My God, that cat got huge.
That's what the bad guys would say. And speaking of the Order, it's time to go deal with them at their HQ, thanks to my new Dragon God mount.
This is the final and best mount in the game. Flies over everything, and goes at high speed. The world is your oyster now.
The Temple of...uh, Z: Once upon a time we helped build it. Now, we get to tear it down!
First, I finish the Zenithian armor set. The hero is looking dapper now.
Atop the temple is the statue of Bianca (finally, geez).
Only problem is, this poser is pretending to be Gaz's mom! Don't listen to it!
Yeah, we know.
Boss fight, goes as you'd expect. Partial to the cyclops models going back to DQII.
This is a little obscure: You have to search to find the stairs in the middle of the altar, and I don't think it gives you any direct clues.
Here's the big head honcho of the Order. He's above even Bishop Ladja on the pecking order. We never heard of him before, but whatever, here he is.
It's another big battle, and plays out like the rest. He's sort of the Baramos of this game, because...
...there's another higher power above him! How many higher powers are we getting out of this Order?
"Not me" whines Flora sadly somewhere.
With Bianca un-petrified, the family is restored to their former greatness. Kind of horrifying that she missed so many years of her kids growing up, but everyone just sort of ignores that and we take off.
As this is a game of its time, I have to go all the way back to the first town to get Bianca out of the reserve party member club.
With that, we head to the Underworld for the REAL final battle.
Soon as you arrive in the underworld, boom. Search here to find the best item in the game. Infinite group heal item and usually crucial to any endgame setup in any full-party DQ series game.
Underworld world map. This zone is actually pretty huge, and a bit of a maze. Doesn't help to have some of the strongest enemies in the game hounding you at every step here.
The underworld has only one city, but it has everything you need: Hookers, cocaine, and the best equipment in the game:
That's right, the shop here contains the strongest purchasable weapons and armor. The problem is, with that 99999 gold limit, buying the best-in-slot gear for everyone is a tall order. One can level-grind in the underworld for a while, but none of the enemies really drop much gold. Still, I do my best. Getting a Big Bowgun for Golem, at the very least, is a huge boon. It's his best weapon, and since all he does is DPS for the final battles, you want him maxed out.
I get what I can, and it's time for the final dungeon.
Best helm acquired. Better than Zenithian, but also better off on a different character since the Zenithian is hero-only. I like when the DQ series makes King Metal equipment available in lategame dungeons rather than just a casino setting.
If one is trying to gain some last-minute levels, this is the spot. King Metals show up with a fair bit of regularity.
This is huge, but I was hoping for 100k. Golem takes ages to level in this version of the game so 30ish almost doesn't seem like a ton. I feel like everyone has steeper exp requirements than in the remake.
The re-fill function is worth its weight. Basically the "rest" command from Baldur's Gate. Just fire this off and heal up between fights, saves a lot of energy.
FINAL EQUIPMENT SETS:
Whew, that's a lot of characters. And it's important to have all of them in tip-top shape since the final boss lets you switch characters out mid-fight. Everyone's got a role to play. Some of them are largely ineffective on the final fight (Sancho, Pierre) but can still play a role in terms of taking hits / getting heals and revives out to the injured back-row characters.
Funny thing is that the lowly Scale Shield ended up being the best for several characters. And those Great Helms were obscenely expensive.
Here's Grandmaster Nizzo, the REAL big bad of the Order. "Not anymore you're not!" he says to the previously in-charge Ivol and Ladja.
The final boss is a two-parter. It's one of those two-parters where the first form is way less powerful than the second.
Very Toriyama bad guy design for the first form here.
After that fairly easy fight, it's time for the main event...and the REAL highest power: Mildrath.
"Not anymore you're not!" he says to Nizzo.
This is a fairly standard DQ series final boss. He's got AOE dispels and some nasty breath attacks. Having Shane keep Barrier up, and using BiKill on your attackers, is crucial. Also Increase and Decrease, of course. It all comes down to setting up the buff infrastructure. ...then setting it up again after he takes it down. In the remake this fight dragged on for about 15 minutes because of this.
In this version it takes significantly less time. I think he likely got a substantial buff for the remake, which makes sense due to the four character party in that one.
"But...I was the King of Kings" he says before spouting water into the air and keeling over.
The planet is now at peace! And I've finally got DQV done, old and new. The first five games in this series are all classics and you can't go wrong with them. The ones after this? Well, there's a bit of eh, and some very high points later. But yeah, the first five are solid gold and classic.
I mean, process of elimination... anyway though, Prince Henry and his haughty wife need to go appear on Oprah now.
Rudaman is so happy, he's ALMOST ready to go back to hip-swinging!
Well, I can't take it back, so what do ya want from me?
That's right, Gaz is an Honest-to-God King!
Credits roll, and let's take a moment to thank Yuji Horii for everything once more.
But wait! This game isn't actually over yet.
After defeating the final boss, a postgame dungeon opens up. It's hidden in this swamp south of the final dungeon. I imagine most players back in the day didn't even know about it because who'd think of this on their own? Especially without Nintendo Power existing for these Super Famicom only games. At that point it would have been reliant on "urban legend status" with people telling each other about it.
The hidden dungeon isn't anything incredible, just a basic cave maze.
Best armor in the game here, about time it showed up. And I need it too, because...
...it's uberboss time! What's Esturk doing here? Who knows, but he's even stronger than the final boss and suffices as the game's big postgame challenge.
Yep, that's Esturk alright. It may seem a little odd that what was essentially a sub-villain in DQIV is now a postgame uberboss. Thing is, Esturk is more or less the "Satan" of the Zenithia world as I understand it. So he's a pretty important being.
As usual, the strategy involves pumping up Golem (and Gaz/Shane if possible) to dish out physical attacks via BiKill etc and have everyone else focus on weathering the boss attacks.
He's much, much stronger than in DQIV. Maybe it's because we only have 3 party members, maybe it's because DQV characters are weaker than DQIV. I really don't think that's the case though. More likely, his DQIV version was half-asleep and not at full power, while this one IS at full power.
Damn, that was a hell of a fight right there. A truly worthy endgame uberboss. Probably the most challenging fight in this version of the game.
As is tradition, you find out how long it took to defeat the uberboss, and can fight it again and try to get the score lower. Presumably having a lower number results in prizes. It's something to do when the game is beaten.
One last thing:
::Rudaman swings his hips to the sides like Pumbaa:: "Yeah! Yeah!"
I like the cyclops too, though it looks a little too small here.
ReplyDeleteOh I like that little Golem sprite.
Huh, I wonder where Gaz's ultimate weapon was.
A post-game dungeon and boss was really innovative when this came out.