Part 31: The Spirits Within

Part 31 - The Spirits Within










We start our final mission from the same dimly-lit basement room we once used to escape the Brotherhood. This time our goal is in the opposite direction.



And our company is decidedly weirder.

[Harlequin grins a wide, predatory grin. Both sets of his pearly-white teeth, offset by the livid red lipstick around his mouth.]

Now the fun begins.

Wait, I have some questions.

There's always time for more questions in this game.

Of course you do.

If you won't tell me who you are, will you at least tell me what you can do?

See this sword?

Just pretend that he's holding one.

It's kind of hard to miss.

I can stick people with it. Pretty good, too. I also have one of those Telestrofwyr Magical Bug-Eradicating launchers like the rest of you.

That it?

Is that not enough?! Beyond the tattoos that adorn my face, I have another - a recent addition - in a place that only those closest to me will ever see.

TMI



Oh, and I am a powerful mage as well. I forgot that.

Canonically one of the most powerful there is. In this game... eh, I'd rather have Alexander Falk or even Verbena Vie to be honest.

Right. And what can we expect to find down here?



Sounds like a final dungeon alright.

Great. Well, I'm ready.

But first, how about one last traditional look at our party? We haven't done one of those in a while, and definitely won't after this.



Amazon worked hard training her previously feeble Body in preparation for this day. Real hard. As in, she could now probably do side work as a live crash test dummy.

Amazing how far a little motivation and a stack of spare Karma can take you.





It comes as no surprise to anybody that Harlequin is nowhere near as powerful as he "should" be, though this being Harlequin that's fairly easy to write off as him not taking things entirely seriously. Statistically he's by no means weak, having downright herculean strength with very respectable caster stats on top. Unfortunately, his primary specialization is Physical Adept and not even the great clown man himself has the strength to pull it up from the bottom of the archetype barrel.

He's also decently skilled in ranged weapons, especially shotguns... except again, the Aegis launcher ignores stats and he has no other ranged weapons, rendering those stats useless. This makes me think the bug sprayer was originally affected by skills, especially since the Ghost likewise has points in Shotguns despite not carrying a traditional one.



His primary weapon of choice is the sword he mentioned earlier, which is also the best melee weapon in the game. Three times as powerful as the 2 damage baseball bat!





Lazy bastard hasn't even bothered upgrading all his spells, bringing an okay-but-not-great mix of damage and support. I want to draw some special attention to Quick Strike at the end there. It's the highest-level offensive Adept spell and on paper, sounds quite nice. A free attack with +6 damage every couple of turns, right?

Well no. See, probably owing to its status as a spell rather than an innate Adept or weapon skill which is where most offensive melee abilities are found, Quick Strike here actually ignores your base damage entirely and deals its damage independently. In other words, instead of adding +6 to your normal attack damage, it simply deals 6 damage. That's it.

I have to imagine this is a bug, and a real unfortunate one at that considering Physical Adepts already struggle in this game.





The Tir Tairngire Ghost is a pretty basic grunt who'd be nothing special if not for the fact that he carries our third Aegis launcher, a fact that elevates him from "kinda meh" to "thank god this guy's here". As I mentioned earlier, he's quite skilled at using shotguns despite a Colt M23 rifle being his only "real" weapon.



Coyote is, well, Coyote. Statistically similar to the Ghost but lacking his Aegis launcher, by now she's starting to have some issues hittings things reliably except at very close range. Still, it's not like we were going to leave her behind on this one and she can definitely still bring the pain with her Enfield AS-7 provided her shots actually land.

Now, let's get this show on the road.



We end up in a fight immediately upon entering the ritual chamber or whatever this place is, firmly setting the tone for this entire mission. We won't be leaving combat mode even for a single moment until we reach the final boss, so you'd best buckle up.







For enemies found in the final dungeon, the brotherhood jackasses are really nothing special.



Some of them have swords, some of them have guns and some of them cast spells, but they're all weak enough that they only manage to be a credible threat if multiple of them happen to gang up on the same character. And if they all hit. And if all the hits are crits.



None of that'll happen when you kill them all in a single turn before they get to act, like we just did.



The way upstairs is locked and we have no business there anyway, so we head deeper in, utilizing the tunnel the bugs dug up the last time we were here.



It's unfamiliar territory from here on out. It looks like the facility extends even further than it originally seemed, these hallways obviously aren't insect handiwork.



More weirdos wait for us around the corner. It's not hard to guess what they're referring to with this "elevated one" business.



Here's how we distribute our own special brand of spiritual elevation.



Rude! It's hard to completely avoid damage here since every Brotherhood bozo starts each fight on Overwatch. Everything also needs to be healed manually due to the lack of end-of-combat heals.



Top 10 anime battles of the season. Unlike this sucker, the cowardly ambusher manages to get away and runs off through the door at the end of the hallway.



We take this time to heal up a bit. Another lovely consequence of the constant combat mode is that after single every battle, Amazon has to manually deactivate her drones and wait a turn so that she can catch up with the rest of the team.



The first thing of note in the next area is this network of air vents which provide our drones with easy flanking positions.



While they're looking around, the escapee from the last room grows tired of waiting and makes the fascinating strategic decision of rushing our team all by his lonesome.



Harlequin teaches him the error of his ways with Chi Onslaught, an Adept ability which hits three times in a single action with reduced accuracy but increased crit chance. Unfortunately it also costs 3 AP to use, so it's not actually that different from just using three normal attacks.



The "elevated one" is waiting for us around the next corner. These are the exact same creatures we fought during our last visit, with the Worker being a melee variant. All the bugs have high health and defenses, but are also pretty easy to hit.



Let's see if our fancy weapon works. First we bring down the physical form the traditional way...



...then the spirit emerges the next turn (and gets its free 1 damage/-1 AP attack). Last time this is where we hit a wall and had to retreat, but this time we've come prepared.



Aw yeah, back to the bug dimension with you.

A couple of notes about the Aegis launcher: It can only damage bugs in their spirit form and it can't crit or land Weak shots, meaning it always deals 15 damage if it hits. It only has an ammo capacity of 2, so without AP boosts it can only ever be fired twice per turn for a total of 30 damage per character.

The joke here is that all bug spirits have 40 HP and must be killed in a single turn or else they revive the physical form, so it requires three successful shots in one turn to take one down. Now without disabling her drones the previous turn, Amazon can only fire one shot with her one AP (assuming she doesn't move) which leaves us with five shots per turn at best.

As a result our team is only really capable of killing one spirit per turn which can be a real pain when facing two or three at once. It's not particularly dangerous since we have the firepower to keep the physical forms down reliably and the spirits only ever do 1 damage at a time, but it does cause every fight to take two or three times longer than normal. This is why the Tir Tairngire Ghost and his extra launcher are such an invaluable addition, especially if you don't bring anyone with Haste.



The next room features a mix of normal dudes and highly abnormal dudes, one of which is hiding behind some bars in the middle of the room. Harlequin having 99% hit chance on everything with his Manabolt 3 implies none of them have particularly high Willpower, which seems fitting enough.

Also some flesh seems to be growing on the wall. High-quality wallflesh is a must-have accessory for any good final dungeon designer.





The humans remain little more than fodder, but going after them does mean their ugly buddies get to live a little longer.



One of them, a Venom, spits nasty venom at the Ghost through the bars. It's hard to see (blame video capture) but in addition to traditional damage the venomous Venom venom temporarily reduces Body by 2, making it one of the rare stat-reducing debuffs in these games.





Regardless, we dispose of them the same way as before. You get to skip the whole song and dance of killing and re-killing them though, so be thankful.



While the rest of the team is having their fun, Coyote who can't harm the spirits is looking at the computer screens. I'm not entirely sure whether or not this counts as foreshadowing in this case.



Nothing else here, so onwards we go. It can't be much further, right?



The first thing we come across in the next room are some unfortunate souls who seemingly had some trouble adapting to their new spiritual lifestyle.



Beyond that, it's more fighting and also more wallflesh, a clear sign of us getting closer and closer to our goal.



Good ol' Prime remains both accurate and incredibly deadly.



This guy actually manages to fight back a little, leaving Harlequin who soaks most of the damage in these fights in pretty bad shape.



But he didn't manage to finish the job, and is thus finished himself instead.



Alright so... now what? There are no visible doors in this room, and there haven't been any other paths we could've taken. Could this be a bug?



Ah nope, that is a bug.



Three of them in fact, with one of them busting through a wall in the previous room.





We do our usual extermination routine on the two nearby abominations while the third shuffles off somewhere.



Backtracking to the previous room, we find and promptly put down the sneak, in the process discovering that its tunnel has conveniently opened up a path forward. The other two tunnels are just dead ends, in case you were wondering.



An area transition! This seems like a good place to take a break, catch our breath a bit. Hell, if we were playing the original unpatched version of the game this'd be the first spot we even could take a break since manual saves weren't a thing back then.

Anyway, see you next time.