This one's coming out in a somewhat more timely manner.
One thing I think I forgot to mention last time is that the first phase of this final boss fight fight turned out to be relatively easy once I hit on the party I mentioned then. It kind of helped that I had Zidane's limit break meter pretty much all the way full going into this portion of the fight. Hitting the monster, called Deathguise, with Zidane's Grand Lethal move a couple times, along with Blizzaga spells from Vivi and the related Sword Magic technique from Steiner really moves things along fairly quickly. Since this thing is called Deathguise, after all, it can kill characters easily enough all the same, which means Eiko's Full-Life spell and Phoenix summon really come in handy, too.
When Deathguise goes down, Kuja acts all shocked that the heroes won, even after everything else he's seen them do. But since I had the chance to heal up and save after that fight, I decided that was also a good place to take a break for awhile and come back at a later time to see if the same party worked as well against Kuja himself.
The first attempt againts Kuja went relatively well. Got him all knocked out and moved on to an entity called Necron after a cutscene kind of like the one at the end of Final Fantasy 4, where the party going to fight the real final boss gets fully healed up by the ones who are not. The first attempt against Necron didn't go so well, mostly because it's got an attack called Grand Cross that can pretty much cheese the party to death by inflicting multiple status effects, which is bullshit for a few reasons, not the least of which is that the zombie status stays in effect after a character dies and has to be removed with an item before they can be revived. I did not realize that until I looked it up after a couple more unsuccessful runs at Kuja on account of getting wiped out in that first short at Necron.
After getting some rest, I gave it another shot. And by a little rest, I mean a fortnight, as in two weeks rather than the video game that I've more or less heard of but never had much interest in actually trying myself.
As I was noting above, the fight against Kuja isn't a particularly difficult one, like quite a lot of the bosses in this part of the game, as memory serves. Necron, on the other hand, was a good deal more difficult, as I've said before, mostly because of that Grand Cross thing I mentioned above. There's also something it does called Neutron Ring, which might do something similar. Given that this final boss can also do multiple attacks per turn and apparently heal doesn't really make things any easier. I did make it through on this second attempt, though, and I've gotta say, I'm equal parts pleased and disappointed that Necron didn't have a second form. Given that It really helped to have Eiko there to use her Phoenix summon, use her Full-Life spell when needed, and heal, one form for Necron was enough. Upon reflection and taking a look after the fact, I remembered that Caves of Narshe's walkthrough even pointed out that there was just the one form for both Kuja and Necron here at the end of the game. That's certainly enough, of course, and I'm not complaining, really.
That said, had the ending of this game been entirely up to me and my preferences, I think I would have made Trance Kuja at least a little harder than he was, maybe gave him a second form, and done away with Necron entirely. For me, anyway, it would have made the fight a little more satisfying, and the whole “why do you fight against your fate, as all living things are born to die?” thing we had going on for a good chunk of the last disk, at least, would have worked just as well, if not better.
Another thing that might have worked out a little better if we'd had a more difficult multi-stage fight with Kuja to end the game is the end scene where Zidane goes down into the roots of Gaia's Ilfa Tree to rescue him after he somehow survives the beating we gave him and doing Ultima on the big Omni Crystal that apparently created the universe in this game. One thing I did have to look up is that Kuja ultimately did wind up buying it just after telling Zidane that he realized that life wasn't pointless after all, and that he regretted his actions up to that point.
We then cut to some time later, where we see most of the characters getting on with their lives, and having pretty decent ones, all things considered, what with all they'd been through over the course of the game. Freya and Fratley are happily together again, even if Fratley doesn't really remember the context of the “again” aspect of it; Steiner and Beatrix are a couple in Alexandria, with Dagger as Queen; I'm assuming Quina works in Alexandria Castle's kitchen. Since Tantalus has come back to do a performance of I Want to be Your Canary, the play from the very beginning of the game, we see what looks like Vivi running into Puck and getting his legit ticket jacked again because Puck's pulling the same crap with the fake tickets again, only for it to turn out to be like Vivi Junior or a clone or something because there's like six of him now and they're all going to see the play. And of course, Eiko's going to be there with Regent Cid and Hilda.
We actually get to see a bit of the play this time around, and it looks like a pretty good one. It makes for a good reveal when Zidane finally shows back up in Alexandria after the undisclosed amount of time that's passed since Kuja wound up carking it after the final battle. Dagger, Now Queen Garnet, is happy to see him again, of course, but also pissed at him for being gone so long and making everybody think he'd bought it when he tried to rescue Kuja after the fight.
From there we get the end credits, and what I believe is the game's main theme, a song called Melodies of Life. I'm glad I sat through the end credits because it's always nice to hear these songs and see these things in their original context. In this case, there was an added bonus of seeing that Skywalker Sound, which is part of George Lucas's Industrial Lights and Magic, as I understand, had a hand in the sound design of the game. That's one of quite a few things I probably knew when I started the game and had just forgot over time.
I've got plenty of other thoughts to give on all this, but I'm going to save those for the epilog post I tend to do for these things, especially when it's a game I actually manage to finish. The plan is that I'm going to get that started once I get this posted, so until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and, as always, DFTBA, my friends!
See you soon.
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