So moments ago, Ghaleon did this to the party for 3 to 4 times their amount of health.
I've been informed that the attack is called Hell Wave, but years of MvC won't let me see anything but Unibeam.
Ghaleon gives a little speech and the couple transports over to their new fortress of evil.
Nall doesn't take the sight of all his friends laying near death on the ground all that well. We see Nall panicking, and begging them to get back up. After the pleas fail to have much of an effect, he is surrounded in a blue aura and the screen fades to black. Alex awakens in Jessica's bed. He learns from Nall that he's been asleep the longest. The others have recovered from the beating, but only Mia and Jessica are still motivated and making plans for how to stop Ghaleon.
After we meet up with the ladies in Jessica's office, they tell us where the two sad-sacks names Nash and Kyle are hiding. (Seriously. The ladies, both good and bad, outshine the men in this narrative. Step it up, fellas.) No surprise, they're drinking away their sorrows at the bar. Alex confronts them at the aforesaid bar, where they're feeling very defeated. Behind every sad-sack is the lady they don't really deserve. It's true for me, it's true for these two idiots. So, Alex returns with the women in question, who proceed to get their fellas re-motivated and ready for war. With a re-swelling of pride, determination, and strength we have our old friend Not-Dyne show up suddenly.
Alex professes his deep affection for Luna, and how he will never stop trying for her. With this sentiment in mind, Not-Dyne speaks to Nall who once again surrounds himself with this new, mysterious, clearly not dragon-magic related aura. The group is transported back to the burial site of Dyne in the quaint town of Burg.
Dyne tells us the fate of the four heroes, or more specifically Dyne and Ghaleon, after meeting with Althena. It seems Althena had grown increasingly frustrated or saddened that her presence as a goddess had led a lot of humanoids to do unpleasant things to gain her favor. I think it must be something like this that led to her punishing the Vile Tribe. Her plan to avoid became sacrificing her goddess form to spread her influence out across humanity. She would be reborn as a human that would contain most of her essence, but her powers would be drastically decreased. If I understand correctly, that's what led to places like Vane and humans having magical powers? Anyway, to accomplish this the Dragonmaster would also need to sacrifice his powers. This would lead to a world where Althena's presence as a visible, active goddess that could take an active role in human affairs would be replaced by a more general presence of goodness that left the humans to care for themselves under her more nebulous, amorphous protection.
Ghaleon does not handle that plan well at all. Some people need a strong, direct form of leadership to feel safe and to have a sense of purpose. As the change takes place, all we here is "What can you see that I can NOT?". The situation is the breaking point for Ghaleon that sets in motion 15 years of him planning to either resurrect Althena in a form more to his preference, or to replace her.
With that explanation given, we return to Dyne and the gang at his own grave. After some more discussion and words of encouragement to get everyone ready for war, Alex pulls the sword from Dyne's grave and Nall goes all "true form" again to transport them to Althena's Fortress. (Does anyone else think Nall's dragon form makes it look like he's up to something? He's staring right at you, and he looks like he wants to shank me. I don't trust it.)
We begin the trek through the fortress where we have the standard strong enemies and new loot to grab and equip. Soon enough we run into Royce. Fight Time, ACTIVATE!.....except she insults us, throws some enemies at us, and skedaddles. After that and some other fights, we track her down again. Fight Time, ACTI-are we doing it this time? yeah? okay, cool. Fight Time, ACTIVATE!!!
Royce's battle sprite looks pretty interesting. She has some sort of pink, slithery familiar wrapped around her, and she's often surrounded by a flame aura. The way she holds her legs up also makes her like like a fire serpent. She wraps the party members up in some form of a fire blanket to immobilize them. Nevertheless, we beat her senseless and she is confused and confounded as she fades away. (Not sure if dead?)
Now the fortress becomes a mixture of simple puzzles based off the dragon colors again, along with the fighting. In short order, we run into Xenobia. She is a sad woman. As these situations often go, it seems she fancies herself in love with Ghaleon. Considering her outlook on life, his outlook on life and everyone around him, and her acceptance of the person he is and what he wants to do, I'm not sure if you can call it real love. I think she's yet another person who simply responds to the strength and confidence of Ghaleon while either choosing to ignore is actually unable to see the negative affects Ghaleon has had on herself and the rest of the VeeTeetians.
She casts some kind of genjutsu on the party (Xenobia is a kunoichi, confirmed.), and they all have to face their inner fears in the form of themselves. The party is strong by this point, even Nash, and they quickly shrug off the spell. I've carried that darn ocarina around in my limited inventory the whole game, and already saw Alex play it once, so I thought that certainly,
certainly, now was the time to use it to talk Luna down. Of course it didn't work. Then I remember that was the Luna in Alex's head, anyway.
We get in a fight, and she kicks our asses. So we fight again, and she kicks our asses. She keeps turning us to stone, turn after turn. I spend all my time healing and correcting the condition, and she decimates the party. I look up some help and learn that I should try equipping Jess with a ring that prevents that condition so she can focus on healing. I equip the ring.
Going into the fight, Xenobia hits the top two rows with the stone attack (Sonic something?) I can have Jess heal and/or correct conditions, but Xenobia hits us with the same attack the next round. And then a third time. So I'm once again just trying to stop the inevitable. The party dies, and I try again. This time, the RNG gods have mercy, and Xenobia only uses the stone attack about as often as she uses her other attacks instead of almost every single round. The fight takes a bit, but we wear her down and put an end to things. She is equally shocked at her downfall as Royce, and also fades away. (Not sure if dead?)
From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump into the Ghaleon fight. We listen to his depressing ramble about how the world needs the physical presence of the Goddess Althena or it will fall into chaos. I'm not sure where he's getting this from. I'd need to see some sources. The last 15 years haven't been perfect, but I certainly wouldn't call it chaos. Things seem.....decent. I think he's just a douche-canoe.
The fight itself is straight forward, but Jeez Louise is he a damage sponge. He hits us with more Unibeams, and boulders, and some discount light sabers. He likes to throw Worm Crush in there once-in-a-while, and also he likes good ol' Chaos Shield combined with an attack the vamps life from the party to himself. So this shield. Does it fall after a certain number attacks, or a certain amount of damage absorption? That's an important question that I didn't know the answer to.
I hit Ghaleon with the all the biggest attacks I have, as I've been doing, while his shield is up. The shield falls, and we get back to fighting and healing. Everyone that needs an attack buff is maxed out. Everyone has Mia's ice shield maxed out. I even kept Nash alive. But our boy Ghaleon just keeps tanking hits. He can't get enough of it. Whenever I get a read on Ghaleon doing one of his two really nasty attacks, I cast Alex's dragon shield. (The attacks usually come after he casts his shield and life steal attack.) Things are fine, I keep knocking his shield down and dealing good damage, but I'm running out of magic, magic replacement items, and healing items. Ghaleon just keeps on trucking.
It eventually gets to the point that the only person with enough magic to do anything is Kyle and Mia, and Ghaleon finishes his turn with two big attacks. That's it, the party is done. They can't heal, they're out of magic, and Ghaleon has just about killed them. Jess hits him for minimal damage, Nash shoots him for minimal damage, and then Alex finally drops him with an attack that does about 40 dmg. FINALLY. I wonder if I wasted a lot of my magic attacks against that shield, when all I needed to do was simply hit the shield a number of times. Either way, it's finally over.
That's a good stopping point. I fee like the ending deserves its own entry post.