Part 78: Final Sidequest Interlude: Part Three

Sidequest Interlude: Final

We're in the home stretch, with only a few things to wrap up. Let's go from less to more severe, eh?



After you complete the cows quest and get Natalia's Star of Malkuth costume, a new, completely different sidequest becomes available. He'll ask for a giant fish bone, and if you give it to him...



He uses it to build an arcade cabinet, which lets you play a mini game.



This is Tales of Dragon Buster, though it's written in Abyss's language, which is why it's indecipherable there.



The controls are surprisingly complex, so instead of explaining them all in detail, I'll just cop out and show you this.



The gist of the game is fairly simple. It's a 2D sidescroller where you play as Luke fighting monsters. The levels are designed in a sort of Castlevania non-linear manner, where taking certain routes will lad you to different levels. At predetermined points along the levels, you'll hit a room where you have to fight a boss monster. Defeating it gets you items. Pretty straightforward.



You can get weapon and armor upgrades that increase your damage and decrease damage dealt to you, but that's only half the story.



There are two other items that can be obtained, the staff and the circlet. There are three endings in Dragon Buster. The normal end where you have neither, the Princess end where you have either the staff or the circlet, and the Best end when you have both. Sounds easy, right?

But there's a catch. To have the staff in your inventory, you can't have a weapon upgrade. And to have the circlet, you can't have an armor upgrade. So to get the best ending, you have to beat Dragon Buster without any of the upgrades, which is actually quite challenging.



At the end, you fight a big ol' dragon.



And then you win!

I've included a video below that has some footage of the game. The first two tries I die horribly, but in my third run I manage to get a princess end. I spent the better part of three hours trying to get a best ending take for you all, but I just couldn't swing it. Sorry!

Dragon Buster



: “The 'princess'? It was just Tear.”

: “....Gee, I'm so sorry. I suppose you would have preferred Natalia.”

: “Wh-what's your problem?”

: “Now now, no need to fight. The princess appears in the game as the person the player has in his heart.”



: “...What...?”

: “Wh- that's... n-no way! That's ridiculous!!”

: “That kind of reaction just makes it sound all the more true, Luke.”

: “Really. Luke is such a kid.”

: “I don't need to hear a little kid calling me a little kid!”

: “Now, now, settle down. Luke, please don't start shouting just because someone pointed out the truth.”

: “Still, I must say, I'm very impressed you were able to rescue the princess. I was pretty sure no one could beat that game. I'm at a loss, so I'll give you this prize. It'll make you feel more authentic.”



This is the Dragon Buster costume.

If you're not aware, this whole thing is a big shout out to a very, very old arcade game by Namco (back when they called themselves Namcot) called Dragon Buster.



It's actually a surprisingly faithful re-imagining as a mini-game.

Now normally, it ends there, but if you're on new game plus like I am, you also get a second costume.





This is the Dragon Buster? costume, which you only get on new game plus, for the same requirements as the other one. It's the same costume, but Luke gets a mask to make him look more like Dragon Buster's protagonist, Clovis. Also there's an obvious zipper on the back of the mask.

Next up, we have some unfinished business at the coliseum.



I haven't really covered it because it's a tad boring, but in addition to the singles matches I played earlier, you can play team matches as well. There's not much reward for them, however the first time you complete the advanced team cup, you get a very special fight.



Cameo battle!

Another enduring Tales tradition is that, in the arena, you are eventually able to fight against characters from older Tales games. From left to right, we have Nanaly Fletch from Tales of Destiny 2, Mint Adnade from Tales of Phantasia, Philia Felice (oddly translated here as Philia Philis) from Tales of Destiny, and finally Reid Hershel from Tales of Eternia.

Boss: Exhibition Match

Here's the video. I decided to get fancy and, in place of the standard boss theme that plays for everybody else, I muxed in an unused song on the Abyss soundtrack called Eternal Mind. It's pretty fucking good and I have no idea why they never used it, so I will! I'm still new at this, so the song repeats a bit awkwardly. Sorry. Also please ignore my controller spazing out for the first 15 seconds of the video.



So here's the thing about this fight: it's hard. It's really, really hard. There are several reasons for this.



First of all, the enemy party is very well balanced. Reid is a tank, Mint is a healer (and she will throw heals around if you don't kill her, Philia is a mage to rival Jade, and Nanaly is a long range DPS machine. It's a damn good configuration.



The first thing you'll notice is that I put all my effort into focus-firing Mint down. She has access to both Tear and Natalia's best heals. During this fight, she casts revitalize. She needs to go, and fast.



Oh, and naturally, Philia knows time stop.



The next thing I did is start to focus down Reid. The reason for this is that he has a mystic arte that, when used, will revive his entire team. It's bullshit, and I didn't want it to happen.



Reason number two these guys are horrible. Do you see it?

They can use items. And I don't just mean like in Xillia, where people will spam lemon gels. These assholes have life bottles, and they will use them to bring their teammates back up.



Also, I totally forgot that Philia knows resurrection. She pulled this just after Reid used a life bottle, so they went from two teammates back up to four in a second.

The thing about fighting these guys is that they act... well, like a human controlled party. They use items. They have mystic artes. They heal each other. They're well balanced. Were I not level 200, winning this fight would be on par with taking down Nebilim.



I get my revenge, however. Jade immediately casts indignation, killing Reid and Philia just as they revive their teammates.



And then Mint immediately brings Philia back to life.



Here's time stop again, and yeah, they get cut in images, too.



Seriously, fucking Revitalize! Luckily Mint was just outside of it, but Nanaly and Philia were back up to full HP.



Mint finally goes down. Nanaly is the least dangerous of the four, so once I focus down Philia I've won.





Not that she makes it easy on me. Sacred Penance is, to my knowledge, featured nowhere else in this game but here. A lot of effort for a fight most people will never see.



Yeah, she gets Big Bang too.



Nanaly's all that's left, so I send her out with a bang.



Or at least she was all that's left, until she used a life bottle to bring back Philia, again!



And before she can cast Revitalize again, I finish it.



The big score here is the Faerie Ring, which cuts TP usage by a whopping 50%. With this, Natalia can become a better healer than Tear because she no longer fears burning out her TP too fast.

Honestly I feel kind of bad. While this fight is hard, their numbers are far lower than Nebilim's, and I overestimated them, only setting them to Very Hard. As much as it was a pain in the ass with them healing one another, none of my team ever died and it was kind of a sweep. Maybe I'll go back and do this fight on Unknown again, and see if it's more interesting enough to post.

Okay, only one sidequest left. No really, for the whole game. Just one more. Are you excited? I'm excited.



: “Ah, it reacted!”

: “That must mean the signature is correct.”

: “What are you doing, pointing weird fon machines at me...”

: “Sorry, this is a replica detector that we constructed for His Majesty.”

: “A replica detector?”

: “Yes, we were told we needed to be able to distinguish replicas in order to protect them, but...”

: “But?”

: “The fon machine reacts to replicas and to currently active fomicry. When we tested it, we detected incredibly strong replica and fomicry signatures from the direction of Ortion Cavern.”

: “Ortion Cavern is though tot be where Dist conducted his experiments.”

: “Yes, we thought it was a malfunction, but it seems the device is operating properly.”

: “I hope nobody's trying to continue Dist's research...”

: “Yes, there's an eccentric engineer who fears that very thing. He says we should excavate the deeper part of Ortion Cavern where the signature originates, but it's too dangerous. Besides, we don't have the funds, so the project has been discontinued.”

: “Who's the engineer?”

: “He's in the meeting hall. His name is Shiba.”

Remember? The guy with the dog we rescued at Aramis Spring? And then who gave us the ice-nine to throw into the volcano? Let's go talk to him.



: “I agree that it should be excavated, but as you know that place is covered in mirrorstone. It costs a lot of money to dig through it.”

: “How much would it cost?”

: “Between 20,000 to 30,000 gald per dig.”

: “That's quite a range.”

: “There's quite a range in the strength of the mirrorstone.”

And so we have our gimmick. But I'll explain more later. To the dungeon!



Once you tell Shiba you're ready to go, he brings us to the back of Ortion Cavern's second section.

: “Mieuu... I feel scary monsters in here...”

: “Yes... it's not a pleasant feeling.”



: “...! I see... this is bad.”

: “What's up?”

: “The fomicry is creating a replica of the wall we just dug through. In other words, after a certain time, the wall will close, and we'll be trapped in here.”

: “My! Why would they build such a thing...?”

: “...To stop holes from being opened up in the walls, I imagine.”

: “To stop people from coming in?”

: “I suspect the opposite. They probably created something... bad. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made this silly machine.”

: “You mean there's something in here so nasty they had to trap it?”

: “Yes.”



We break the shit out of the generator anyway, though. We aren't going to let some scary monster stop us, we press on!



Okay, there are a few gimmicks to this dungeon. First, note the '1/18' in the top left. That's the number of generators we've destroyed out of the total. Since Mieu just totaled this one, we've got one down. The dungeon is largely split into three parts, and to move forward to the next part, you have to destroy all the generators in the area.



The dungeon is divided into a series of rooms, connected by giant chunks of mirrorstone. Shiba can mine through it to get us to the next room, but there's a catch. See that blue bar? That's Shiba's health. It goes down every time we get into a fight with monsters (going down further the longer the fight takes), and every time he digs into another room.

There's a catch, however. Shiba needs money to dig through these, and you can pay him in a range of 20,000 to 30,000 gald per wall. The more money you pay him, the less his health drops per dig. As you can imagine this adds up quite fast, so I just hacked myself in some additional funds. Sorry but I'm too close to the end to start grinding for money right now.



Now you might be wondering how you know where these generators are. The answer is you don't: you're flying blind. You'll notice in the bottom right that the game kinda creates a primitive map of the rooms you've been to, but it's dodgy at best. If you didn't get a map from online like I did, you'd be wandering around here forever, hemorrhaging gald.



There are, however, a handful of springs scattered around the dungeon that will fill Shiba and the party up back to max. Handy.





After about 45 minutes of getting lost and backtracking (even with a map), all 18 generators are down, and the way is open.





: “Wh-what?!”

: “M-Major?!”

: “Sync! And... Arietta...”

: “Fath...er... no, Largo!”

: “Only Dist would leave behind replicas of such bad taste...”

: “He must have been quietly taking their data before. What a bastard.”

: “We aren't going to have to fight them, are we?”

: “If they bear no ill will, I imagine we can merely leave them alone...”



: “...But it appears this isn't going to end peacefully.”

: “Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there's time for sentiment.”

: Dammit... forgive me!”

Boss: God-General Replicas



Ah yes, this fight.



We start off with Sync, Largo, and Arietta. If you're wondering where Legretta is, she slides into the battle after one of the others falls. These guys can really lay into you, but luckily I'm strong enough to brute force it.



I don't think we ever saw Evil Light, did we? It's basically Rending Saber with a giant laser beam at the end.



The trick here is to focus fire Arietta down ASAP. She'll just sit around buffing the rest of the God-Generals.



I go for Largo next for no particular reason. Mostly because he's big and slow, and Guy can finish him rather quickly.



Another cut in we haven't seen. I'm trying to get as many as I can!



Down you go. As you can see, Legretta has happily joined the fray.



She joins the others shortly.



Sync is last, but he pops Akashic Torment just as Luke and Guy close in on him, slamming them both.



And Jade comes in for the kill, running off screen to impale Sync through the heart.



Once again, my max levels and AD skills kinda made a difficult fight look like chump change. Granted if you drop the difficulty down to Hard, it's totally doable. The trick is to have two melee fighters: one to distract Sync/Legretta and the other to focus fire Arietta, then go wild.



: “...That was a surprise. They were no less powerful than their originals. Considering the flawlessness of these replicas, it's almost certain this is Dist's work.”

: “They were replicas, but they had their own wills to some degree. Dist must have taught them for a while.”

: “And then he just trapped them in here...? What was he thinking...”

: “They felt... stronger than their originals to me. How can that be...?”

: “...The original method I developed creates replicas like them – stronger than their originals. But... in exchange, they have a variety of problems.”

Exhibit A: Nebilim.

: “When we leave here, let's make graves for them. Their bodies disappeared because of the fonon separation... but I can't stand just doing nothing.”

: “Guys... The detector's still showing a replica signature. I know it sounds harsh, but we can't stay here forever...”

: “Yes... let's keep moving.”



11 more generators till the final area.



It's all more of the same, really. The only thing of note here are these trap rooms, which periodically send shocks into the water, damaging both us and Shiba.



Let's finish this.





: “...Wait. There's something moving in here.”

: “My tail's tingling!”

: “Behind us!”



...Really?

Boss: God-General Replicas



I don't know... in my opinion, Replicantis is a huge letdown. They pump this guy up to be a beast, and then not only does he look like some terrible devientart monster, he's also just not that tough.



I mean okay, he's tough, but compared to the fight with the replica God-Generals? He's a single, slow opponent who can't cast. Chump change.



Also he's hilariously easy to stun. He spent 90% of the fight just getting staggered by Guy and Luke's combined onslaught.



He has a few tricks, like laser beams and fire balls, but its not very impressive.





Get out.



: “That must have been what Dist wanted to seal here...”

: “He's insane, making something like that...”

: “What does the detector show?”

: “All the replica signatures have disappeared.”

: “Then if we destroy this device, that'll be it.”

: “Okay, go Mieu!”





And that's it for the secret dungeon, folks... well, there is one more thing we can get.



Up on the third floor of the Keterberg hotel is this kid in a cat suit. Talk to him.

: “What was that?”

: “N-nothing...”

: “Pretty lady, can I ask you something?”

: “What is it?”

: “My granddad told me there's a really rare animal somewhere in the world.”

: “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

: “He said there's an animal that's made up of a huge worm and a big black beast and other animals all stuck together, but everyone says granddad is making it up. It makes me sad.”

: “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

: That sounds like a monster, not an animal...

: “Pretty lady, have you seen that animal?”

: “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

: …?

: “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

: “Um...”





: “Um... Tear?”

: “...What? Wh-what?!”

: “You weren't listening, were you...”

: “I-I was!”

: “Granddad says the monsters have a gold spear, a golden helmet, and a gold stone.”

: “They sound like the golden helm, Gae Bolg, and sunlight chamber.”

Which we got from fighting Sand Worm in the desert, Behemoth in the marsh, and Replicantis just now.

: “Oh!! Wow!! You've seen it, haven't you?! Thank you!! I knew granddad wasn't a liar. In thanks, I'll dance for you.”

: “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”



: “And I'll give you this, pretty lady!”





The costume in all its 'glory'.

Next Time: The final battle.

No synopsis for this update.