Monday, December 17, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 8 - Relentless Insomnia

This is hands-down the nicest, most relaxed screenshot of any game ever. It won't get any better than this, Clive.





 Previously on Wild Arms 3: Virginia wasn't paying attention and set off a massive explosion. I'd say she's the "wrong hands" we should have been worried about all along.

Due to the mess we caused, the large cash reward we had waiting for us is now null and void, yet the evil church won't get nuclear weapons now. You gotta take the good with the bad, I guess.

The Council of Seven (aka the secret illuminati running the planet who may or may not have put humans here) isn't a permanent, Sol 9000 type deal as it turns out. As they die off they get replaced with new members. So it's like the Supreme Court, only with fewer sex crimes.

It turns out that Malik, Melody, and Leehalt are members of the current council, as is Virginia's dad.

Speaking of which, we're back in Virginia's hometown.

"Yooo! Mera, hombre!" says the save robot while keeping a low profile to avoid the attention of any republicans.

Virginia's parents are glad to see her back. Well, her mom is. The most affection she can get from adoptive dad Tesla is...

...A mild expression of approval from a safe distance.

Yggdrasil is the home base of the Advocacy, and we'll need to go there soon. It is, of course, a mythical locale that has appeared in numerous games and movies. How will this game handle it?

Tesla then immediately leaves the room to go up to his shack and get drunk. Is it possible to get negged by your own father?

Virginia continues to be super-nice to them trying to get some sort of anything back from Tesla. Let's just get outta here.

Yeah, I concur. We'd be better off getting validation out of Jan-

-OH MY GOD HE'S HERE. This is why you make sure you're not being followed before you go back to your hometown!

He isn't here to cause problems though. He explains their entire crooked plan, then takes off.

The next stop is the domain of the Guardian Force / Esper / Medium of Time, possessed by Dr. Strange.

Gallows is the next one to get some major character development, as we return to his hometown so he can learn more about shaman-ing.

I sail across the sand-ocean on my new craft. There are some interesting landmarks on the overworld, like this arch. Time will tell if they're later-game locations or just unused decorations like every interesting thing in the distance on the overworld in Final Fantasy XV.

The next Medium dungeon has a cool name. That's a trend with this game, though. Lots of places have awesome names, then turn out to be fairly generic areas once you go in.

After, yes, another somewhat generic dungeon, Leehalt of the Advocacy appears to try and eat the esper before we do.

This is a good time to point out that I love Virginia's action-pose in this game. Pointing both guns, with one of them sideways gangsta-style, never gets old.

He summons this "drake" and sics it on us before...leaving again.

It's another standard boss fight, no match for our increased levels. It'll be smooth sailing for a bit. Worth noting: It has an attack called Caloric Sphere, which brings back memories of an attack some bosses used in the original Wild Arms called Caloric Nova. That stuck with me, like Negative Rainbow, because it's such an interesting attack name.

What follows are Castlevania gear platform puzzles...

...and clock-brazier-lighting puzzles...

...before another boss fight. This time it's Asgard yet again. He's learning to talk, because he improves every time he fights or interacts with anyone. This is actually one of the coolest things the game has done so far. Asgard could have just been another generic hoss to beat up throughout the game, but instead he's basically the game's version of Cell.

This time we just have to survive for three turns while Gallows activates the shrine.

Asgard unleashes severe AOE damage every round for those three turns. With my higher levels it's nothing to worry about, but I suspect this fight could be nearly impossible for low-leveled parties. If Virginia is below level 25 she can't Mystic on the first round, which means a party that level would probably be dead before she had a chance to heal. In any case, after this fight Asgard blows up...possibly permanently, we'll see. Wow, he really WAS Cell.

After that, Janus appears, but he doesn't feel like fighting right now either. We must have hit the "boss fight limit" for this dungeon. In any case, that gets us...

...Cosmic Cog, the Time elemental. Now, finally, everyone has two Mediums equipped. Obtaining the third and final tier of Mediums is going to take up much of the final act of the game.

It's funny how you "fill in" the overworld map like one tiny square at a time rather than by-area like most games. I don't know if I'll ever get this map completely filled-in at this point, unless there's a trophy involved. Then I'll probably do it. I likes me them trophies.

The next dungeon is actually a two-fer, as you need to go through it twice from two different start-points and follow two different paths. It also has the distinction of throwing a boss fight at you right at the -beginning- of the dungeon. ...both beginnings, because this game wastes NO chance to reuse boss fights.

Virginia's second tool is obtained here, the Galecrest. This one is really cool, and basically lets her dash over gaps at high speed.

Here it is in action, as we dash north across a couple gaps. Anything bigger than a square, it won't work. Also you're zipping by so fast that Virginia disappears.

Leehalt is back, and he'll finally take on our heroes mano-a-party. No one is going to stop him from augmenting entropy! I think what he's saying here is that as long as existence exists, non-existence has power over it. Or something. The purposes of these guys has become noticeably convoluted, and I'll need to brush up on my Wild Arms 3 lingo before the next post.

What follows is one of the more irritating boss fights in the game. He doesn't actually attack, but every time one of your characters attacks him they sustain the exact same amount of damage back. This means the fight is a matter of heavily tempering and controlling your damage output rather than burning him down, and thus it might be the one fight where the higher level you are the worse off you are.

After that obnoxious, drawn-out fight, he poisons Virginia and then belts out this creepy line. Ooookay. Please leave, sir.

The question is, how do we cure her? CAN we cure her? Well, yeah, of course we can. I just hope this doesn't turn into a Cloud situation where she's gone for a large portion of the game, in a wheelchair muttering about Zenogias.

Not to worry, she's up quickly, though she'll have a stat penalty until we get her cured. She also won't regen between fights like the other characters for the time being.

We're not done yet, as that weird alien that keeps hovering around in the background has shown up for a boss fight. Turns out its name is Balazs, and I still don't know WTF it is. Is it wearing a cape?

It's another obnoxious gimmick fight, as it uses an AOE attack that also makes it invincible for the remainder of the turn...and it goes before everyone except Virginia, so you're basically whittling it down with just her for the entire fight, making for another drawn-out affair.

Virginia dozes off and deals with her father-abandonment issues some more. AND TESLA ISN'T HELPING EITHER.


Speaking of, her dad is here, and he impassively gives our heroes some advice. Turns out her illness is nanomachine-caused. So...like the nano-terminator in Terminator Genisys?

She looks past all of that and finally LETS HIM HAVE IT.

"He's yer father, girl, but he ain't yer dad!"

Meanwhile, back at the base... the Advocacy yell at Janus for his failure to defeat our heroes. Failure to even engage them, really...

Of course, Janus is secretly rooting for our heroes. Well, that isn't entirely accurate, but let's just say that if they take out the Advocacy, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for him.

More on this later. Also, for the next 11 days I'll be doing A POST EVERY DAY for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Have a bit of a backup of posts to do and the idea here is to get some of these games finished up. What will we get tomorrow, you ask? Tune in to find out.


3 comments:

  1. Lamium is lame!

    "I'm glad you're still a drifter" isn't something you expect to hear.

    Virginia is so cool. When she's not freaking out over where babies come from.

    I like the map and how you fill it in, though I wonder if a lot of that unexplored area even has anything interesting. This is an early PS2 game after all.

    WTF BALAZS

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