Rogue Galaxy Session 11

I really need to do these sessions more often, I'm not going to beat the game if I don't play it.

Since I handled equipment upgrades and whatnot at the end of last session, I headed across the bridge that's way too fucking long and into the forest where Mother no doubt awaits our arrival.

In the forest, there was a trial for Kisala, which so happened to be fighting the beast-transformed form of her father.

Partway through the forest I started getting drops of Cyclonic Pumps.  Looking at the description I realized it's the item I need to trigger the fight with the quarry back in the Starship Factory on Zerard.  I was a bit low level for the area anyway, considering the rate at which I was going through healing items, so a detour was welcome, and since the other hunters in the hunter rankings are always getting more points, it's necessary to keep up with them.

While I was on Zerard I picked up the remaining three quarries available for purchase, completing the set.  I did the rounds to figure out what items they needed and fight any of them that I could.  I ended up having all the items necessary and fought all three, which got me to first place in the hunter rankings.

Back where I was supposed to be, I got to the place where we had to "overcome ourselves".  I thought it was going to be a doppleganger fight much like in other role-playing games with this concept (Secret of Mana and Guild Wars, to name two), but it's more of a "realizing mental weakness" kind of thing.  There's one for each character other than Kisala and we get these orbs called Drigellum that we can get forged together into some sort of weird sword.  It seems like they're using this to reveal back story on the characters.

After finally getting the item for another quarry I had and making a quick departure to claim it, I tossed some stuff in Jaster's Revelation Flow and got him to needing one more item to have it 100% complete.  Some of these items are ultra-fucking-rare, jeez...  At this point, I had one quarry left to complete and I had no clue what item I needed to trigger the fight.

The acquisition of the Drigellum goes fairly smoothly, you just kill your way down a winding path and walk into the colored light at the end.  Watch the cutscene, get the Drigellum.

I gave up on the last quarry and looked it up, it turned out that I had the right item but needed to be controlling Jupis to trigger the fight as well.  Also, once I got in the fight, I was able to swap him back out and have my usual party for the fight.  Since that was the last quarry, I headed on over to Galaxy Corporation on Zerard because I'd remembered that the stupid idol girl has this "completion check" thing.  Apparently you get costumes for completing various parts of the game, and I got two of them, one for getting hunter rank 1 and the other for completing the quarries.  I'm not exactly close to complete on anything else, to be honest, and I've ignored Insectron entirely so I have a big fat zero for completion there.

After getting all of the Drigellums, I forged "the ultimate sword".  Which had less attack power than the sword I got for getting to hunter rank 1.  Okay, whatever.  Figuring I needed to actually use this sword, I went ahead and equipped it.

I pressed on through Mother's Lair, most of the time taking what I thought was the wrong route to look for chests when in fact I'd taken the correct route.  The enemies here range from hard to annoying.  The game has never let up on the stupid jump-to-hit enemies, and it's even worse when it spawns five of them in a challenge battle and says "defeat all enemies in 30 seconds!" because that's flat out impossible to do.  Abilities don't work on enemies that you have to jump to hit, so your major damage source is unusable.

Anyway, I found my way down through the winding cavern to the core where I'd fight Mother, then I promptly teleported out using the save point so I could stock up on healing items before the big fight.

Once I started the big fight, it took a bit to figure out what I needed to do.  It turns out that Jaster's Illusion Sword is key to the first form of Mother and works decently well on the second form.  On the second form, the rest of the party can do more than just attack when the head is in range, for instance, I can spam Starshine Lv3 with Kisala and end the second form rather quickly.

The third phase is an entirely new boss, because Valkog and his crew (including cone-tit lady) get dragged in by the Rune and consumed by it, battleship and all.  Jaster uses the Star King's powers to send everyone to different weapons on board the ship to take them out, and then you take control of each party member in turn to take out that part of the ship.

The very last part of this third phase comes back to Jaster, who has a huge fucking sword made from the hopes and prayers of everyone on Mariglenn (not even joking) that can hit from a mile away.  You can't change weapons or use his abilities, so you basically just have to dodge incoming attacks and spam the ultra-slow not-very-damaging attack as much as you can, and then find a safe point to heal up.  I've died many times in this part of the fight, and it's really annoying that there's no opportunity to save between the second form of Mother and the third phase.

So, since I've had to fight the third phase so many times, I might as well mention how it works in a bit more detail.  I've omitted the obligatory "heal as necessary" from each strategy.  Each part has a different strategy depending on who you have and what you're fighting:

• Deego - Fighting Valkog's hand - Use Top Dog, hit the ring to make the hand open up, jump and do your 3 hit combo on the hand, then dodge to the side and repeat.
• Simon - Fighting a Bomb Walker - Avoid getting hit by missiles as much as possible, run around, and spam Missile Squall.
• Steve - Fighting a Bomb Walker - Avoid getting hit by missiles as much as possible, run around, and spam Icy Eye Beam.
• Lillika - Fighting a Bomb Walker and a Core - Ignore the Bomb Walker as much as you can.  Use Blast Arrow, target the Core, and keep hitting it with charged arrows.
• Jupis - Fighting Valkog's other hand - Use Aromatic Boost, hit the ring, then do the same jump-three hits-dodge thing as with Deego.  Aromatic Boost runs out quickly and might not be worth it in the long run.
• Zegram - Fighting Izel - Stay back as most of its attacks hit in a fairly close area around it.  Hit the core with a ranged attack (attack from your left side for a better chance of hitting).  Once it says it's confused (it'll start punching the ground in front of it), use Drunken Burst and target the head.  Spam your ranged attack on the head until either it has to reload or your action bar runs out.  Repeat.
• Kisala - Fighting Norma - Run all the way forward, take the occasional hit, clear the occasional Shocked status from yourself.  Spam Starshine.
• Jaster - Fighting Valkog - Position yourself on the left side of the platform and take careful swings since you swing so slowly.  When in doubt, heal, as it can dish out almost 999 damage rather quickly.  Try to stay mobile and get hits in whenever you can.  Be moving when his eyes glow to avoid the glowing orbs of death that killed me four times in a row, but be ready to block should they appear right around you.

Fuck it, I'm tired of dying on Jaster's part, which I can get to quickly and reliably.  I think I'll apply my patented "put it down for a while and then pick it back up" method.  The session 12 post will be understandably short since it really just involves beating the boss and summarizing how the story wraps up after that.  To pad it out a bit I'll include some thoughts about the game now that I've played through it.  In addition, the session 12 post won't be posted until I successfully defeat the boss, regardless of how many distinct attempts I make between now and then.

I do plan on playing the postgame content, Ghost Ship and Ghost Ship Extreme, but they probably won't get session posts and I'm going to have guides all up in this shit for them.  I'll probably also do Insector at some point and try to grind out 100% completion and all the best weapons.  I dunno, we'll see.