Happy New Year! Today is January 2nd, the day we get back to work. Any skill you work on today you’ll improve greatly. I’ve decided to work on my finger snap.
Previously on Wild Arms 3: We have reached the promised land (little p, little l), and it is lush and green and contains at least one Daddy. Unfortunately, it also contains a tower full of miscreants. So it is time to clean house.
And here is our first opponent.
I did a quick check, and the only person to say the word “unsightly” in the script is Melody. She uses the word seven times over the course of the game. This is number six.
“So you want the planet to feed on nectar?”
“It’s a metaphor!”
If each of the Prophets has a rival, then Clive has been assigned to Melody.
And she is trying to be magnanimous about it.
She had this whole origin story bit prepared, and she is not going to let anyone interrupt.
“We were slugs for a hot second, but we digivolved from there.”
“He’s so uncreative…”
So… uh… is the implication that Malik is, like, holding himself back by not turning into a blue meanie?
On one hand, it is a bit of a cliché that the one woman on the team opts to forgo other “reborn bonuses” for superficial beauty. On the other hand, this is the entirety of Melody’s tragic flaw in a nutshell, so I’ll allow it.
“And then we all decided to wear loose-fitting robes as uniforms! So you can’t see my great butterfly at all!”
“I value ecological beauty, too!”
“Same thing.”
“I like my crapsack planet just the way it is!”
“You! You and that snazzy red coat!”
“I got it on sale.”
Sick burn!
“In case I am not making myself clear, I would like to reiterate that you are pitiful.”
She got through her speech and origin story, now we’re back to the Melody we all know and love.
Fight time!
Straightforward stats. But something is different this time.
It is difficult to see in these screenshots, but Melody now comes equipped with a weird little “mirage effect” of the camera blurring around her body. This is meant to convey that Melody is now poisonous.
This leads to two issues. One, Melody will use poison attacks continually, and counter nearly everything with that same poison attack…
And two, Melody has permanent protection against any attack that does less than 350 damage. Note that this does not subtract 350 from all damage counts, just that nothing will register if it doesn’t clear 350. You must be this tall to ride.
So that makes this our third boss battle that is almost entirely based on managing counters. Melody will always counter with poison attacks, so weigh your characters’ strength against whether it is worth it to eat poison for their troubles.
But! Remember the recommendation to come equipped with poison wards? If you are invulnerable to poison attacks in the first place, you can just go full hog, and Melody will do practically zero damage.
Thus making this a pretty easy boss fight. If you can deal with poison effectively, you are golden.
Thanks for stopping by!
I don’t believe I have noted this yet: you may have already noticed, but when you use an “ability” during battle, you get bonus experience multipliers. Using a lucky card bumps you from x1.0 to x2.0, but from there you can add x0.1 per every usage of an ability. Given everyone had the “poison ward” ability active during the Melody fight, and poison was used a lot, you can see Clive gets x3.5 experience for this fight. The rest of the gang gets bonuses, too, but Gallows gets the least because he was using (not countered) magic the whole time. Get with the program, Gallows!
This will be important during later super boss battles, where a ward against a particular element will save the day and grant bonuses. Not a bad situation when you fight the biggest bad on the planet and they keep adding to your dividends…
Anywho, the party barely notices Melody has left, and is still stunned by Clive’s trash talkin’.
If you can believe it, this is foreshadowing.
I like that there are occasional hints that Clive used to be a very different person before he became a dad/killed his wife’s dad.
Jet is just filing this away for later.
So moving right along.
Melody may be defeated, but recurring staircases remain.
And puzzles! We all love puzzles!
Thanks, dad.
Use Virginia’s fire crest to activate all the red boxes? Don’t activate the blue ones? That sound about good?
So the fire crest always flies in a straight horizontal line, and it will activate all the boxes regardless of whether or not you want everything in between turned on. This could make things complicated, but the solution is a simple four tosses: hit the two vertical columns with all the reds, and then horizontally hit the top and bottom rows. Easy peasy.
And our reward is an elevator ride on up.
Next room has some very inconvenient treasure chests that can only be obtained with the steady doll.
And a room containing boobytrapped treasure.
Mimics are practically slimes at this point, so turn them into pudding.
And the reward is… well, it’s not bad, per se…
Strong winds ahead.
No, the solution is not the Gale Crest. Even if that did work, Virginia would have gone sailing off the platform at the bend anyway.
Ice up those fans.
Colder than a server room in here. Let’s move on.
Before we go any further, let’s go ahead and switch our poison wards over to confusion wards. No big reason why. Just felt like it was time.
And coincidentally enough, here’s Malik.
Oh snap! His amiibo collection has gotten out of control!
“Could you rephrase that in a way that isn’t creepy as hell?”
“Okay. Super. … What?”
There it is! Malik been cloning his mommy.
“Now, Gallows, let’s hear him out. Mr. Malik, sir, have you ever considered cloning my dad?”
Sure! That’s what’s the wrong thing here. Let’s go with that.
Gallows… uh… we just covered that we don’t know what he is going to do with the clones after they are hatched… so… uh… don’t give him any ideas.
I guess Malik officially gets Gallows as his rival for today. Please enjoy each other’s company.
No matter, regular fight for everyone.
Malik is basically the same doof you fought way back at the moon shrine. He has some super speed dodging power going on, so go ahead and slow him down.
Nice. You stand around and let us shoot you like a good boy.
Haha, you have a lead foot now, loser.
If everyone wasn’t confused enough by blondie’s masterplan involving a clone army of his mother, we also have Chaotic Dimension for a multi-hit confusion attack.
And that would be why it is a good idea to protect against confusion for this fight.
Other than that, Malik uses attacks with amazing names that barely do any damage.
So this is Prophet Fight #2 that is a bit of a nonstarter.
Could you let us know when you are going to die? We would put it on the calendar and everything.
See you at the top of the tower!
All Prophets carry potion berries, apparently.
“I, being a man lacking general handsome aesthetics, am perfectly normal.”
Jet has mentally noted that it would be a bad idea to cross Clive, but Gallows is fair game.
“Probably has something to do with all the people being grown in tubes. I do not want to know some weirdo jar-person.”
Guess we’re… just gonna leave these mama bodies to float here? The ethical ramifications of escaping this room are staggering.
Narrator horny, Clive.
Note that the characters have different reactions to the tube, and I would say literally all of them are surprisingly poignant for plot beats either established or soon to come…
“I kinda understand how he feels…But I still think it’s wrong to try and resurrect the dead.”
“The sound of this liquid circulating is driving me nuts! AHHH!”
“I’d hate to see his earlier work”
“This is some formidable technology…How advanced is this wisdom of Hyades?”
I’m not even going to label who said what, because it is all so delightfully obvious.
Enough of that nonsense. Anyone else thinking about how Malik’s “secret” project is in a place that you have to walk through? Like keeping your social security number framed in your living room.
Well, this room seems surprisingly straightforward.
Oh. Crushing wall trap.
You think we’re a couple of five-year-old twins? Use bombs to blow up the wall and move on.
Prophets couldn’t divine a better trap?
And a block puzzle for good measure.
First of all: this bridge is not safe.
So go ahead and zoom with the Gale Crest.
Now we have some blocks to play with.
Use Mighty Gloves to stick the heavy block on the ground, and then push the ice block against that.
And then shove that ice block to the switch, and all you have to do now is remember to use the Gale Crest to zoom back over the bridge.
Though be sure to stop by the treasure room before you leave.
Steppin’ on up.
A few lasers are hiding around corners to ruin our day.
Diagonal angles exist.
Remember when we won one of these off Janus right after he became a fish guy? Do you think this was his spare? … Is this his room?
Because you know who does have a room up ahead?
It’s Leehalt! And he’s talking to Virginia’s dad? Oh man! What an exciting place to have to wait to find out what happens next!
Next time on Wild Arms: Werner bleeds mysteries.
[…] like another vaguely techno dungeon. Not as bad as Yggdrasil, but pretty close to Faraway […]