Part 36: Episode 35: Metal Heart

Finally, sweet Jesus. The age of Words has ended. The time of beating the shit out of things has returned. Ok, there are a few words still. But not that many.


Dart: "Forbidden Land."

At least Snake repeated things in a shocked form of a question.

Ancestor Blano: "It is the place where our hideous memory sleeps. It used to be, until 11,000 years ago, a palace for us Winglies and it was the place where eternal prosperity was promised. It was called the royal capital Kadessa. Now it is a mere ruin without a name."

Dart: "Are you sure? Is it okay to go in?"

Ancestor Blano: "It is fine. Everything is in the past."

Dart: "I see. We have to do what we can do now."

Ancestor Blano: "Are you ready?"

Dart: “Yes we are.”


Dart: "This is...the wisdom of the Winglies!?"

Ancestor Blano: "It's a ruin of their wisdom. Let's go!!"


Of we goooo into the wild green yonder.


Into the very brown yonder. Actually this should look pretty familiar. Rose and friends had a battle here about 11,000 years ago.

Dart: "So, this is the Forbidden Land. The ruins of past glory..."

Albert: "No remnant of the royal capital remains."

Yes. No remnant. Only the large ruins of a city.


Meru: "Cuz I, I hear the outcries of the people who died here."

Dart: "Are you going to wait in the forest, Meru?"

Meru: "No! I'm okay! If I can't get past such a small thing, how will I be able to fight against the Divine Dragon!?"


We zig zag through a boring room with a Mind Purifier and get to the first of a whole pile of twenty foot teleporters. Handy for us, but I reiterate: the Winglies must have been lazy fucks.


This teleporter leads us to very happy places. Very happy indeed.


Awwww yeah. Dancer’s Shoes are the female only shoes that add +20 to speed. Meru gladly shoves these on and is now quite the speed demon. She’ll double up Dart and Kongol pretty frequently and if hit with the speed up she’ll almost always triple them. It’s kind of a waste though for right now cause she’s rolling more in a support roll. Averaged with her speed she does ok, if not exceptional damage. But the big thing is she has a shit ton of turns to get healing in on our other team mates while they focus on murder.


Speaking of murder: Have some of our enemies in the area. The little dudes are Pucks. As you can guess they are little goat men. They never did anything more than a standard attack to me. The spinningheads however can be annoying. They can drop most of the mental status effects on you. The first battle I had with them Meru got feared. Jeeerks.


This is a room of “Looks far worse than it is.” This area is pretty linear on the whole other than a split with an optional boss.


We also can run into Gnomes of all things here. They carry tiny broom that they hit you with. They don’t have much HP but their defense is pretty ridiculous. They take half as much damage as either of the bosses in here from physical hits.


God damn these teleporters never end.


Eventually we do get somewhere that isn’t a bunch of random, completely useless platforms floating around. There are still plenty of teleporters to move you a short distance though.

Miranda: "It's such a large space."

Haschel: "Indeed. I wonder what it was for?"

Kongol: "Kongol feels.... Smells like blood."

Albert: "'Blood', and a large space. It sounds like a coliseum."

Meru: "Yes, it really was. I heard it from the Ancestor. Once upon a time, it was a coliseum.”


Meru: “But it wasn't for regular fights that you won or lost. It was for matches to the death. Winglies would just enjoy the view from above...or fighters picked from among the dominated Humans, Dragons, and some Gigantos. I am the offspring of that kind of Wingly."

Dart: "The Ancestor told us that this is a mere ruin, didn't he?"

Meru: "..."

Dart: "What happened here happened in the past. No matter what sorrow there was, it is no longer our sorrow. Isn't that right?"

Albert: "There is nothing to worry about, Meru. The sins of the past are there just to tell us not to repeat them anymore."

Dart: "Cheer up! Let's focus on moving on."

At least someone in this universe is feeling their Wingly Guilt!

Somewhere in our murder fest through here Meru picks up Dragoon Level 3 and her third magic Diamond Dust...which she will not be using today cause most of her MP goes to healing.


Here we have our save point, a healing point in the red circle, and our path split. North goes to the optional boss, right goes towards a longer path with some loot on it. We’ll be hitting up both.


We have a kind of dumb puzzle in here. We need to activate these glow panels in the right order. We need to go off the order that the species came from the Divine Tree. Like fuck we'll remember that. 6 -> 1 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 2 is the order for reference though! You can brute force it pretty easy though and if you fail Albert gives you a hand.


Then Dart excitedly goes HOLY SHIT as this teleporter comes dropping down from the ceiling.


Dart: "Let's go back."

Rose: "Wait! This is a Virage! And this scar!! It must be the Virage that killed Belzac."

I guess Shirley did a bigger number on this thing than I gave her credit for. Although, seeing as its a scar and not a gaping stasised wound, it clearly survived. Also no one questions her knowing the details of a battle that occurred 11,000 years ago. Hell, no Dragoon names are mentioned up until later this disc.

Dart: "You say this is a Virage?"

Miranda: "What are you talking about?"

Albert: "It was a destructive weapon of ancient legend that battled throughout the Dragon Campaign with the Winglies. Although some still remain."

Meru: "But it looks totally different from the one we met before."

Rose: "It's one of their subspecies and from its shape, it must have a power far beyond the one we saw. But, it's not a very pretty sight to see."

Dart: "!!"

Meru: "The Virage..."

Dart: "The monster from ten thousand years ago. Was it awoken by us!?"


Click To Watch

My original recording somehow ended up without sound. This is a fixed run of the battle that differs from all the screenshots that follow, though they aren't terribly different. About the only major change is Meru played more support in the video and didn't die like in the screen shots. Enjoy your split reality.

Welcome to the Virage fight of disc 3. This one isn’t looking in much better shape than the first one we fought, but it started out life as a much beefier S(super?) Virage.


It welcomes us by dropping rocks on everyone’s head. This is definitely physical cause Dart and Kongol shrug it off and Meru gets smashed for 422. She has only 830 HP. This could be...interesting.


Kongol gets some vengeance fpr ass Gigantos of years past by turning into a Dragoon and pounding the Virage in the skull while Meru heals up. He knocks off about 638 of about 10,000. Could be a while. As usual the Virage has three parts we can attack. We just want to focus on one though because we just waste our time otherwise.


And here we get our gimmick. We only have 10 of the Virage’s turns to do this battle. Although...it’s pretty weird. If we let time run out he self-detonates and we get full XP and loot. If we kill him...he self-detonates and we get full XP and loot. So just guarding and going FUCK YOU is a legitimate, if slow option. But what’s the fun in that?

When Dart get’s a turn he heaves a Speed Up on Kongol so he can keep the pain train a’ rollin’. In retrospect I should have had Dart be my sped up opener.


The Virage can also punch us for 250 on Dart or about 450 on Meru. Kongol never gets hit by it but I’d imagine he’d laugh at what a weakling that Virage is


Everyone is back in good shape healthwise so Meru does her small part and chucks a Dark attack item at the Virage for about 417. Not too bad.


Fuck you rooooocks.


Meru drops into Dragoon form to show off her level 2 spell which is a 50% heal and status restore on all. This will only put her in the 400s, but she has a massive defense buff in Dragoon form. Usually a Dragoons highest bonuses go to their weaker base stats. She’ll drop another one to top off her next turn.


Uh, Meru. You really might want to have words with your Dragoon Spirit about the crotch covering status.


Although with how she’s flaunting it for 20 seconds I think she’s into it.


Know how I was using Crush Dance back on bosses in the first half of disc 2? YUP. Still using it. Madness hero has ridoncluous SP but it does shit-tastic damage on its own. I think I finally get Moon Strike in time for the next boss.


Kongol only has 3 additions. He gets his second one fairly quickly too. So he’s already on his final one, Bone Crush. Not a great damage percent, but he’s rolling in strength so it does fine. From here on out he’ll be alternating between one round normal form, one round dragoon.


Meru finishes off her transformation by beating on the Virage with her huge hammer.


With Meru dropped out Dart takes over as Dragoon. Due to Meru’s very real chance of death I’m only keeping one person in Dragoon form at a time so I have other outlets to heal. Nothing like being trapped without healing for several rounds. And that damage output is why I really should have let him lead off. I guess in the end it doesn’t matter that much.


Meru procedes with the hammer abuse to get some SP back in case she needs to dish out more healing.


And her dinky ass hit drops the Virage into the yellow.


Angered, he tentacle rapes Meru for 600+ damage oh god. Luckily she immediately gets a turn and drops a Healing Fog on herself to get back to full. She’s really the only one taking significant damage this fight. During all this Dart keeps mindlessly dropping Final Bursts.


And then Meru gets hit with the tentacle again immediately followed by a swipe to knock her out. While the individual parts of the Virage are slow as hell, they occasionally line up in the turn order to drop a bomb like this. It’s up to Kongol to get her ass back alive since Dart still has 2 turns of dragoon left.


Well, he’s half way out of lives and we are solidly past half his HP. Doing alright!


Dart’s out of MP so resorts to a good old fashioned aerial stabbing. Not nearly as good of damage, but it will do the trick.


And hell, everyone else gets to show off their flashy spells. Why not Kongol? Meteor strike is about as awesome(Looking) as it sounds.






Who else would fly up thousands of feet to PUNCH A METEOR. No one. That’s who.


The shards then rain death on our enemy. For a measly 472 damage each. We’d have better off with a 700 damage attack, but hey gotta have some fun in life.


Meru pops into Dragoon form again to throw some chunks of ice and get some defense up. Then to make all things right in the world Kongol gets the killing blow.


And then the Virage shoots fiery death at us in return before it goes. Misses Kongol(Soa bless you Legend Casque), 700 to Dart, 500 to Meru.


:fistbump:


Dart: "Why do Virages wake up in reaction to us?""

Meru: "I dunno. The Ancestor never mentioned about this thingy."

Rose: "So, does this mean they were not just reacting to Shana?"

Dart: "Shana.... I still don't know anything about the mystery surrounding Shana. There is no choice for us but going forward.”

Actually, Dart. We’re going backwards so we can pick up swag.


So back to the save point and off to the right after some much needed healing. We pop into a room with five of those red panels vomiting enemies at us. And a door sealed by, shockingly, five laser beams. If we stand in one place the enemies will rush us and we have to fight. Basically our goal is to run to the panels and shut them off. They’ll stop spewing enemies and remove one of the barriers to our TP out.


This is definitely the worst room to get around in in here. But its also got some nice goodies. First thing is first, take the floating rock by the teleporter straight up as high as it goes.


Where we get a power up. It’s alright, not as good as the Speed Up. For 3 turns you get 50% more attack power. There is a very good chance I’m just going to sell this poor bastard as well as my Signet Stone. That’s precious inventory space!


Next we need to drop one floor then loop all the way around to here. Where the game has a bit of a dick move. We basically need to furiously mash X to get across here. If we don’t and we are on either one of the rocks it drops us down a floor and then we have to loop allll the way back around from the entrance. Our reward is a Mind Crush sword for Dart though. More powerful and can cause confusion.


Andfinally we are into the proper last chamber.

Meru: "This is the Dragon Block Staff!!!"

Miranda: "It doesn't look very impressive. Can we really constrain the Divine Dragon with this?"

Rose: "You can never tell the size of the magical power from the size of the object. The power of this staff alone has been sealing off the Divine Dragon for more than 10,000 years."

Miranda: "I see, then when we take this back and deploy our defense of the royal capital, the Divine Dragon will be no match for us."


Rose: "The Divine Dragon is not the same as the other Dragons. Even with the staff and us Dragoons, we will have reason for thanks if we can seal him back in."

Dart: "Is Lloyd taming such a monster?"

Rose: "Talking about that, I don't think it is possible. The Divine Dragon would never give in. They couldn't kill him either. That's why he was sealed in. It's way beyond Lloyd's ability to deal with."

Dart: "Then, it means Lloyd has not taken any aciton yet?"

Rose: "Maybe he cannot act."

Albert: "There is no sign he is going after the next Divine Moon Object yet."


Dart: "You must have it in Mille Seseau, don't you? A Divine Object with a name starting with Moon?"

Miranda: "I don't want to talk about it."

Dart: "How come?"

Miranda: "It's not your business. Just focus on how you can bring the staff back now."

Dart: "Okay."

It’s kind of weird Miranda is going crazy over this unless she got hilariously mislead on the story. As a King, Albert is obviously going to know about the Moon Objects. And the crew have talked about them pretty casually up until now. I’ll let you in on a spoiler! It’s not even been secretly stolen or anything.


Meru: "I'm getting it! Whoa!! What the heck is this!?"


It’s a boss fight! That’s what it is. You didn’t think JUST fighting a Super Virage would be enough would you?


Click to Watch

Like the Virage fight this got recorded without any sound. So the video does not match up to the screenshots. I actually did quite a bit worse in the video. He did an obnoxious attack and extra time and just generally used stronger spells. I was forced to heal in it!

Oh the Grand Jewel. You exist to punish people for playing the game as they have up until now. Shockingly, having a Dragon Block Staff embedded in it is not very healthy for our Dragoons. If we have a character still in Dragoon form when it gets a turn it will use the staff to MASSIVELY drop the stats of Dragoons. And it can double every few turns. So out of no where you can get a massive defense drop followed by powerful magic and bam, instant dead teammate.

There are two ways we can deal with this: One is to come into the fight without being above SP level 1. You can drop into dragoon form, slam an attack or heal through, then drop out. Or you can do like I did and just be lazy and plow through with normal attacks. It’s got a lot less HP than the Virage did so its not really a big deal.


It starts off by hitting Dart with some mid-range wind magic for 350 damage. He’s in the 1800 range at this point, so not a pressing concern. In fact, I do not healing this entire fight.


Meru does her usual, heave magic items at the enemy. She can dink off about 320 damage depending on how furiously I’m mashing on X.



Dart spends a lot of wasted Confusion procs on this fight. Stupid immune bosses.


You have to be kidding me, Grand Jewel. Using EARTH MAGIC on Kongol when he has the Casque on? He literally took 37 damage.


Kongol and Meru spend their turns buffing Dart’s speed and power so he can get the staff and get his ass out of here.


And here is the Jewel’s other signature attack if you aren’t futzing with Dragoons at all.


It has a backwards spinning clock. My experience in RPGs has taught me this is never good.


Oh you motherfucker! It’s not permanent or anything, but for the rest of the fight our attack and damage is gimped like we were a few levels lower.


Beyond that he pretty much just tosses out random elemental attacks. The most anyone took from this was 200. Oooh boy.


Kongol does what he does best. Beat the shit out of things.


Meru performs a hammer and chorus line routine for the Grand Jewel’s viewing pleasure.


Ok I lied. This guy has one more obnoxious trick. When you drop him into the read he uses this.


Which heals him for 1350 health. It’s possible for him to decide to start spamming the shit out of this and this fight will take for fucking ever. Luckily this is the only time he did it to me.


I have him pretty damn deep into the red again so decide to push my luck. Dart drops into Dragoon form...


Stabs him, and finishes him. Nice timing on that one! We don’t even get a finishing move on this jerk.


So we’ll just suffice with our standard victory poses.


Albert: "We didn't know there was a guardian."

Haschel: "The Ancestor should've told us so."

Meru: "I didn't know that either."

Dart: "Anyway, the Dragon Block Staff is in our hands. Let's go back quickly."


Strangely its labeled as a Dragon Blocker in our key items inventory. I think Dragon Block Staff is one character too many to fit. You can also see some of the random ass crap we are still dragging with us. But can’t fit more than 32 battle items

Bonus! Apparently there was a Legend of Dragoon manga. The internet claims this group shot is from it.