We last left off right before my job blew up in my face. Microsoft's craptastic browser programming is entirely to blame.
I know, man. That shit came out of left field.
I'll remember that next time I get stabbed in the heart.
Well anyway, reporting back to Redmont!
Goddammit Gardner. You are the worst guard ever.
So McGuire finally came out of the evil closet then. The rest of the way, I mean. He was already kind of, like, in the evil closet but his evil dick was sticking out clear across the room.
Alright, what's the damage? This is an RPG, so people can just kind of lock their doors and it's completely impenetrable, right? How bad could it --
Goddammit Elena. And not just you, either -- you had to go kick some poor girl in the shins too (I-22)!
The Valestein soldiers are kind of annoying because they block everything, but they're not too bad as long as you string them out, jump stun one, and smack him away from the rest to deal with him alone.
"And why does everyone keep saying my brother's an asshole...? And what are these things on the end of my arms with fingers all over them...?"
"Typical Valestein soldiers, really. But they also fell apart into bones and stuff so I guess maybe something's weird."
"I just threw video games at him until he shut up. I don't know where I went wrong as a father."
Already?! It's been like fifteen seconds!
A brief recap for his benefit...
Alright, so off to Valestein it is. But before we go...
Don't buy any elixir. Save it all up for the necklace.
...what does that even mean?
Anyway. Valestein. We find a small, remarkably un-undead entourage outside.
Looks like Fran got off on the Named Character Exception. Lazy soldier will be missed though. Kind of. Maybe.
Chester's zompocalypse plans appear to be bearing fruit.
We last left off after Chester committed mass murder. 2000g says everyone forgives him.
Fun fact: Ys 3 was one of the first games to sell its soundtrack, way back in 1989. Rearranging it on new systems is likely one of the main reasons it got ported so often. Valestein in particular is considered one of the most iconic themes of the era.
The upstairs gate is locked, so take the bottom one to the east wing. Now, this is a place of residence where people are expected to live, eat, work, hang out...
...and get disemboweled for displeasing Count Evil. Do the staff and royal family have to jump around all these deathtraps, or are they usually off and people just pray it doesn't turn on and shove a few hundred spears up their ass while they walk past?
Keep Spirit Cape on and rest often. Almost nothing here is hard, but it's long and punishes you for screwups.
There's also fucking zombie ninja maids, BECAUSE SHUT UP. I guess any maid that works here would have to be a ninja to not die in the traps. They run away when you get close, but they're also weak to fire. They can stab you if you get close, but weirdly it's way weaker than the throw.
Free ore for the observant.
These guys can wreck your shit. They jump stab you, and jump away when you try to counterattack. Ideally, you want to jump over them as they jump stab, then turn and jump stab them back.
This is the only path through the east hall. There have been no blockaded side doors or anything that might lead to residential spaces, facilities, or audience chambers. Apparently McGuire makes petitioners walk across a rail-less ice bridge lined with spear pits and giant spiked medicine balls of doom.
Just run and shield charge. You don't even need the stone shoes.
Beyond is a big round pit with lizards and stuff. Obvious exits are west, east, up, down, and Dennis. Take the ramp up for a Big Dramatic Spiral Staircase.
Don't expect much XP here. Dudes usually just walk off the ledges like idiots before you can kill them.
Not pictured: whiffing the jump twice in a row and falling like an idiot.
At the top you meet mummy monster girl knights or something, BECAUSE SHUT UP. They shoot homing magic and teleport when you get close, but like the maids they're weak to fire.
This is the first furnished room we've seen in the castle, even untouched by zombie fog. It's also only reachable by making a magic-assisted leap across a 400-foot drop.
Refreshingly, Elizabetha doesn't waffle around making excuses for her genocidal husband or her genocidal asshole knight. So, props for that.
Not sold on their school curriculum though. They should send them to Redmont. Plus, you know, less chance of spear-up-ass.
Alice, like all adorable little anime scamps, gets her jollies pickpocketing illegal contraband from dangerous homicidal maniacs.
Next, down. LEEROOOYYYYYY
FUCK THIS WAS A BAD IDEAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
You land in Sakuya Izayoi's wet dream. It's a bit ridiculous until you thin the maids out a bit. Also I got the 28 Maids Later achievement here.
What functional purpose could this room possibly serve in a civilian capacity? Extreme parkour exercise room? Gladiator fights? Sacrificing virgins?
Climb the walls to the left and get this.
The ramp up from Maid Hell goes back to the circle room. East loops back around the front of the castle to a dead end that'll probably be important later. You know this because conspicuous pieces of the background are missing and Elena butterfingered her most prized possession here.
West of the circle room is the place that inspired the creation of OSHA and workers' unions.
Seriously, why the fuck would you build a room like this? More importantly, HOW?!
Push enemies off the edges. Whirlwind makes jumps a bit safer -- it's often a better idea to make a long horizontal jump than a short vertical one because lol depth.
Also, backtrack over this spear pit for 500 ore.
Just on the other side is the save point. Be smarter than I was and warp back to Redmont to upgrade your new armor. The next boss taps lightly but often, and two points can make a noticeable difference.
He's a spinning jester knight thing with a big-ass flail. BECAUSE SHUT UP.
Death Faleon is the obligatory Barrier Change boss. Red, green, and yellow for respective magic, and white for getting stabbed in the face.
The above attack is your main opening. He telegraphs the mace shot pretty well, and you'll want to hang around at about mid-range to bait it as often as possible. Any closer, and he uses a sword attack, and any further and he starts breaking out homing knives. Jump his flail, sneak in some damage, and back off before popcorn from his mace shot drifts into you. Since the attack roots him, a charged shield slam or whirlwind will hit for full damage.
At range, he'll throw homing knives and make a circle of spears. It's...possible to dodge the knives laterally, but they turn sharply enough that you probably won't. The best way is to jump towards him and land in the middle of the spear ring. The knives will hit the ground behind you, and you get some free hits.
After a few seconds he'll radiate an X of spears and change his weakness. It goes green, red, yellow, white, then repeats. The fight lasts about one and a half loops of that. Green and Yellow are great for damage, and you'll have a Boost by the time white rolls around. Play defense during Red, especially in case he does this shit:
This is how he says "restart now lol". 37 doesn't look like much, but this is a messy fight where you get hit by stray shots a lot, and the first hit stuns you long to take all five. He telegraphs it very poorly, and the only reliable way to dodge it is to burn your entire magic bar with shield slams. He seems to do it more often while you have fire equipped, which is the only one you can't dodge/block with.
Eventually and with some luck he explodes.
The full fight, by this guy:
The original Ys 3 "Halvager", where you mostly just stabbed him in the shins a lot:
The upstairs door at the entrance opens.
And we get a rather less dramatic reward than for other bosses. Oh well.
We last left off after picking up random broken shit from the floor.
The upper door at the entrance is open now! To the west wing.
The knights have stopped fucking around. By which I mean they're actually easier because they don't annoyingly block you all the time anymore. As long as you jump-stab and keep hitting them they never have their spear pointed at you.
Climb this unlikely architecture for free ore!
This room is a pain in the ass. You have to put the stone shoes on because McGuire really likes freezing random parts of his castle for some goddamn reason. And then enough ranged enemies are clustered around that charging in is a great way to get killed, so pick them off or lure them away instead.
Obviously this can't be lured away. It fires four shots, two cardinal, two diagonal, then stops. Try to stun it when it's done -- it often fails, but the pause is long enough to get some damage in and get back to safety.
McGuire's interior decorator is a fan of Hell Chic. Left goes to the chapel in the middle of the castle, and right goes to the boss. But let's dick around first and go up the ramp.
These guys can fuck you up even worse than the green ones, because they up-slash you when you try to stun them. The only safe way to engage them is to ram them with shields.
Like before, there's a minor prize halfway up. And like before, the monsters are idiots and usually walk/jump off the edge before you can kill them.
Conspicuous door to isolated room?!
...said the bishop to the actress.
Nicky was safely locked in here by Chester, because even though his genocidal rage includes random staff, zombifying bishops is just not on.
How the hell does that work?
Well there had to be a more efficient way to go about it than an evil, ominous clock tower.
GUESS WHERE WE GO LATER
Bishop Nicky is a douche and doesn't give us anything for that. I think there's gold next to him, but meh. Downward!
FUCK THIS IS STILL A BAD IDEAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
Okay seriously. There is no legitimate civilian-use reason to have a giant fucking lava pit in your castle! It's probably here for the sole purpose of Sparta'ing random villagers.
To the right is another eXtreme parkour gym. Sadly you can't do like in Ys Origin and kill monsters by goading them into lava pits. Not even the monster girl casters, even through they're weak to fire. Maybe they all have magic navel protection charms from Illburns.
Speaking of, you can use yours here but there's not really any reason to. Just climb and don't suck.
And you get more gear! Head back up to the Sparta room, then go right.
It's dark but full of completely workable and totally stable platforms.
Except then you equip the light amulet and it's not either. The fake floor tiles drop you into the lava pit again, but it's nothing difficult. Just fireball casters off the cliff, and fireball turrets from just outside their shot.
On the other side is a save point!
Heal up, then warp to Redmont and upgrade your shield. It's not quite as critical as for Death Faleon because the next one hits a lot harder (weirdly, almost twice as hard as on Nightmare, which takes him from another unusually light hitter to just about everything else), but better than nothing. When you're ready, go through...
I swear to God I didn't make up that name.
ZELLFEL ZAM SCHULTIGER is easy (I beat him on the second try while taking screenshots) but still very fun. His AI is a bit weird in that he'll retreat if you go toward him, but chase you if you run. All along he's runnin' 'round, but won't let you breakaway, yeah oh yeah. Put on your shield charge and get ready to use it a lot, because it's your go-to button for pretty much the whole fight.
When he sits back and opens wide, he's ready to give you a good hot grillin'. Jump toward him and shield bash through the fire -- the path is thin enough that you can pin him against the wall and land most of the hits from the spell. Also if you can get behind him, you can stab him in the back. This is your primary opening for damage.
If you see him flip backwards and double back, double back again, he'll probably try to use his own dash attack. It's lower than it looks and you can usually go over it, but don't hesitate to shield slam it either. If you can bait him into dashing into a corner, shield slam traps him against the wall and does a ton of damage -- but on Inferno the cost of fucking that up is way higher than previous difficulties and it's generally not worth it.
The first half of the fight is a warm-up. He's hard to land much damage on at a time, so to speed things up a bit you can retreat, equip fireballs, then shoot it to him straight and look him in the eye. Because of the 2D path, most of it hits him, and it staggers him too. Just don't burn the whole bar, because you need to defend at a moment's notice.
After the halfway point, he pulls out two new moves. One of them will ruin your day very quickly.
When he's comin' out on a roll, he ricochets around the edge of the screen. On Normal you can scroll the screen to aim him into the lower corner, let him bounce over your head in the middle, then scroll the screen again to put him in the other corner. On Hard and above that's a BAD IDEA because he can offset his angle to catch you with your ya-yas down and it'll usually kill you in seconds. Spam shield bash instead -- you can sort of knock him out of it early. Also, he doesn't daze afterward like on Normal.
The other new attack is when he sits down and howls. The wall behind him opens up and you get mobbed by adorable shield-charging doom puppies. BECAUSE DOOM PUPPIES.
The answer is to cackle loudly and shield charge right through all of them. the boss sits still from when the puppies come out to when they're right near the other end, so depending on whether you have more time before or after they reach you, boost and punctureate the hell out of him. This is where most of your damage in the second phase comes from.
Keep calm and don't try to rush it, and ZELLFEL ZAM SCHULTIGER goes down without too much trouble. What's our reward? C'mon, gimme something now...
Okay, I'll stop now. >_>
The full fight, by this guy:
It was surprisingly hard finding a good video. Most of them are perfectly acceptable if narrow Nightmare kills, but on Inferno he hits almost twice as hard. This one comes closest, but gets reckless at the end.
The original Ys 3 "Halabus", who was interesting only in that it had a noticeably different AI loop in most versions, and all of them were exploitable.
Heading left from the Sparta room loops around back to the central chapel. After replacing the missing pieces of scenery, a passage to the castle sewer opens up!
This raises many questions. Did mass have to happen with several parts missing from the pipe organ, lest this thing open up? Did it always reek to high heaven in here because it's right next to an otherwise open sewer?
The sewer is full of lots of new enemies.
Ticks explode if you don't whirlwind them immediately.
It's hard to tell, but these flowers's bursts are directional. When they die, they release two big bursts to either side, so standing where they were is a safe spot. They're good XP too.
These lobster things are kind of like the antlions in Illburns, but they leap twice consecutively.
I'm not sure what this thing is named, but I call it the Fuck-you-upagus. It'll do several consecutive dash attacks, none of which knock you down, then follow up by dropping clouds of spores that are just as powerful. It's entirely capable of killing you instantly with either attack. Fireball it from a distance with walls between you when possible. If you must engage the Fuck-you-upagus at close range, get inside its turning radius while it dashes about, then drop a charged whirlwind on it before it can get high enough to drop spores.
The game's a dick and teases you with this about two screens before you can get it.
The platforming isn't hard, but if you get knocked off you have to go all the way forward and all the way back through like three Fuck-you-upagi, and there haven't been any save points since ZELLFEL ZAM SCHULTIGER.
But there is one not too much further in.
Warp to Redmont and upgrade your new weapon. Then because the next boss is utterly terrifying, go right instead. The next door is locked, but you can grind out a level or two against the oozes here. They give fantastic XP.
When you're ready, save and head north.
This, I think, indicates just how needlessly elaborate McGuire's supervillainy gets. He commissions one of the most advanced war machines in the world, but makes the engineers laboriously build it in the depths of the castle's sewer, where at least half of them will choke to death on the fumes of his own feces and the rest will die of dysentery, and where the paths are too narrow to ever move it out and deploy it anywhere useful. The only purpose Zirduros will ever be able to serve is to guard one (1) room that has nothing of worth in it, or possibly to blast the foundations out from the entire castle and kill everyone in it at a moment's notice.
Amusing observations aside, Zirduros is the last boss that had me completely scared shitless for this run (other than the final boss but he gets a pass on that), and my pants were not disappointed. He has a lot of attacks with sketchy hitboxes, and a lot of ways to just randomly screw you over. On Normal he's pathetic because he does almost no damage and dies quickly (you can kill him in seconds by abusing down-slash + fireball), but here he's a monster.
He is only vulnerable in the tailpipe. He also makes it as much of a pain in the ass as possible to get close to it.
He'll usually lead off with a big leap attack. The shockwave stops just at the top of your double jump, so you'll probably have to shield it. It lingers long enough that you might get hit anyway, and if he jumps directly into you (undodgeable), you take damage if you don't blow your shield early.
When he lands, he spews mines everywhere, then stomps back to the middle while dropping more mines.
Speaking of mines, he'll slap the ground with his tailpipe, dropping mines everywhere behind him and making it almost impossible to hit him safely. It's not entirely clear what causes the mines to damage you. They seem to hurt you sometimes just for being nearby, and sometimes you can run right through a field of them directly over the top of 4-5 mines and come out unscathed. It doesn't appear to be related to their exploding either, and your shield charge will often block hits but no mines disappear.
Additionally, the slap itself will hurt you and has no warning animation at all.
He does it often enough that there will almost always be mines protecting him, so you'll have to do most of your damage through mines. The down-slash + fireball trick can be used with shield slam as well, which lets you sneak in a good 150 sword damage as well as blocking everything as you hit the ground. As Zirduros is immovable, it will do full damage.
He can sweep the room with machine guns. This can be blocked or jumped. It might be worth it to just go ahead and shield slam through it, because this is one of the few attacks that lasts long enough to give a reliable opening.
This attack isn't bad on Normal, but here the missiles are faster than you and have insanely tight turning radii, so they'll almost never hit the floor if you shield slam under them. You want to jump up and down while running away so they have to zigzag a bit, then turn and shield through them. A couple will detonate, but expect to have to do this 2-3 times until they all blow on a timer.
Your magic probably won't last more than two salvos in a row, especially since you have to block just about everything else he does too. He can fire any number in a row -- I've seen him do five, and they were completely impossible to dodge after the third.
If you're in front of him at range, he Master Sparks you. The telegraph for this is less than half a second, and it took me a good 15 tries just to screencap it because by the time you even know he fired it, it's gone. He likes to fire homing missiles, then turn toward you while you're pinned down and laser you repeatedly. There's not much you can do to stop it.
I forgot to screencap it, but he'll also shoot missiles straight up, which then crash down all over your general area. The blasts are very large and inflict damage slightly longer than their animation lasts, come down too quickly to read their shadows, and you can be hit midair. It's probably the most forgiving blind luck in this fight.
Sneak in damage where you can. Down-slash + shield when he has mines up. Shield slam sideways along his back if you're passing but don't have time to open up. Down-slash him as homing missiles come out. Boost when he sweeps the room with his guns and crack him open.
Seriously, fuck Zirduros.
The full fight, by this poor sucker. This is basically the cleanest I've ever seen it:
The original Ys 3 "Jilderos", who would have been preferable to this clusterfuck:
Our reward is Elena, who sums up quite well why she is not an acceptable reward for that meat grinder of a boss.
Uh... I dunno how to tell you this, but he's kind of already committed mass murder and started releasing the dark god under your home island.
This guy is here, for some reason. I dunno what he did to piss off McGuire badly enough to throw in the sewer dungeon full of his own shit, but...oh right, probably not much, really.
Lazy knight appears to have survived too. I'm not sure why he was in the clock tower when he's supposed to be guarding the front door...
We last left off after enforcing medieval fantasy LARP rule #21: no robots.
Just beyond the grinding spot is a clock tower, which for some reason is the preferred way of siphoning ancient statues of evil. Or something.
I swear I didn't edit that subtitle.
The enemies here are pretty standard penultimate dungeon fare. The slimes from the grind, which cause slippy-slidey.
Then the armor pictured above, which can twoshot you with a big-ass shockwave -- stun it when possible, and shield dash through it to block the swing (immune to knockback, so it's full damage).
Also these yiff archers, which for some reason are also immune to knockback and can be demolished by shield slam.
The dungeon is really just a four-room vertical obstacle course to collect the statues Chester stole from you. Collecting each statue opens the door to the next. There's a lot of moving platforms and superfluous giant gears that don't seem to serve any timekeeping purpose, but try to spin you into stabby death that can't possibly serve any timekeeping purpose.
Keep your eye out for treasure along the way. Drop down this shaft for the final Ruby...
And watch out below in the next room for an asston of ore.
Other than that though, it's a straight climb through exactly the sort of clock tower gimmicks one would expect if they've played pretty much any platformer ever.
At the top, it's sunset because that's more dramatic. What a horrible night to have a curse.
Inside, Chester has McGuire at swordpoint and monologues instead of doing the thing he committed mass murder for the chance to do.
Because you forgot to run background checks?
"Axe through the head is how Genosians say hello, right? Right?!?"
As usual, Chester decides it'd be more fun to murder us instead. If he'd waited a second, I was just going to ask if I could take the second swing at McGuire, but hey -- raging asshole.
So this is one of those fights that fucking everyone bitches about. While it is a rough endurance match and took me a good 20 minutes to take him down, it's nowhere near as bad as the boss right before him. The fight mirrors the one in Illburns pretty closely. For the first half, he has a nice predictable pattern that can be flawlessed without too much trouble. Then in the second phase he berserks and you want to kill him as quickly as possible before you get screwed by teleport spam.
Instead of knives, he now throws much faster shockwaves from his new sword. These should be dodged at maximum range.
After two pairs of shots, he'll close range for either a whirlwind (he stands still for a second), or a jump slash that throws popcorn.
He'll throw another 2-4 shots, then charge up his lance. It's quicker, longer, and stronger than before, but dodged exactly the same way. If he catches you coming down from a jump, just shield slam. Unlike before, do not attempt to jump over him -- he puts up a pink shield that will knock you down if you touch it.
This is again your opening once the shield drops. This is what people usually gripe about, because they don't like not being able to throw themselves at him like lemmings. You can wait for it to wear off and do less damage...or...
Your sword arcs just far enough to hit him with the tip, without running into the shield yourself -- and the first hit drops it instantly. Pull up beside him, let go of the movement keys, and let your attack carry you into him. You can get a good 4-5 hits in before he pulls up the blue exploding shield. If you're boosting, it's even easier to break the pink shield unharmed, and a few hits will slip past the blue shield too.
You'll probably trigger the blue shield blast, so shield slam to knock him away and get a breather.
As always, do not approach him from directly in front or he throws this in your face.
That's the first phase of the fight in a nutshell. Once he hits half health, he commences teleport spam, triple shots, and his pattern is much more erratic.
Honestly though, it's easier than the Illburns fight because you can always shield slam if he gets too noisy. He also tends to signal the lance opening more clearly -- be ready after he fires two single shots.
Shazam, motherfucker.
The full fight, by this guy:
As before, there is no equivalent in Ys 3. Actually, Ys 3 gets a completely different boss, but that's a story for a bit further...
Why is nobody in this game capable of admitting they got their ass beat?
McGuire quite sensibly runs like the skidmark he just made, because frankly either one of us would've dissected him. We both give chase.
Signs You're Probably A Villain Now, #452: Menacing monologue littered with narcissistic theater jargon while holding someone at swordpoint.
Elena delivers a touching speech of conscience and letting the dead rest in peace that would have made a lot more sense if Chester hadn't already committed mass murder on exactly the same scale as McGuire. But it's moot because we're all interrupted by an earthquake.
Seriously? Good lord, you're almost as much of an idiot as Elena.
Whaaaaa???
WHAT A TWEEST
Bishop Nikolas monologues to everyone present about how he manipulated both Chester and McGuire into collecting the statues to resuscitate Galbalan.
I was going to photoshop something amusing onto him, but honestly this ridiculous desaturated red-eye sneer portrait is hilarious enough as is.
Chester decides to solve this problem in his usual manner: attempted murder.
He whips out his shiny purple Sword of Fabulosity and smashes Nick's shield easily.
Then Chester gets his ass kicked by Dularn, which is frankly kind of embarrassing.
The bishop turns into a giant pope hat monster or something. Instead of picking up the weapon that he just saw smash through this shield (which probably would've ended this game early, because Garland is a very easy boss), Adol just charges head-on without any preparation at all.
It goes about as well as you'd expect.
In the original Ys 3, you were actually supposed to win this fight. Lots of shin-stabbing was involved.
Bishop Garland gloats, and announces that he needs to sacrifice a descendant of Genos to finish reviving Galbalan.
Elena, never one to pass up a chance at being kidnapped, volunteers, and seems to think I actually want Chester to make a full recovery.
O-72.
Next time: we go to the place highlighted by the dramatic pan-out!
I seriously got Castlevania vibes from this castle.
There was the clock tower, the organ, the underground waterway, ...
Oh yeah, and I insist that that dog boss is Velguarder (Sigma's pet in Mega Man X) with Verossa Acous's "Infinite Hunting Dogs: Infinite Hunt" ability tacked on.
We last left off after contrivance kept us from ending the game three bosses early.
Redmont is in full oshit mode. Because Gardner is completely useless, they pull in outside help.
Specifically, outside help that could finish the game for us if he wasn't babysitting these clowns.
"...again."
You don't say.
Wait, you're naked! Where were you keeping that? I don't think I want it anymore...
The villagers are all holed up in the church, because apparently they looked at a building with a doorless archway and no exits and thought it'd be a great place to do that.
I'm not sure him stabbing you would have been ironic. We pretty much expect that from him anymore.
Yeah, it's still a couple games before we get any female characters who can handle themselves.
"But for some reason she was wearing dark robes and shouting 'SWORDS. BURN. SPIN. SWORDS.' It was hella weird."
The inn's got stuff going on too. Apparently Team McGuire moved in.
Even with the two genocidal maniacs in town and a horde of slavering hellspawn outside? Maybe she came from Detroit or something.
Dude, he's got a skeletal face, sunken eyes, greasy hair, and a porn stache of evil. Unless you're Severus Snape, that doesn't happen naturally.
"He's going to re-grow all of the Genosians from their aged, charred remains in a vat of primordial ooze. Isn't that right, honey?"
Outside is a lynch mob posing as a guard unit.
Welp, nice knowing you. Anyone who's played the Berhardt bonus fight from boss rush knows his combat style probably doesn't play nice with anything that isn't a background texture.
I swear I stopped editing this guy's lines so long ago.
The blacksmith has a new pet project, but he needs a couple things.
So he needs literally the entire town's monthly GDP, and some special equipment. The end goal is to make some armor out of a material that's too delicate to work with by conventional means. This works because stats.
Holy what the fuck man. The last set of upgrades are prohibitively expensive, but it's worth upgrading the sword at least. Doing the armor is impossible without grinding the extremely deadly monsters in the last room in the game for a good hour, which is a) risky, b) tedious, and c) only helps against two bosses, both of which hit too hard to make a difference, one of whom is easy, and grinding it out overlevels you for both of them.
Okay, all set. To the docks!
...WHAT. YOU GOT STABBED IN THE HEART. HOW ARE YOU PUMPING BLOOD.
Dogi's sucking chest wound catches up to him, but he goes out making a "that's what she said" joke. Save and head in.
OH MY GOD NOBODY SAW THIS COMING
So you fight Dularn again. The first 3/4 of the fight is almost identical to when you first fought her at the beginning of the game. She uses slightly beefier patterns on her main three sword attacks.
Keep your shield ready, because the curving ones along the floor are borderline undodgeable this time. The main threat is her boring straight line of swords, just because they're really fast.
After three salvos, she drops her shield and appears in one of six places in the room with some fake clones. Unlike before, they're not visually distinguishable. Switch to fire and charge it.
The real one shoots fire instead of a shockwave. Stand in the middle, jump over all the shockwaves, and then smack her. Slash three times -- don't hold directions to make sure you're auto-facing her exactly -- then drop the fireball in her face.
She's super-weak to it and takes like 200 damage. If she's in the far back or front position, your first attacks butt her up against the wall and she gets hit by the fireball twice.
Dularn ramps up from one clone to all five by the time she hits about half health. At 1/4 health she realizes this isn't going so well for her and changes tactics. Try to flawless the entire fight up to this point -- it's not that hard -- and push her as close to 1500 as you can before pushing her abruptly over it as far as you can. You won't be able to last too many cycles of her desperation attack.
She releases these spikes on the next clone attack after passing 1500, and they start mixing it up on the next sword phase after that. It's ugly and random. She throws swords slower, but these flying spikes laser you to death the whole time, and can catch you in undodgeable crosses. Unlike on easier difficulties, they keep lasering until after the clones show up and fire, so they might screw with your ability to hit the right copy or safely switch to fire attacks.
If you space the damage out right, and keep pressure on her when you get the opening, you'll have to survive about 2-3 rounds of this. Boost during the lasers when possible to cut damage -- it doesn't help much for offense because she vanishes on number of hits. Good luck.
The whole fight, by this guy.
There is no Ys 3 equivalent this time. DULAN!!! actually died in the mines I guess.
And you thought the senpai jokes were just to mess around. No, she's actually like that. Also, meth is a hell of a drug.
A baby born into this world and it got no dang ol friends. It got no nothing but go come in find out all about it, ol evil man. Man, see like it you don’t even know man. It’s like he’s born into this world man. And you got like, it’s like this man, dust in the wind man. Or like dang ol candle in the wind man it don’t matter it’s all oldies all the time man. You know what I think man, like I dang ol think therefore you are man.
Yeah I figured after the first post or two that the only people reading this thread are people who've already played it, and the reveals were silly enough that anyone who hasn't probably won't miss them.
It's kind of funny though that I first started making smartass comments about some things without really remembering just how deep they ran because I haven't paid much attention to the dialogue since my first Normal run. Like Gardner being useless. I just took a shot at him early, and then the opportunities just kept coming. Or editing a couple of Paul's lines, and then all the ones after that being so amazingly stereotypical that there wasn't any need to.
We last left off after an improbable discovery of the meaning of life.
This was supposed to be a non-dark shrine before Galbalan came around, so presumably it was built this way by well-meaning shrinegoers. Maybe they just really liked catwalks.
The enemies are nasty and hit like trucks. For the first third or so of the dungeon you fight three varieties:
The blue bats are a cross between Lava Zone birds and Illburns Evil Fucking Bastards. They can charge, but they can also damage without attacking. Pin them against a wall and whirlwind, and stun where needed.
That skull turret shoots a big pink laser. It's not too hard to stay behind him, but it's got a shitload of HP and can twoshot you, so the main threat is that it just stays alive so damn long when other stuff is trying to kill you.
If a skull gets impatient, it hulks out and rolls around as a fucking dragon tank that breathes fire arcs.
There's also Illburns frogs, except they crap explosions when they jump. They get interrupted when you hit though, so just blitz them.
Also rolling spikes. They're more annoying than anything.
Genos is long and messy with no save points, so expect to Spirit Cape at least once per screen.
Full of goodies though. Your last Emerald is here, as is a ton of ore. DO NOT spend it on the sword yet, because there wasn't quite enough for both that and Adonis's raval project, and I had to push through the worst part of the dungeon without the last armor until more ore dropped. It sucked balls. Don't do that.
Don't go down the conspicuous hole just yet. Just south is a set of skull-guarded platforms with more ore. After collecting that, go ahead and jump down that hole.
You land at the top of this thing.
This room is full of the scary skeletons from the Spirit Cape tunnel, which hit absurdly hard and regenerate instead of dying properly. It also has a few casters, which don't teleport like the annoying Valestein monster girls but have even more dangerous spinning flame shields so you want to fireball them.
On the far end of these pillars is the first big lifesaver of the dungeon, which you should equip immediately:
And just south of that on the ground floor (ignore enemies!) is this thing.
Grab it and teleport back to Redmont immediately.
The blacksmith flips his shit over the hammer but he wasn't kidding when he said he needed a ton of ore.
Worth it though. Also you get the last special Adol sprite for wearing the entire final tier.
Pick up this thing when you can afford it, too. Don't wear it -- save it for the final boss.
Teleport back, save, and head back in.
Clear out the skull turrets on the left, then shield slam through the entire pack to the end.
Undead only die and yield rewards if you have this equipped. You'll have to switch it out for the cape a lot.
These flowers shoot a bunch of fire into the air, and it comes down as bombs with very large explosions. They're scary, but you can just shield slam when it starts to kill them quickly and keep yourself safe.
The final gem in the game is behind a tricky jump under a platform guarded by spikes. With the last pieces of armor the spikes do almost no damage.
I call these things the Ohgodasaurus. They're fast, have a ton of HP, and can demolish you in seconds at range or up close. You have to fight a couple along the way, and they're terrifying enough alone. Bait them into a melee attack, shield through them, boost, and tear into their back before they attack again.
Some last-minute cash-in.
When you see this hole, equip the shield. Then jump down and RUN LIKE HELL until you see a save point.
I cannot stress enough how much this is not worth it. This is a fantastic place to grind out your last couple upgrades on Normal, but on Inferno it's really more of a fantastic place to get violently dismembered and your remains displayed on a pike made of your own tibias next to a pile of BBQ sauce and lube.
Don't wear the amulet yet. I was just a dumbass and forgot to screenshot this until after the next boss.
Save, go to Redmont and upgrade what you can, then grind level 49 against the two Ohgodasauruses in the previous room. They're not too bad with a quick shield finger and generous use of boost and spirit cape.
When you're ready, equip shield magic and head through the ominous archway.
I can't help but get this picture of Nikolas yelling "YOU HAD ONE JOB" at Nell while she senpais at him with hearts in her eyes.
Giant Popemonster is awesome. He's almost comically easy -- I beat him on the second try even while gathering screenshots -- but it's just so amazingly fun. It's noisy and flashy with lots of explosions, and the strategy is to charge in screaming like a psycho and beat the shit out of him while shield charging through every single one of his attacks. After some of the meat grinders we've fought so far, it's really cathartic. Also if you're playing the PSP version his voice acting throughout the fight is hilaribad.
For the first bit of the fight, he stays still in the middle and puts up his shield. It pushes you back, and he starts throwing purple orbs of death to the edges while swinging a huge fuck-off scythe.
Run up, break the shield with one sword hit, shield through the scythe, and just run up and beat the hell out of him.
Pivot around him as you attack. As he takes damage he throws off lightning. It's mostly random and flies off into the back BECAUSE EXPLOSIONS, but every once in a while it's actually pointed at you. It also means when his next shield comes up and pushes you back you'll be away from most of the orbs. He'll also very rarely do his homing spray from the first fight. Out of four full runs and a boss rush on every difficulty, I've seen him do it all of twice.
When he hits half health or so he realizes this is a terrible strategy. He starts teleporting, and the orbs start forming at random from lightning. They usually spawn far away from you though.
Sometimes he turns into a rocket-powered exploding pope hat garden trowel BECAUSE WHY NOT. Jump sideways or shield.
When he does this, run away or you get sucked into an FF7 cutscene that eats about half your health. Use sword combos and shield charge to power away from it. This is the only thing he does that cannot and should not be blocked.
If he reappears in front of you but hovers backward as you approach, he'll reach back and swing a fucking huge exploding pope hat sword BECAUSE WHY NOT.
If he shoots a red laser into the air, they'll fall back down in wide explosions. He's completely vulnerable while it happens. Boost and tear him up, and shield if a laser lands on you.
Run when you land the killing blow. He gets back up after a second, sucks you in, and does a massive suicide blast.
We last left off after killing a giant Popemonster.
He didn't quite take me to level 50 yet, so I walked out of the room and polished that out against the Ohgodasauruses. When you're ready, equip the amulet (which gives you a one-off revive to full health on death), and step on the ominous glowing geometry where the Bishop croaked.
Ys 3: Adol goes to Hell.
"I was having a private moment with the tentacle monster! N-31!"
The PSP version had Galbalan go on a loud, threatening speech while he sucks Elena's juices. The Steam version throws out most of that and instead he zombie-groans a lot of foreshadowing for the next Ys games.
Chester shows up to perform suckus interruptus.
With Galbalan's revival short-circuited, you're clear to take his ass down.
Well actually you're clear to get your ass chewed off, shredded into a chunky pesto, and shat out over pasta, because he's exactly as hard as you'd expect the final boss of a brutal game like this to be. The fight is in three phases. The first is an easy warmup, the second is hell, and the third is mostly just scary with as little health as you have left.
In phase 1, he'll randomly select one of three attacks, all of which are telegraphed well, and two of which are avoided by jumping in place.
To dodge the homing balls, run left, pause a split second at the edge, then jump and continue right, and reverse again at the edge. The pause is so his third shot from the right goes under you without having time to angle up as you jump. It sounds fussy, but the window is narrower than it looks, that shit hits you for over 100 damage, and you really want to be at full health for phase 2.
Jumping straight up for the ice attack lands you on ascending ice floes. Start charging a fireball as you jump, then double- jump and release the moment it finishes to hit his faceplate. If he starts firing balls as you go up, abort and dodge them as normal.
A direct hit exposes his eye. Fireball the crap out of it.
While his eye is out, he'll either link his swords and do four chops that you jump horizontally, or a simple horizontal sweep. If he does the chops, you can squeeze a couple more fireballs in between every second one. Galbalan will do two randomly-chosen attacks, then cover his modesty again and you're back to waiting for ice.
If you're super-cheap you can actually hit his face just from a double-jump by timing a charged fireball's explosion when his floating animation drifts downward. EXPLOITS.
Phase 1 lasts until he hits 6000 HP. It's possible to end it in two loops if he does the vertical swings every time, but expect three.
Phase 2 is the ballbuster. He starts by stealing your magic. Whirlwind his hands before it runs out, then keep jump-slashing them. The hit detection is a bit spotty, but you can do a good couple hundred damage to his hands as he winds up, which makes your much-needed breather come a bit sooner.
Then he charges up the ball of Adol-magic and throws it in a fucking huge fireball, while lighting up six lasers that trace horizontally across the floor, and readying a third simultaneous attack with his hands.
His hands can do several things. He can jet fire waves, shoot ice (you can land on the floes for a breather), trace a horizontal beam from back to front (you can attack the hands diagonally when they stop at the front), slam the ground a few times, or completely dick you over by simultaneously jetting fire and shooting homing balls.
It's basically impossible to dodge unscathed even when the lasers are off. If they're on, you can expect to take a good 200 damage. If he does it while the big fireball is still on screen, you're basically dead outright.
The hand-slam is your main opening, as little as it is. Jump the shockwave when his hands hit the ground, then down-stab them and do as much damage as is safe.
The lasers will either line up across the field and do a crossing pattern, or they'll pile up on one side and sweep across at once. If they sweep across from one side, try to jump three at a time -- four if you're boxed in.
Ignore my positioning in the pictures -- juke the giant fireball right, and position yourself in the far back left. He slams the left hand a bit later than the right, and that's bad. If he leads with a hand-slam and the lasers lead with their crossing pattern, the first laser you jump lands you right on top of the left hand's shockwave -- but if you do it on the right side, it goes earlier and you clear both simultaneously.
When he recoils and pulls his laser-balls back, you'll start regaining magic. Switch to shield slam and charge immediately.
He'll charge forward and cover the floor with ice. Jump forward, shield slam forward through it into his eye, then boost and unload. You can also whirlwind over and it's a less risky. But ramming him lets you hit harder and end the nasty phase in two loops.
At 1000 HP, phase 2 ends and you're probably near death with your amulet gone. Thankfully the final phase isn't too difficult, but it's extremely stressful.
He sucks out your magic and plays ping-pong. Once more, knowing your sword's exact range will save your life, because the ball hits for over 200 damage.
But that's not enough. Vortices spawn and complicate things. Odd-numbered ping-pong rounds use a suction hentai trap with an instant-kill cutscene. Fight out with sword swings and don't get hit by the ball at the end of your sixth. Alternately, it only "grabs" you when it flashes red at the end of the animation, so you can just jump it.
Even rounds spawn bullet hell spirals. They're random and can hem you in, and jumping is a really bad idea because of how it messes with your sword arc. If you get cornered and the ball is too close, just boost and eat a bullet.
Naturally, each round takes less time if you're closer. It's a good idea to make the first couple hits from further back, then press forward to beat the next vortex.
After five hits of ping-pong, Galbalan dies and you can take a break to slow your heart rate.
The full fight, by this guy:
The original Ys 3 version, which was sometimes called Demanicus because lol Hudsonsoft. It was tedious with a whole lot of waiting, and the floor and background can cause seizures.
Also, if you have company over for the holidays that show up during the ending, set your laptop aside but don't sleep it. The Steam version can crash while asleep, and I had to do it all again.
I was screwing around tonight and realized I still had these screenshots but didn't actually finish the liveblog. So yeah, let's do this.
Epilogue: Bee forgot to finish the fucking thread
So yeah, we totally kicked Galbalan's ass. Twice!
So let's just stab him some more while he's down. We can take shifts or something.
Oh, because that turned out so well last time I did that.
Chester wants to blow up the island, because suicide and island-scale slaughter are both still on his bucket list.
"Also O-70."
But like Elena when she really feels like getting kidnapped, Chester cannot be swayed. He decides to go out doing what he loves most...
...being a dick to his sister.
...O-61.
The screen fades to black, which I can only assume means Adol passes out from ambient stupidity...
------------------
...and wakes up in Redmont where everyone is happy and eager to talk to him!
How? Redmont spent the entire game getting its economy fucking gutted, and the nearest place that could buy stuff all got turned into zombies. The town's probably in a terminal death spiral by now. Here, take it from this guy:
They're desperate enough to take back Count McGuire. Do you really think they're interested in buying the horseshit souvenirs you steal off drunk guys in the inn? Hell, the only reason I didn't call the guards on you for that was because the only one is Gardner and he'd probably trip on the stairs and die on the way to arrest you.
Father Pierre reminisces on senpai-chan.
"She always taught me to loudly yell 'SWORDS! SPIN! BURN!' when I'm fighting. It's served me well."
Oh God, I know exactly how you feel. I haven't seen Elena all morning, so she's probably in Illburns trying to hug the Evil Fucking Bastards by now.
"...also it's still full of slavering undead. Kind of a downer."
"WE WILL BUILD IT ON SMILES AND OPTIMISM."
See? Optimism.
See, Chester didn't have to blow up the island. We could've just had this guy eat Galbalan.
Sadly, Ys III.5: Dogi's Excellent Wall-Smashing Adventure was never imported.
"Maybe I can just bring back a few. Hundred. You guys wouldn't mind, right?"
"But, like, minus the crazy evil."
"I'll be sure to attend instead of doing my job!"
The game makes you wait for Dogi before leaving.
Which is hilarious, because he ditches you literally seconds later.
Elena still needs a few more spaces on her bingo card and only one of them can be a selfie.
"Except punting you into a volcano. And stabbing Dogi. And mass murdering random castle staff. But everything ELSE, you know?"
Elena does not get to Come Sail Away With Meeee, so she does a desperate photoshoot on the pier.
"God dammit how have I not won this thing yet?! Fuck my life."
So your reward for slogging through the whole game on Inferno is getting the credits hijacked by a magical fuzzy pig who wants to molest you. But not before you get tenderized a bit by his minions.
Said minions are superpowered versions of the three hardest monsters in the game: the teleporting wolf mummy knight maid who shoots homing shit, the orange axe dino from Valestein, and the Ohgodasaurus. You're put at pretty high level and given a free revive necklace, at least.
Concentrate on fireballing the teleporting one to death first. By the time she dies, you'll probably have a full boost bar to spend on the orange one -- his default reaction to your attack is to jump backward, so if you boost him into a corner and spam attack, he just tries and fails to jump away until he dies. Then, you can take on the Ohgodasaurus alone.
When his minions die, the Black Pikkard completely loses his shit.
Pictured: shit-losing. He cycles four attacks:
1) black bullet hell
2) aimed fireballs
3) chasing you and crapping out poison bombs
4) homing whirlwinds
All of these are generally dodged by running and/or jumping in a circle and shielding as needed. He really doesn't hit that hard, and the fight doesn't really change much as it goes on (he speeds up, but only slightly).
Your opening is right as he finishes the poison bomb spam, because he waits for them all to blow up. If you kite him along the edge, most of the bombs bounce away far enough to melee him with relative safety (boosting if possible). They explode in the sequence they were laid, so you have plenty of warning to shield through him to safety. As a bonus, he's immune to knockback, so your shield does full damage no matter what. You can even slip in another one while he's casting whirlwinds.
The main hazard is really just running out of magic during the bullet hell bits. Even then, it's not that hard. He's really weak compared to just about everything you fought through to get to him.
He dies with little trouble, fanfare, or animation. I not only beat him on the second try while gathering screenshots, but this was done blind, and a third try could probably have netted me a win without using the revive necklace. Compared to what you went through to get here, he's piss easy.
Just make sure you have some HP left before he goes down, because the cutscene locks your controls but doesn't turn on invincibility, and you'll probably get tapped once or twice by leftover shots. Whoops.
I highly recommend watching the SA Lets Play of Oath in Felghana by Toddy. He did simultaneous runs of Oath and the hilariously awful Hudsonsoft translation of Wanderers, and they're pretty great. I deliberately held off on watching it, and made a point of not linking to any of his videos until after I finished the game, which kind of sucked at times, because he's one of the only people that has good non-cheating runs of Inferno bosses. He's currently doing Ys Origin, which I'm following and you should too.
While watching it, I realized I forgot two things.
In the Abandoned Mine, just upstairs from the save point, you can shield bash through this wall.
The sad part is it probably would've been enough to not have to go through Genos without the Raval Shield. :(
Also, remember how Dogi couldn't cross that chasm in Elderm? But how after beating Gildias, he apparently did anyway? Here's how:
Yes. He fucking punched a path out of the wall. This shows up anytime you revisit the area after killing Gildias.
The very last thing I needed to do was rather silly. See, the game resets its internal timers when you die, so only your "live" run through each thing counts toward game time. Which means my Inferno run, despite being a considerable amount of time beating my head against things, was still only 8 hours of game time. The last achievement is for 10.
So I just sat here and played Professor Layton until this happened.
As much as I swore up and down throughout, I really did enjoy this game and I recommend it. Cheers :)
Interesting that you can actually hit Gyalva's toenails.
I haven't touched this thread in forever but re-reading it just now makes me wonder whether I was thinking of Ridley from Metroid Zero Mission when I wrote this.
Comments
At least Oath's battle is made a lot less tedious than the original's.
Kinda funny how in Oath, Gildias gives you the Light Statue, but in Wanderers, you get the Dark Statue.
Edit: Oh hey, look. New page. Now the page won't take forever to load.
Alternatively, why would you raise a famil--oh wait, right, he's eeeeevil.
There was the clock tower, the organ, the underground waterway, ...
Oh yeah, and I insist that that dog boss is Velguarder (Sigma's pet in Mega Man X) with Verossa Acous's "Infinite Hunting Dogs: Infinite Hunt" ability tacked on.
Obviously not for a first-time player, but for someone who's played the game, this is quite entertaining.
But yeah, Galbalan is very cactus.