Part 41: Update 41

Update 41









Click here if you're insane enough to watch the entire thing.




This is it. This is the biggest, baddest quest the Katz will offer. It's also the only one that has a dungeon unique to itself.



: This has got to be where we'll find the final note and the secret treasure!
: This place is crawling with monsters, as usual. You'll be attacked from behind if you don't look out. Do take care.
: Right, let's go.





To the left and right you'll note colored barriers.


You disable them by lighting the corresponding torch.


For some reason the regular enemies here are hilariously weak. Then again we'll fight these guys as part of a forced fight in the storyline soon so maybe they're just part of a set of weakass enemies trying to get us to lower our guard for the first boss fight in Ginnungagap. Yes that is their HP on mania.







This fight is pretty tough. Both Blue Roses have a fairly powerful heal that has no cast time.






What you want to do here is kill the weaker Blue Rose ASAP by blowing it up with whatever, then blow up the other Blue Rose, then you can kill everything else eventually.


Your guess about the dude's level is as good as mine.


These shots are from my first go around, not the one in the video. This is about where I realized what I had to do.


You can't really stop them from healing reliably so you have to just outdamage the healing. The fact that it's very hard to shift the elemental grid off water due to your party healing you in addition to all the enemy moves is just icing on the cake.


This one is from the fight in the video.


DIE YOU SONOVA


FFFFFF


At some point I really need to disable Ars Nova as it takes much longer to execute than other unison attacks but deals LESS damage.


Fucking finally. The fight is essentially trivial from here, you wipe out the other one and then everything else.


My first time through I took 10 minutes 22 seconds, had a MAX HIT of 36 and got 11.54 MORE grade

: All right. That's one down.





This would be cool if it wasn't going to be palette-swapped 2 more times.






Carbuncles heal but have very low HP.


Night Stalkers can teleport.


WTF is up with these levels.


These shots are from my first run so I didn't remember at the time that Carbuncles are healers.


This is how you deal with a Carbuncle


Once again it becomes incredibly trivial after you remove the healers.
: Good, let's keep this up.





Yeah.


This fight is pretty bad.








The sirens are the biggest problem, followed by the Jasconius.




I just didn't have the stats to stand up to the Jasconius. Emil actually died there but was brought back by Prayer of Resurrection.


Oh hey all my party members that aren't dead are asleep. Thanks, Sirens.



Let's reload and have a rematch.


I also, I'm ashamed to admit, lowered the difficulty. I didn't exactly want to grind out until I could survive the death-rush the Jasconius kept pulling out of its ass.


Yeah I equipped a sleep resist item on the Tree but he's still asleep.

This place is just status debuff central.


Death to Sirens.


Honestly I think I picked the right difficulty. It was by no means a cakewalk


This move is a HUGE PAIN because it makes it very hard to actually hit him, since by the time I catch up to him he can do it again.


That spin is also a pain.


This was a major source of damage on Jasconius since it was so hard to combo on him normally (tree kept dying).


So did Emil.


Eventually I tried a strategy where my goal was to control the Elemental Grid and pump out third-movement dark attacks, but I ended up using Devil's Hellfire instead since I couldn't seem to keep up.


I hate caster monsters because they have this alarming tendency to NOT CAST for some reason. But when they do cast it's pretty awesome.


I thought for sure it was over here.


Nope they didn't attack Marta at any point for two seconds, allowing me to Life Bottle Emil and then Melange Gel Marta.


Holy shit that's a lot of damage, thanks caster monster!


Now we just have to kill the giant Polywog with alpha and beta on its side. Do those letters have any mythological connection to Poseidon?


Mostly this guy just doesn't take damage. That is pretty low for over 30 hits.


That clocked out at about 11 minutes but all those menus put it over 15 minutes.
: You're doing fine. Only one more to go!
: Right!
After this I went and bought more Life Bottles and such. I should point out at this time that there is no way to save while doing a Katz quest.







: It might be some kind of trap. Be careful.
: Yeah.
: Please don't be booby trapped!
: What's wrong, Emil?
: There's nothing but a note inside. It's the letter "S".
: S?
: If we look at all the notes together, we've got...
: L, A, E, and S.
: Could it be SEAL? Maybe there's something being sealed up.
: That's got to be it. The secret treasure's been sealed away somewhere.
: But how are we supposed to break it? Do you think there's a password, or something?
: Break, seal, I command it!
: Listen. Do you really think it would be anything that simple?


Monster: Graaaah!!



Click here to just see the last boss.


Oh. Oh FUCK.




Reminder that the highest HP of any boss ENCOUNTER TOTAL in Tales of Symphonia was 240,000 on MANIA. This is on NORMAL.








These guys hit hard.


Annihilate seems fairly similar to Meteor Storm.


At first I thought it was too much for my current party even on easy normal.


I stuck at it though. At least the Vroom is easy to damage.


No more Vroom.


The snake is next.


I am using Devil's Hellfire a LOT.


No more snake.


OHSHIT


Whew, close.


Despite being a giant hulking monstrosity, Album Atrum likes to cast spells.


Like Blessed Drops.




I have no idea why it did so little damage.


Radiant Spark seems to resemble Photon.


Fallen Thirst is a charge attack.


Branded Earth appears to be a point-blank AOE attack.


I'm not sure what this attack is called but HOLY SHIT. I'm guessing it deals damage equal to your max HP with the "can't reduce below 1" flag. If this had gone off while he still had four buddies I might have lost instantly.


It's just you and the four of us now.


Now at this point I could hit him normally.


And Devil's Hellfire does a lot of damage.


And then he casts this.


WELP
EDIT: I found out later that this is actually him switching his "mode" from spell-vulnerable to physical and back. Apparently he starts out in "normal" mode and alternates between being nearly immune to melee and nearly immune to spells (with a corresponding boost to the other).


No worries. Even if the Summon Spirit of Whine can't damage him my monsters can.


Eye lasers.


Yeah.


It occurs to me that I never ever use debuff spells.


It doesn't seem to help.


Holy shit does he have an elemental weakness though.


This version of the Meteor Storm spell seems to be called "Terra Forming".


I hurriedly turn off all non-Dark spells.


Why can't Marta have even a single non-light attack spell?




Much better.








Doris is seriously MVP for that fight. Too bad I don't have anybody capable of casting Bloody Howling (the top-tier dark spell).



: Does that mean this monster was the secret treasure?
: It didn't seem that special.
: You're right.


: What's this?
WTF it's like a Katz with the freaky face but it's on all fours.
: It's adorable!~
: I can't believe it! It's the elusive Kitty Kat, a rare monster long thought to be extinct!
: So that's what the treasure hunter's trophy was.
: It's amazing, simply fantastic! It warms my heart to know that even some humans would be concerned with the extinction of a poor monster such as this.
Kitty Kat: Meow!
: Lord Emil, I would ask that you befriend this monster and look after it's welfare.
: Of course I will.
: I owe you my most sincere thanks.
: It's no problem. We'll take good care of the Kitty Kat until it can live with others of its kind.
: Uh, where exactly are they going to find those?
: The Katz have some.
: Whatever happened to those creepy guys?
: They went... elsewhere.
: I don't like how you phrased that.
: If you want I could ask them to come back.
: That's ok, don't trouble them on my account!!!
: The true treasure hunter's trophy might have been a desire for people and monsters to live together in peace.
: I do enjoy a happy ending.
: I think you're right, Marta.
: This treasure hunting business is actually really fun! This is the kind of experience money can't buy.
: Oh? Who was it that said they wanted jewels and a dress for their wedding with Lord Emil?
: Oh, oops.
: Heh heh.
: Ho ho ho.



Skit Video: A Lie
(Trigger: Defeat Album Atrum and win the Nether Traitor)
: Nether Traitor? Never heard of it.
: Could it be?!
: What?
: In the age of darkness, the fell god Nether gained this legendary weapon when he sold his soul to the demons in exchange for eternal youth.
: What?! That's horrible. I don't want a weapon like that!
: Just kidding.
: Come on, don't scare me like that.
: That was a lie.
: Wait. Which part was the lie?




On the whole the last fight was rather enjoyable and reminded me of some of the better ToS fights. It's certainly better than Commander "facetank" Brute or any of these other fucks.

Next Time: GO PLANET!