Part 18: To conquer a tower

Now that we've cleared out Mt. Gale, it's time to head back to Otto and see if we've helped anything.



But, we didn't even do anything? The crystal wasn't there and...oh, fuck it.



Otto wanders offscreen for a moment, returning after a rather loud noise.




In the tower, you'll see switches on the even-numbered floors. Flick the switches with your axe. Then the elevator won't go past that floor!"

Uh, 'kay. Thanks for that.



Otto wasn't kidding when he said "rainbow road."



Welcome to Pazuzu's Tower, home of the final crystal. As you might expect, there are a fuckton of enemies (most of them new, and dangerous), and depending on how you go about it, can be very long and tedious. The main puzzle can be cheesed though, if you're clever (at least, in terms of "Mystic Quest level" cleverness). The music is once again from Mt. Gale.





That was surprisingly painless. Now all we have to do is get the Wind Crystal.



The first of many new enemies is the Garuda. More difficult than in the past, given that we don't have someone with a shooting weapon, but they're still not that much of a threat. Wind is the easy weakness here.



Huh. Well that was easy, dungeon over already.



This is Pazuzu. After talking to us, he disappears. This is the main puzzle of the dungeon. Going up the tower, you'll go up two floors at time. Once you reach the top and come back down, you'll hit all the even floors. Hit a switch on those floors, and then the elevator he's riding on won't be able to go past there. Eventually, you box him in on a floor for the fight. Yes, it's as tedious as it sounds.



Beholders are a little better off than their Gather cousins, given that your bombs will no longer OHKO them 95% of the time, but they're still not very threatening aside from their Selfdestruct attack.



In between floors, you get treated to this, because it wasn't good enough to just let you freely travel between them. Every staircase has a different set of enemies, so this one with Garudas is okay, while one with Chimera or Manticore are a huge pain in the ass. Speaking of Manticore (and bunch more enemies!):



Manticore are pretty annoying. They've paralysis, confusion, and petrification in their arsenal, plus a fairly damaging fire attack. You can't even cheese them with the Dragon Claw, because they're resistant to petrification.



Chimera aren't really dangerous so much as bothersome. They have poison-touch as a counter (which Kaeli can and will get hit with every single time), and have everything else Gidrah did. They're weak to wind (much like pretty much everything else in the tower), but unless you're swimming in seeds, you probably should use magic sparingly.



Thanatos is a scaled down Dullahan. Still throws out Doom Dances like no tomorrow, can cure other enemies, but he's vulnerable to the Claw.



Sorcerors are assholes. They will constantly heal one another (and neither Kaeli nor you can kill them in one hit without magic) and have a lot of powerful magic. Their Quake spell can do well over 400 damage if one person goes down. The best strategy is magic (as with everything else), but the Claw works very well too.



Naga, much like the Lamia from way back when are more of a threat for their status ailments, not their offensive prowess. Still weak to Thunder, but the Claw works quite well.



Ooh, what do we have here?



Ah yes, the final spell. Flare is the most powerful spell in the game, in terms of sheer damage. It's unfortunately fire-elemental, which a majority of bosses in the endgame are resistant to, but hey.



Just a reskinned White, but it does good damage.





Anyway, as Otto said, flipping the switch shuts off the elevator to that floor.



Another chest? I am intrigued.





The final weapon, Excalibur is the top tier sword, and fittingly, the strongest weapon in the game. It's not nearly as good as it sounds, given that no enemies have a weakness to sword attacks, and unlike the Dragon Claw, it doesn't have a chance of wiping them immediately.



The art hasn't changed as far as I can tell.



The final new enemy is the Gargoyle. They're not very dangerous, and bizzarely NOT resistant to petrification.


You can't catch me!"

If you run into Pazuzu before you box him in, you'll get this dialogue before he runs off. Strangely, I got this after I hit the switch on both 4F and 6F, so I dunno why he ran.


And you can forget about Captain Mac!"



Once you finally track him down, the fight begins. He's much easier than the Dualhead Hydra, mainly because he's weak to wind, so Aero is the way to go here.



His nasty little trick for that is that every couple turns he'll throw up his Psychshield, which will reflect any spells back at the user. It lasts for a couple turns, and he can do it at any time and immediately attack afterwards. It's not that dangerous, given that it tells you when it comes up or down, but it can be easy to forget that it's up if it's been a few turns.



His other attacks include Hurricane and Piledriver, both good for 400 damage to both characters, and Dive Bomb for 500 on one. He's not big on status effects, just a rush to who can kill each other faster.



Finally, the last Vile One goes down.



After killing him, we hijack his elevator and proceed to ignore all the blockades we put in specifically to stop Pazuzu from doing exactly what we're doing.



After reaching the top, we see the last crystal (The scene isn't any different from the last three times, you're not missing anything), grab the Sky coin, and we're done with all this crystal nonsense.

Next time: The return of plot.