Part 12: Screenshot Missions 3: The Conductor's Rifts 1/3
Post-Game Screenshot Missions 3: The Conductor's Rifts 1Jumping headfirst into The Conductor's boss refights. Since I'm already in Ding Dong Dell, I go after Hickory Dock.
The fights are like every other bounty hunt in that you need to initiate the battle yourself, though these bosses appear as black orbs. The first fight you do might surprise you.
Yes, "Dickory Dock". Every refight is a recolour and renaming of the original boss, and they're much harder hitting and have higher HP.
This in itself is not a problem.
All of the original bosses special moves and usually their gimmicks still apply. Dock still uses Tailspin to confuse me constantly, and defending against it doesn't seem to work ever.
The nice thing about this though is I'm able to take on bosses I had to do on my own with all three companions. And they're leveled enough that they actually help out a good deal. I'm sure not healing anyone myself.
Since the battle takes a bit longer, Dock has more opportunities to knock himself out.
Once he's nearly done, Gogo and I just smack him to death.
Satisfying murder.
Now we can head back to Swift Solutions before going after the next boss. Thankfully most dungeons have warps in the boss arena that take you back to the entrance. Alternately you can use Vacate.
I also metamorphose Yeto, because I had a brief interest in actually caring about familiars while recording the post-game stuff.
Before heading to the next boss, a sidequest has opened in the Ivory Tower that will take us multiple updates to get all the way through. Some sidequests will be like that, though not as obviously as the rifts or the Solosseum. I just record them and add them to the updates as they come along.
The cow lady? She hasn't guided shit since we met her.
I like the idea that Cassiopeia can bring to life benevolent illusions, not just malevolent ones like the Zodiarchs.
Getting used to vague mission summaries yet? Someone in Level-5 was determined as all fuck to drag the dialogue out.
We are not fans of magimechs.
You'll recall seeing the dormant magimechs from early videos like the Golden Grove and Old Smoky. Starting this sidequest activates them for battle.
That's not as useful as they probably hoped. Memory stones are the stones where we save and heal, FYI, and since there's only four magimechs (two of which are a good distance away from the nearest memory stone), you'll likely have a long search ahead of you if you haven't already seen all four.
Golden Grove is our next destination for the boss refights, so we'll also take out the first magimech we ever saw.
It goes how you'd expect.
A new addition to some areas after you've beaten the game is golden enemies. These are much tougher enemies closer to your current level, they drop rare and better items, only certain enemies will have golden versions, and it's not uncommon for the golden enemy to not even be native to the area.
For instance, we've never seen a Psychophant or any of its relatives in Golden Grove.
Cut Loose will easily take care of the usual enemies in this area, so let's see how the Golden enemies stack up in comparison.
Only a chunk. I like the addition of these enemies for the most part. Makes going back through the old dungeons a little less boringly easy, though I don't always want to bother.
From hereon-out, I'll show quick examples of the golden enemies I come across, but we'll skip their fights.
We've made it to the boss arena, but that fairy we helped out earlier is still hanging out here.
This is another sidequest that will stretch for multiple parts. Mostly because I forgot to do it until the boss fight near the first fairy.
No, he's not passing a stone. He's using his special powers to tell us where to find his friend.
That's right in front of Skull Mountain, which is the location of a later refight, so we'll fetch that fairy when we get to that.
They didn't even try that time.
Badiataur (which was harder to type out than I expected) likes to use Everblade constantly in this first half.
I'm always amused when Gogo gets hit. It's just innately funny.
He's weak to storm damage, so I Forest Guardian his face a little.
Meanwhile Swaine continues to steal some pretty good shit from these bosses. Fun fact: we also get that shield as a bounty reward for this fight.
Eventually the fight devolves into more Mornstar. Until...
The full-body colour change is a pretty nice touch, along with the usual glowing trail eyes.
But I still Mornstar.
His special attacks at this point don't usually head in my direction, so this half turns out easier than the first.
Haha fuck off Gogo.
And he's down. Note that Drippy decided that, since we had two people fighting along with us this time, he didn't need to bother with being useful in any way. Knocking the boss out with his own shield again might have been unfair, granted.
Our next stop is the Deep Dark Wood, with new golden enemies.
I'm liking how more obviously evil these versions are.
I also like how this screenshot looks like I sent him to Hell.
I think I was out of Jumbo Planetdrops when Swaine stole that, so good on you, inexplicably helpful and not-always-dying friend.
Fury uses Windfall a lot, but more than that, he uses Bellow to stun me first, and then uses Windfall to knock me over while I can't react.
Doesn't do significant enough damage, though, and he goes down without much fuss.
Heading up Old Smoky, we seemingly frighten this magimech in a private moment.
Drippy fills the spot of a pop-up dialogue box saying "Two down, two to go!", plus about 10x more words as always.
I found a new way these old areas can suddenly become almost-challenging: having enemies attack you from behind while you're trying to run past them, and suddenly having a golden enemy appear in their ranks.
These Dragettes and Draggles were particularly tougher than expected.
Oh, um... Well done camera work, I guess.
Vulcaan doesn't use Volcanic Roar nearly as much as he probably could, instead simply blowing fire onto the ground while I pelt him from a distance. Of course Swaine and Esther run right into it.
That one I don't think I was low on. If anything I had a surplus.
Esthers choice of defensive familiar continues to be shit.
Pretty sure he only used Tail Flail once, and it hit these two pretty hard, but way too late for it to matter.
Two old friends randomly decide to appear on the Iron Wyvern, long after we forgot that Drippy gave them a mission they didn't do. Well, here we find out why.
Ever-positive Oliver decides that maybe Useless and Worthless can still do something for them.
Hooray! They sell strong and expensive equipment.
Well, it's expensive anyway.
Yeah, we've gone so far and leveled so high that the familiars you care about won't need their weapons. Their Nix Gnashers will probably be good accessory additions to your human characters, though. Plus, this isn't the last time we'll be talking to them; now that their shop is open, they're eventually going to need some new stock.
Our final rift fight for this update is hiding behind Solomon in the Temple of Trials.
Ways you can tell they didn't give a shit, #494.
Smashura is just as tough for us now as he was for us back then. Devastation can still fuck us up, but thankfully he spreads it out between his other two attacks that don't hit me.
I'm guessing Smashura stole that from the Hamelin guard waiting in the hallway.
I felt these battles were lacking some irony.
That's about as much damage as he is doing to us, which I guess is acceptablee.
Esther times this buff perfectly.
That probably saved them a chunk of health, but it would have saved them all of their health if they just got out of the way. And that's why I hate buff spells in this game.
The fight concludes how you expect.
Motherfucker.
MOTHERFUCKER.
And now you see why these will have to wait for the last two updates.
Next time: Saying Goodbye to Horace!