Part 35: .hack Outbreak - //Update 11 - Σ Chatting Snaring Twins

//Update 11

Hello again everyone! Are you guys ready to beat the game? I sure as hell am! Last time, Wiseman and Helba briefed us on exactly what should be going down, so let's hope Murphy's Law doesn't come into effect.









I've already preemptively cut out the level grinding. We're actually going into this final dungeon two levels too low, but it really won't turn out to be much of a problem. We're also stocked up as far as we can be on consumable items.





Hand of God starts the pain train out. It sucks that Wiseman can't contribute against her, but it's rarely worth breaking the tolerances on trash mobs.



Though she does drop a neat weapon for Blackrose, who seems to like her new killstick.



Liches return from the Sora event dungeon. These enemies become distressingly common the higher in level you go. You know what's sad? Eventually I'm gonna be savestate scumming monster portals hoping for one of these guys. Look forward to that in the distant future!





Wiseman gets a new hat somewhere on the second floor.







Somewhere on the third floor, Kite gets a new hat too.





Finally on the last portal of the third floor we get this sign. That's the first time we've seen one of these in an incredibly long time. I haven't been keeping up with the all field and all dungeon portal clears, and it's going to come back to bite me in the ass at the end of Quarantine.

To get the last reward from the Ryu book for "all dungeon portals cleared" you need to clear 75 dungeons of all portals.

Video:





I like to imagine that Helba made a field-wide announcement.



















Gorre looks so fucking ridiculous. Two silver guitar picks or whatever those faces are.

: Just who designs these freaky things anyway?!

Someone fed the artists tabs of acid after keeping them awake for five straight days.

Alternatively it's because GAINAX is listed in the credits.

Video:

The video linked right above details all of Gorre's abilities if you want to see what they look like in action.

To make things easy, I'm gonna treat the two of them as a single unit. They move in sync, they attack in sync, and they share a health bar. For all intents and purposes, they are a single unit.

As far as Gorre goes, one of them is magic tolerant, and the other is physical tolerant. I decided to use the Standard Strategy and put Wiseman on healbot duties while Kite and Blackrose beat the ever loving shit out of the magic tolerant half.

I probably could have told Wiseman to nuke the physical tolerant one and have been just fine. Unlike the previous three phase fights, Gorre is a little more akin to a proper final boss.



This is how it opened up the fight. Yep, because there are two of them, you take double the shockwave damage when Gorre slams into the ground. Fun, huh?







Gorre also possesses the standard repertoire of charm, sleep, and paralysis. I also don't know if it was just because he was incredibly unlucky or not, but it had a hate boner for Wiseman. Almost all of its special attacks were directed against him.





The thing certainly is pretty creepy at least. Those yellow eyes and that mouth full of teeth emerging out of an otherwise flat stone is the sort of shit nightmares are made of.





This shot was taken a second before Wiseman died from being electrocuted to death.



Yellow Gorre: You know, they really tick me off.

Blue Gorre: Yes well. Shall we do it then?













The field name's starting to make sense, eh? Σ Chatting Snaring Twins. They're talkative, there's two of them, and their abilities have a theme of plotting and scheming.



Gorre also has data drain. But that's to be expected from a phase fight. Though seeing those two fucked up stone faces staring at you before you go comatose has got to be pretty high up there on the "what the fuck" o meter.

Despite being more like a proper final boss, Gorre still isn't a very good fight. With the exception of Skeith and Magus, all the phase fights have had one thing in common. The next three will also share this trait to some extent or another. They're fucking cowards. They run very fast around their fields, only stopping to occasionally use one of their abilities before taking off again.

Skeith was aggressive. Instead of running, he was mixing it up with your party.

Innis ran away, and despite hitting somewhat hard, it never pushed things. So you'd have time to heal up before its next attack.

Magus was so concerned with setting up its instant kill gimmick that it didn't have time to do anything else.

Fidchell ran away. It stopped to occasionally use one of its prophecies and then half the time forgot to follow up while the debuff still affected your party.

Gorre is a more pronounced coward than the previous phases, because I swear the fucking thing is faster than the previous four. The next three also move extremely fast, for the record.

The fight I recorded took 20 minutes. Most of that time, no joke, was spent chasing the boss around its field. By the time I protect broke the boss, I had gotten so sick of chasing it around that I had given both Kite and Blackrose a speed buff.

The point I'm getting at is that because these bosses spend so much time running around, the threat they present to your party is close to zero. You always have plenty of time to top your health off after each ability fires. To actually get a game over against this boss, you'd have to come in to the fight itself at something like level 65 after having done absolutely no side-quests.

Well that or just straight up fall asleep while fighting it. To be honest, this is the more realistic prospect between the two.

Video:



Even being data drained that thing is fucking creepy as hell.







As per the usual, the epitaph stone versions of the bosses are the more threatening part of the fight. These things don't spend their time running away, and instead elect to stomp around and occasionally cast obscenely high level magic.



Oh wait, its magic stats are so shit that it can't even be a threatening epitaph stone boss fight. We took hundreds of damage there! HUNDREDS!

Jesus Gorre, you were the worst.

Video: ***THIS IS THE ENDING***



Blue Gorre: Why me?

Yellow Gorre: No! I can't, I can't, I can't!

Blue Gorre: Why me? How?

You know, hearing them scream and cry as they died really took all of the satisfaction out of that kill.







: All appears to have gone well. An investigation will still be needed, but... I guess you've succeeded, for now.



: Let us rejoice at our triumph.





More earthquakes are shaking the game.

: The immensity... There's a possibility that it's the "Cursed Wave" itself. It's moving...



: Counterattack? No!



Before we start celebrating, can I ask something here? What the fuck is Kite even talking about? What true rule? This ending makes no sense. Kite is just spouting gibberish and the game's doing this dramatic zoom on his face and it's all rather dumb.

Some of this is still me being salty about Gorre being another shitty phase fight, but this last line really cements Outbreak as being the worst entry in the series.

Anyway, that's enough out of me. All that's left are the credits. I recommend you click on the video and just listen to them in the background. The credits music for the first three games is one of my favorite tracks from the entire series.

See you guys next time when we tackle post-game content!






























Oh and I wasn't kidding earlier. GAINAX really is in the credits for the game.