Part 52: Ancient Ruins

Ancient Ruins


This time, Yuri will be exploring the Ancient Ruins with Keith and Halley, but a couple things of note before we get to that. The first is that the phone in Karl's house now works. I guess that if you're still missing Gravestones at this point, it will give you hints where to find them. But who is this mysterious "Dad"?

Dad: Hunh? You want to know who exactly this Papa is? Sorry, that's a secret. Ah hah hah hah.

Damn you, game!


The second thing is that I did indeed miss one of Keith's weapons at Calios. It's in the pile of cloth in Koudelka's cell. Jiru has crap stats compared to the rest of Keith's late game weapons and tiny, tiny, tiny slivers of hit areas, but it also has a very good chance of causing Instant Death. (If you manage to hit all three areas, which, as you'll see in the library update, is quite a feat.)


We're off to the Ancient Ruins. Hopefully, this won't be as painful as the Cave Temple.


Charming place. The bats fluttering against the sky are a nice touch.


The inside has held up a bit better than the entrance. There's a Save Point here, the only one in the place.


There's also a staircase we can't get to...


...and a door we can't open.


The only way we can go is through a passageway to the north.


There's a chest at the beginning of the labyrinth. Three paths lead away from here, each marked with a different colored light. This place is much easier to get through than the Cave Temple. The Book of Rituals spells out the path exactly: "Cross the rainbow, then follow the drops of blood to the royal garden."


In other words, we have to follow the order of the rainbow, starting with RED (drops of blood).


This brings us to a small transitional passageway. I'd like to note that all the passages head in the same direction. Even if you take a side passage instead of the center one, it immediately curves north.

There are fairly powerful monsters wandering around here: Asps and Basilisks, both of which can cause Petrification. Asps also cast Icy Breath; I never had the Basilisks cast anything at me, but I have just been lucky. There's also a rather odd-looking monster called Sweeper. He casts Rock Storm.


We come to another set of three paths identical to the first, though with different colored lights marking them. We choose ORANGE. Which looks yellow, at least until you see it next to the actual yellow light.


YELLOW follows orange


GREEN


BLUE


INDIGO


And last of all, VIOLET.


For the first time, the passage goes in a direction other than north.


Back at the entrance, the water drains out of the pool, and Yuri comes out of the now open door, defying all laws of time and space. Well, all laws of space, anyway, since we've only been traveling north and slightly east, but ended up south and west of where we started. This place is weird.


At the bottom of the stairs, there's a large catacomb. Comparing them to Yuri, the skulls in the alcove seem much too large to be human.


There's a broken pillar in the way, so we have to go up the stairs and around the edge of the room to get to the chest in the center (Alice's ultimate armor ). Because heaven forfend that Yuri should slide through the huge gaps between the pillars that are still standing. That just wouldn't be lady-like.


Like the Cave Temple, you have to leave the Ancient Ruins and then look at the Book of Rituals again. The description has changed. This one is also easy to figure out. We just go through the rainbow backwards, starting with violet (Violet = purple, which is the color of royalty ).


VIOLET


INDIGO


BLUE


GREEN


Here, we get to see YELLOW and orange side-by-side. I say they could have made the different shades between these two more distinct. Not to mention that anyone who has any type of color-blindness is fucked on this entire puzzle and left with no option but trial-and-error.


ORANGE. By the way, has anyone else been seeing the phallic design on the floor, or am I just crazy?


RED


Back to the entrance, and back down the stairs in the drained pool.


This time, we've got company. Maybe he'll be our friend!


Maybe not.


Meet Seraphim. He's just pissy because someone stole his skin.


Seraphim, meet Sandalphon. Yuri's Light fusion will help make up for the lack of Alice, since he has his own group healing spell, Revive. Revive is more expensive than Arc, but it restores Unconscious party members as well as completely filling everyone's health. Keith and Halley both have healing spells of their own, making this fight much easier than the fight with Cherubim.


Speaking of which, Seraphim has a lot in common with Cherubim. He also has the Divine Punishment spell, and he hits HARD, making all those healing spells a necessity.


Thankfully, he only has about half the HP of the previous boss, so this fight doesn't last anywhere near as long.


As our reward, the group gets a bunch of cash and XP, and we get Halley's ultimate weapon.


Next time on Shadow Hearts: the Dollhouse!


Seraphim Fight on Viddler


NPC Scorecard