Part 55: Bonus Update: After The End

Bonus Update: After The End



Well, that was one hell of a ride, wasn't it? We've seen just about everything there is to see in Last Scenario, but there's still a few things that can be found after the credits roll. Once the final shot of Alexander fades out, the game lets us know that we can save our clear data.



After we do, this screen comes up, with a few last things for us to check out. Status, Hex List, and Game Stats work exactly the same way as they do during the game. And since I'm sure there are a few curious people out there...











... here's our character and game stats for the no-post-game file. Though as much as I hate to admit it, I wasn't actually undefeated in Hex. I just reloaded whenever I lost.



The other four options, on the other hand, are entirely new, and for the average player, all of them will probably be grayed out. This is because, as I alluded to way, way back in update 3, they are unlocked by having a certain number of unique Hex tiles. Obviously having only one of them available won't do, so let's have some fun annihilating Castor with our post-game party, shall we?



Castor goes down in two turns, and suffers the extra humiliation of being killed by Lorenza's staff.



Alpha Castor goes down in three, mostly thanks to Matilda doing damage like this on a regular basis.





And really, what kind of LP would this be if I didn't finish off Omega Castor with Nuke?





That's more like it. Here are the game stats for the post-game party as well, since I'm not sure I showed them during the post-game updates. As for the unlocked options...

Return is unlocked with 70 unique Hex tiles, and allows the player to return to the final save point as though they hadn't fought Castor yet, but with the same inventory and levels that they ended the game with. Frankly I'm not sure what the point of this is if you didn't save over your pre-Castor file. All that the final boss gives the player is 50,000 experience, and their inventory is likely in a much worse shape than before the fight.

Gallery is unlocked at 80 tiles, and is pretty much what it says. Unfortunately it doesn't contain anything that we didn't already see in the game, but it does have high-res versions of every portrait and the images shown during the credits. Have some timgs:



New Game+ is unlocked at 90 tiles. You know it, you love it: New Game+ allows the player to start the game over with the same levels and inventory as when the game ended, minus plot items of course. I don't believe anything changes on a second playthrough, though.

And lastly, for all 100 tiles, we unlock Extra. The game's only description of what this does is "Unlock extra challenge". When we select it...



... we're abruptly tossed onto the world map, on a small island northwest of the Republic. There's also something rather conspicuous nearby: Last Scenario's ultimate challenge.





Music:

And that challenge is a battle against the Planetary Consciousness. This is a battle purely for bragging rights: the only reward for winning it is a key item known as the Sign of Eternity, which does nothing other than having the description "Mark of a true champion".





To put things into perspective, Alexander, the main game's ultimate boss, had 200,000 HP. Even Melchior, an opponent designed explicitly to be unbeatable, had 500,000. The Planetary Consciousness has a million. It's also backed up by three Biosphere flunkies.





The three Biospheres are just there to take potshots at us, but they're quite powerful potshots. They have no named techniques, but they do have the ability to attack either physically...





... or magically.



And once they're destroyed, they have the ability to revive themselves without wasting any of the Consciousness's turns. Fortunately each Biosphere only do this once.



As for the Planetary Consciousness itself, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that it has the most powerful attacks of anything in the game. It has Meteor Shower, a ten-hit combo for about 1000 damage per hit.





It has Invertigo, an extremely powerful single-target attack that will straight-up one-shot Ethan and Lorenza, even if they're Shielded. And unlike Alexander's Lionheart, the Consciousness can use Invertigo at will.





And lastly, it has Grand Apocalypse, a full-party attack that has the power to cause a total party wipe from full health. Only Hilbert is faster than the Planetary Consciousness, so if your Shields just expired and Hilbert doesn't have the Crisis or MP to cast Mega Shield? Too bad! You're fucked.



So, is the Consciousness beatable? Well, I can at least see how it would be possible--for starters, my party's not level 99, and abusing Capsules would go a long way. But even then, with a million HP to chew through, the battle is at least a half-hour-long marathon, and it can be ended at any point by the Consciousness getting an opening to Grand Apocalypse everyone into oblivion. If you really want to see it done, there's a video of a victory on Youtube--one that has to spend most of its length on extreme fast-forward in order to fit under the 10-minute limit. But I'm not going to spend a ton of time grinding to win a battle with no real reward, so I think it's time for this LP to say...



Thanks again for reading