The Let's Play Archive

Shadow Hearts

by The Dark Id

Part 79: Episode LXXIX: For Tomorrow

Episode LXXIX: For Tomorrow


Music: Tanjou



D-Dad…?
<steps forward> It’s been a long time. I’ve been waiting for you.
D-Dad? What are you doing here?
Hee hee hee… I’ve always been here. I’ve always watched over you. You just never noticed.

Yuri and Colonel Hyuga approach one another.



I thought the jig was up with that whole Fox Face affair. But you moved on again without noticing once more. I've got to say... that whole business was really weird, son...
<rubs neck> Yeah...
How are you? You’ve continued your travels and must have grown much.
I can see you've gotten more than a few levels under your belt. Not to mention Fusions. Amon, huh? Nice.
Heh. I punched that one out of that jerk Albert Simon.
That is not how that usually works... But if you say so, son...
Feel like fighting me?
Fighting you?!
Yeah.

Ben turns away and stares at the sun.



...the Seraphic Radiance, will be released from my body.
<steps forward> Seraphic Radiance?! That terrible monster… inside Dad?!
Crap, I nearly forgot about that thing.
It leveled an entire city, Yuri.
I've had a lot on my plate lately, dad. Dunno if you heard in here, but the world is about to end.
<shakes head> Don't get too worked up about that. There is a world-ending crisis every other year. Just hope you're not roped up in too many of them. It wears you down after a while. Both literally and figuratively.
<shakes head> So… you sealed that monster to protect my soul?
<nods> I already told you. I’ve been watching over you.
Did you really think you sealed a dark god just by your girlfriend bargaining with a few metaphysical representations of your vices?
Kinda hoped so, yeah...
The ancient god who lost once at Shanghai. If you can’t conquer him, of course, it will mean your life.

Colonel Hyuga turns back to Yuri.



Power to make gods throughout the universe tremble.
Me…? Fuse with the Seraphic Radiance…?
<nods> Yes. Believe in yourself, and come at me with everything you’ve got! Every battle offers an opportunity of victory It’s up to you to summon the courage to grasp that moment! A fearless heart, unfaltering confidence which grants calm. That is the Spirit of Bronze. That’s the only gift I can offer you!!
<nods> The Spirit of Bronze… All right, Dad. Let’s do it!




Music: Brain Hopper







Time for the fight of the century! The battle of the Hyugas! I mean... I know we already kind of did this with Fox Face. But now it's the genuine article Ben Hyuga's ghost or... soul inside Yuri or... something. Look, the point is Yuri and his dad need to punch each other a bunch.



Well, by "punch" I naturally mean Yuri is going to Fuse into Amon and shoot a load of powerful eye lasers at his father. As you do.



Ben Hyuga, on the other, will actually stick to punches and kicks. It's literally his only move in the start of the fight. But Ben can throw a heck of right hook since his physical combo does between 150-250 damage against Yuri every turn. It is worth mentioning that strangely enough, while the playable Colonel Hyuga earlier in the game and Fox Face both just reused Yuri's attack animations, boss Ben has a unique combination strike for this fight.



For the most part, this fight is entirely a stat check for Yuri on top of an inventory check. Remember how we stocked up on Thera Extracts (full heals) at the Silent Peddler a few updates back? Those weren't just for Halley to survive the Pit Fights. They'll also very important for this fight since Yuri has to manage by himself. I came into this fight with 13 Thera Extracts and ended up using nine of them by the end of the battle. As for stats, Yuri pretty much has to have 800+ HP available to him to make this fight viable which means he needs to be at least in the upper 40s Level wise.



Not for this first part of the fight. This is just the warm-up match. After we deplete 4000 HP from Ben Hyuga, we move to the second phase...



Take the power of the Seraphic Radiance in your hands!


Music: Ghost Jogging







Now it's time for the real boss fight -- Seraphic Radiance. It's nice of Yuri's dad to shrink it down to a reasonable scale. It wouldn't exactly be fair if Yuri had to plink away at an 800-foot tall god. Instead, he can just get a nice, up-close look at the big veiny nightmare angel and its three belly buttons.



Yuri's mode of attack is unaltered. Demon Rays will do between around 575 HP of damage every turn and we're not getting a better investment of damage dealing than that.





The thing is, now Yuri only gets to attack twice tops before having to use a Thera Extract. Seraphic Radiance is NOT playing around. It WILL kill Yuri in three rounds if he does not heal. At the bare minimum, its physical strikes do 250+ damage in a single round. If it feels particularly ornery, Seraphic Radiance can just delete just shy of 400 HP of damage in a concentrated telekinesis combo. This is why we wanted at least 800 HP before coming into this fight. That way Yuri can get two good rounds of attacking in before he needs to heal. Granted, there will be a round wasted on MP restoration eventually as well. But overall, two rounds of offense is a lot more viable than a resource race of one round of attack and one round of healing anything less than 800 HP would provide.





With that said... that's kind of just how this fight goes. If Yuri can maintain Attack, Attack, Heal with little in the way of interruptions... he's pretty much good to go wearing down Seraphic Radiance's 8000 HP. That's not very interesting, but if we're being real, boss fights in the back half of the game have sort of left something to be desired in general.



Seraphic Radiance does have one other trick up its err... snake sleeve? Why does it half a flesh coil that turns into a snake? Between the long, gnarled nails and the snake wristband, it must be a pain in the ass for that thing to type anything.





Malcto is an attack that damages Yuri for nearly 300 HP and restores some HP to Seraphic Radiance. This really isn't much to write home about. The amount of health it restores is kind of trifling at maybe 150 HP tops and 300 HP of damage is the same as it was already doing. It also rarely casts this spell so it's not a Mammon situation where it turns into a damage race against a boss that is spamming heal constantly. It just makes the fight drag on slightly longer.









Cutting to chase, skipping past about fifteen minutes of further shooting lasers and healing himself, Yuri manages to defeat the Seraphic Radiance. That ain't going to bring back the thousands of dead Chinese folk back in Shanghai. But it's a start.


Music: Results



For his efforts, Yuri shoots up another level and gains a hefty inheritance from his dead dad.



We also receive a ring that halves all Elemental damage, except weird non-elemental bosses of which there are exactly two left in the entire game.



But most importantly, Yuri obtains the final and most powerful Fusion in Shadow Hearts - Seraphic Radiance. We'll take a closer look at that in a minute.

Music: ENDS



Dad!! I… Did I do the right thing?
Hee hee hee…
You're a Hyuga, son. Do what we always do... Just wing it! It'll probably be fine. Probably!




CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO! (You should watch this, it's the only time Papa Hyuga gets any voice acting.)


Music: Tanjou



Why do I worry so? I’m blessed with true friends, I have enemies to battle and my body remains strong enough to face any challenge. Can there be any greater happiness than this? Do not waver, forge ahead! The blood of the Harmonixer, the power of fusion…



You’ve come this far since awakening, have you not? You’re a man, aren’t you? You must not halt your steps. When you choose of your own free will to halt your steps THAT will signify true defeat. Go! Continue to put one foot before the other.



For every man there is a resting place. Grit your teeth, and no matter what setbacks you may encounter along the way, continue on to that place. THAT is victory! Heh heh ha ha ha ha!



Don’t look at me like that. You’ve grown, son. That little boy that used to hide behind his mother’s back when I came home... has grown big and strong. Do you remember the garden you and I made for your mother in the back yard? I only wish I had more time…



I'll go now. Keep watching over me!



And that concludes the Seraphic Radiance sidequest. Though, there is one last thing left to do in the Graveyard before we depart and never return the rest of the remaining game.



If we now go check behind the tree where Ben Hyuga was hiding out to make his dramatic entrance, we now find...



Father's Coat -- Yuri's ultimate armor and the very last piece of ultimate equipment in Shadow Hearts. This provides +83 Physical and +77 Special defense on top of halving both Light and Dark Elemental damage. Zhuzhen is going to get weak in the knees if he sees Yuri stroll up wearing this.



We should probably take a look at Seraphic Radiance. Unlike every other Fusion in the game where Yuri just started wearing the skin of the Fusion monster he defeated (or at least something fairly similar in Amon's case), Yuri gets a completely new look for his version of Seraphic Radiance. That look being a sparkling naked angelic Ken Doll with tribal tattoos. Sure, why not?

Being the ultimate Fusion in the game, Seraphic Radiance hosts quite the hefty stat buff:
Just straight 25s all the way down. Yeah... that's a pretty good Fusion. The only downside is its Sanity cost is a pricey 64 SP. So at current that only gives us nine turns before having to restock on SP for Yuri. But... nine turns is probably enough for most things now.



We're now done with the Graveyard forever. Before we wrap things up and actually get to the main plot for the remainder of the game...




Music: NDE - Near Death Experience



Let's take this thing out for a test ride, shall we?



Get a nice view of Seraphic Yuri's sculpted ass as he telekinetically fires blasts that do... around the ballpark of 400 damage on just standard Hits on the Judgment Wheel.



Other than the high SP cost to Fuse into Seraphic Radiance, there is also a substantial MP cost for all of its abilities. At most, we're getting three or four of them out before Yuri runs dry on mana. But... they usually get the job done in that time.



Praise the Sun, it's For Everyone!





Remember in the old primitive days when we used Ignition Fusion to buff Inferno's Attack Power so he could punch better? Wasn't that quaint?



For Everyone raises the entire party's Physical Attack/Defense and Special Attack/Defense by 30% (36% on Perfect Hit) as well as giving everyone a +30 Agility boost for five rounds. That is... rather substantial all round. Seraphic Radiance might be a wee bit busted.







For Tomorrow is an attack that hits all enemies for Non-Elemental damage (to the tune of around 600-700 damage) and distributes that HP to the party for a full heal (or damn well close to it.) That's not exactly going to replace Alice and Arc. But it's there just in case.


Music: SSC - Special Short Cuts



Finally, we do need to sort out the final [????] Skill by having Yuri go Berserk on purpose for the last time in the game. This unlocks...





For the Children, the highest MP consuming attack in the game at a massive 200 MP a cast. So what does For the Children exactly entail?







Do you think Albert Simon is the only one that can summon a calamity from deep space? Pfft. 200 MP and Yuri can do that. In a reasonable timeframe, no less. Where is your space disaster, Simon? It's been nearly two months!



For the Children just hits all enemies for the damage cap. Full stop. You cast this and the enemy takes 999 damage making it the single strongest attack in the game. I suppose that's worth burning through half of Yuri's total MP.



Welp. That's it! We have now officially seen all the side content in Shadow Hearts. Tune in next time as Yuri and the gang head into space to begin sorting out that whole Neameto Float business as the final stretch of Shadow Hearts begins!






Video: Ben Hyuga/Seraphic Radiance Battle Highlight Reel (You should watch this.)


Video: Seraphic Radiance Yuri Special Attacks (You should also watch this.)





Seraphic Radiance Yuri Render - Yuri has attained ultimate power... but at what cost...? It's his junk.