Part 36: Finale - For Everlasting Peace
Finale - For Everlasting PeaceMusic: Judgement of the Truth
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Last time, Redips ran away.
...wait, Far East HQ has an orbital elevator?
And they named it Babel?
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Anyways, today, we kill Redips.
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This hallway has the same boss refight room as before, but this one is empty.
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Instead, the far door is open.
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Leading to one last elevator.
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This one is different. It lasts longer, moves faster, and the view outside has changed.
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And leads us right to a teleporter.
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We have to be near the end, right?
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A Gain Hyper and Tank Energy ∞ says yes.
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We're extremely high up. How high?
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Oh, we're just in fucking space, that's all!
Video: The Final Battle
Music: Redips, First Movement
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We come out into a fittingly fancy room.
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Redips has plugged himself in, you can see the Supra-Force Metal up top.
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He had a 30 second head start at best, how did he set all this up so fast?
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He didn't hide it, though? There are only so many places in Giga City, and a place designed around making Force Metal is kinda an obvious spot to look.
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Sigma never knew when to quit, but at least he didn't have a full-on god complex like Redips.
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The room starts shaking.
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The machine is on.
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Music: The Rebellion's Ambition
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The entire room kinda exploded.
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Uh.
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Oh dear.
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Supra-Force Metal is a hell of a drug, isn't it?
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Music: Redips, First Movement
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Now, this fight has a catch.
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Namely, that he has 100% regen, which means this is an unwinnable fight.
Just so you can't be cheeky and try to damage rush him, he also has 999,999 LE in this phase.
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So the name of the game is stalling until the game shows mercy on us.
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Redips has two bits of Supra-Force Metal supporting him. Supra-Force Metal L gives him a permanent barrier, and can chip in with all three Mega skills, plus Reformat to undo any buffs you throw out.
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While we can't beat him just yet, Great Redips (God Redips in Japan, natch), has a bit of SFM in his pocket for Marino to steal, finally giving us some Supra-Metal of our own.
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And the Supra-Force Metal R gives Redips his regen, and only has the Mega skills.
Killing either SFM will knock out their bonus, but they'll auto-revive in a few turns, so there's no point in doing that just yet.
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Marino yoinks the SFM Fragment.
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Then tops off her Hyper turns, as she was already running low after stealing from normal Redips.
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The SFM bits may only have Mega skills, but they still hurt. That's with Cinnamon's innate elemental resists, by the way. If I had Massimo out, he'd be taking 2K damage a pop!
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And there's two of them!
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Redips, for his part, follows up with Memento Mori, which does, well...
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Literally every status effect in the game. While Hyper Mode shuts this move down effortlessly, using it now also means wasting turns while you can't do anything to him.
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By the time everyone is knocked out of Freeze, Cinnamon is dead while X and Zero aren't far behind. This is the closest I've been to a Game Over since Rafflesian, and that was intentional!
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However, a quick All Life Gain 100 and a Backup gets everyone back on their feet in no time.
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Just in time too.
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As the first phase ends.
Music: Redips: Second Movement
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It doesn't work very well.
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How will our heroes get out of this mess!?
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Music: Stops
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Ferham out of fucking nowhere, that's how!
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How did she get here? Last time we saw her she was badly wounded at the Ore Plant. She had to get repaired, find out about Redips' plan, find her own way from Giga City to Far East HQ, and get all the way up into space!
Command Mission, everyone!
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She tries to steal one of Redips' SFM bits.
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And Redips does the job for her!
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Music: Redips: Third Movement
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Thankfully, Ferham took the SFM that was giving Redips his regen, making him actually killable. He also drops from 999K LE to a much more reasonable (but still less than the Silver Horn refight) 72K.
This fight is also rigged to always start with a blitzkrieg, just to be rude.
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Now that we're in the actual fight, I can go over his moves. His normal attack hits everyone.
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While Memento Mori, which we've already seen, throws every status effect at the party.
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Deus ex Machina hits everyone three times.
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And Carpe Diem attempts to drain everyone's WE.
Which, admittedly, is much less threatening now that I have enough WE Gain to hit 100% every turn.
He also has Codebreaker and Deep Impact.
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A new phase means a new steal list, which holds a new SFM fragment.
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So Marino steals it.
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Zero spends a round relaxing as he waits to hit 100%.
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And X gets started, knocking out the barrier while chipping away at Redips.
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Deep Impact is actually one of his more threatening moves, as it bypasses everything that isn't a barrier.
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Thanks to Great Redips' size, Calamitous Arts gets a new camera angle.
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He's already half dead. The only real threat in this fight is Memento Mori, and only because you have to reserve Hyper Mode for phase 2. Without that, he's just another Command Mission boss.
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Cinnamon does her thing.
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Memento Mori is utterly toothless if everyone is in Hyper.
Bizarrely, he does remove Codebreaker from his moves if anyone is in Hyper, while he'll happily waste turns on this.
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Almost there.
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Zero holds back a bit to keep him in Final Strike range.
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Except Great Redips gives no rewards, so the Final Strike is purely for style.
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Music: Stops
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Well, we beat the transformation out of him.
Music: Demise
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Honestly, this could have been a good motivation if it ever came up beforehand. Until the ZX games where humans and Reploids are on par with each other, Reploids have always been treated as lesser compared to humans. They're the ones fighting wars, they're the ones sent off to wherever people can't work, and in the Zero series, they get declared Maverick for the sole crime of not wanting to be taken out back and shot during an energy crisis.
Shame this is only mentioned seconds before Redips dies, and his only desire beforehand was to take over the universe as a god.
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RIP Redips, you died because Ferham fell into a plot hole and came out in space.
Music: Stops
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For the first time since the opening movie, we're in the pre-rendered zone!
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Ferham still has the SFM.
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The pre-rendered zone also has no subtitles, so tough shit if you're hearing impaired.
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The ground starts shaking.
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Ferham's plan is to jump off and take it into space.
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At least Redips' snazzy hat survived.
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Scratch that.
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You know, at least falling into the atmosphere and burning up on re-entry is a good reason for the usual post-boss arena destruction.
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Probably bad for anyone on it, but still.
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Axl and Zero jump in.
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And X follows.
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Now they have to wait for it to land.
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While that's going on, we check in on Ferham.
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Can't find the SFM if she blows it up.
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Jesus Christ.
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Epsilon was planning to use that as a nuke!
Music: Fate of the Irregular Hunters
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We cut to Nana, somewhere.
Seriously, she completely dropped out of the plot after Redips betrayed the party at the Helipad, I have no clue where she is and how she got here.
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I do hope that she's out of range of the SFM explosion's Maverick effect.
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Also, R's parrot survived!
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Axl shoots out the hatch.
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Zero strikes a pose.
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Axl climbs out.
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As does X.
Massimo, Marino, and Cinnamon don't show up, so presumably the guys shut the door on them and they all died on re-entry.
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I wonder how long it'll take for someone to find them?
Music: parts
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Tatsuya Minami went on to much bigger roles, as executive producer of Devil May Cry 3, 4, and even going off to found Platinum Games!
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I imagine these guys are the writers, in which case, holy shit did you guys miss the mark on this game.
Google isn't turning up anything on what a Flag Ship Scenario Editor is, but among these three only Takemoto worked on any video games after Command Mission, with him working on Street Fighter 4.
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Alright, which of you greenlit the difficulty here. Seriously, even the final boss was a joke.
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You're cool, Inoue, the battle fields were a treat. Hell, Ulfat had three different ones in the same room!
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Even close to 20 years later, Command Mission is a very pretty game. Kudos to the modelers.
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Although I do feel a bit bad for these guys, having to make a game that was 80% corridors.
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The music slaps, what more can I say?
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According to Famitsu, Command Mission sold just over 50K copies in its first year between both versions, which is kinda bad. X7 sold over 111K and X8 sold 35K, for comparison, which shows how much X7 poisoned the well.
On the plus side, the Legacy Collections have sold over 920K copies, so here's hoping we get a remaster of Command Mission someday.
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Ocean Group is a fairly large dub company that's still going to this day.
I'll list who voiced what, just so you can keep track of things.
Angie Beers - Nana (also Tatsuko in Flame of Recca)
Tony Binns - Mach Jentra (also Fumio Tatesako in Flame of Recca)
Byron Close - Silver Horn (also Dr. Mikamura in Mobile Fighter G Gundam)
Carol-Anne Day - Marino, Rafflesian, Additional Voices (also Four Murasama in Zeta Gundam, Allenby Beardsley in G Gundam)
Mark Gatha - X (also Domon Kasshu in G Gundam)
Lucas Gilbertson - Zero (also Madoka in Flame of Recca)
Elinor Holt - Additional Voices (also Neon in Flame of Recca, Lumine in Mega Man X8)
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Paul Hunter - Shadow, Additional Voices (Alias for Ryan Luhning, also did Saette Gyuzelle in G Gundam, Tokia Mikagami in Flame of Recca)
Tommy James - Botos, Additional Voices (also Storm Eagle in Maverick Hunter X)
Ben Jeffery - Chief R, Additional Voices (also Wong Yun-Fat in G Gundam, Col. Silver in Dragon Ball)
Jonathan Love - Spider, Additional Voices (also Kurei in Flame of Recca, Michelo Chariot in G Gundam)
Gerald Matthews - Wild Jango, Depth Dragoon, Additional Voices (also Rui Shan in G Gundam)
Caitlynne Medrek - Cinnamon, Additional Voices (also Gano Morikawa in Flame of Recca, Pan in Dragon Ball GT)
Dave Pettitt - Epsilon, Additional Voices (also Master Asia in G Gundam)
Corby Proctor - Scarface, Additional Voices (also Captain Dark in Dragon Ball)
Roger Rhodes - Dr. Psyche, Incentas, Duckbill Mole, Additional Voices (also Chibodee Crocket in G Gundam, Vegeta in Dragon Ball GT)
Scott Roberts - Additional Voices (also George de Sand in G Gundam, Gohan in Dragon Ball GT)
Kris Rundle - Ferham, Additional Voices (alias for Onalea Gilbertson, also Fuko Kirisawa in Flame of Recca, Nastasha Zabigov in G Gundam)
Michael Shepherd - Colonel Redips, Additional Voices (also Koran Mori in Flame of Recca)
Noah Umholtz - Steel Massimo, Additional Voices (also Andrew Graham in G Gundam, Bask Om in Zeta Gundam)
Jeffery Watson - Axl, Additional Voices (also Dende in Dragon Ball GT)
Randall Wiebe - Gaudile, Additional Voices (also Dr. Light in Mega Man X8/Maverick Hunter X)
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Takenawa hasn't done much after Command Mission, only working on three other games between 2004 and 2007.
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Music: Stops
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Oooh, post credits scene!
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But nothing really implied that, though? I mean, Redips was playing everyone for his own ends, but Epsilon was very doing his own thing.
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But he still worked with crazy people, and threatened to nuke the world. Even if Redips played him for a fool, I imagine that alone would get you declared Maverick.
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We're not quite done yet.
Music: Memories of Gigantis
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Next time:
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