Path to Mountain of Woe
-I thought “The Beast” would be a boss, but it’s just a new type of standard encounter enemy. Looks like a triceratops, and fire raises its attack rate.
-Strike that. Looks like any time a Beast gets hit by non-retaliation, its attack power raises. Best to take it down with a big tech rather than lots of little slashes.
-New dual tech between Frog and Lucca: “Red Pin.” Similar to Ice sword. Lucca sets Frogs sword on fire while he’s mid-air, and he plunges it through the enemy with a leap attack. Badass af.
-Now it’s boss time.
Trio of bosses: Red Beast, Blue Beast, and Mud Imp. Starting out with Fire Sword on Blue Beast. It does GINORMOUS damage, but the Blue Beast has a ton of health.
-Blue Beast down. Onto the Red Beast, and SwordStream – the Frog/Crono dual tech for single target water damage – crushes it just as hard.
-hahahaha – it’s a slumber party.
Lucca cast Hypno to put the Red Beast to sleep, then the Mud Imp put all of us to sleep. I had forgotten to use Heal to cure Sleep.
-Red Beast down. The Mud Imp that remains has really high defense and heals after getting heat each time. Only weakness I’ve found it strong single-target physical techs, like Frog’s Leap Slash and Crono’s Spincut.
Victory! Tricky fight. Exited the cave and climbed up the chain to the floating island.
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Mountain of Woe
-First monster we face is a pain in the butt. Rubble.
We can’t use techs or items against it, and melee attacks don’t land. Just Lucca plinking away with her gun.
-WHOA! The next Rubble I encountered, a Crono hit. 100 TECH POINTS WTFFFFF - these are like Cactuars. Evasive, massive rewards.
-I wonder…
-Nope. I was hoping I could leave the screen, come back, and find the Rubbles respawned to farm them. No dice.
-It seriously pains my heart when I fight a Rubble, miss enough times, and it runs away.
-Really digging the feel of this place. This cold, windswept mountain. Reminds me of the feel from climbing Mt. Ordeals in FFIV.
-TRIPLE TECH HYPPPEEE – first triple tech, Delta Attack. Speaking of FFIV lol.
-Crono now has what looks to be his ultimate single target tech in the works, Luminaire. It’ll take another 963 tech points, but we’ll get there.
-This is really mana-inefficient on trash mobs, but idec. I gotta see.
Neat! Delta attack conjures a triangle that flashes between red, blue, and white as it erupts to do huge elemental damage to all enemies.
-Man Eaters here remind me of Malboros, though waaaay toned down. Plant enemies that cast confuse.
-Picked up a Time Hat that prevents Stop and Slow. It gives the biggest defense boost to Lucca, but I put it on Crono because in combat he seems to be the most key fighter so far, with the most flexible techs.
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Summit
-Whoa. Quite a striking visual to be presented with at the top of the mountain.
-The ice block must be the prison containing Melchior, Guru of Life. Who will Melchior’s warden be? (Guessing that’s the upcoming boss.)
-The block is disappearing. Um. That was a poorly guarded prison.
-Nothing’s inside?
AAAAAAH HOLY SHIT
Giga Gaia.
That scared the daylights outta me. He just rose up into the middle of the screen. I should’ve been expecting it, but… well. Me and sudden titanic monsters. Something about them. *shivers*
-Three parts. Head, defense arm, attack arm. Delta Attack obliterated him, destroying the head, but the defense arm revived it. Got it. Defense Arm is target #1.
-Down. Attack Arm next.
-Go go go… aw, head restored the hands.
-Ok, got down the hands again with Delta Attack, wailing on the head, and timed the next Delta Attack to destroy the hands just as they spawned.
-Woohoo!! Victory! Spire and Fire2 repeated destroyed the head after the hands were down.
-The ice barrier that had disappeared temporarily returns, and melts. Melchior revealed.
-lol frog’s surprised face
-New theory: this “Old Man Melchior” wording makes me think that the Old Man in the End of Time is Melchior.
-Melchior is disappointed, but not really surprised, to learn that the Queen has been progressing with the Ocean Palace. He knows the Mammon Machine’s corruptive influence.
I doubt this is the case, but I wonder… what if the Mammon Machine is only corruptive because we’re drawing energy from it? Maybe Lavos is just an innocent space being doing his thing and we’re paining him in some way.
That seems unlikely, but we really don’t know much about why Lavos chose to come to the planet. I can’t imagine he was just an evil being looking for planets to corrupt, heard some lizard person call him, and boom, he comes down. Could just be like Jenova, where we don’t really learn why and he’s just evil – or at the least, a destructive force of cosmic nature.
-I get the sense that the Ocean Palace isn’t simply a palace underwater, but more likely some companion to the Mammon Machine in its purpose.
-Now that the prison seal is broken, the Mountain of Woe starts to come down. Yikes. Bad news for the Earthbound. Things are about to go Sector 7 down there.
-We pan out to the overworld screen. The Mountain’s chains break.
The Mountain falls.
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Algetty
-Whew. The city seems to be doing okay, and we somehow survived. I guess if Cid can survive falling from an exploding airship, we can survive that. (Sorry, my mind seems to be on an FFIV kick tonight.)
-Melchior tells the problem. If the Mammon Machine gets too close to the earth, to Lavos, then it might wake Lavos up.
-Schala arrives with Janus. God, I LOVE Schala’s theme music.
-She’s great. Emphasizes how artificial the Enlightened Ones’ so-called superiority really is.
That the only difference is that the Enlightened Ones are “under the control of Lavos.” Janus is kind of a dick though.
-The Ocean Palace is fully operational, but needs Schala to control the Mammon Machine. She refuses. That dialogue from earlier about Janus’s power (not to mention the character being named “Janus” to begin with) makes me think Janus will sneak away to power the Mammon Machine for… reasons? Something something black wind.
-Crap. Schala was followed. Dalton arrives.
Blasts everyone away, takes Schala hostage, and whisks her magically away towards the Ocean Palace. That went south quickly.
-A new quest ahead of us. Melchior tells us to go stop the Mammon Machine in the Ocean Palace, giving us a Ruby Knife that will allows us to destroy the Machine.
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Next time: towards the Ocean Palace.
