Part 208: Side Story: At Journey's End (Part II)

Music: The Gate of Finis



All we've got left is what lies beyond this gate...



Here we are. Our journey's end.





The final boss consists of two parts, which means we'll be using all eight characters for this fight. Beforehand, I grinded them all to around L60 and used the JP to buy the support skills I wanted and to master all skills in each character's secondary job.

First off, all eight characters have Patience (25% chance of getting an extra action at the end of turn) and Saving Grace (can overheal to a max of 9999HP). More actions are crazy useful for everyone here, and with max HP averaging around 3500, having over twice that as a buffer is key to surviving a lot of these nasty attacks.

Beyond that, I've basically got two groups: Damage Dealers (Tressa, Olberic, Primrose, H'aanit) and Healers (Cyrus, Therion, Alfyn, Ophilia). The healers all get Divine Aura (25% chance to ignore damage) for extra tankiness, and all but Cyrus has The Show Goes On (increase buff duration cast by this character by one), with Cyrus having Elemental Edge (grants ElemAtk and ElemDef buffs). Meanwhile, my Damage Dealers all have Surpassing Power (breaks damage limit of 9999) and all but Tressa have BP Eater (boosts damage when using BP), with Tressa also opting for Elemental Edge since her damage doesn't rely on BP.

As for the parties, Starseer is very important for the second fight, and really I wanted to put all my more powerful characters in the second half. Single-target moves work a bit better for the first fight, which is great for the likes of Tressa and Olberic. Alfyn's a Merchant just for added flexibility, Olberic's a Hunter for Leghold Trap and Arrowstorm, and Therion's an Apothecary due to his speed.

With all that, let's finish this.



"Where's Kit?" That's the question on your lips, isn't it?



SILENCE



The thirteenth god. Galdera, the Fallen. He and Kit are one and the same.



And the Crossford family, you see, comes from a long and ancient line that carries the stuff of the Dark God in their veins.



I told him that by coming here he could return his beloved to the land of the living. A lie, of course, but one he was all too willing to believe. All was proceeding according to plan. But in the end, I underestimated the strength of the man's spirit. The ritual failed, and Graham escaped somewhere...though he hardly resembled himself anymore. This time, though, will be different. This time I will not fail.



You, too, have an important role to play on this historic day. Your flesh, your blood, your very soul will feed the Dark God and give him strength.



O, Father! Pray show mercy on these poor, wretched souls...



O, Father...at last...we are together...





And with that, Lyblac disappears from sight.







Video: Final Boss - Omniscient Eye

Music: The One They Call the Witch





The first half has our party facing off against the Omniscient Eye. The final boss music is pretty solid, so be sure to give it a listen!





The Omniscient Eye will summon adds like the Raging Soul throughout the fight. Whenever any of these souls are active enemies, the Omniscient Eye cannot be damaged or broken. Thus, we'll have to find a way to kill these adds first.



Divine Aura already paying off! This move hurts so good to avoid it here!



Each soul has 50k HP to burn through. Fortunately this one has an easy enough weakness to exploit.



A key Patience proc on Tressa lets me immediately stack Light Runes on the party.



Electrocute's a rather nasty lightning attack.



Therion's no Alfyn, but that doesn't matter when we have access to some really handy items.







Once the soul is broken, the 50k HP is trivial to burn through with Tressa and Olberic.



Of course, the Eye responds by summoning a Screaming and Wailing Soul.



This is handy for adding more stacks of Sidestep and Runes.





The Omniscient Eye can release one of several auras, including this one that buffs poison damage. It can also reduce the party's accuracy and buff its own elemental damage.



This will cause an effect the next round, depending on the aura.



Revitalizing Jam is key for both these fights. Full recovery of HP, SP, and maxing BP is very, very powerful, and especially so party-wide thanks to Dohter's.



Thanks to the Hunter Divine, Olberic does have options for party-wide damage, even if Brand's Thunder is preferable in most cases for its pure damage.



The Delayed Incantation effect flat-out killed Cyrus, which isn't really a big deal.





This, of course, is. It'll take some turns to regain those buffs, and of course we don't want to waste time on this fight because these foes can really screw us up if we take too long.



The nice thing about Saving Grave is that it includes overheal from Olives, and the large Olives heal for 9999HP. So Cyrus actually gained HP from dying, and since he would've lost his buffs anyway, I didn't really lose anything besides an action or two.



This inflicts poison on the party, which of course is really bad with the current aura.



The large Soulstones are very useful for this fight, especially later on.

Also I just realized I completely forgot to use all the stat nuts before this fight. Oops!





The poison proc is bad, but fortunately it's still just poison, and a simple herb will take care of it. Even here Dohter's is fantastic.





Otherwise I take down one soul and break another.



So far, we're around seven minutes in and we've just barely grazed the eye's massive 500K HP.



Fortunately, we're about to catch a break and start laying into it.





Olberic is invaluable for this fight as my main damage dealer. Tressa's not bad, but she's also usually spending more time buffing than attacking.



Honestly, Cyrus doesn't have a lot to do since items take away his need to heal, and Scholar's damage output isn't really big here. I instead start making him my Dohter's bot while Therion can work on exploiting the eye's knife weakness and throw some other skills here and there.



Armed with Aelfric's Auspices, Tressa grants everyone a ton of stacks of Sidestep and Thunder Rune.





I also try out the highest-level Hired Help, Veteran, which is...alright, I guess.





All three souls are up now, and they have a weird gimmick where they only have one weakness exposed at a time.





Whenever they take damage, their weakness moves to the next one to the right (or loops back to the first one if at the end), so Fire becomes Ice, Light becomes Fire, and so on.



This is where the Soulstones really shine, doing solid damage and enabling you to hit a weakness.



This is the aura that boost elemental damage.



One down!



Of course, the elemental aura is followed up by an ElemAtk debuff on our party.



Swords ain't an elemental, though.





After a failed attempt early on when the eye was invulnerable, I try again with Leghold Trap, to better success.



I also remember Reflective Veil exists, which is great since the eye's attacks are all magical.





And since it's weak to its own Electrocute attacks.





Between these buffs and debuffs, Olberic's starting to chew through the eye's HP with ease. That 500K will be gone in no time!







Once the Omniscient Eye is low on health, it will consume the souls and gain all sorts of advantages. Three actions a turn, more shields, buffs on both attacks and defenses, and even a new move that can petrify a character like Redeye theoretically can, though of course I don't see that here either.





Mostly because Olberic quickly takes it down for good.



That's the end of the Omniscient Eye...

Music: Moment of Truth



...but we're not done yet.

Video: Final Boss - Galdera, the Fallen

Music: Daughter of the Dark God



Behold, Galdera, the Fallen. The music really kicks into high gear here, so give it a whirl!





Galdera is currently immune to damage and shield breakage, not that we'd really be able to with those massive 99 shields.

There are three sections besides Galdera. To the far right is the Blade of the Fallen, which specializes in physical attacks and status effects. Next is the Abyssal Maw, which specializes in elemental attacks and debuffs. Finally, there's Lyblac herself, who focuses on giving buffs to the other parts of Galdera, as well as some elemental moves and debuffs herself.



Those buffs are a major problem because the various parts of Galdera will already inflict heavy damage, so the last thing we need is more of it to deal with.



A minor annoyance, which I'll very gladly take over any of the other moves these fiends can use.



I move to overheal immediately. The first part of this fight can be really brutal, and it can get worse before it gets better.



Of course, priority is to get BP up ASAP. I want the Dancer Divine on Ophilia so she can prevent these nasty buffs on the enemies.



Especially since this is what we're dealing with without buffs.



That's part one done.



This adds three shields to whichever part is lowest.





Aaaand this is the point I start screaming obscenities for a minute straight.





Lyblac is able to grant the Blade buffs that will let it inflict Blind or Terror. The latter is especially bad to deal with.



This is basically a tell that Galdera will either remove your party's buffs or his party's debuffs.

At this point, I'll gladly take it, as it means Primrose has somehow not died long enough to get her turn.



Now I might have a chance to come back from this.



This sucks, but Alfyn has enough HP that he should survive to his turn. Hopefully...



...or he could get an incredibly key Patience proc right when I needed it. He very well may have died before his next turn otherwise.



Rather than a full revive, I opt to bring Ophilia back at max HP, because she might be able to revive for more HP with a boosted Revive.



Which, she does. I got a bit lucky, but it looks like I'm back in this fight!



Deceleration can sap BP, though I'm "lucky" in that H'aanit already had no BP.



Though of course I quickly change that.







Finally. Celestial Intervention is a weird one, in that it's the only ability in the game that can be used on both enemies and allies. This is great combined with Sealtgice's Seduction, as it affects allies and enemies both.





Of course, I immediately lose those buffs, but the important thing there was blocking the enemies from buffing each other, and that should stick for a little while.



Now to go on the offensive.



And to really get started on the BP train.





Unfortunately, Galdera can also remove debuffs from his allies, so now I have to get Celestial Intervention back up. Having to cast Sealtgice so much takes away from Primrose spamming elemental attacks.



Even with Concoct, Revitalizing Jam is my most powerful option for recovery and pure power.



Finally, some breathing room.



Five out of six procs for Divine Aura. Wow. I'll gladly take that luck!



Starsong buffs both defenses, speed, and evasion. Great to have until they inevitably get removed.



Also more BP because why not.





Oof.



This simply takes a party member down to 1HP.



Now the Maw is defeated.





You really want to be careful here. Once one part is defeated, the other parts become more powerful. They gain more shields, and can use some really nasty moves. The Blade and the Maw can completely block all physical/magical attacks respectively until they're broken. Once two are defeated, then the last part changes its weaknesses and gets a really nasty move, with the Blade getting two turns a round, the Maw inflicting a debuff that reduces max HP every round until it's defeated (and it stays lowered for the rest of the battle!), and Lyblac granting herself every buff in the book.

I get really lucky that I get to evade all that. Naturally, the best strategy is to try to kill all three as close to each other as possible, though it also means dealing with all three of these foes at once. No matter how you look at it, this part of the fight is not going to be easy.



This deals four nasty hits to random targets. This pops up after one section is defeated.





I quickly take care of Lyblac next. The blade's probably the best of the three to leave for last, though those two actions a turn can still be quite nasty to deal with. Of course, I wasn't thinking about any of that while doing this fight, only really going by memory of my last attempt here months ago.



Thankfully, a soulstone is enough to take out the Blade, finally getting past this section of the fight relatively unscathed.





Now all of Galdera's weaknesses are exposed, and he gets three actions a turn.



Fortunately, my assumption that the Dark God may be weak to Light was correct.



I have an army of priests help out to fight the Dark God, for a small fee of course.



This reduces my party to 1HP and saps all their BP.





He then uses this BP to increase his own shields. Oof.



This sucks, but it's not damage so I'll gladly take it.



Well, I kinda mess up here, as I accidentally did Purifying Seed instead of Dust. Oh well, I'm sure Primrose appreciates it.



Of course, now Galdera has a variety of nasty moves to inflict us with, mostly heavy damage-dealers.



But with Saving Grace to give me a huge buffer, I can weather any hit I take now. Especially once I break Galdera to get some breathing room.





The thing about this fight is that the three parts of Galdera have around 125k HP. This means Galdera himself has lower HP than the Omniscient Eye to compensate, a mere 180k. His moves also aren't really as bad as his other parts, or even the Omniscient Eye, as now he's mostly doing damage, which is easier for me to deal with than buffs, debuffs, and other gimmicks.



He can still remove my buffs, but he's not going to do much else now as long as I can stay topped off, and with Alfyn and Ophilia around, that should not be a problem.



Plus I've got access to buffs like Reflective Veil.





I even try out Nightmare Chimera. Turns out it's kinda OK!





I love Reflective Veil.

This is actually the easy part of the fight if you know what you're doing. The various parts of Galdera can combine to do some nasty things that are hard to recover from, and if you're careless you can really get stuck in a bad situation. Here, as long as you mitigate damage, you should inevitably win.





And so Galdera, the Fallen, has fallen once again.

Music: Victory Fanfare



We even get some nice rewards from all this. Not that it matters anymore...

At this point, there's no more music for the rest of this update, which is a bit of a missed opportunity, but oh well...

SILENCE







Congrats, everyone. We just beat a god. Our inevitable jRPG destiny has been fulfilled.



And Kit has also been freed as a result.



...I see. Thank you, my friends.



...





Father...? Mother...!?



.........



All these years, I had thought my journey a futile one...



In journeying here, you have not just found meaning in your own lives...



It's really understated here, but we just saved the world from the resurrection of a dark god. No dramatic fanfare for us, because nobody even knows what we did save Kit (and Lianna and Heathcote I guess).







And yeah, that's pretty much the entire ending. Pretty anticlimatic, huh?





Our party walks away, and with that, we have finished Octopath Traveler.









This has certainly been a journey for me, and I hope it's been a great journey for you all!

Wait, we're missing something... OK, let's do this proper.

Music: Enveloped in Kindness

I've been doing Let's Plays for over eight years now, and never have I been so invested in creating a Let's Play to show off a game as I have here. Hell, I spent two weeks learning how to rip the sprites for this game, I was that dedicated. The game definitely has flaws, but there's something about the world-building of this game that grabbed me in a way few others have. It really feels like a fully-realized world, at least in my eyes, and that's probably why I've been so enraptured by it and why I've consistently worked on this LP over the past year. That said, this is also by far the longest and hardest I've worked on a LP, so I'm definitely glad that this is finally finished.

This is a game I feel was made for me. A solid, engaging battle system that makes fights require careful planning and attention, a solid cast of memorable characters that I enjoyed spending time with, a huge world with history and culture and famous figures that define it... There's no big plot, the character interaction is hit-or-miss, and there are some really questionable gameplay decisions, but those are things I can overlook due to how well the game's strengths shine for me. I loved both my experiences playing this game, and I look forward to doing so again in the future (though I doubt I'll ever 100% this game again). I'm certainly looking forward to the next Octopath game, and I hope this becomes a strong franchise for years to come.

Thank you very much for following along on this journey through Octopath Traveler!



We do get dumped back onto Hornburg after the battle, with some rewards. First, a huge sum of useless money, and in one of the biggest jerk moves I've seen in a game...



...The accessory that blocks random encounters is only unlocked by defeating the final boss. Of course. Ah well.

Thanks for reading, and until next time!