Part 25: So near, yet so far

Chapter 24 – So near, yet so far

No more delays, no “But first!”. We’re going straight into the final dungeon.




“Yeah, probably.”

“It sounds like the Source Forge is moaning.”



“It’s as if…they understand….They know everything hangs on this battle!”

“We can’t afford to lose! We’ve absolutely GOT to restore the Source Forge back to the way it was!!”



Now Playing – End of the World

“Sōzō no Tō”. The literal translation would be “Tower of Creation”. As the Demiurge is the one that created the world in Gnostic belief, it’s fitting enough. As for why it’s a tower, your guess is as good as mine. It’s clearly more of a sinkhole. Or a crater.

….in fact, you could say Demiurge Tower is a crater in a snowy northern region of the world. A northern crater, if you will.

Anyway, not long after heading inside a nearby cave entrance (hmm, northern cave), we encounter someone…






“The very fact you’re here must mean you’ve defeated Rauss and gotten ahold of the Sacred Teal Stone. The End will soon change everything! This entire world, and every living thing in it! In the next world, only the Chosen Ones will have the right to live! You! You were among the Chosen Ones…!”



Pick your poison of flimsy JRPG justification. Cocky Lang chooses “We won’t let you do this!”

“You do whatever you want, without a thought to others! We don’t care WHO you are! We aren’t letting you get away with it! Do you honestly think we’d just sit back and let you destroy the whole world on some selfish whim?!”

“’Selfish,’ you say? Oh, come now. The strong have always weeded out the weak. Isn’t that the natural order of things? You should embrace the idea of the new world! In the new world, there’ll be no such thing as ‘pride’ or ‘greed…’”

“Pride? Greed? What’s wrong with ‘em? We need those things! If we didn’t have passions or desires, we couldn’t accomplish anything! Those are the things that separate us from the animals!”

“But until we let go of pride and greed, both you and I will forever be embroiled in worldly strife…”

“WHY?! WHY are you trying to destroy this world and create a new one?”

”Sorry, was I not being clear enough every other time I opened my mouth? Whatever then…”

“Wouldn’t you like to see the new world, too? A place in which life and the world itself are intermingled into one…? Life in its ideal form! There’ll be no death, no fear. All life combined into one….the ultimate world! There’ll no longer be any strife. The individual will no longer exist. Transcendent life, for all eternity! You couldn’t possibly understand, you who continue to struggle and fight, ruled by your useless emotions…”






“There’s nothing more for us to talk about. I know you want to advance forward, even if it means killing me. I challenge you! Come and face the secrets of Kabel, forever erased from history, and my Origin, the Spatial Origin, Vestra!”



”Hey, why the fuck does YOUR Origin get to just stay out and fight!? Galea, get the fuck out here!”

”Nah.”

Velna and Vestra have a special gimmick in this fight. Your first thought might be that eliminating Velna should eliminate Vestra, given what we know about how Origins work, but you’d be wrong…





Beating up Velna results in her disappearing inside Vestra. You might think the answer is to just kill Vestra then, but there’s a snag with that plan…



Vestra cannot be harmed by regular attacks and Arts. These are our primary damage dealers that have allowed us to cheese bosses since Bubba. We can only affect Vestra with “Special Damage”, of which Origins are the most obvious dealers. Our Origins are not nearly as potent as our Arts by this point, so using them to take down Vestra would be something of a slog.

As you might expect, Velna is not gone and forgotten. After a round…




At first I thought my emulator was wigging out, but they must have changed the text colour so it could be seen on a white background.

“All through the creation of the new world…for millennia, I have waited for this moment…Come what may….You will not proceed any further!”



In contrast to Vestra, Velna is immune to special damage. You basically have to pick one to take down each round.

The best practise is to kill Velna and then try to KO Vestra while she’s gone. If you leave her around, not only does she get to make attacks, but she can also work with Vestra…





This is the set up to an instant kill attack. That’s why it’s best to make sure Velna isn’t around to let these attacks go off. If you kill her before the next round, Vestra can’t use the attack.

Velna can also use Kabel magic attacks just like Maya, but we don’t let her use any of those.

Now, using Origins to whittle down Vestra is the obvious tactic, but there’s one ability that can make this fight so much quicker and easier. You just have to be under the right circumstances to do it.

If a character has under half their health, 100 MP and 100 AP, then they can use…



Mystic Arts. These are a character’s ultimate attack, doing WELL over what you’d get using a Variable Art, and without involving another character. The only problem is you have to be in ridiculously specific circumstances to pull one off, and need to know the combination to use one. That I know of, there’s no indication that Mystic Arts even exist in game, let alone what the combinations are for using one.

If you watch the video, you’ll see me try to use Sharon’s, but I flub the combination. In the end, we pull off Lang’s…





As you can see, that’s 40000 more than we usually get from Variable Arts. As for why they harm Vestra, given they involve Origins in the attack, they count as special damage.

As Ayne has no Origin, Ayne cannot perform a Mystic Art, one of the factors that honestly makes him less useful than Kazan. But we’ve made our choice, and we don’t really need more ways to wreck our enemies.

Hitting Vestra with that Mystic Art alone would have been enough to end the match if we were in a position to use it earlier. Now that we have…






Velna collapses to the ground, sobbing, and the fight is over.

Click the image below to see Velna and Vestra die together.




“I endured thousands of years…waiting and waiting for this moment….!”




This might be the only real twist in the game. It’s obvious Velna has something to do with the Kabel, but Maya can use their magic too, so it’s not like you’d assume Velna was one of the original Kabel. But the possibility was there: Chief West Wind told us the Kabel had mastered life and death, and Vestra’s ability to revive Velna also raised the possibility.

“This body is nothing but a ghost-like shell. It’s endured, thanks only to Vestra’s power! I spoke of creating a new world…but in truth…I was really only driven by a deep hatred! I could never forgive the humans that destroyed my race!”




“Sorrow gives birth to hatred. And that hatred in turn bears more sorrow. ‘The important thing is to forgive, to help each other, and to love.’ That’s an old saying among my tribe.”

“…Forgive…? You suggest I…let go of these feelings, feelings I’ve held onto and lived by for thousands of years…?”

“People CAN change. If you’ve got all that passion, I know YOU can change, too….”





“….It’s so sad, I can’t stand it! She lived all those years on hatred and the wish for revenge…”

“…If it were me, I don’t think I could’ve done it…living thousands of years on the sole strength of hatred!”



Remember this line.

Anyway, with Velna having passed into the ether, we’re free to continue. But before we do, let’s step outside Demiurge Tower and have a camp chat….

Hatred

“She sure was filled with a powerful hatred! Did we really defeat her, I wonder? I still can’t believe it…”

“Can you imagine just wishing and hoping for the destruction of the world, for thousands of years, like she did?”

“The Kabel race must’ve been bound by some pretty close ties! Otherwise…she wouldn’t have been able to keep it up! She wouldn’t have been able to hate for so long, for all those thousands of years!”

“There’s an old saying among my tribe. ‘The root of love and hate is one.’ The deeper love is, the stronger hate can be.”

“Do you really think it’s OK…? For me to use this power…?”

”Are you kidding me!? How’d we get back to this just because Velna went batty with racial hatred!?”

“It’s like Lang said. There’s nothing evil about power itself. It all depends on the wielder of that power.”

“…Yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess I just have to believe in myself!”

Let’s take a moment to talk about Velna, shall we?

From a conceptual point of view, Velna might just be this game’s most interesting villain. Not only does she possess a slew of almighty Kabel powers but also possesses an Origin that has allowed her to live forever. Thematically speaking, she fits what the game appears to be going for twice over: she survived the purge of the Kabel race at the hands of regular humanity aeons ago, and most likely lived through the stigmatisation of Mystics as well. She has every reason to be angry at the world.

Unlike most other villains, Velna is by far the most prominent. We see her as far back as Lang’s first stay in Doplin Castle, and she plays a role in both his second visit, Drokonia and Ellsworth. Her coming back just to taunt Doplin as he dies a pitiful death is honestly pretty cool. The whole game, Avalon just chills out in the Source Forge while Velna actively tries to get you all killed.

And yet she’s still woefully underutilized. Most of her earlier scenes just have her standing around while Doplin hams it up. Her only contribution to Ellsworth is telling Rauss to piss off back to the altar. The most interesting things about her only come out here, right at the end of the game.

Did you notice that Maya, the character explicitly linked to the Kabel, had little to nothing to say here? I think it might be all of three lines of commentary. Maya’s Kabel heritage is meant to be the centrepiece of her character, but she has absolutely nothing to do with Velna, an actual Kabel. It would have made both characters far more interesting if the two had ever had a meaningful interaction.

Velna: despite being the most interesting villain by far, she’s just another symptom of this game’s disappointments.

Well, enough ranting. We’re not done with the camp chatting, as it were…

Nazak Revealed



“Yeah. We should get some sleep, too.”

“…Dupon told me….That you were ‘Thunder God, Nazak…’”



“Aren’t you gonna say anything? I’m an adult, you know. After all this time, I’m not gonna blame you for abandoning my father or anything. But why…? WHY did you leave him? You can at least tell me that, can’t you?”

“Yeah……In those days, I was the assault commander of the fleet…Alphis and I and all the men spent our days doing battle. Those were the days, I tell you…! But on day….my most trusted man-my star pupil-turned traitor. And I really believed he was gonna be my successor! I should’ve been angry, but all I felt was an unbearable regret…I killed him with my own two hands! He told me he betrayed me because he wanted the chance to fight me….Fighting lost all meaning for me then. I realized it was all my fault. I faced up to the responsibility, and decided to leave the ship. That’s the whole story.”

“…My father called your name right up to the moment he died. He really believed in you, you know…”

“I’m sorry…”

“…Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, but who was that star pupil, anyway? Was it…him?”

“…Yeah, it was Rauss….I didn’t think I’d see him again till the next world…”

“Come on…It’s OK. Here, have a drink!”

“You mean…you forgive me?”

“Everybody has a sorrow or hardship or two in life…That’s the way it is! I’ve gotta admit, I used to hate you….But that was a long time ago. Now we’re friends, right? Ha ha ha! Am I being too dramatic? Come on! Don’t be gloomy! Have a drink!”

“Oh…*sob* *sniff* *sob*”

“Huh? What are you crying for? Come on, now! Don’t blubber on me!”

“I’m not…! I’m NOT crying…! *sniff* Here, you have a drink, too.”

“OK. Whatever you say.”

In the same vein as Maya and Velna, this chat reminds me of the missed opportunity that Sharon and Rauss could have been. Rauss was a part of Alphis’ crew, and clearly important enough to Kazan to make him quit the whole thing. There’s every reason Sharon should have recognised his name, maybe having been told by Dupon what happened. But rather than have it actually play a role in the story, they reserve the Nazak reveal for a completely missable chat scene. I really can’t see how it would have been so hard to just plonk something like this on Phorchoon or Ellsworth.

Now we’re done chatting. Let us actually get through Demiurge Tower.



Even here, at the end, we’re not immune to pallet swaps.



And more.



And more.



And even more.



And m-oh wait, there’s a unique one! Azul Velra!

Well, sort of. These things are like they slapped together the Arus Auge from Ellsworth with the Alza Dorgue enemies from the Kabel Ruins 2. They have the same attacks as an Arus Auge, so they’re not very inventive.



Now here’s an actually unique enemy. Revizor’s don’t have many interesting attacks, but their regular attacks can cause instant death randomly.



Arzel Goth’s are a pallet swap of the Storm Idol. They’re even weaker, so there’s no chance of them lasting long enough to show us their stupidly named abilities.



And here’s our final unique enemy: Valnoah. It’s quite rare to find and hits pretty hard, even with an end-game party.



It has this wind spell that can stun, but otherwise it’s not that special. It does have a lot of HP compared to other enemies, but it’s not that hard to take down.

So you might be thinking: what about the dungeon itself? Like the puzzles and such?

Well, there are no fucking puzzles in Demiurge Tower. From start to finish, Demiurge Tower is a corridor simulator with minimal interesting features.



If it weren’t for the sparkly lights and weird whatsits snaking down into the nether, this would be nothing more than a romp over some dull, grey catwalks. What is it with Legaia 2 and dull, grey colour schemes?



These rock elevators will either take you to optional treasure or closer to the end. Enough said.

Inside some wee alcoves, we’ll find some odd creatures…




There are three of these in total, each slightly different. They have different colours and use some different moves. The snag is I’m destroying them so effortlessly it doesn’t matter what their differences are. I could have taken these out in one Variable Art back on Drokonia, let alone now.



Each one drops one of three gems: this one the “Divine BlueIce Gem”, and the others the “Divine Sacrlet Gem” and “Divine Gem of Dawn”. You need all three to reach the final boss.



This optional treasure room is the only place in the entire dungeon where you need to use your Origins. And all you get from it is a semi-rare combination material. What a prize.



Some parts of Demiurge Tower are like this, where you traverse the outer wall of the pit, watching the energy surge up from below.

You know, this feels familiar…



Hmmmm…..



This is it. Beyond this door lies the final boss. We pass through, and we complete the game.

And that is exactly not what we will be doing today.

Because guess what? Having entered Demiurge Tower, we’ve unlocked a whole bunch of new side content to sit through! Isn’t it wonderful?

Join me next time, where we do anything but complete the game.