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« on: March 04, 2011, 06:04:24 PM »
Grandia LLG! The exciting finale.
A few notes first. Right here at the top of this update is the last time to buy anything in the game. This point of no return is obviously not announced. You get three dungeons with a ton of moneybags in them but nothing. to. buy. And very few stashing places for that matter. Grandia would be regarded as a ridiculously badly designed game if any of this mattered at all on a normal playthrough (it doesn't because you can't die)
Oh and you lose Feena for yet another extended period of time because what kind of scrub would rather have a full battle party anyway, right FF13? Also I wished to free you from those wings that torment you so. Mullen is almost Chaos Wars bad.
Mage King (Justin 25, Rapp 25, Liete 31) (1 reset): Body, Head and Wand. Body and Head share their HP, Wand is an optional target. 4500/3000 HP I believe. Body spams Howlnado for 70 MT damage every turn. This is very bad. It does Vanish away your buffs if you try anything other than damage and healing obviously because that is how lategame Grandia rolls. Head uses Atomic Shot that covers a quarter of the platform you're on. Sometimes this ends up firing at nothing, most of the time you're looking at 30-50 damage though. Wand mostly uses a scrub AoE physical for 20ish damage. Occasionally though it OHKOs a PC with GadZap (150 damage). First time through I die because I can't keep up with Howlnado once resources start getting depleted and there's the occasional Gadzap thrown in. I then reload, put on a few wind blockers, take 15 minutes to trek through the dungeon, and steamroll the fight. Oh and obviously the boss is right next to the save point but the game doesn't give you a path back once you reach the boss even though the dungeon gimmick is about new paths being created between platforms when you do stuff because that would be entirely too sensible and clearly defeat the true challenge of the game. Haha Grandia designers you sure got me.
Gaia Battler 4 (Justin 26, Rapp 26, Liete 31): 4500/2500HP. No this isn't hard even with a missing PC. Obviously this one has Vanish too. Of note, the sleep physical gets Liete once even though she's wearing a Talisman.
Mullen (Justin 26) (2 resets): Hardest beatable boss in the game !! I am actually serious, Justin has 150 HP and Mullen hits hard and is crazy fast. As a small mercy I have one auto-life Revival Stone left on Justin. First time in, I take hits in the face for 40x2 from his standard physicals and the rest of his skillset isn't any more merciful. I can't really chop through 3k HP fast so back to the drawing board we go.
I need to equip for defense obviously, but this leaves Justin sorely lacking in speed and I can't have being doubled on a regular basis. I swap out the Talisman for Hurricane Belt (+50 wit). This leaves me with +4 status resistance from the Spirit Shield. Which means Mullen can and will inflict Moveblock with any physical hit. Ah status resistance, you are almost universally worthless. This means I have even less offense, oh well. I hang with him for a bit and then make the grave mistake of trying to Defend through one of his specials. Protip: Never defend against anyone faster than you in a duel. The defend command fails ANYWAY (what), and I get tripleturned and die.
I decide to ditch my axe training plan and get the Spirit Sword for pure offense. This means I hit for around 250 with a combo, which aside from turn 1 Midair Cut is all the offense I will use in this battle. Well, I do cancel almost any special I can with Critical for 150 damage or so. With Mullen's speed this is often not possible though. So Mullen has physical hits, 5-20x2. One of the least threatening parts of his moveset and he loses the basic combo quickdraw to Justin, amusingly enough. Sonic Boom hits for 30-40, not worth cancelling since there are much worse things. Like Rising Dragon Cut, which hit for 70. Or Fireburner for 80, or Zap-All for almost 100. He also loves placing buffs on himself. When this happens I lay down one level of Diggin' to bait him into Vanishing it, which is a losing trade for him turnwise and means he can't get up to +7atk/+7spd or something equally ridiculous. Finally he can cast Alhealer+ for 300. This is really annoying but not worth canceling, while you are doing damage slower than he heals it is at least a turn he is not crushing your face with Zap All. Healing is done either with Healer or with Crimson Potions when you just need stronger faster healing. I lose the revival stone to a double turn but eventually manage to prevail and become the mightiest swordsman in all the land.
Nice of you to return for the final dungeon Feena, you've only missed half of this disc's bosses.
Gaia Trent (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31): It is almost unscaled from the original Trent, Flowerbeam hits for 100 I guess, woo. Oh and it has Vanish and the final dungeon boss gimmick, universal elemental resistance. Hooray for making even more battle options useless, now you can't do shit with magic. Sleep Pollen hits through Liete's Talisman a few times here, which means:
a) Talisman is actually +7 status resistance and Liete has undocumented status vulnerability for some reason
b) Grandia coding is fucked
I could buy either one.
Gaia Armor (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31) (2 resets): Scaled up Massacre Machine. 6500 HP. Standard boss gimmicks. Eye casts Gravity (-4 to -7 MOV on one, essentially makes them immobile), Vanish and Healer for 500. Body either uses various worthless physicals or Killer Tackles a pack of people for 80. I lose twice because of doubleturn Killer Tackle. Third time of the same gets the win, standard stuff, bait Vanish with one buff layer, use physical attacks, heal with the -MOV character.
BAAL, IS ACTUALLY A TENTACLE (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (1 reset): Four targets. Baal has 7000 HP and beating him ends the battle. Tentacles have 6000 each. Gaia Cyst has 4000 and is straight up immune to elements instead of just resistant. Baal has Seed Smash for 50ish MT damage, Grand Cross for the same deal except it sucks the PCs in front of Baal first, Gaia Tail for 40-60 to one PC and dispels their stat changes. And Vanish because ST Dispel with damage is obviously not enough. Right Tentacle uses pretty much every stat debuff in the game and can cast Alhealer+ for...300, I think. Left Tentacle spams a whole lot of mid-high tier offensive magic. Gaia Cyst spams Deathmark, which is a giant laser sweeping the whole room and does 40ish damage. First time in I get overwhelmed by all the damage and die in short order. Switching in an equipment set built for maximum magic resistance I head back in, and...surprisingly there's no negative status to be seen. Huh. One layer of Starlight Symphony both gives a nice boost and counteracts the stat-down assault as Baal will eventually use a turn to Vanish it. Damage is manageable when you roughly halve Left Tentacle's spell rampage and cancel Gaia Cyst every chance you get. Once Cyst is down (this phase takes plenty of consumables). I go after the main body, since killing the tentacles would just drag out the fight. It's fairly easy to cancel the main body's big hitters in this phase too. Not that bad despite first impressions.
Gaia Core (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (GAME OVER): There are two Mega Gaias and they spawn 2 1300 HP Gaia Tentacles every turn they get (unless there are tentacles on the field, then they either do that or order them to do combo attacks). I can't cut them down that amount of HP in any reasonable amount of time, so I have the main body slinging high end spells and Vanish (of course) at me, 2 Mega Gaias spitting out tentacles and 6 tentacles doing unspeakable acts to my party. Game Over.
Oh well, I am satisfied since I wasn't sure I would get to endgame anyway. Quite a few of the boss battles were a lot of fun to figure out/mock, and now I remember what an awful game Grandia is and will never touch it again.
And just for the record's sake, final party stats.
Justin
Level 28
163HP 76SP
46/39/23MP
111STR 58VIT 121WIT 53AGI
Sword L19 Mace L13 Axe L14
Fire L12 Wind L4 Water L15 Earth L9
Feena
Level 25
158HP 49SP
62/29/16MP
91STR 58VIT 103WIT 47AGI
Dagger L3 Whip L16
Fire L18 Wind L6 Water L17 Earth L11
Rapp
Level 27
164HP 101SP
46/35/15MP
103STR 62VIT 136WIT 127AGI
Dagger L20 Sword L14 Throw L26
Fire L15 Wind L2 Water L13 Earth L6
Liete
Level 32
145HP 65SP
83/58/30MP
87STR 62VIT 145WIT 63AGI
Mace L14
Fire L16 Wind L21 Water L20 Earth L21
Grandia 2 - Why do I do this to myself? There is a good battle system concept buried in here, I like the skill system in general. But the enemies have trouble even keeping me awake. Got to village of spooky eyes. A minor thing I enjoy is the Regional tab in shops, this would be brilliant and multifunctional in a RPG that used it correctly;
1. It alerts the player of items unique to that shop. Stock up.
2. It gives a little extra flavor to areas.
Unfortunately G2 botches the first part by only having consumables in there and the world does not seem like a coherent construct in any way, simply a collection of unrelated towns and dungeons. Oh well.
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