Day 10 of the Twelve Days of DQsmas is upon us. With Sorrow Town cured, the next one is Greed Town. Wait, so each Dark World town is essentially a personality issue that needs to be fixed? Is this suddenly an Ultima game? Will the next town be Wrath, and I need to cure it by visiting Empath Abbey?
People here are so greedy that they're willing to sell their souls just to get the unknown contents of treasure boxes.
After an annoying minigame where you have to race all the townspeople to the box, we find that the box was empty all along!
"I learned something today" say the townspeople.
There's only one chest that anyone should be willing to kill over.
Each town's quest ends with some new piece of equipment, so at least there's some gear progression during all this endgame busywork.
Yet another spot where people no doubt got stuck / quit / wasted lots of time wandering around wondering what they were missing. Turns out you need to examine the empty chest again after opening it. I think this is the only time in the entire game where interacting with a chest a second time actually does anything.
Can this game just be straightforward for a LITTLE WHILE?
At the other end of the cave is this underground prison, where our heroes battle Nick Bruiser.
More like Gabby Jay, this thing is the joke boss of the DQ6 lategame and barely puts up a fight compared to the last few bosses.
Nearby, Rick Bruiser is dumbfounded at the defeat of Nick Bruiser. Finding it hard to believe that nobody was able to beat that boss in a century.
Did you build the pyramids? AI said you did. WE NEED TO KNOW, DAMMIT!
This all leads to our heroes being thrown into prison. Great, a prison dungeon, just what we need!
Just when I think I'm headed for a showdown with Deathtamoor, our heroes must now escape from Cobb County Correctional Facility.
This leads to another tedious chapter (boy, this game has worn thin) where the heroes dress up as soldiers to sneak around the prison. The place is run by Akbar, who I want to say is the latest Maou but he's never called that. So more likely he's just a goon who is in a position of authority, yet never rose to the rank of Maou.
Sounds like one of those "guard for the bad guys" jobs that drastically shortens your life expectancy.
....yeah, exactly.
Eventually the disguises come off and we have an unwinnable fight with...
...these guys! No matter how strong you are, the battle ends automatically after several rounds and you're portrayed as losing in the following scene.
....Annnnnd we're back in prison. This part had me stumped for a minute because inspecting the door just showed it as locked, inspecting everything else did nothing, and pressing the action button towards the sleeping guard just inspected the locked door again.
Turns out it was simple, I had to manually choose the Talk command on the right side of the door to talk to the sleeping guard to trigger the next thing. I haven't manually chosen Talk in ages, always just action button. As usual, the game has to be finicky.
Next up is a PRISON RIOT~!
They've beaten down the guy who defeated my party in that previous fight! It's a MAD HOUSE in here!
On the upper floor we find Akbar, about to marry a nun. Yep, there's this whole side-story about how he's making this nun marry him for some reason.
All I can say is, I'm glad Akbar is wearing a loincloth.
Fairly basic fight here, and I spammed MegaZap like the last several bosses. I'll need to use some actual strategy for the final boss soon enough, but in the meantime MegaZap totally wrecks everything.
Winning gets you this useless (in stats) piece of armor. It's humorous though, because presumably it's his wedding tux.
Next up is this weird bit with these two twin sages who Deathtamoor is afraid of so he's got them chained up in two different prisons to keep 'em separated, like The Offspring.
Why not just kill 'em?
Next step is to use the orb he gives us to teleport to the north side of the Dark World. Finally some clear instructions! ...sort of.
Still have to put two and two together to walk out onto a jutting peninsula before activating it, which then warps to this northern zone.
This leads to the other, much smaller prison, where Masarl the other sage is being kept.
This next part is weird, with your party going inside Masarl's mind to defeat a couple of Deathtamoor's interrogators who are in there tormenting him.
"This man's soul is ours!" they hiss.
They're both quite sturdy at this point and it's effectively the second-to-last boss fight of the game so it's a real fight.
With Masarl's mind cleared of boss fights, the brothers combine their power to unleash...
...a KAMEHAMEHA wave that destroys Deathtamoor's mountain!
Or rather, breaks it down enough that the castle atop it plummets to the ground. ...how did anyone get up there before? Did Deathtamoor have his groceries flown in? The Doordash charges must have been like 8x the actual cost of the goods. ...so about 3x as bad as it is in our world.
Either way, with the castle grounded, it's time. The game has delayed the finale WAY past long enough, let's crush this last dungeon.
Masa and Mune then bid our heroes good luck, and we're off.
Deathtamoor's lair is foggy and full of the game's toughest foes. It's definitely easier than most DQ final dungeons though. No real complicated routes here, no minibosses, no hidden doors or rampant traps.
There's a healing spring a couple floors in, and that's the best place in the game (as far as I know) to farm EXP. Mainly from these guys, but also...
...THESE rotund menaces occasionally show up. Getting a firm grasp on these bad boys results in...
...basically a guaranteed level for everyone. It isn't easy though, because they've got a lot of HP for a metal (around 10). I should have tried using BeDragon to see if it'd work like it does in DQ3. Either way there's probably a better method than spamming MetalCut (usually does 1-2 damage to them) and praying. Protip: Enemy actions are decided AFTER you enter commands, so emulator rewind can totally gimp these guys. They're still quite rare, regardless.
Oh man! 3 Satans?? These guys, for whatever reason, give far more EXP than anything else in the area besides the MKS. I stayed here and grinded out 5 levels (to put everyone at about 50-51) before continuing to the final battle.
One annoying trap: These flipper-things bounce you across gaps, and can throw you into pits so you have to repeat a floor.
This unlocks one of the two hidden classes, but only one character can acquire it which is kind of disappointing. Dragon is a very formidable class and the only one that actually exceeds Hero in terms of stats and abilities. More on that later.
The last section of the dungeon is another annoying area where you can only see the walls when lightning flashes, and it only flashes once in a while. Rest of the time you're feeling your way around, getting attacked.
Right before the final boss door, here's the sword of swords. It's just as strong as the legendary sword, plus anyone can use it instead of just the hero. This SHOULD be a massive upgrade, but with Hassan on tank duty and Muriel/Barbara functioning as casters, there isn't a lot I can do with it. I throw it on Muriel.
Now for the final boss... in the next episode.
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