Part 16: Screenshot Missions 7: Solosseum Ranks B-S

Screenshot Missions 7: Solosseum Ranks B-S

Last half of the Solosseum, folks! Watch the raw video here, complete with me cheesing the latter fights in real-time!

Speaking of which, time to get down to Rank B.




D'aww, I can't wait to destroy their dreams.




Dreams destroyed.




My two most-hated attacks crushed underneath my over-leveled ass.



Mama never learned not to fuck with Tingle.





I never associated those creatures with any Hispanic culture, but alright.



They're not particularly weak to any of Dumple's attacks, so I just send the lot at them.






I'm sure Montezuma won that war, too. Lot of help that was.



Hey! Two people we only ever saw once in a cinematic.



This makes me think Solomon kidnapped people to make them fight in the tournament.



...Not that they need to be that concerned. These are decently tough familiars.



To most people.

I switch out Dumple for Oliver for most of the Solosseum, and I experiment with my spells a bit more here.





Astra once again a standout, but keep in mind it costs way too much magic to be used for anything other than the final fight in a rank. Remember: we can't use items, and Drippy doesn't do anything, so any magic we recover must come from glims dropped by the enemies.




Let's bop it!






Time for the Solosseum to actually get tough!




I like most of our opponents. Some of them have pretty good dialogue.



Boars would have made more sense, but okay. Robots are weak to storm, so ZAP THEIR ASSES!





And here's how I learned to cheese the Solosseum.

See all of those glims? Every time you use Thunderstorm on regular monsters, it knocks them back with a "Nice!", like if you'd countered an attack or used Pulse. More often than not, this causes them to drop health and magic glims. By this point even the smallest blue glims give around 20 magic, and Thunderstorm only costs 18 (with the reduced-magic Bounty Reward). That low cost for decent damage, fast casting time, ability to disrupt their special attacks if you do it fast enough, and the chance to confuse the monsters makes Thunderstorm a tournament breaker.

In other words: Use Thunderstorm -> Never run out of magic -> Win the Solosseum.




When their health is low and there's only one monster left, you can go back to the anticlimax slap.




They look like leaves, mam.

Try saying that five times fast.



Good lord, that dude on the right. He's called a Big Daddy, and he's as much a fuck as his Bioshock namesake.



Going after the healers first.



Then it turns out Daddy has the same idea I have.




I decide that the healers have taken second priority.



I finish off the last one just in time for Esther to waste magic on buffing everyone.




Okay, now Solomon is just fucking with people.

You'll recall Bellicosia was the nation that Lucien (Shadar) was from. They're kinda obliterated from history. Also they were cunts, so let's kick their asses.

Note that it says "Round 3" and not "Final Round".




I expect a tougher fight than I get here.



And the big guy certainly tries, starting off the fight with an all-around debuff.



But then I Thunderstormed.

Even if one or more of the monsters is resistant to storm damage, it's still worth doing the attack for the glims. The fact that these two are weak to it is just a bonus.




The tiny, non-weak-to-storm goblin holds out the longest.



So he gets a warrior's death.




And here I got blindsided the first time I did the Solosseum. Ranks A and S have four rounds, not three. And the fourth rank is a bastard!



One cool thing though, we're seeing more familiar faces these last several fights.





Nice bit of continuity there. These are fully metamorphosed versions of the three familiars Solomon offered to us early in the LP.



The trumpet duck jumps into the fight headfirst.



Oh yeah, Travis, he's great.





These fights might blend into each other, fair warning.



In multiple ways.



Immediately after I take out the Naiaad, I get another gold glim.




Shit, I think they're learning.



Not succeeding, but...



And we close out Rank A with a good old Mornstar.





Heart of the Muse is an alchemy item. You'll notice a lot of reward items you get very late in the game are for alchemy.





I'm so ready to make a mockery of this.




I dedicate this asskicking to Travis and his eternal grudge against the girl on the left.




What a shock.





Eh, resistant or not, Burning Heart still knocks a good chunk off of anyone.



I got blinded at some point, but Oliver's magic hits no matter what.



Literally only ever went there again to check if my knowledge of the Mem-O-Vision was accurate.




The right camera angle can make any smiling fairy look hilarious.




This is the dorkiest fight we've had yet.






It's also much less exciting than the last one or the next two.



The tree has some freaky ass evolutions.



Surprised Smily doesn't say anything. Just staring off into space like a poor put-upon moron.




Yay! My favourite character finally enters a fight. Sadly it's only with his familiars. Fighting Horace himself would be a much more interesting battle.





This one's gonna be proper tough. Not just because the magimech has a lot of health, but because I still need to ration my magic since this isn't the last fight, and...



...it's resistant to storm.



I still get some glims out of the other two monsters...



...but they don't last long. This is where things get tense.



My new most-hated attack is still here, and he likes to use it a lot.



I give a Mornstar a try.



And I'm immediately reminded why that's a bad chance to take.



It can cast Twinkle Twinkle faster than you can cast Mornstar. So that's 32 magic gone for nothing.



Esther's completely out of magic, so it falls on me to keep myself and my team healed. Their familiars have been remarkably helpful (in comparison to if I was fighting by myself), so it's not undeserved.




Here's how to land a Mornstar: wait until it's already casting a spell, then you cast yours. That'll give you enough time to hit it before it's ready to cast another spell. I'm still doing the most damage, so it's always focused on me.




Oh.
Shit.
Speaking of fighting by myself.



I finish off the fight safely enough, but I'm running on half, my teammates will start the final fight with 1 HP each, and I have only a split second to heal them before they die again.

This one's gonna be a doozy.






Final fight is the big cheese himself.




Killing your pets will be the highlight of my day.



I'll never understand developers who insist on making characters that no one will like.



Oh shit. Here we go. Golden versions of Oliver's, Esther's, and Swaine's first familiars.



First thing I do is pathetically attempt to save Esther.



But Golden Dumple nips that bud even faster than I can.




Aaaand I'm alone against three golden monsters with half my health and only 66 magic.



The Ghost of Johnny Thunders, save me.





Suddenly I realize...





...I can finish the very last Solosseum fight all by myself.




Take note of both my health and magic.



It isn't long before I've gained back more of both than I started the fight with.



The monsters don't use their special moves very often either, with the Golden Mite doing Cut Loose the most. But even though they all do a decent chunk of damage...



I'm able to consistently maintain my stats throughout the battle.

And that's how you exploit Thunderstorm to cheese the Solosseum!



Be very careful, though. Things can quickly take a turn for the worse, such as, for example, if you happen to get a golden glim...



...and while trying to cast Burning Heart, the Golden Drongo hits you with a Thunder Spark...



...and you get confused. I'm stuck here, letting them wail on me, until they smack me hard enough to focus again.



I'm all the way down in the red before I can retaliate again.



And then I get supremely lucky again.



Payback's a bitch.



The Hurly is the first to go down, followed by the Drongo.




With the Mite left and less chance of getting good glims, Thunderstorm isn't as economical, so I try a few other spells.




Piss. Cinematic attacks continue to be Mornstar's bane.



Another reason to skip Thunderstorm for finishing off the Mite: it's resistant to it.



On the plus side, the Mite was easily confused by it for the entire battle. Either it would go after its friends and do a bit of damage for me, or it would immediately attack itself in order to snap out of it.




It goes for the latter, giving me enough time to...



...waste my magic.



I'm reduced to healing myself up with my last 4 MP.




The Mite has a lot of health, but I've managed to whittle it down to it's last chunk. It's time to literally fight Mite with Mite.



It's a tense battle (that I cheesed 90% of the way)...



...but ultimately the most satisfying battle of the entire LP.



Where the fuck did you two come from?!








"And won useless PlayStation thing."




In an interesting twist, the Solosseum was technically the last trial of the Temple of Trials. Man, they give you a huge grace period between trials.



Ollie boy's a sage!



Our last reward is a familiar ticket for a monster that doesn't appear anywhere else.





It looks like a dork.



Let's name it after one!



Since the monster doesn't appear anywhere else, only now do we get the Wizard's Companion page on it.



He's so chubby.



And there we have our lineup for the last fights of the game.

Next time: Conductor's Battles, part 2 of 3!