Going for a Final
Fantasy II reference here. It was the castle
where the final battle happened.
And let me tell you, getting through
this thing is hell. Not necessarily because it's difficult. I've
prepped myself well enough to handle the challenge well enough. It's
Sierra and my pet zombie Ed Frid that kept dying on me. That was
partly because I kept getting turned around and walking into this one
room in the castle where a pair of dragon-type monsters would ambush
us with fire breath. I can understand Ed not making it through that.
Undead monsters are naturally weak to fire, after all. I would have
just thought that Sierra would have been better-able to handle it
than she was. She'd been tasked by her master to go to Hell and save
her brother, who served the Devil, after all.
But the place is a maze. No surprise
there. The Flames, as it's officially called in the game, is the
palace of the Underworld, so that's to be expected. Lots of
dragon-type and undead monsters, too. Also to be expected. And so
are the four mini-bosses. What surprised me in the end is that it
wasn't as hard as I had expected. This is not to say it wasn't hard.
I did wind up losing both Sierra and Ed on multiple occasions going
through here. The good thing is that so long as the avatar character
survives, the game goes on, and as close as I came to dieing myself a
few times, that never did quite happen.
But after all the trap floors and
switchbacks and multiple trips through floors, I finally got to the
fourth mini-boss, stationed on a balcony. Apparently this is Larc
again. It sure looks like the same monster. And Sierra says
something about “Here he comes!”, too. After this fight, there's
a choice of three doors, with one in the middle, one on the left, and
one on the right. The right door to go through is dreadfully
obvious, especially if you've seen the MST3K episode Quest
of the Delta Knights. It's quite literally the door on the
right.
From there, it's not far to the boss
fight with Drakonis. Drakonis does his whole “I'm the Devil and
I'm going to devour your souls because I need the love to survive”
bit, and naturally, Sierra responds with the whole “We're the good
guys so we'll win instead.” bit. With that, the fight's on.
I gotta say, this fight wasn't as hard
as I was expecting it to be. Don't get me wrong here, either. It
was hard. Drakonis's dragon form took out Sierra and Ed and knocked
my health down to half before I got a decent weapons lock on him.
But after that, it was just a matter of standing there and stabbing
him in the foot until he died. That really kind of sucks, because I
was actually expecting a more epic battle than that. At least the
ending's good. Larc's back to normal, if in bad shape, and
Pademonium implodes back into the Underworld. Once it's all over,
Vadise astral-projects in and tells Sierra that she can't touch her
brother because she'll be tainted with the same curse he's got, and
he may need another thousand years to get a chance to break free
again. I'd use the “go to hell” clip I found here, but really,
we're still building up to that. See, after Vadise gives us that
little kick in the nuts, Larc says he's got one more trick up his
sleeve that's going to get him out sooner than that.
In the meantime, however, Sierra, Ed,
and I go restore Jajara and Akrivator, the dragons we killed while
helping Larc and Drakonis, and return their Mana flow to Fa'Diel
before going back to the White Forest. Once we're there, it becomes
clear that all this is an epilog, because we've finished the Dragoon
arc, and we should consider ourselves amongst the privileged few who
get to know of the brother and sister separated by the curse of war
and then reunited with the help of a greater hero. I guess this
means we won this part of the game. I'm just not sure what the hell
happened. I do know that Drakonis is sealed again, but is Larc free
now? Has he turned himself around? I am confused, and can only turn
to the words of Captain Spockat the end of Star Trek 6.
I guess all I can do now is run around
a bit and look for clues as to what to do next. First things first,
I gotta stop at home to put Ed back in the barn, talk to Lil Cactus,
and get some produce off the tree. I think by this point, I've
talked about everything that comes off of there, so I won't again.
While I was at it, I went and got some
more off the other tree. More of the same there, too. When I got
back to the house again, there was a clue as to what might be coming
next. Seems something's up with the Sproutlings in the area.
There's been the one hanging out around the front door the whole
game. Now he's got two buddies and something's going on with one of
them. He doesn't look good. I guess he's going back to the
Sproutling dimension or joining the all-mother or some such thing.
The two Sproutlings that are on better ground are explaining this to
Lil Cactus, who somehow got out of the house when he saw what was
going on. The Sproutlings tell Cactus that he'll be joining the
giant root ball at some point himself. I know there's a quest about
that coming up in the near future, but I'm not sure how soon. I
guess it's time for a little running around while I get this all
sorted out.
In the meantime, I may even get a
little Final Fantasy in, as well. At any rate, see you soon, folks!
Stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and as always DFTBA!
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