Part 21: Armic's Adventure - Part 8: Finale

Unlimited Saga, Part 21: The Finish Line

In between the last part and this one I did some grinding, because the party's armor and weapons simply didn't cut it against the boss. So just imagine me doing the abandoned castle a second time, etc. Now everyone has good armor and accessories, and is ready to go. Huzzah.



It's time to get the final object and save Armic's home. We never did get to meet Pharr, and Henri isn't very good, so this is the final party:



And obviously we need to bring Norff, the coolest dude around! Alright. Let's get started.




Mostly the party is ready to go, so we really only have to clear the dungeon and reach the end. However, Norff is still working on a spell i want him to learn -- Missile Guard, which gives the party a chance to block missile attacks and, supposedly, all piercing attacks generally. I'm not sure how true this is, but that sounds pretty rad, so I wanted him to learn it by the end.

You can still find magic tablets in the final dungeon, and you can apply them if you find the Tetra Force. The one in this dungeon is accessible almost immediately if you know where it is, and also missable if you don't. It's kind of annoying that way.

The Island is a series of ruins on a flying jungle-themed island. You can see some of it in the background of the battle arena.



It's honestly pretty straightforward. There's lots of places where you can use Obstacle Crossing or Swimming to find shortcuts or secret treasure, but it's not required of course, and we've no use for treasure anymore.



This is an indication of what we need to do. We just have to find all three towers (to pull switches) and then go to the big hole (which has an elevator in it). The Island is also pretty funny because some of the area pictures are clearly just cgi pasted over actual photographs:



Seamless. This is the only place I've ever seen this. It's bizarre.

I like the idea of a big floating city, but it's not particularly interesting. There are some neat landmarks, I guess?

The area has four sections, divided by gates. Three of them have a switch and the starting area has the elevator. However, it's pretty clear they intended you to do it in clockwise fashion, because the Tetra Force is in the southwest corner.



There's a big lake on the island I guess?



As long as you make sure you find the lever before you leave each area, you'll be fine. A very simple area. Here's one!




One area down. On to the next!




And then in the southwest ruins, we find the third:




The Tetra Force is near the exit back to the starting area. After that, all we have to do is head back to the start and find the elevator.





Well, that was easy. BUT WAIT!



Our good buddy Yun is also here!

I'll see if you have all the necessary items.

Master Yun, you've come all the way for this? Thank you.

Yun is very cool and trustworthy. He's our friend, just like Norff!

Umm, Master Yun...?

Silence!

Oh no did we trust the wrong person what a twist

I-I'm sorry.

Armic, stand right there.

But the ritual must take place in...

Be quiet and stand there! So the key is the Chapa himself! Go back and stand there!

I'm going back home. Thanks for your help. Once it rains, I'll bring you tons of fish!

I appreciate that Armic is still oblivious to what is happening here. He is committed to being a dumbass.

What? Fish? I finally obtained Iskandar's secret element-control art! You will cooperate!

But I collected them for our rainmaking ritual. I can't do this. Please give them back to me.

Come and get them. Care to trade your life? You're not the only Chapa I can use!



After they learn to control the elements, they’ll kill the Chapas and everyone else! Take a good look! See what a real wizard can do!

Yun has decided to kill Armic for vague reasons. I feel like he could perhaps have fixed their weather and then just stolen everything with no consequences, but he wants to kill Armic so we have to stop him. This is a shocking twist! Everybody thought this guy was so trustworthy!

Yun is a lame gimmick boss. The barriers around him aren't just for show; they block all damage until you break them with magic. If, after the end of a round, you have attacked Yun with the right element, a barrier will break. It has to be the right element, though, and they are never told to you. How are you supposed to figure this out? I have no idea. If you know the order, it's still annoying, because you can only break one shield per turn, meaning you have to sit there and take his attacks for five turns no matter what. After the shields are gone, though, he's a pushover. As you may remember, every final boss has a unique attack, and the Phantom's was Triple Zero, which dealt massive damage while also petrifying people. Yun's is Lost Spell, which looks kind of cool I guess?

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ShySpryFluke-mobile.mp4

But is ultimately fairly lame. It causes a bunch of status effects, which is annoying, but deals no damage. Since the healing spells you'll be casting anyway also cure most of these effects, and many of them aren't a big deal regardless, it's really just kind of annoying. Poison is probably the most problematic, because it keeps characters from healing outside of combat.

Dealing enough LP damage (which is very easy, even if your party is nowhere near ready to fight Chaos itself) will cause him to go crazy and, of course, turn into a big dumb monster on the moon. As you do.

I will not allow those ugly little idiotic Chapas to control the elements!



Norff is understandably rather upset at his teacher turning into a big moon creature:

That power is swallowing the master! Master! Master, wake up!
An apparition left over from delusion, no longer of this world. Wretched soul indeed.
Ugh! And will my tactic work on the Tai Chi?
This is all your fault!
And now it doesn't even know what it wants!
I don’t get it.

I guess that's good enough. Thanks, Armic.

Because Chaos takes on skills from its predecessor, and Yun is pretty lame, this Chaos is less dangerous than the one Mythe fought, but it's still very powerful. It still gets Overkill in its final form, too, which is just as dangerous as it was back then. The positive is that nothing it does causes Petrify, as in Mythe's fight, or Blackout, as in Laura's story. However, everyone will definitely be paralyzed or confused, like, all the time.



I found a great appreciation for spears in this fight. After getting Chaos's HP down, even Nuage's basic Double Strike could sometimes deal more than one LP damage, meaning I wasn't so reliant on landing high-level techniques. If he pulled a level 4 attack, then he'd do 3LP -- even better! I mostly used spells for HP damage, since nobody had anything particularly great to cast except for Norff, and thus Rebecca and Kong Ming were never going to deal LP damage regardless. They were useful sacrifices in order to weaken Chaos and let the powerhouses move in for the kill. I did also keep Missile Guard up even though I don't know if it ultimately did anything useful at all. Maybe so.

Oh yeah, and Kong Ming died. I guess his tactic didn't work on the Tai Chi.



Because Overkill and Neutron Slap are both party-wide attacks, I tried to keep only one person out at a time. This meant I couldn't use Armic much, since these people would inevitably die at some point and Armic's death meant game over.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FrigidAdv...cont-mobile.mp4

Usually, I had Vearst out to heal and a damage dealer as backup. It was a gamble, since Chaos could have spammed Overkill and wiped them both out, but at other times it'd just cast Lost Spell or use Raven Blade and thus waste its turns.

Vearst is still unimaginably useless and after a while I had to pull him out to prevent his death. As soon as Norff's thunderbringers started doing LP damage, I changed up my tactics.



Every turn, I sent out one of the physical fighters and had them attack as hard as possible, over and over, until they died. This was very stupid and almost did not work, as seen in this picture of the final blow landed on Chaos:



Armic was the sole survivor of the fight, but he did it. Fight complete.



Time for the ending.



I guess Yun recovered from the whole exploding moon creature debacle, which is nice.

Armic... I've done a horrible thing. I only wanted to surpass the great wizard Leith Torles! There is no excuse for what I've done. Do to me as you wish.

Will Armic get his violent revenge? Of course not.

The Chapas love fish and our fights over fish can get quite nasty. So I know what that's like. You only love magic.

Who among us would not destroy the world over a fish? Let he who is without sin cast the first Fire Arrows.

Armic...

I can finally go home.

So he did.



We'll have to imagine what Spry and the others did while Armic saved his village because we'll never see them again. Instead, Armic has some other, more important people to meet:






And so, Armic and his enormous family went to see the rain-making ritual performed.



https://thumbs.gfycat.com/OnlyOffbeatAgama-mobile.mp4



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbVGMZ7e2k

The End.