Train Graveyard
-On my way to the Central Complex.
-Came upon a walled-off room with treasure, but can’t find the cardkey to get inside.
-Enemies in here are hitting much harder than prior areas, and taking many more hits to go down.
-The little sentry bots that zap me with lightning are pretty annoying. A bit like the Castlevania Medusa heads, though perhaps that’s overstating it. (Not sure how to see their real names.)
-Big room. No enemies in it. Except… yes.
I spy with my little eye something red.
Boss time.
-Quick side note: bless this game for including these vending machines so frequently. Resource conservation in a game when I have no idea how long the dungeon will be is frustrating, and the presence of these vendors eliminates this worry. I wonder if the vending machines are here on the harder difficulties too.
-I said this about Weiss and I feel it also about Rosso. I love how unrepentantly evil they are.
Mwa-ha-ha!
I mean, she’s monologuing about how joyous she is having traded away her humanity for power. No regrets.
Is it wrong that I’m mentally shipping her and Azula, or perhaps her and Emperor Palamecia from FFII?
-I think I have her pattern down to start. She shoots a few times from a distance. Sidesteps quickly, more shooting. Does this a few times, then sprints in for a slice-n-dice. I have to shoot her from afar and dodge during the first part, then kite/dodge when she cuts in.
First phase down. She takes a break to say “Do you know why they call me the Crimson, darling? Let me show you!” Second phase seems likely.
-Yup. She tosses red boomerang things at me to dodge. I tried using Limit Breaker and closing the distance, but no go. She just swats me away. Gotta do this at a distance.
MOTHERFUCKER> I keep trying to dodge these boomerangs, but they keep landing. Goddammit.
-FUCCCCCCCCCCCK I CANNOT DODGE THESE THINGS DAMMIT
I literally have no idea how to defend myself. I can probably win through potions and attrition, but I hate feeling out of control.
-Defeated her, but it was a super frustrating fight anyway. I feel like I only won because the game is so forgiving. I sometimes was able to dodge her boomerangs, maybe 1 in 4-5 times, and sometimes blocked them with pillars. I was sometimes able to dodge her melee, maybe 1 in 4-5 times with just running.
Granted, practice makes perfect. A second attempt would’ve gone better. As is, I just feel like the game wanted me to win and gave me enough potions to survive. Ugh.
[Later edit: this isn’t a complaint about the fight itself. It’s an interesting, multi-phase fight with good combat and mechanics to learn. It’s just frustration with my failure to execute well or to get timings down. Like getting your ass kicked in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, if you know what I mean. You see the timings needed, and JUST CAN’T DO IT. Just part of my mental/emotional process on challenging game segments is to vent frustration.]
-She doesn’t let Vincent land the killing blow. Instead, she stands at the edge of the tower we’re fighting in, cuts the ground out from under herself, and plummets.
RIP Rosso.
-Rosso dispatched, Vincent calls Shelke.
-The ground troops weren’t able to penetrate Deepground’s defenses. The reactors are all up.
Don’t let me down, Cloud-Tifa-Barret!
-Vincent’s at what used to be the Shinra Building. Shelke instructs him to find the passage to Deepground within the Shinra Building, near the president’s personal entrance.
-Ruh-roh. Vincent starts to go into beast mode. His eyes glow red. (…redder?) He swats an attacking dog out of the way from behind him without looking, but continues to change.
-Oh. It’s Chaos. Acting up I guess.
-Shelke reminds him that without the Protomateria that helps him control Chaos, Vincent is unstable.
-Shelke’s voice of all of a sudden seems to change. Perhaps it’s Lucrecia’s voice now, being drawn on from her hardware. I can’t remember exactly what Lucrecia sounds like so I’m not sure, but seems like a reasonable guess.
-Yup. It’s Lucrecia. Holo-Lucrecia appears before Vincent, confirming that thing from before about Chaos being the harbinger of Omega.
Someone to prepare the way.
LUCRECIA: “I’m so sorry. You must fight him! I don’t want you to die.” I’m pretty sure she means she wants Vincent to fight to stay in control of his body, but it’d be kind of cool if we got some 1v1 Vincent vs. Chaos boss battle. Despite the fact that Chaos would probably sweep away Vincent without a problem.
-Before Shelkrecia can continue, the virtual reality helmet thingy short-circuits. Or overloads.
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Next time: danger on the Shera.
