Part 70: Episode LXI: Defend My Summoner

New Music: Seymour's Ambition



How could it have inevitably come to this? Time to fight Seymour Guado & Friends! This boss battle has a few gimmicks going for it. But it doesn't nearly have as many things to juggle as the Crawler. Which doesn't say a lot for Seymour's abilities, to be honest.



First of all, we have Seymour's two cronies to worry about. Before we can do anything, both of the Guado henchmen will cast Protect on themselves to limit damage from physical attacks.



Meanwhile, Seymour buffs himself with Shell to ward off those pesky magical abilties. Usually mages have a bit higher than normal inate magical resistance and a glass jaw when it comes to physical attacks. But I'm sure he knows what he's doing.



Following the Guado Gang's buffs, we'll gain control of the party. Three of the party members (Tidus, Yuna, and Wakka) now have access to a Trigger Command for this fight: Talk. We can use it on Seymour and should do so immediately with all three characters.



"Oh, my sincerest apologies."
"Seymour!"



Getting all hotblooded anime protagonist on Seymour will boost the holy hell out of Tidus' physical attacks for the duration of the fight. His normal attacks will do a good 1500-2500 HP a shot. So he'll be doing most of the leg work damage output wise against Seymour.



"Your eyes, they burn with resolve... Beautiful."



Seymour being a bigger creeper than usual will raise Yuna's magic defenses. I like how Seymour has absolutely no middle ground between shady, almost definitely evil church official and full on definitely evil slimeball. Just: 'Oh my, my ghost dad ratted me out? I suppose it's time to just murder everyone in the middle of this public temple.' I wonder how confused his entourage are right now at this turn of events.



"... ... ..."
“Argh... This can't be happening!"

Wakka's Magic Defense also raises thanks to Seymour... having no response to him. Sorry Wakka, folks in power only pay attention to the hyper religious shirtless rednecks whose only compassion are sports and shitting on minorities around election time and I think maesters are in it for life.



Now then, about the battle proper. We've got a couple problems to deal with before we can get to work on Seymour. Namely, his two buddies. Seymour has Shell cast so magic is out (and he'd just immediately recast it if it were dispelled.) And if we attempt to attack him physically, it is revealed Seymour has grinded out the S-Link with his pals, so they will shield any blows against him.



On top of that, both the Guado goons are equipped with Auto-Potion and will heal 1000 HP as soon as they are attacked by anything. Rude. We need to put a button on that ASAP.



Rikku comes in handy here. Auto-Potion can be disabled by simply having her steal from the two. We get a pair of free Hi-Potions out of the deal and their infinite supply of auto-healing is knocked out of commission. Don't ask me how that works. It just does. Don't question it.



On the offensive side of Team Guado, Seymour comes packing all four second tier magic spells and will select a different one every turn. That's all he's got going for him at the moment. While damaging, it's not the biggest of threats. Yuna can pop off some Shell spells to lessen the damage. It's recommend at least herself and Tidus get a dose of the old Shell, since they're the major players in this fight.



While still breathing and not busying themselves with protecting Seymour or healing themselves, the Guado guards will use “Shremedy” which afflicts Confusion on a party member. Depending on who it hits, that can be a minor annoyance. Or it could mean a confused Tidus lopping Yuna's head off by mistake. So best to avoid that by...



...Murdering both of Seymour's body guards, of course. Can't leave any witnesses to our assassination of a head of Yevon, now can we? Maybe Auron has knowledge of doctoring a crime scene to frame one of 'em. He did travel with Jecht. That scenario had to crop up at least once or twice.





After we waste Seymour's guards and take the man himself to around 50% health (of his total 6,000 HP) he'll decide he has enough of our shit and pull out his trump card...









Things just got a whole lot more METAL!



We now need to deal with Seymour's trademark summon, Anima. The death metal album cover of an aeon has 18,000 HP we need to grind down before the fight returns focus to Seymour. Which is a lot less of an ordeal than it sounds. Despite its fierce looks, Anima is a bit of a glass cannon and takes damage like a chump.



Fighting Anima is a bit of a race against the clock. As soon as it is summoned it uses Boost, making all actions (especially attacks against it) err... boost its Overdrive gauge. And we do not want to see the aeon's overdrive. And if we do, it better be one of Yuna's aeons taking one for the team. Otherwise, well...



We're gonna have a bad time.



While waiting to annihilate everyone on the field with its overdrive, Anima's only offensive capability is Pain. Which... is an instant kill against anyone in our party. I think the game may be kind of nudging us toward using a summon. Indeed, as soon as Anima appears one of the party members will straight up tell Yuna “Summon! NOW!”



And there is a good reason for that. I wasn't actually joking earlier when I said Yuna did a speedrun through the Cloister of Trials. In her ten minute head start over the party she did indeed solve all the temple puzzles, pray to the fayth, and got hooked up with a brand new aeon. She's certainly come a long way from spending multiple days praying in a temple just to get an oversized bird with boobs out of the deal.

We may as well give that a test drive. Especially, since I have a Grand Summon overdrive tucked away for a rainy day good to go on Yuna already.













Alright, you're on oversized shawl duty while our giant woman ice stripper gets to work. Meet ???? or Shiva, as her friends like to call her. For now.



Shiva had a few options available to her. But we did perform a Grand Summon, so we may as well use it. We do have 16,000 HP to whittle down here, after all.











???? gets her Sub-Zero on and and proceeds to ice blast the entire field. Wasn't there a terrible female Sub-Zero clone at some point or am I imagining things? Back on the tail end of the PS2/GCN/Xbox generation that was full to the brim with shit characters to the point they had to do a soft reboot.

…

Yep! Frost. Good grief. Literally just Sub-Zero with boobs and some sort of ridiculous frozen Super Saiyan hair. Terrible.





Anyway, letting Shiva get her magical sass on does some pretty good damage here against Anima. This leg of the battle is already over half done.



We still need to worry about Anima's Overdrive as it will one-shot Shiva. But Pain's instant kill abilities don't work against aeons and only do around 500ish damage. Which is nothing to worry about.



Should Shiva's HP get low, she comes equipped with Blizzard and Blizzara. The latter of which can be cast on Shiva herself for a full heal. Or against Anima for a good 3000 HP of damage.





As its unique ability, Shiva brings to the table “Heavenly Strike” which is... just forming a large chunk of ice above an opponent's head and letting gravity do its work. Despite being literally ice in a world where ice is a type of magic, it only counts as a non-elemental physical attack. It can also inflict Threaten (read: Paralysis/Daze/Kind of a shitty Stop) occasionally... were we not against an enemy that is immune to the status.



Not much more to be said on the ice queen or the embodiment of Seymour's teenage angst. Diamond Dust did most of the work on Anima and it's just a matter of burning through the rest of its HP in short order with Blizzara or Heavenly Strikes.



Once its health is depleted, Seymour dismisses Anima and returns to the battle for a second round. The creep has cheated a bit during his aeon summoning as he's regained all his health and fucked with his Sphere Grid a bit to buff his magic capabilities and unlock double-casting for his magic.





Seymour's first order of business will be to nuke Shiva from the playing field. Two rounds of tier two magic will probably do the job in short order. But barring that, Seymour can straight up use his summoner ability to dismiss Yuna's aeons. So those are out for the remainder of the battle.







Remember how I said it was a good idea to use Shell on some of the active party? Well this is why. Seymour takes every turn to cast two second tier magic spells. With Shell active it only does around 500-700 per attack. While unprotected it can do four digit damage. That's less than ideal.



Optimally, we want Yuna and Tidus at least Hasted and everyone with a Shell. Yuna is on healing duty, Tidus is still doing around 2000 HP of damage with his physicals and basically soloing the damage output for the fight. Lulu is worthless since Seymour still has Shell cast as well. And Rikku is made out of tissue paper still at this point and can't do physical damage worth crap. So Auron or Wakka ought to be our third wheel. I suppose Kimahri could work too, but that would require remembering he exists in the heat of battle and that's just never going to happen.





Once we have a good set-up in place, it's just a matter of beating Seymour into submission. No further tricks up the Guado's ridiculously oversized sleeves. He apparently forgot how to do his Overdrive back at Mushroom Rock. Not that I'm complaining.





Welp. That wasn't too bad. Your Sphere Grid was a mess, maester.





Yuna replies with a silent look of “Eh...”







Aaaaaand that's a wrap! No fleeing through a portal or taking off on a helicopter to fight another day here. First battle and job is done. Maester Seymour Guado is fucking dead!







RIP Seymour Guado. Meanwhile, Guado Guard A was supporting three children after their mother was killed in an attack by Sin earlier this year. Guado Guard B's wife was expecting their first child later this month. Both of their corpses have been shuffled off into a corner to rot while Seymour's death drama plays out. Real compassionate, Yuna.



*rushes to Seymour* “Wh-What happened here?”



“Wait a minute! It's not our fault at all!”
”I mean yes... it's our fault he's dead now. But there was more to it than that!”



*evacuates bowels*



“Dude, it was self-defense.”
“B-But there are SEVEN of you!”
“He had two more dudes with him. They err...”
*looks at twitching roasted bodies of Guado Guards* “...Nevermind about that.”
*walks away* "Yuna. Send him."



“Stay away from him, traitors!"



The trio of Guado recover Seymour's body and shuffle off out of the room with his corpse to go enact Weekend at Seymour's or whatever Guado do with their dead. Nobody pays it much mind. I'm sure that will never come up again.

Yuna drops to her knees...



“We're finished.”
"Now hold on just a minute! Seymour's the bad guy, right? We'll just explain to everyone what happened!"
"It won't be that easy...”

What's so difficult to explain? A summoner's guardians only beat up a monk to gain access to the inner sanctum of a temple and murdered the resident maester, and leader of an entire race of Spira, as well as his bodyguards in cold blood. But we have proof he was a baddie! A ghost leaving behind a video tape saying his son was totally an evil little shit and did him in will hold up in court, right?

Wait... didn't we leave that in the other room with the temple staff and Tromell nearby? Bah. I'm sure it's fine.



Anyway, no reason to dwell on it. We've gotten a new summon for Yuna so our business is concluded at this temple. Let's bounce.





But first, some healthy spoils of war. Look, we're at no fault for the vicious assassination of Seymour Guado. All that loot that was on his still warm corpse was just going to go to waste if we didn't take it! It'd be a disservice to his memory if we didn't take all the money from his wallet as well.

It's only natural.



And finally, now that the battle is over we can rename ????/Shiva. The original thread came to a consensus of Gunter way back when. Any you know what...? That thread caught on fire around then. Gunter is clearly some sort of hexed name and we won't have it poisoning this resurrected LP. So that name is tossed in the trash. It's a new thread. It's been three years. So let's have a do-over.

----- AEON RENAMING: SHIVA -----

Let's review the boundaries for naming our new summon...

• We’ve only got EIGHT spaces to work with here. So no names over eight spaces!
  
• Suggestions must be BOLDED to make my life easier. If you don't bold it, I'm not going to acknowledge it.
  
• No naming it dongs or any variations thereof. This is a family friendly LP except for all the times it is not.
  
• No using other summons' names. From this game or previous titles. That's just confusing.
  
• Gunter is a killing name. It is barred from the proceedings.
  
• Try not to kill my soul too hard with ice/snow puns...
  

Whatever consensus the thread comes to or whatever I think is the funniest will become Shiva's new slave name loving title.










Video: Episode 61 Highlight Reel (Recommended viewing!)





Anima Concept Art - Catdog got really fucked up in later seasons...