo Shinryu


Neo Shinryu is a pure expression of hatred compressed into a treasure chest. Let me count the ways it hates you. First, it will do every single Screw You attack in the game. Tidal Wave, Zombie Breath, Algemest. You name it, Neo Shinryu does it. Of course, we've dealt with those attacks before. What makes it worse is that they happen so fast. That's not the worst of it though. Neo Shinryu has three parts. One of them is a dummy target meant to make Rapidfire less useful. The other one is the part you attack. It will randomly decide to make itself invulnerable for a while. Finally, there's the part that actually attacks. This part is untargetable. This means that the usual way I deal with bosses doesn't work. Because while Neo Shinryu is technically vulnerable to Slow and Old, a combo that would normally render a boss harmless, the part that attacks can't be hit with it. And will continue to fire along its attacks at its usual absurd speed. It took more tries then any other boss so far to beat before I stumbled across a strategy that worked.


First Haste everybody. Then Lenna and Krile hide.


Faris begins singing Swift Song. This is all she'll do for this fight.


With Butz having cast Hastega, he switches out to the second Healing Staff.


He then begins singing Hero's Rime.


With this done, Neo Shinryu uses Zombie Breath. I will say one thing though, though it delivers an unending assault. Neo Shinryu is largely predictable. (That's why Butz and Faris had Ice Shields, to block his Ice Breath attack) Now Butz and Faris are Zombies, and it reveals an interesting quirk of the game.

If a character is hit with the Zombie status while singing, they continue to sing as a zombie This means that I can sit back, let Kirile get buffed up, and bring her out when it's safe to hit him.


So screw you Neo Shinryu. I outsmarted your absurd brute force.


Of course as a final expression of hate, when you finally kill him he casts Gigaflare...


...and Meteor back to back. Which is why Lenna didn't do anything in this fight.


Sure, 3/4 of my party is dead, but I won.


In return, you get the Ultima Weapon.


Ladies and Gentlemen, the best weapon in the game. The Ulitma Weapon doesn't have any fancy tricks. Just an absolutely massive attack power.

Next Time: I finish off this dungeon.