Part 21: Mystic River - Mystic Knight 08
Mystic River - Mystic Knight 08Welcome back, last episode we beat the final boss, today we go celebrate.
So we finally get closure on Salsa's true name.
These jerks chest bumped us. They were supposed to be thinking we're threats to the royal family (well Mihnwu is), and think the best plan of guarding them is to push us into them.
Yeah... look at those... pixels? Don't know why Mihnwu is shocked, he was aroused when she dressed like a man.
Then again, maybe he's surprised she's been well... preserved over the last several days of being dead.
Silence, or you will be the first to die. Well we can't do anything aside from talk to Krile (the dancers are better guards and block all attempts at contact better than the Royal Guards), so let's bounce. The end credits are sure to roll then.
Mihnwu started a wanderer, and will end the game as a wanderer, but the world has changed around him.
They'll have their little vignettes during the ending, no worries there.
Oh yeah, the real reward for beating the game: we get a bridge. Final Fantasy started with a bridge being built, so Final Fantasy V ending with one is a nice bookend to the series.
Another call back to where Frionielion and Maria forgot all about her brother until he became the next Dark Lord.
Sadly, we'll never get resolution to this loose thread. Mihnwu hasn't conquered his fear of heights.
Nor his urge to teamkill.
You can kill a Demon Tree in Shining Armor, but not a level 3 corpse. That boy ain't right.
I don't remember a river being there.
The only other chocobo I know of was in Galuf's world in a place I had no business wandering into, where'd this one come from and why are they introducing it at the end?
So now we're riding Boko into the sunset.
Boko can cross rivers. This didn't come up before because there were no rivers to cross. Why the game chooses to introduce new mechanics in the end eludes me.
Mihnwu falls into a hole and fights this "boss." I'm having a feeling this might not be over.
The Antlion has a regular attack, a sap inflicting attack, and the ever popular Discord.
Mihnwu uses the good standby Drain Blade to keep sap from doing him in. He's done enough Discords here to reduce him to Level 1.
It takes a long time, but he eventually runs.
That's not true at all, Mihnwu relies on no one else.
Oh, hello Faris. We beat the final boss, but feel free to join us.
Because royalty is allowed to take what they want, you want the challenge of it being a forbidden fruit.
So anyway, getting back to the end. Thank you Sakaguchi for your production.
Amano, I know your work is divisive, but I love it.
Uematsu, great work as always.
Ghido, you're a dirty old man.
Narita, for all the complexity in this game, it's a well oiled machine.
oiled machinemachinechine...
Kitase, you get top marks for Gilgamesh and Ghido alone!
Ito, good job.
And last but not least, Exdeath for his...
Exdeath for...?
Exdeath, get out of the end credits!
So maybe this isn't the end.
At least we've got a new party member to take Lenna's place as a corpsely shield.
Kurosowa showdown.
So we get smacked out of a cave and a quarter world away.
Neeeeerrrrd.
Leaving this here without further comment.
We're gonna be unsealing Ultima, bitches!
So now we're in a desert. No Sandworms were harmed in this journey. They all died when the sand stopped shifting.
Nothing particularly interesting here, more jerks inflicting sap and hitting fairly hard, so Drain Sword is the way to go.
Sap and slow, but nothing too dangerous.
We've skipped the next dungeon for a very special item. In the Southwest corner of the town, there was a locked door, it is now open.
Mihnwu is back there, somewhere. Go all the way down you can, then west, north, east, then south.
And a mystic clearing appears.
He gives us a choice, but it isn't really a real choice to make.
Every two fights Mihnwu runs from increases the attack by one. I'm honestly shocked it's this low of a number.
The Great Sword for reference on its power.
So the pyramid.
So sentient and hostile statues.
These guys will revive each other if left alone.
The back one is casting transfusion on the front one. This has gone south fast.
Wait, I forgot one extra condition about that revival thing. Left alone and awake.
Mihnwu is fast enough to sleep lock them. The only thing of note is that the Gargoyles are in a front and back row. Not like the Bio Soldiers who had a similar formation long ago.
Final Level - 43
Total Deaths - 0
The Pyramid is full of undead. Shockingly not many are vulnerable to fire. These guys are vulnerable to Ice
These guys have no elemental weakness. They hit hard and often.
So change in plans, switch to the back row and lay on the Sleep. When all is calm, pop back to the front and end it.
This dragon can be nasty to an unprepared party, what with the zombie breath and all. But the Bone Mail blocks most of his garbage. He's heavy, so Firaga only does a lot of damage (back row), rather than cremate him.
This is the most dangerous enemy in the dungeon for a solo character. She summons monsters and buffs and heals them. They're enemies from previous areas but the constant 700HP curas shells, hastes and protects make that a very irritating thing to deal with.
Plus its hard to run from. Mihnwu must be fixated on her lack of pants. Put her to sleep (and any monster she manages to drag out) and hack away. She has some evasion, so there may be times where she sneaks something in.
Another interesting fact, if you put her to sleep while she's charging her summon, it will still go off, but will die instantly.
There's a room full of these guys.
For probably 2 tons of steel, it wasn't very heavy.
I should correct myself; there was a room full of these guys.
This is the first time in the game where Mihnwu has been short of MP. So these guys get to be burned to death the slow and painful way. Rather than the instant and painful way.
These guys guarded the second gimmick armor of the game. The Thornlet has high physical defense, but inflicts constant sap. No thank you.
A couple ethers and we fight the second set of these guys.
Firaga to the face.
So we get our first and only necessary tablet, or lithograph. Bahamut sends his regards.
Exdeath has posessed Lenna, she's now Evi-lenna.
Sadly, the Hiryu suicides on her.
He learned it from you Lenna, he learned it from YOU!
So, boss time. She's got a gimmick too.
She always starts the fight weak to fire, so that does some good.
The trick is that she does the ever popular Barrier Change. So she cycles randomly between the three elements and Aero. She could reveal the form if she stayed on script long enough (she casts the 2 black magics she's absorbing), but in this fight she just constantly barrier changed after one attack.
So Mihnwu switches to Drain. Some forms don't take damage from it (but don't heal her), some do.
Thundaga (and theoretically Aeroga, but she never cast it) is the only danger of the fight, even accounting for 0-damage dry spells a damage dealing Drain would easily overcome it.
Final Level - 45
Total Deaths - 0
And Exdeath kills about half the planet.
Next time, we're eventually headed to Mysidia Tower.