Part 69: Our Long Fantasy Nightmare Is Over (Part 3)

CUTSCENE: Emperor Madoras, I Assume

Ledom: Ugh!


Ledom: Mwahuhuhuhaa. You mean to kill me?
Cisna: What part of “the last five minutes,” aren’t you getting?


Ledom: Go ahead.


Ledom: But the future has already been written!


Ledom: Emperor Madoras has descended from on high to rule us!




The cocoon shatters in a brilliant light, Madoras’ resurrection finally complete.




CUTSCENE MUSIC: “Advent” (Game 2 OST, Track 15)


????: Ten thousand years will give you SUCH a creak in the neck!


Wait…


Waaaaaait….


Noooooo.


Are you serious Level-5? Are you fucking shitting me?

Well, here we go. This is it, the reveal of the big villain of the game.


Are you all ready?








Here it comes….











…

…

…







….




BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!

WHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOleee shit.

Really Level-5? THAT’S what you’re going with for our Series Big Bad? “David Bowie as Anime Satan?” Really?

God, fuck me.

Well, then again, given everything we’ve been through in this weird and wonderful adventure, I suppose it’s only natural, really. We started this game facing off against a midget clown with crazy eyes and an insane haircut voiced by Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and we’re ending it with an albino S&M fetishist in a leather man-dress with a terrible dye job voiced by Gaara from Naruto.

The game has circled around itself and swallowed its own tail to become an ouroboros of crazy.


But I digress, we’ve got some “Liam O’Brien would like to blow out your subwoofer” to get to.






So Madoras descends to meet the thoroughly unimpressive audience for his glorious resurrection to the living world.


He also has a spikey metal spine… because he’s un-fucking-subtly evil, in case you’re having difficulty sussing that out.




Ledom: Oooooooh!


Ledom: Your Excellency!


Madoras: Ledom. Rest now.


Madoras: You have borne your burden well.




Ledom: You are… Ugh… too kind, My Lord…


So Madoras just microwaves him to death or something. I don’t know.




Farewell, High Priest Ledom, you magnificent motherfucker. You won today. You really goddamn did. And nothing or nobody is going to take that away from you. Go and join Belcitane in Competent Villain Heaven, you delightfully scummy bastard.

Also, since this is Ledom’s last moment in the game, let’s just knock out this one outstanding plot point related to his character that Level-5 legitimately forgot was a thing and never bothered to follow up on:


Ledom killed Queen Floraine.

The game forgot that even happened, but I sure as hell didn’t. Motherfucker helped foster further animosity between Balandor and Faria by assassinating the Queen during a Farian attack on the castle so that everyone would assume a Farian assassin did the deed and thereby further weakened the states of both nations by prolonging the War of the Two Kingdoms for at most another ten years.

Ledom, you crafty motherfucker. You really are the smartest person in this game. And he was only one member of the Royal Family off from racking up a bloody Royal Hat-trick in the murder department, too.

I think Ledom has almost as high a number of confirmed kills at this point as Leonard does—and all this were intentional too!


And then Grazel remembers he’s still a part of this game, because, oh yeah, we’ve still got one last villain to quickly kill off without fanfare or catharsis because we’ve got like ten minutes left in this game, tops now.


Grazel: Who the hell are you?!
Grazel: Who disrupts my coronation?
Madoras: Coronation, Grazel? This is bad comedy.
Madoras: Hm? I am Madoras, Emperor of Yshrenia.


Madoras: Rightful ruler of this world.
Cisna: Hey! That line starts back there, buddy, right at my ass!

Also, O’Brien’s voice is so modulated and artificially deepened that I honestly feel that I need to be writing out everything Madoras says in all caps and with bold and underline tags around everything. Doubly so when he just starts screaming all his dialog in the next few minutes.


Grazel takes a moment to ponder this revelation, before deciding, “fuck reality!”


Grazel: You’re looking at the Emperor of Yshrenia RIGHT HERE!


And he takes a running charge at the Villain of all Villains of this world.




Madoras: Ah. Excellent. I was wondering how long I’d have to wait before I got to choke a bitch again. Thanks for obliging me.


Madoras uses his PHENOMINAL COSMIC POWER to NOPE the world around him.


VOIP!


Grazel: GHA!


Grazel: RRGH! Damn you!


Madoras: This was always the best part of my job back in the old days, am I right or what, Mureas?
Cisna: No comment.


Madoras: I will be merciful, since you have served me in your own way.

Why is that I can practically see the sarcasm quotation marks around the word when you say “merciful”?


Madoras: Your reward shall be without pain.


SWAAA!!


Grazel: UH-huaaauuu—


So yeah, I think Madoras just Soul Crushed Grazel to death…


His blade tumbles to the ground, followed by his lifeless body.


Kara: SETTI!!!

Girl, for the last time, Setti is… actually 100% dead now. Damn.


Ah yes, and there’s the capper to the “nothing good ever happens to Kara, ever,” element of this game. Yeah, she just closed the book on the Black Knight chapter of her life with Shapur’s death, but now she also just watched a man she loved as a brother (a man she still believed was fully capable of redemption even at this point) be brutally murdered simply for being an egotistical idiot who was of no actual threat to Madoras in any way shape or form.


So now that Team Evil's slate has been completely wiped clean of characters, let’s take stock here of the fates our various villains have met over the course of the game. Belcitane was killed by Shapur, robbing the player of the catharsis of beating him ourselves. Kara was killed by Shapur, and then resurrected and returned to the good side without any real effort to win her back, robbing the player of the victory that would have been Kara’s redemption. Shapur killed himself accidentally, robbing the player of the catharsis of finally doing in the dirty shitfuck who’d killed like half the cast at this point. Ledom was mercy killed by Madoras, robbing the player of the catharsis of killing the A-1 scheming villain—the Hojo, the Dr. Cid, the Miang, the Albedo, the Illusive Man, the Revolver Ocelot—of the game. And now Madoras just killed Grazel, the primary target for this whole counterstrike action by Cisna, Miu, and the party, robbing us of the catharsis involved in either killing or last-second reforming the apparent big bad of the series in the face of the bigger bad.

The only villain we’ve actually trounced by our own hands thus far was Ban Nanazel, a bit-player forgotten about two seconds after he died, whose impact on the plot didn’t register with the player because no one gave a fuck about Faria until we got to know and like Miu as a character.


PICTURED: How 90% of the plot elements of this game tend to go over.


Madoras: I love it when they THUD. It gives me a stiffy.

Ew.


Madoras: There.


Madoras: Now that the pawns have been scattered from the board… Greetings, Mureas.
Cisna: What have you done?
Madoras: Whatever I please. The Pactmakers are merely tools of war.
Cisna: Where is Leonard?
Cisna: ...’s Knight?


Madoras: Leonard?


CUTSCENE MUSIC: “The Battlefield Flower (Violin Version)” (Game 2 OST, Track 18)

Madoras: Muhahahahahahahah.


Madoras: The child has been cast into endless darkness.
Orren: This guy’s actually kind of alright in my books.
Eldore: He’s a monster, Niles!
Orren: Yeah, but he got rid of Leonard for us.
Eldore: Point taken… But still. Look at him! No one that Anime-looking deserves to live!
Madoras: Do you mind? I’m monologuing.


Madoras: But this body… I believe it will serve quite nicely.
Orren: So that’s actually the Idiot’s body you’re wearing there?
Madoras: Yes, why?
Orren: …Pff…Huha… Ha hah… PffffffHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH! Oh my fucking gods! That’s fucking a-mazing! Ooooooooh shit, you poor dumb bastard. I am sooooo sorry for you right now.
Madoras: I fail to see your—
Orren: Do you have any godsdamn idea what an absolute fuck up’s skin your inhabiting right now?
Madoras: I’ve been hiding in the White Knight this whole time, I have SOME idea, yes.
Orren: And you went through with it anyway? Fuck me. You’re either desperate, or just as dumb as he is. Probably the latter seeing as how you willingly remanifested looking like THAT!
Madoras: What do you mean ‘like that’?
Orren: [HOLDS UP MIRROR]
Madoras: …WHAT THE SHIT?!! WHY DO I LOOK LIKE SATAN’S DOMINATRIX COUSIN?!
Caesar: Wow. Somebody got screwed in this whole “reincarnation” thing.
Yulie: It’s what you get for possessing Leonard.
Kara: Serves you right, jackass.

So yeah, this is Madoras using a mangled version of Leonard’s body to sustain his physical form, like St. Ajora style, only without the unresolved gender identity issues. According to the prequel manga, from as best I can tell, OG Madoras was a wrinkled old man who looked more like Emperor Gestahl than Seymour Guado… which, by the way, I’m pretty sure is some kind of sex joke, I swear to god.

But alas, this is the Madoras we’re given in the game, so it’s all we’ve got to work with.

Still, there we go. The last car on the train has left the track and followed the rest of it over the embankment and we are now officially in narrative freefall. All the conventions that would have helped guide us in to a safe landing have been broken in the wrongest way possible because Akihiro Hino wanted to do… I have no fucking idea at this point.

All the villains we would have had a stake in seeing defeated have been taken out, either by themselves or by each other and replaced with a capital M Monster who we don’t know or care about beating in any way because he hasn’t been a part of the plot in any fashion beyond being a spooky legend who half of you legitimately wondered if he’d ever be paid off or not.

And the hero(?) we’d all like to maybe see triumph just once before the end of the game? The fuck up who could make up for every last misstep and obtuse screw up by actually managing to pull out a win and save the world when it actually was time to step up and save it? Eh. He actually becomes the villain he’d sworn to fight against and wound up putting the entire world in the greatest jeopardy it has even been in in 10,000 years because he’s an impulsive idiot and got manipulated by literally every single person around him.

So this leaves us with a blank slate antagonist facing off against a party of deutrotagonists because he already one-shotted the protagonist, and I use that term in the loosest possible sense, by forcibly overwriting his existence like it was nothing.

Still though, it is nice to have definitive confirmation that Leonard will always and forever be an unmitigated, undisputed, undeniable, and unarguable failure.


Madoras: UrrrrRAAAAGH!! The inanity! I will exterminate every man woman and child in Balandor for this!
Cisna: Give Leonard back!
Cisna: Also, the people of Blandor are MINE to exterminate, not yours, thank you very much.
Madoras: Ha ha ha ha hah. You mean to defy me, Mureas?


Madoras: The Knight’s power is lost to you.


Madoras: You cannot win.
Cisna: I will stop you.


Madoras: Is that so?

Total Number of Fucks Given: 0


Madoras: Then by all means… Come and stop me!


As the music begins to swell into its action suite, Madoras hefts his Rita Repulsa wand high into the air to make his monster grow… which in this case, is him.








So as you might or might not have ferreted out by now, because Madoras is possessing Leonard’s body he also has all of Leonard’s abilities, including the ability to transform into an Incorruptus.


Show of hands, just really quick here. Who here expected that when we began this journey nine long months ago that the final boss of White Knight Chronicles would be the White Knight itself?


Because it is.


It really fucking is.


Level-5 in its infinite wisdom decided it would be a good idea to have you, at the end of all things, mercilessly beat the shit out of the icon of the series.

This is it. The game and the LP have reached 100% synchronicity. I am no longer a mere man. I am the orange soupy remains of nine-gear crow writing you from inside of a colossal, berserk beast of metallic vented frustration. If exasperation with a person's story telling choices could trigger Third Impact, GOOD GOD would you all be fucked right now.


A white light sweeps over the White Knight…


Altering its appearance into something monstrous.


Because it’s Madoras, and Madoras has to make everything he owns look as cartoonishly evil as he possibly can, just because he worries he me be too subtle with his points some times.

This, my lovelies, is the evil variant of the White Knight that will be our final boss for this duology. It has no official name, fans call it the “Demon Knight”, for stupefyingly obvious reasons.










Well now, this looks somewhat familiar, doesn’t it? Where have I seen that curious horn shape before?

Oh yeah!


Oh why hello there, The Phantom. Fancy sort-of encountering you again all the way at the end of the game.

Just like Ledom murdering Floraine, this is another plot point the game more or less forgot about somewhere between the start of the duology and the end of it. The implied idea here is that Mardoras went full Voldemort and fractured his soul into five pieces, binding them to the five remaining Incorrupti in his possession, the five Knights our story concerns.

It’s something similar to how Father Yggdra bound his soul to the massive tree in the Numenshrine, only much more ridiculously complex. This allowed him to escape death and essentially “live” through the next 10,000 years’ worth of history—because remember, Eldore explicitly says at the end of the previous game that Madoras didn’t die at the end of the Dogma Era like Mureas did.

He bound each piece of his soul to the essence of each Knight, but the largest fragment, the one where his consciousness resided, was bound to the White Knight and survived in the form of the Phantom, this malformed, ephemeral half-existence waiting to be unleashed and then reunited with its remaining parts as both heroes and villains alike careened unwittingly toward fulfilling his resurrection gambit.

…Or so I’m guessing. This is all conjecture on my part trying to fill in all the holes and form a cohesive narrative out of it, because if the game was reluctant to explain things before, it’s goddamn done explaining things now because we literally have like not even five minutes left before the credits start rolling.


But back to there here-and-now, at least. The Demon Knight stands an imposing 35-some feet tall, a full 1.5x taller than the other Knights, because Madoras has a massive ego and the game wants to psyche you out even more than it already is.

You can pick out design elements from the other four Knights interwoven in its design, from the massive swirling chest piece of the Sun King to the spiky protrusions of the Dragon Knight. It’s not quite a Zarathustra-like mix-and-match abomination of Knight parts, but we’re getting there.

And you can also see that the Demon Knight is wielding Talion. It’s a nice design choice, in my opionion, and it really sends the message to the player about what a petty, vindictive prick Madoras really is. He has chosen to not just co-opt the body of Cisna’s “champion” for lack of a better word, but he’s also co-opting the weapon that was specifically forged by the Athwani to destroy his Knights, and was wielded to great effect by Thaumus 10,000 years ago.

Madoras just, in essence, whipped out his dick and took a nice long figurative piss on Thalmus’ legend and legacy by choosing to wield his own sword to kill Queen Mureas/Cisna with. Because even though the other guy’s been dead for 10,000 years, he’s still got a grudge to settle and a message to send.

So good on you, Emperor Madoras. You may be bland and generic as shit on paper, but I have something of a soft spot for seething, rage-blind, pyrrhic, shoot-self-in-foot-and-ENJOY-it revenge-seeking villains. The only thing that makes Star Trek: Nemesis watchable, in my opinion is seeing Shinzon get progressively more pissed off and murderous as the film rolls on and shit turns further and further away from his favour.

But I digress…


Cisna: NO!
Cisna: …But also yes. Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier putting this war behind us and coming to work for me? I’m pretty sure I’ve got this whole “invading sovereign nations and crushing them underfoot” thing worked out.
Madoras: Just a moment. Let me just consult my Magic Eight Ba—FUCK YOU, MUREAS!
Cisna: Meh. I tried. Alright peons, kill this prick for me. Please.


Yulie: Stay back, Your Grace! This is our fight.
Eldore: We must prevail… at all costs!


Caesar: Right!
Kara: Come on!


The music fully kicks into its action phase now and we get a dramatic zoom in on the Avatar.


This is it.


I said the Avatar was the real hero of White Knight Chronicles, did I not? Well, now’s the time to cash that cheque I wrote oh so long ago.

Submitted for your approval, I present, filmed in Videcolor and Supermarionation: Orren Kicks The Ever-loving Shit Out of Leonard.


Orren: Stand back, people. I got this one.


Madoras: Mwahahahahaha! Vexatious fools! The witch is not long for the world if YOU are her champions!
Kara: We have to get Leonard back.
Caesar: Leonard, man, I know you’re still in there.
Yulie: We’ll save you Leonard, I promise!
Eldore: I will fight you to my last breath.
Orren: So you mean that after ALL of this bullshit, stupidity, and insanity, it all comes down to us having to probably kill Leonard then? Hoohooo! Sign me the fuck up, please.
Madoras: Do you not know Death when you see it, BOY?!
Orren: Tell ya what. I’ll let you know if it shows up. In the meantime, hey dickface, GUESS WHAT? I gotta surprise for you.
Madoras: Whut—


Orren: O Swordo, emerald champion—
Madoras: What?
Orren: Master of the ancient hammer—
Madoras: WHAT?!
Orren: Grant me your power… TO CAVE THIS MORON’S SKULL IN!


Orren: This one’s for you, Framboise!


Pictured: Utter Badass Incarnate.


And to think, at this point in the story, we’re actually only half-way through Orren’s transformation from mute wine merchant intern to god-slaying man-titan.




Orren: I call this one the “Nineteen-And-A-Half Metric Ton Fuck You”.


Orren: Verto!




And thus the mighty Arc Knight emerges from the ether to fulfill its destiny as the cosmic monkey wrench in Madoras’s tightly prophesied return to the mortal realm.












Special Guest Appearance by BRICKSTICK!


Madoras: NO! IMPOSSIBLE!
Orren: Gods, I’m never gonna get tired of hearing people scream that.
Caesar: Whoohoo! Go Orren! You’re the man bro!
Kara: End it once and for all!
Yulie: I think I love you.
Eldore: Kick his ass, Niles!
Cisna: BREAK THE FUCKER!


Orren: With pleasure.


The cool thing about the final battle here is that after all the many hours of utterly ignoring the Avatar as a thing in this game and treating them like shit, the final battle is engineered to be their moment to shine. Then again, it was done so in order to be the biggest, most unsubtlest of hints that you should really start playing the online half of the game now that the storyline is 99.999% finished.


So let’s break down how engineered it is.


While you’re offered your choice of party members heading into the fight with Ledom who then carry over into the Madoras fight, just like the final boss of the first game, you’d be an idiot not to have the Avatar in the party, or even leading the party because the Avatar will invariably be your strongest character by this point, and the only character with a usable Knight at their disposal now, as post-Final Awakening, the Moon Maiden and Dragon Knight are no longer summonable.

Even more incentive to have the Avatar in your party? Everyone’s HP, MP, and more importantly AC are all replenished to their maximum amount at the start of this fight meaning you can do what I did and literally begin by summoning the Arc Knight right out of the gate. But that’s about the only way that the game is going to take it easy on you in this fight.


So Emperor Madoras is a tough motherfucker—to the point of actually making the White Knight legitimately pants-shitting intimidating at times.


This fight is a veritable menagerie of “ HOLY SHIT WHAT!” moments.


Por ejemplo: you can see that Kara has Curse cast on her right now. Madoras’s version of the White Knight’s Strong Slash attack has a high percentage chance of inflicting Curse on the entire party, meaning all your stats are hampered against an already deadly opponent, so you pretty much need to go into this fight with at least one character with either Uncurse or +Uncurse on their command bar, or stocked to the gills with Uncurse Talismans, the consumable item that removes Curse status—because Madoras will inflict it early and often to keep the odds stacked in his favour.


Orren: PAYBACK’S A BITCH, AIN’T IT, SHITHEAD?!


Madoras: Worthless!
Madoras: If I’d known you’d be THIS meddlesome, I’d have had the runt kill you too!
Orren: You can’t fight fate, fucker. I was MADE to destroy you!


Kara: All the world’s misery began with this man.
Orren: And Queen Mureas! Let’s not forget her too!

So just like pretty much every boss and giant enemy we’ve encountered up till now, it’s Best Practice to break as many of their stats as you can, which is really bloody tedious, especially since you can’t do it in one fell swoop like Madoras can by casting Curse right back at him.


Your second and third characters are kind of an afterthought in this battle, technically speaking. The throwdown between the two titans of the Arc Knight and Demon Knight is a pretty big (no pun intended) attention grabber.

That said, you’re going to want to make judicious use of whatever buffs and debuffs they have available as the Arc Knight doesn’t have access to the Avatar’s regular command bar while its out on the field.


Plus using the human characters gives me a chance to get some unintended ground-level action shots of the Arc Knight doing its thing.


Ruining Emperor Madoras’ day, I mean.


You can see the size disparity between the Demon Knight and the Arc Knight here. Neither Knight is standing at its full height here, but if they were the Arc Knight would only come up to the Demon Knight’s mid-chest. Keep in mind that the Arc Knight was about as tall as, if not, maybe even a little taller than the Black Knight when we saw them both together on Redhorn Isle.

That right there gives you a decent idea of how much bigger the White Knight has become with Madoras in control over it.


Madoras: Was it your wish to BORE me?!


Orren: How ‘bout a face-full of SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY?!


So as you can see on the command bar down there, the Arc Knight wielding the Drega hammer has a few more moves than we originally had with the Gigantic Hammer. Earth Soul and Terra’s Rage are back from the Thaseios hiccup on Redhorn Isle, as well as the standard 0 MP attacks Smash and Stab.

The three new attacks are Barrier Crusher, Divine Pummel and Soul Bash. You’ve seen a few Barrier Crushers enacted on Madoras’ yelly ass already in this fight. The Arc Knight swings the hammer back and uppercuts its opponent with it for massive damage, very basic but also very effective.


Now, Soul Bash…


The Arc Knights leaps into the air and dives down, forcing the flat end of the hammer into the ground with its weight.


And KABOOM!


Massive area-of-effect damage for all those unlucky enough to be in the blast radius.


Madoras: Yeeeees! Cling to life! Allow me the PLEASURE of ripping it away!

Now Divine Pummel is one fascinating bird…


It’s a brief flash of additional gameplay mechanics evoking the GF Boost system of Final Fantasy VIII or even certain QTE’s. You can see the tiny little X button prompt there in the center of the ATB circle gauge.

What you have to do is mash the X button on the controller rapidly and repeatedly to charge up the attack. You’re given like four or five seconds to spam it for all its worth and the more times you hit it, the stronger the final attack will be.


The particularly great thing about it is that it’s one of the few attacks that cannot be interrupted by an enemy attack, like Madoras’ haymaker swing here.


You still take damage, but the attack isn’t cancelled and even the knock-down chance that a lot of Madoras’ stronger attacks carry is nullified while you’re charging up.




When the button mashing window closes, the Arc Knight leaps into the air…




And comes down on its target with a massive amount of force.


It’s not as strong as Soul Bash and Barrier Crusher in damage-per-hit terms, but it is very therapeutic to mash the attack button and then watch the Arc Knight go full Richard B. Riddick flying-punch-to-face-attack on the end boss of the game.

There’s one thing you’re probably noticing if you’re paying attention with gameplay mechanics in mind in this fight (and really, why would you?)… the lack of orange critical damage numbers.

Why is that?

Well, Madoras is the inverse of the Black Usurper from the last game. Instead of being weak to everything, Madoras is hardened against everything; all three attack types, all four elements, and all possible non-stat-altering status effects like silence, poison, sleep, paralyze, etc.


Yulie: Go find your own body! Leave Leonard alone!
Caesar: Urgh! I don’t care what it takes, you’re going down!










Orren: Had enough yet?


Madoras: Of your feeble attempts to wound me? Or your insolent jabbering? Because I am—


Orren: This is never going to get old.
Madoras: How dare you harm me! HOW DARE YOU!!!


Orren: What did the giant hammer say to the face?
Madoras: I don’t even—


Orren: LIGHTS OUT, MOTHERFUCKER!


Madoras: Urgh! Now you are trying my PATIENCE!
Orren: Really? Because I was sick of you before I even MET you.


Madoras: Your pithy comments and uncouth cursing won’t save you from me, boy. I will crush the life out of you with my BARE HANDS!
Orren: Still waiting on that one…
Madoras: You mortals cannot dethrone your rightful emperor!
Cisna: Yeah, because they’re working for her, DIPSHIT!
Caesar: Go back to the Dogma Age! Your reign ended ten thousand years ago!


Kara: Setti! Why didn’t you listen, brother?
Eldore: How could we allow the Emperor to return?
Orren: I’ll give you the point-by-point breakdown if you want.
Eldore: Shut up, Niles! I was being rhetorical.


Yulie: LEONARD!
Eldore: Keep fighting! The Emperor must be destroyed at all costs!


So Madoras has a few very nasty powerful attacks to go along with his regular powerful attacks.

He’ll let you know when they’re coming by making very deliberate charging up motions like this blue glowy one so you have a moment or two to prepare of them, which usually consists of awkwardly fumbling through the command bar and hoping you hit “defend” quick enough, or just cursing in frustration as you eat it like a chump.


You can’t disrupt any of his attacking barring full-on charge attacks using a Turn Break…


So that usually just means “eat it like a chump.”


And here’s that Curse-inflicting attack I talked about.




Madoras: I have you now, BOY!
Orren: Not dead yet. Still don’t know what you’re celebrating over.

So yeah, in addition to potentially inflicting Curse on whoever it hits, it also knocks your Knight off its feet and leaves it vulnerable for a few tense seconds with a full array of broken stats.

This is usually the point when most people take on Madoras for the first time where he unloads a second powerful bullshit attack on you and knocks you out of Knight mode. And if you’re knocked out of Knight mode, you return to human form with no MP and critically low MP, meaning you’re easy picking for a third follow up attack and will almost assuredly die.

It’s moments like these that can dramatically flip the fight into Madoras’ favour, even if you’re in the level 60 range.


So while the Arc Knight is waylaid for the moment, it’s time to hop into Kara and play Team Medic for a few turns.


Getting Curse off the Arc Knight by any means necessary is your top priority.


Followed by healing and then buffing as best you can.


Giving everyone Haste status in addition to re-breaking Madoras’ stats really helps keep things in my favour.

Fun fact: I’m technically NOT cheating for this iteration of the fight. Yes, I modded the materials into the game to build the Drega and the various Arc Knight armour parts, but at this point in the game I could actually bind and equip Drega because already beat the game once and save a Clear file for it, it returns you to the moment right before you head into the Garmatha the first time, allowing you essentially to replay the Final Boss Gauntlet as many times as you want now with (in theory) everything opened up to you… including Knight weapons and armours.








These are all just gravy shots, but I figured you’d all want to see as much of Orren demolishing what’s technically Leonard as you possibly can, right?


















Madoras has one final big move to pull off here and that’s this multi-slash attack with Talion that does accumulated damage depending on however many times it scores a “hit” like the Dragon Knight’s Wrym Dace attack does.




















Orren: Get thee behind me, jerkoff!


Madoras: Urrgh! Enough! Now this farce will end!
Orren: Just. Fucking. DIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!


Madoras: _{…I’ve made a huge mistake.}





Orren: You are cordially invited to bend down and suck my colossal metal n—
Eldore: We get the point, Niles. Thank you.

Fun fact: I actually killed Madoras in mid-sentence when I captured this footage and had to go back to get the rest of the “now this farce will end” quote. It found that oddly appropriate and satisfying.

And that’s it, for all intents and purposes, we have beaten White Knight Chronicles II. Neither the game nor the LP are over by a longshot, but in terms of the broader storyline, this is it.

We did it. It’s done.

Now, let’s see this fabled “ending” everyone’s been talking about. I hope we have a good deal of emotional catharsis and see the characters we’ve all grudgingly grown to like over the last nine months off with an appropriate level of respect and—

Oh, who the fuck am I kidding.

You know what’s the one consistent factor in every single trainwreck ever? The catastrophic abrupt stop.