Part 19: Gattuso

Watch the cutscene!



So this is Ehmead Hill?
Yeah...but...



That's weird... The barrier's gone.
You mean there was a barrier here?
There was when I came before.



Are you sure you aren't mistaken? I'm pretty familiar with the barrier locations, but here?
You just haven't heard about this one. Nan told me it was only put here recently.
Who is Nan, Karol?
Huh...? Uh, she's um... You know, she's just a friend from my guild. I-I'm gonna go see if I can find anything out!



All right, never mind us, guys. I'm not gonna go look for them if they get lost.
Shall we, Yuri?




Let me through! I'm Rita Mordio of the Imperial Blastia Research Laboratory.
Researcher: Oh, you're a mage from Aspio? Excuse me!




I think you have plenty already...

Karol comes running, excited about something.

Hey! Listen to this!!



Who did what how... huh?
Someone riding a flying dragon threw a giant spear at the blastia! And then just flew off!
A human riding a dragon? No way.
I've never heard of anything like that before.
That's what I thought too, but a bunch of people here saw it happen! They say it was a "dragon rider."
A dragon rider... Hmmm. Well, the world's just full of surprises.



There she goes again.



Researcher: There's nothing strange at all. Perhaps you are...
Just who do you think I am!?
Researcher: I'm well aware of who you are. The famed genius mage, correct? But surely there are some formulas that even you aren't familiar with!
You can't use a weird formula like this! Think of the poor blastia!
Researcher B: H-Hey! Stop gawking and help us catch her!




Knight B: A fire? I don't hear anything or smell anything...
Knight A: Hey! You little liar!
Crap...they caught on that fast?

The Knights start chasing Karol, who runs away.




Knight: Wait a minute... You--there's a warrant for your--





It's now or never...




I'm sorry.



Knight A: Hey! Stop goofing off and help catch that kid!
Knight B: Damn...!



*Huff* *huff* Rita, you should really think more before you act!
*Huff* ...That barrier blastia was just so strange, I couldn't help myself...
Strange? Something fishy about it?
I have a feeling that may be an understatement.
Well, our hands are already full as it is, so could you please keep us out of it?
...It doesn't concern you, regardless.
Yuri Looowell! Where have you run off to now?



Hey, Mr. Famous, sounds like you've got a fan out there.
Again? That guy gives a new meaning to the word "workaholic."



You guys have a lot of problems! Just who are you, anyway?
Umm, well, I'm...
Yuuuri, come out, come out, wherever you are!
You can talk about that later!

Something or someone can be heard in the bushes.



Waaaah! Wait, wait! It's me!



Anyway, let's get our butts to Nor Harbor before things get any more complicated.
Which way were we supposed to go, again?
Let's see, as the crow flies...
Isn't this a beast trail? Can we really go through here?
We'll go as far as we can go, at least. I don't want to get captured again.
We'll need to be on the lookout for monsters, then.
Meh, what are one or two monsters to the brave Captain Karol?
Y-yeah, that's right! Though if the barrier were up, we wouldn't have to worry about monsters at all...
I can't stand it! Why does some idiot have to go around breaking blastia and making our lives difficult?!




Dungeon Time! Ehmead Hill is, frankly, fairly uninteresting. There's a lot of junctions but most just lead to dead ends with some treasure.

Skit: Who is Nan?
...Hey, Estelle. I noticed you keep looking in my direction--what's up?
You don't mind if I ask?
All right, well then...here goes. This "Nan"... Are you in love with her?
Ack...*hack* *cough* *choke*
Nan is a girl's name, right? Is she the girl you wanted to show Halure's flowers to...?
Waaaaaa! No, no, no! You got it all wrong!
I do?
Man, she'd be so angry if she heard you say that...
Karol, good luck with her! I'm rooting for you!
Uh, yeah...well, thanks. That's encouraging...


Of course, we also get some new artes in the battles here.




Repede learns Thievery, which allows him to steal an item from the enemy. For some reason I barely ever get this to work manually, but the AI is pretty good with it.

Stealing in this game is fairly unimportant. There's only one battle where the enemy actually holds something that can only be gotten through stealing, and most enemies just hold some crafting materials they also drop. But hey, can't complain about extra items.





Estelle gets Resist, which raises one ally's Magic Defense temporarily.


Skit: The Dragon Rider
Man, some people have some weird hobbies. I mean, who goes around destroying blastia?
I wouldn't really call that a hobby.
If we ever come across whoever's doing this, I'll destroy him!
But what if he has some reason for what he's doing?
They can have any reason they want, destroying blastia is unforgivable!
Period!
Ack, my, my neck! My neck! Waaaaaghh! Ack, heeeelp meee, Yuri!
Meh, that'd take effort. Just play nice with each other, kids.
Estelle...
Umm...do your best, Karol!


We eventually run across those flowers:



Rita! Don't touch it! "Inhaling billybally leaf pollen can lead to vertigo and strong feelings of exhaustion."
Hmph...





Whoops, sorry!




You're interested in healing artes?
Nah...
...It's no use. Healing artes don't work on this. We'll just have to wait until he recovers naturally.
How long will that take?
Karol, be strong!

Sometime later.



I said I was sorry.
If you're all right, then let's go.
Let's be careful to stay away from the billybally leaf from now on, okay?




Skit: A Nice, Fun, Relaxing Trip
Red-eyes, knights... Why can't we just have a nice, fun, relaxing trip?
You're one to complain, Yuri.
Yeah, weren't those knights calling YOUR name?
But you're the one who was fighting with the mages, Rita.
Please, everyone! We're okay, aren't we? I actually think it's kind of fun.
If you think being chased is fun, you're going to love the rest of this trip.
Yeah, you may have written off what just happened, but we're still fugitives!



Skit: The Value of a Barrier Blastia
That was a pretty big commotion over breaking a single barrier blastia.
I dunno, it seemed like the commotion Rita caused was even bigger.
Stop bringing up trivial details!
Of course people would be upset. It was a barrier blastia. Blastia are intertwined with almost every aspect of people's daily lives.
Good point. Things got really crazy back in the lower quarter when the aque blastia broke.
I hope they can fix it soon.
Yeah. I mean, that's what we're going through all this for.




Alright, the boss is coming up. Let's look over our equipment we got here first:

Magic Guard: Allows blocking of Magic by holding Down while guarding.
Item Pro: Reduces time immobile after using an item.

This thing is actually a dick move by the game: Strength-wise, it's the best thing you have right now, so you'll probably equip it; however, it's an axe, which means both reduced attack speed and attack range. Both of which you don't want against the next boss. (I put it on anyway because I'm slightly overlevelled here, so to kinda counteract that.)


Backstep: Jump away from enemy while guarding.


Magic Guard: Allows blocking of Magic by holding Down while guarding.


Alright, with that checked, let's go to the boss!

Watch the cutscene and boss battle!



Wh...what's that?
Gyaaaah!



A survivor, huh?
If we leave it here it'll surely go back and try to attack Halure again...
But Halure has the barrier protecting it now.
Even so, how are the people of Halure supposed to sleep at night with beasts like this crawling around just outside the barrier?




Fuck this guy. My battle here went surprisingly well, but he's still an asshole.




He comes with two minions, which you want to kill off first as they have fairly little health and are annoying.

Now, the first thing that happens while I'm doing that is Yuri learning a new arte.




Crushing Eagle is our first Arcane Arte, which has some benefits over Base ones. You can also link Base into Arcane artes. I'm not really a fan of Crushing Eagle, though.

Anyway, Gattuso and can go into Over Limit, which he likes to do near the start of the battle. At that point it's not a huge deal since you want to concentrate on the cubs anyway, but it's still annoying.





Note that there are some Billybally Leaf plants on the field. If we - or the enemies - hit them with an attack, they release pollen that stun whoever is near them. So try to stay away.

Gattuso has several attacks, such as



poisoning you,



stabbing you with his tail,



dashing into you, thowing you into the air in the process,



or attacking with his teeth. It all hits fairly hard, he can execute them in fast succession, and you really shouldn't be surprised if someone dies. Hope you bought some Life Bottles!




One good tactic against him is having Rita cast Fire Ball. He's weak to fire and has a pretty low Magic Defense, so one fire ball takes off about 1000 HP.




For the secret mission, you want to get him close to a Billybally Leaf and hit the leaf, preferably with Azure Edge or another long-range arte.



Now, the game is very finnicky about what counts and what doesn't. I think it wants you (instead of him) activating the flower, and you not getting hit by it, but it doesn't always quite work. Try it a few times and you'll eventually get it though.



And that's about it, I guess.



That was easy.
Now Halure is safe as well!
I don't know...

Our Secret Mission reward is an Attack Ring, an accessory that increases the wearer's physical attack power by 10%. Not too shabby.


Achievement/Trophy:

Secret Mission 3


Now, I wasn't entirely happy with my fight here. Not because it didn't go well, but because it did. I didn't really get to show off how much of a dick Gattuso can be. So here's a few alternative battles:

Typical Battle: This one subs Repede for Karol. This is probably closer to how a typical victory against Gattuso looks like, well maybe with a bit less Over Limit.
Suicide Run: For this battle I put Estelle out of the party, which is a terrible idea. However, it does show off really well how much of an ass Gattuso can be.
Fireball Spam: This took me a few tries to get right, but is essentially how you'd quick-kill Gattuso by abusing his low MDef and fire weakness. I misclick once or twice when switching characters because I had to juggle two controllers due to not having the Moon Selector yet, but otherwise this is about as fast as it gets at that level. (Rewatching that I should have probably set AI-Rita to Fire Ball only but whatever.)

Anyway, back the the story.




Fuck you Karol. I'm not sure why the game designers thought this boss was easy.

But there could be a dozen more just around the corner...
N-no worries, seriously!
Well, let's just hope there aren't too many more where it came from.




And that's it for today. Next time we're gonna finish up Ehmead Hill and do some sidequest stuff.