Part 15: Rainfall

Update 15: Rainfall

Welcome back. This update is longer than I anticipated, but that just means more content. Let’s dive right in.





Rainheart warped through the ceiling, so logic dictates that he should be on the third floor.









We arrive in time to see Rainheart vanish into room 305. Tighten your seatbelts, because it’s time to throw down.

Music: Galerians - Rainheart’s Theme



: I won’t fail this time, Mother!



Rainheart lowers himself to the ground, then it’s time to fight!



Rainheart is actually a fairly simple opponent to beat. He moves slowly enough that you can usually get off at least one attack even at Lv. 1, and he doesn’t have nearly the same amount of stamina that Birdman had. He does occasionally teleport, but not enough that it’s a real issue.



Rainheart’s basic attack is a shove that he uses right after teleporting. It’s fairly powerful and knocks you across the room, but he tends to pause for a bit after doing it which can let you get in a quick attack once Rion gets back up.



The fight isn't too tough, but there is one ground rule that, if broken, will make your life miserable. That rule is simply to never attack Rainheart with Red.







If you do, Rainheart will take control of the flames and send them back at you in a tremendous explosion so huge I couldn't .gif it. Both the initial explosion and the fireballs deal damage, with the flames lingering for several seconds to make it hard to move around.



Stick to Nalcon and this won’t happen. I didn’t have any D-Felon left, but that’s ineffective too. Nalcon is the only way to take Rainheart down.



Of course, Rainheart has more tricks up his sleeve. When you’ve depleted some of his health he’ll occasionally summon two charred zombies to fight you. They’re slow, die in one hit and their only attack is a lunge that causes them to disintegrate regardless of whether they hit you or not, but in the cramped confines of the boss arena they’re one more thing to worry about.





Eventually Rainheart will start using his pyrokinesis even if you don’t use Red on him. You can interrupt him while he’s charging, but only if you’re quick. As an aside, the flames will also kill any zombies that wander into them.









Overall Rainheart isn’t too tough and goes down fairly quickly if you keep pounding him, with his death triggering another cutscene.









Mortally wounded, Rainheart’s psychic powers draw Rion into his memories.



: Please…don’t tell Mother…don’t tell her I failed! She’ll scream at me, then make me take that horrible medicine. I hate it!

: Mother just wants you to get stronger! You must take your medicine.



: But it turns me into a monster! It’s destroying my true self!

: It’s already three o’clock. It’s time for your medicine.



: No! It’s only two fifty! It’s not time yet!!





: Argh!



Lem injects the PPEC, and the scene slowly fades back to reality.



: You’re wrong…I’m not the killer! There’s a beast lurking in my mind. It makes me look like the killer…but I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me…you’ve got to believe me…





: You mustn’t tell her…please…don’t tell Mother I failed…



Rainheart dies, and the cutscene ends. He led a tragic life, but at least the monster inside him can’t hurt anyone else now.









Killing Rainheart causes the maintenance man to finally finish his work downstairs.



: Oh, it’s you again.

: What are you doing?

: Are you blind? I’m checking out the hotel blueprints!



: They demolished the old hotel to build this one, but they kept the same crummy old plumbing. This place shares a boiler with that abandoned restaurant next door. Ugh, I really hate this building.

: So…I could get to that restaurant by going through the boiler room?



: I suppose so! But why bother? It’s out of business, so there’s nothing there now.

: Okay. Thanks.



A locked up, run down old restaurant accessible through the hotel’s basement? Sounds like the perfect hiding place to me.



Sure enough, it’s our next destination. Before that, though, you might be wondering what happened to the two other guests still unaccounted for - the drug dealer and his middleman. Well…









They’re both dead. Out of the original guests only the maintenance man manages to survive.







The boiler room is a small area without much in it.





It contains an elevator that’ll take us to the restaurant, but it doesn’t seem to be functioning.



A reading reveals we’ll need to finally flip that circuit breaker in order to access it.



The magic of editing lets us warp back there instantly.









Flipping the switch cuts the power, so naturally all the lights go out.



It also causes two Arabesques to spawn in the boiler room.



We could fight them, but why bother? There’s just enough room to dodge past them and we aren’t coming through this part of the stage again anyway.







We find ourselves in the kitchen of the old restaurant.



It’s a pretty small area, with only four rooms to explore.



One of these is a run down old bathroom. Unlike most bathrooms in the game there are actually some items inside.





We’ll be needing both of these very soon.



Heading back into the kitchen causes another Arabesque to spawn. Like the ones in the boiler, it’s easiest to just run past it. Going through the door triggers a long-awaited reunion.







: Lilia!

: Rion!







: My father’s dead, isn’t he? I called for him, but there’s no reply.

: You look so tired. Have they hurt you?



Meanwhile, Rita has discovered Rainheart’s body.



: I’ve been secretly moving from place to place over the past month. But don’t worry. I’m okay.



: I’ve heard your voice in my mind so many times.



: I can feel your suffering. When you feel pain, I feel it too.

: I’m sorry I took so long. Your voice helped me so much.



: Congratulations, Rion.



: Who’re you?!

: Rita. I’ve come to bash her brains in.

: Are you a Galerian too?



: Mother fears the virus program hidden in Lilia’s mind. Mother can’t even sleep at night. You humans are such fools. Our fate lies solely in Mother’s hands.



: Now I shall avenge my dear brother! See, Rainheart wasn’t too bright, but he was my pride and joy. He was gentle as could be. Don’t you see? He was the only brother I had left…



:…and that is why I’m going to make sure you die a slow and extremely painful death!





Rita uses psychokinesis to hurl furniture at Rion and Lilia.

: Lilia!



: Don’t worry. I know I can disrupt her psychokinesis with my power!



: Argh! You little punk!





Unfortunately while the virus program may interfere with psychic powers, it does nothing to stop an enemy from picking up a table with their bare hands and decking you in the head with it.



: Lilia!



Music: Galerians - Rita’s Theme



The cutscene ends, and now it’s time for a boss fight against Rita.



Rita is a bitch to fight. The very first thing she does is hop on a table and levitate it, putting herself out of reach of all our attacks. She spends around 90% of the battle like this, so chances to actually deal damage to her are extremely limited.



Her basic attack is to fly around and try to ram into you. She moves quickly and the attack has a slightly wonky hitbox, but there's plenty of room to evade so it's not a massive pain.



After three or four passes Rita will land and become vulnerable to attack. You’d better act fast though, since she only stays on the ground for about a second before summoning another table.





One way to maximise the amount of damage you can do is to use Red, then quickly switch to Nalcon and use its rapid-fire secondary ability to hit her multiple times while she’s stunned. Don’t bother charging the Nalcon up to full, she’ll recover before you can do it.



Clever players may think to try and stunlock her with this method. Unfortunately this won’t work, as Rita will quickly use her psychokinesis to surround herself with spinning bits of furniture. The whirling barricade renders Rita untouchable, at least until she drops it by using its components as projectile weapons.



Like all of this game’s boss fights this battle has a number of stages. Once you’ve damaged Rita a little she’ll start summoning other tables during her attack runs. They float in the air for a while, but once Rita lands…



They hurtle down to smash Rion in the face. They don’t all come down at once, and if you’re in motion they probably won’t hit, but they cut down on the already narrow window you have to attack Rita before she levitates herself again.



Just to make things more irritating, the arena has two screens. And yes, Rita does have a not infrequent habit of landing in the one you aren’t on.



After taking even more damage Rita will pull out another trick. Instead of her usual dive-bombing she’ll more often hover in the air and chuck stuff at you, sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once as seen above. Once she’s run out of stuff to throw she’ll either summon more or execute a quick kamikaze attack. This also forces her to land, but she'll hop on another table immediately so there's no window to hit her.







Things get pretty hectic towards the end! There’s no doubting that Rita is one of the game’s tougher bosses. She doesn’t have any truly damaging attacks, but the never-ending barrage of furniture coupled with only being vulnerable for a very limited period of time mean she’s very capable of grinding you down to nothing.





Eventually though, after using up nearly all our resources, Rita finally bites it. The cutscene following her defeat is one of the longest in the game, and a prime opportunity to sample the wonderfully bad voice acting.



: You’re a worthy opponent, Rion.



: With this, I’ll be able to crush you.



: No! You’re too weak! If you inject yourself-

: Mother told me the moment of Shorting feels oh so good.

: Rita, you’ve gone insane!



: We’re all slowly but surely going mad. You just haven’t realised it yet.

: No!!







Rita injects the PPEC and Shorts.



: Aaaahh!!



She then picks up Rion and smashes him back against the wall.




: AAAAAAAAHHH!!!







Lilia wakes up just as Rita loses control.

: Rita, no! Don’t kill Rion!!



The energy overwhelms everything, turning the world pure white.





When the light fades, the world has been replaced with a snowy dreamscape.





Rita materialises out of the gloom, followed swiftly by Rion.

: Are you alright?

: Don’t worry about me…I don’t like myself anyway. Oh, I hate this power that I possess!



: This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I’ve always wanted the end to come…but I never could die.



: What a beautiful snow. It’s like…having a terrifying and wonderful vision.



: I’ve never felt such tranquility before. Can you feel what I’m feeling right at this moment?



: If Mother is God…why would she inflict you with such a cruel fate? Where did your true self go? You are now nothing but an empty vessel, pretending to be human…



: It’s too bad we’ll never meet again.



: Rion, please…destroy me. My head aches so much…please, it hurts so bad! I just…can’t…stand it anymore…



: Rion, don’t do it!

: Lilia…it’s the only way. She’s decided she wants to die now.

: Yeah, but…

: Please…just…do it…



: I can’t stand it any longer either. Please…forgive me.

: No!







We return to the real world as Rita collapses.

: *Sobs*



: Lilia…please don’t cry.

: Rion…where did you get such power?

: I was experimented on in the hospital. They used various PPECs on me.



: Don’t…believe it…



: Huh?

: What is it?

: Oh…it’s, uh, nothing.





While Rion broods over Rita’s corpse, the scene shifts to the streets outside.



: Those kids who had been injected with the PPEC now live in fear of Dorothy, the Mother Computer.





: But here’s the good part. She lives in fear of the virus program. And that is where I come in.



: They all live where the networks converge - in the Mushroom Tower, high above Michelangelo City. I must destroy Dorothy. Nothing can stop me now…



: Not even the dark city night that fills my heart with fear.





And so we move on to the final disk. The Babylon Hotel was a neat idea, but weighed down by plot holes and a nonsensical midsection that probably resulted in a lot of players wandering around wondering what to do. Rainheart and Rita were interesting characters, but I can’t help but feel they would have had a greater impact if there had been more time to get to know them. Having most of their fleshing-out occur right as they’re about to die really limited things. The stilted dialogue didn't help much either, although that can be chalked up to poor translation / localisation.

Regardless, we found Lilia, which means we can finally put a stop to all this. Join me next time as we infiltrate the Mushroom Tower and end Dorothy's madness once and for all.