Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 9 - Thunder Gun

Time for more of Wiki-Wiki-Wild Arms 3, as I roll into the tower-base of the villains. Is this the end? Not quite. We got a ways to go yet in the RPG that never ends.




Father, Not Your Dad Though continues to talk shop about the Council of Seven and how their efforts to rejuvenate the planet tended to cause more problems. And on that note, I can't hear "rejuvenate" without thinking of "vaginal rejuvenation".

I also can't hear "[Anything] System" without thinking of Xenogears.

So, back when Werner actually behaved like a real father, that's when Virginia began to develop her badass gun-pointing pose.

AHH! JESUS! What's this image doing here? Get out!

It's time to directly attack Yggdrasil, the tower of the bad guys.

The downside is that it's in this extremely obnoxious forested part of the overworld, where you can barely see anything or where you're going.

At least we get a new battle background. Check out the shroom-man on the right. Shroom-men have been permanently ruined for me by the president.

Oh God, now there's four of them!

"One for each of us!" exclaims Gallows as everyone peers at him quizzically.

Finally, we arrive at Yggdrasil itself. The Advocacy are all here and we've gotta fight 'em one by one. Here, Melody explains that Leehalt is blue and old because he opted for strength rather than full restoration.

Melody on the other hand MUST BE BEAUTIFUL, DAMMIT.

She may be attractive on the outside, but our heroes see her for what she really is.

For this fight, she does her usual attack method of poisoning everybody and heavily mitigating their damage output so the fight takes longer. That's about it.

After another irritating, drawn-out fight with Melody, it's time for another irritating, drawn-out fight with Malik.

Er...wait a minute. We going to get an answer on what's going on with these Zero Suit Samuses?

Gallows says what we're all thinking.

Malik unleashes this attack that drops all kinds of status effects on the party, in addition to being un-hittable until you use Decelerate on him. All things considered, these fights seem designed to waste time moreso than actually put up serious challenges.

Unfortunately, Virginia can do nothing to help the Zero Suit Samus RealDolls(tm). They're headed to the Japanese black market as we speak.

Hey, at least one of the villains is taking responsibility for how they hurt the planet. That doesn't happen often. The taking responsibility, I mean.

This is even WORSE than the time she found out that he's had sex.

Meanwhile, Leehalt has a crazed plan to unleash ancient demons upon Filgaia, which leads us to the third and final act of the game.

After this we get yet another fight with Leehalt, just as obnoxious as previous fights. He counters every attack with an equal attack, which makes for perhaps the slowest and most tedious fight out of the trio.

Because we haven't had enough boss fights in this dungeon, it's time for Janus 6.0.

This is actually a real battle, as he can now dish out some seriously potent AOEs. Survive long enough, and...

...he blows up. The demon he's been channeling might well be on the verge of showing itself, finally.

Jet takes a momentary trip into his own memories...his memories that he doesn't really know the nature of. He sure is a Final Fantasy protagonist.

Fun Fact: It turns out that Squaresoft actually did the English localization for this game, despite it not being one of theirs.

We reach the Generator Room, home of Not-Deus. After much talk of "downloading" and "procedures", we learn that the core has been gouged out by an unknown third party.

This leads to a fight with all three Advocates at once. Been wondering why they don't just team up all this time.

Leehalt with a backhanded insult to Virginia, saying she looks just like her father. Ouch.

Moments after this picture was taken, Leehalt played Aerosmith's "Dream On" as the fight commenced.

It was a pretty easy fight, since at this point they've lost most of their powers.

This might be the end of the line for this trio. Our heroes leave them here in their tower, defeated and foiled and slowly bleeding out.

Outside the crumbling Yggdrasil, our heroes have a pow-wow about how the world got into this state. The main question they have: Why didn't anyone do anything about it if they had so much advance notice?

Back at the base, Janus reappears, ready to kill off the Advocacy himself in their weakened state. Turns out he was just playing dead in the corner.

But wait! The spirit he's been drawing power from appears, and it seems to want to steal his corporeal-ness. He fights it...and loses badly.

This is sorta like if Fei had tried to control Id, lost, and then gotten murdered by Id.

The Advocacy reveal that they've been playing him the entire time. Congratulations Janus, you played yourself.

Once Janus dies (yes, he's actually gone), the spirit corporealizes and his demon alterego re-enters the world. Meet the real boss...

...Siegfried, the villain of the original game and a seriously badass foe. NOW we're getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch! Senorita Emilia is already giving away her boyfriend's stuff. "Well, I mustn't mourn forever!" she says while skipping to and fro.

Our next destination, as we cross the 18 hour mark. From here on out my progress should occur in short sprints where I make a lot of progress at once. I want to get this game wrapped up, and it wouldn't be surprising if there are a good 12 hours to go.

Uh...do I have to? This sounds like an offer I can easily refuse.

Kramer Dolls? As in like, the guy from Seinfeld? Also, sorry Gallows, looks like "bring gory death" awaits you now. As for what this third and final Gallows tool does, it summons enemies for you to fight without having to run around. That's about it. Can also summon hidden bosses.

Side Story: When I first played Final Fantasy IV, during my hunt for Culex, I found an item with a name like "Whistle", or "Bell"...something along those lines, can't remember. There was only one of it, at least that I'd found at the time. I think it summoned a random enemy. It was such an odd thing to find one of, so I concluded that it might summon Culex. I tried using it in some of the weirder looking rooms in the endgame, dead ends and the like. Well, turns out it didn't summon Culex. ……..yeah.

Dragon's Lair, eh? This could be interesting.

This is an oddly circular dungeon that reminds me a bit of Chrono Cross in terms of design. One can go around and around in circles until you notice this fairly-unnoticeable bombable wall here that leads you to the next part.

This is actually a dungeon from later in the game, but I'm doing it now with my advanced levels. There's something big and powerful atop the mountain, something you summon with...

...Gallows' new Kramer Dolls. That leads to a fight with...

...Lombardia, a major step-up in the boss department. You want to take this guy on early, because...

...he's actually the airship of the game. That's right. Defeat this guy and you get him as an airship. He's a formidable opponent.

Here's the actual battle, recorded for your perusal. This was a really exciting moment in the course of the game. Didn't even know Wild Arms 3 HAD an airship until right before this area.

After the fight, he's got a very Eternal Dragon vibe going on, bellowing at our heroes and asking them to make wishes.

Virginia has only one wish: To ride Lombardia. Poor Gallows is dumbfounded. What does he have to DO?

The dragon-mech transforms into a full-on airplane. Just roll with it. Now we can go pretty much anywhere in the world at will, which means the rest of the game can fly by if you want it to. There is a MASSIVE amount of side-content, some of which makes the game much easier (like the berry garden), though I haven't needed to step back and work with any of those optional quests yet.

Here's the Yggdrasil Valley. I swear I was frustrated in this place for like 10 minutes because the camera wouldn't zoom out and I couldn't see a damn thing in this part of the overworld.

Next area. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Another dungeon follows, this one with pressure switches. At this point our primary objective is to find the four remaining Mediums, or at least the items we need to trigger them at the main shrine.

The dungeon-crawling is now interspersed with these creepy interludes of Siegfried explaining how ancient demon technology works.

Well, except the ones we killed in the original Wild Arms...including you...how are you here anyway?

Jet's third and final tool is found here. It lets him jump into the air. Only straight up though. It's good for landing on switches hard and grabbing overhead fences.

A boss fight and a countdown-to-demolition await while escaping this dungeon. Luckily it's more of a Final Fantasy VIII "way more time than you need" Fire Cave timer than anything else.

...man, when am I going to cover some Final Fantasy on here? Probably after this...if this game ever concludes.

The jumps back to Siegfried continue. This guy is getting more airtime than Trump during the primaries.

Oh, remember how the Advocacy have been slowly dying during his speech? Now he's going to help them live on by giving them mechanical powerups. Oh boy. Things are getting dark. I hope it means more exciting battles with them later.

At this point I return to earlier areas to acquire an ever-important Migrant Seal (to help me stay ahead of the curve on what enemy fights I can avoid) and...

...a quick jaunt back to Gob's Hideout from the very beginning of the game to get the Wolf Idol.

The Wolf Idol can be used at the Medium sanctuary to summon one of the four final-tier Mediums. Need the jump boots to get up to their pedestals. This means I should be able to go after the other four Mediums fairly quickly in the next episode.

You aren't getting the Wolf Idol Medium without a fight, though.

This is Luceid, the Moon Elemental. He has a ton of HP, so this is another fight I'm likely doing early. The game really opens up after Yggdrasil. In any case, stave off his mostly physical-based offense and you get him as the first third-tier elemental.

As a bonus, you can enhance two other Mediums to a higher power level (Gold). No need to stress too much over the choice, because the other three Tier 3 Mediums will let me enhance the other six previous Mediums to that Gold level as well. In short, we're going to be getting some serious power enhancements in the magic department now.

Luceid itself is the Lust Jaw summon. All of the spells of this elemental are Dark element and do significant damage.

More on this game soon, as my journey to the endgame continues. In the meantime, here's a gameplay recording of the slog through Yggdrasil. I might do more gameplay recordings as things progress, especially of key boss fights.




3 comments:

  1. Ha, I like Virginia's forest sprite.

    Whoa, cool shot with Virginia and her pops here.

    So is that Laxis Land or Lax Island?

    Final Fantasy VIII did have an item that summoned a particular boss, at least.

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