Wake up, Wild Arm-erinos, it’s December 19, Comics Day. Comics were invented by a dashing young lady named Ponchea. Comics are a series of pictures with cynical portrayals and situational comedies. Her debut work was a story about a moss monster titled ‘Mossman.’
Previously on Wild Arms 3: We found Nidhogg Pass. Twice. Now we are about halfway through a double-stuffed dungeon.
Okay! Off into the unknown!
You may recall that the Yggdrasil/Council of Seven system is something that, according to lore we have discovered, a “public good” project spearheaded by men and women that wanted to save the world from its gradual environmental decline for the last hundred years.
And I am noting this because it looks like Filgaia might be failing as a planet because its best and brightest minds had a hell of a commute into the office for a solid century.
Maybe they used to have a work-from-home program to avoid all this nonsense?
Or maybe they had magical flying powers.
Virginia gets her second tool (and is finally the last party member to get one). The Galecrest lets Virginia “zoom” forward. Enemy encounters do not occur while zooming along, nor do traps impact your HP. And, extra special bonus, you can bypass spaces that are one “block” large. If a gap is any larger than that, though, you drop like a rock.
The Galecrest is very similar to Rudy’s Skates in Wild Arms (1), and Kanon’s Rad Blades in Wild Arms 2 (note also that Tim had the Air Ballet in Wild Arms 2, but that was more of a projectile item closer to WA3’s Steady Doll). However, both of those tools did not have the ability to jump holes. But like with those previous two tools/games, dungeons from here on out are going contain suspiciously few straight hallways where a Galecrest skate would bypass the room.
The Galecrest will be the focus of the remainder of this dungeon, but the monsters are still exactly the same as what you saw closer to the entrance(s).
Many of the puzzles here will be focused on creating makeshift bridges to keep your Galecrest active.
Pulling this switch will move a block into place…
But there is a hidden (“hidden” as in “hard to see depending on your camera positioning”) floor panel that will reset the block to its original, useless position.
So you have to zoom over the panel, as apparently using the Galecrest means you are not actually touching the ground. This is a cool way of teaching this Galecrest functionality… that I believe is never seen again.
Now we can zoom along to the other door. Unfortunately, since you cannot manually stop while using the Galecrest, you cannot access the middle platforms…
More blocks, more places to be.
Going to want to unlock the door first…
And then use Clive’s Mighty Gloves to make a new bridge.
Two blocks to walk across, and then a shot of Galecrest to fill the final gap. Note that if you try to use the Galecrest to hop over to the first, middle platform, you will fly off the edge.
Remember the collapsing bridge back at the entrance?
Going to have to deal with structural issues again.
Once again, Link, the solution is to use that tool you just found.
Fish out some treasure, too. This is our second amulet, and it protects against status ailments while defending. It could come in handy for some upcoming bosses…
This room has three branches containing a switch, a door, and some treasure. Be sure to check all three (since two are mandatory).
And then leave.
Hey! Now we’re in the middle of that one room from earlier! Don’t fall off! It would be annoying to have to do any part of this dungeon again.
Away we go!
Feels like it has been so long since we last saw a hallway with no puzzles.
And they’re back.
There are three different blocks here. The lightest block is the “ice block” that will slide continuously until it hits another object…
The middle block is the push block, which you can effectively move anywhere without any restrictions…
And that last one must be lifted, so you can always only move it one block length away from its previous position.
Obviously, you need to make a bridge out of these three blocks. There are a couple ways to do it, and, with that middle block having the ability to go anywhere, you can game the other two blocks to go exactly where you want (it doesn’t matter that the ice block is so unwieldly when you can use another block to make an immediate “stop”).
You can also use the corner wall to prevent falling while zooming.
Next room!
First we zoom over to this area…
For treasure!
A full carrot will immediately max your FP to 100 while in battle. They are terribly rare, though, so you would need some kind of… I don’t know… carrot garden to grow a reasonable supply.
Now back to that puzzle we passed.
This is another puzzle that seems kind of finicky for solutions.
Like, those crates are there to encourage you to stick your blocks over the edge there… but you can pick up the crates from “below” the ledge, and just toss ‘em out of the way. Is it supposed to work like that?
And that is finally it for this damned contemptable dungeon. The annoying part of it all? If you want to find everything in Wild Arms 3, you’re going to have to do all of that again at least once more…
But that problem is for another day. Right now we have a prophet to deal with.
Oh man. I just realized Leehalt would absolutely start peddling bitcoin given the slightest chance.
Virginia correctly asserts that “evolution” is not “genocide”. Well, I mean, if you’re not a jerk about it…
Shrug.
Bro, knock it off with the “I’m smarter than you” shtick. Do you know how many block puzzles we solved to get here?
We’re finally fighting Leehalt!
We have battled Melody and Malik already, and this is the final prophet we have to pummel. Unfortunately, it will not be the final prophet fight…
Nothing to write home about here.
In fact, Leehalt does nothing.
But if you decide to do something…
He counters for exactly the same damage.
Asgard had much the same shtick during their clock fight, but the exact damage ratio is the difference here. If your Virginia is only plinking off 50 HP, you may as well have her fight. But if your Clive is doing thousands of HP damage, you want your healers at the ready.
The other trick available is that Leehalt only full-counters the last hit in a sequence. So using Gatling, which can hit repeatedly, will mean that you only take approximately a quarter of the damage you dish out. This is particularly fun with Clive, who can run out of bullets fast enough that his final hit is the dramatically less impactful “unarmed” attack.
But you probably don’t have to worry about all that, as there is very little tension in this fight. If things are looking bad, just take a round off and heal. Leehalt will wait patiently in the meanwhile.
Yeah, maybe you would be more effective if you weren’t so reactive.
Yes, thank you for asking.
Geez, you shoot a guy a couple of times, and he has a complete breakdown.
Leehalt is going supernova! Or something!
Virginia dutifully leads her boys.
And gets shot. Or… something. It is kind of unclear what hit her, but it is definitely something.
And it hurt. She is lying there twitching. I tried making it a GIF, but I found it vaguely disturbing…
“Dude! Dick move!”
Things are not going well here.
“We get shot all the time and we’re just fine!”
“I screwed her up good, didn’t I?
In a weird way, it makes perfect sense that three super scientists would have some nasty ways to scar their opponents. Kind of funny that the best they’ve been able to muster so far is, like, a confusion attack.
“If you start hollering about evolution again…”
What’s the ransom here? Are you going to heal Virginia? Make her worse? Hit the rest of the party with this nonsense? Actually, why don’t you just wreak havoc on the whole party, and not even worry about this whole disarming step…
Decisions, decisions…
Yep, not getting better…
But what’s this!? Werner comes out of nowhere, quickly does something or other to help Virginia, and then…
Unlike Melody, Leehalt immediately recognizes Virginia’s dad.
“I told you he was a ghost!”
“I think he’s being metaphorical.”
“Where have you been? We need to go grab a beer at Gunner’s Heaven!”
So has he been following the party that closely, or did his Virginia alarm go off?
Fugging most “enlightened” scientists on the planet never thought to check their opponent’s last name. What’s hilarious here is that this will not be the last time that lack of oversight will be a significant plot point.
“And you are super evil. You know that, right?”
“Nobody in history have ever observed demons as being good, Leehalt.”
“We’re never getting the band back together.”
“You used to be cool, Werner. Then you had a kid!”
“Yes, Leehalt, I still get your stupid newsletter. I know what you’re about.”
“That’s just because I wanted to look more like a smurf. Perfectly normal.”
Leehalt tries for another magical (or something) whammy, but Werner outdraws him.
Just taking a frame here to remind you who taught Virginia.
Leehalt runs away, but he left his buddy behind.
His terrible, terrible buddy.
You know some people have the temerity to compare this creature to Wild Arms 2’s Liz? It doesn’t even talk! That’s like saying a character is supposed to represent Aquaman, but they can’t even have sex with fish.
Balazs has previously been revealed as the shape-changing creature that has been spying on Janus and the party alike since practically the beginning. Neither its stealth nor shapeshifting will be utilized in this bout.
However, its seemingly alien nature will be a factor.
Outer World halves your current HP (ouch), and then makes Balazs invincible for the rest of the round. And when we say “invincible”, we mean impervious to literally everything, whether that be physical attacks, magic, or status debuffs.
Given Balazs’s speed, this means only Virginia or Jet have a hope of doing some damage.
Clive’s rock-like speed means he doesn’t have a chance.
So Balazs’s pattern is that he will use Outer World for two turns, effectively cut your HP down to 25%, and then go for an all-out assault on round 3. Then he’ll repeat. This means that the “real” way to win is to have Gallows and Clive on healing duty for two turns, and then let everyone fight back on that third round. However, Balazs seems to have HP balanced for directly fighting Jet and Virginia, and even on my "normal" level run, Balazs went balls up before he got to the assault round. Bro has all the endurance of a hedgehog.
And that’s it for that creature. Incidentally, the name Balazs is Hungarian, and can be traced back to a Latin word that basically means “stammerer”. Maybe this jerk was supposed to be more talkative at some point…
Note that Virginia didn’t seem to show any symptoms during the battle, but she apparently has a status effect that is represented by a red chess piece. Given “death” gets a white pawn icon…
But no time to think about that now. The daddy train is leaving the station!
“For all sorts of reasons this time!”
Oh. Leehalt inflicted Virginia with corporeal inner-child syndrome.
“Again: all sorts of reasons associated with that ‘why’.”
“A couple times…”
“Got somewhere better to be?”
“Just got some bad vibes off you, kid.”
Virginia, I have seen the size of your home. Dad definitely had something shady going on.
“I am telling you he is secretly a robot.”
“Clive! Not the time!”
BEHOLD THE ANTI-DADDY.
Wow. That really broke him up.
Unfortunately, that outburst knocks out Virginia.
“I will thank you to not call my daughter hot.”
Nanomachines! Always gotta be with the nanomachines…
“There’s a lodge that I use up ahead. I can’t guarantee its effects, but I can prepare an anti-nanomachine. Right now, that’s our only hope….Please help carry my daughter there.”
Oh boy! We’re going to check out daddy’s bachelor pad! We’ll give you a week to clean up the place ahead of time, Werner, but no longer than that!
Next time on Wild Arms: Wait… were we supposed to find a specific tree? Did not expect there to be choices…
[…] he literally stopped you, like, three days ago. He shot you. You ran. You ran here. It was remarkably […]
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