With as much preparation as I’m willing to put up with at this point, I walk back into the Night Caverns and come to the Dark Palace. Why is the music so peppy? Why are all the Goddess Statues headless? What’s a Molovia?
The Dark Palace is like every other dungeon in the game, but many of the fights are mandatory. Several rooms need to be entered, and the mobs within slain, to advance. The first set of fights are on either side of the foyer. They contain a single demon that is easily dispatched. Climb the stairs, from either side, to unlock the door and continue on. Keep on keeping on until you reach the throne room.
Enjoy the fall! In your new pit room is Moloccio and two of his random mob sidekicks. Malo tells us why he’s acting like he is. He wants to merge his demon world, Malovia, with the human world. He then attacks in a very easy battle. His sidekicks can be killed with one Ancient Curse by Angela, and he, himself, poses no threat to us. He can be a little annoying, as he zips in and out of reality, making our physical attacks have low accuracy, but that's a minor frustration. His offensive capabilities aren’t remotely capable of killing us.
After the fight is more fights and wandering. Some of the rooms have floors that only open when everyone dies. This might be the easiest dungeon in the game, so it’s a win-win for us with all the exp we get. When you stop trying to explore and grind and get on with the path, you come to the top. The way is blocked, for now, so keep going right. In, what I imagine, the eastern tower is our arch-nemesis, Belladonna. After some threats both ways, the hot redhead turns into a slightly too furry, naked catgirl. I was almost in love.
While a lot harder than her subordinate, she still isn’t too hard. It sure will take a while, though! She likes to jump around the room, doing damage when she does, and has a move called Hexas. Despite its name, it doesn’t debuff us, but do heal afterwards. Whatever strategy you’ve been using up till this point will work here.
With her demise, she gives us the backstory on her boss. This castle used to be called Light Palace. Once upon a time, a prophecy was told about the destruction of this kingdom. The heir would be the cause of that destruction, so, to protect his realm, the King had his son locked in a dungeon. The prince’s heart became closed and evil. One day, he was freed, I think, by Belladonna and went on to fulfill the prophecy. It’s a real Greek tragedy. Belladonna, more or less, confessed her love for her Dark Majesty and dies. The fighting triggered a structural weakness in the wing, and it began to collapse. As our party gets clear in the nick of time, Riesz tells her father to rest in peace, his killer now dead.
We climb the roof and meet the aforementioned Dark Majesty. He thanks us for killing the Benevodos and offers us a chance to join him. He’s totally unaffected by Belladonna’s death, even calling her a weakling. We say no to joining him, but he cares little and goes to absorb the power stored in the Sword of Mana. As he does, the Goddess of Mana stops him. With his goals unreachable at the moment, he decides to stop the interloper and travels to the Sanctuary of Mana. Fairy encourages us to keep fighting and urges us to follow.
I make a pitstop, turn in my two Gear Seeds, get one new terrible hat, restock, and save.
The Sanctuary of Mana is even worse now than before. Worse yet, it’s filled with mobs. Everything is a shapeshifter that transforms into another random mob. They’re easy regardless of who they are. However, they can turn into shadow versions of our characters and make use of our special attacks. The route has slightly changed and does require one mandatory fight. After the Goddess Statues, go up and left. This is the place you need to kill everyone.
Where the Sword of Mana once was, where we saw Fairy and her friends leave from, where we first met the Mana Goddess, is Dark Majesty standing over a slain Goddess. He is now able to properly absorb the Sword of Mana. Fairy tries her hand at stopping him but fails miserably. He then knocks all of us out. With all the Mana in the world now gone, he is free to do what he wants. For some reason, his current body isn’t good enough for him. Instead, he plans to possess Elliot and use the small child’s body to rule. In the process of possession, Fairy manages to gunk up the process. She stops him from killing us, heals us, and tells everyone the true Sword of Mana is hope. Riesz and friends are the last hope for this world! The final battle commences.
The Archfiend’s body transforms throughout the battle. First, the color on its insectoid body and then the body, as a whole, changes into a butterfly looking creature. Not very great evil of him, is it? Both battles have the same mechanics. Don’t buff up in the first half since he’ll nerf you when you do. I think he counters all special attacks with a debuff, too. It’s going to be a long, drawn-out, tedious, boring fight but, at this point, isn’t THAT hard. Unless you have bad luck. Like me, for example. I’ll be honest, I died in this fight. I didn’t die because I was bad, but because of terrible game mechanics. He has a spell that hits you with several stat debuffs. When he uses it, it chunks your HP and nerfs you hard. Every nerf has a text telling you about it. When the text is on screen, you can bring up any menus. He, however, can still charge a new attack. I didn’t have an opportunity to heal from the debuff, so his second attack wiped me out. I don’t want to swear in my blog, but feel free to uncensor my favorite Pat Boone song. That was some utter wang dang taffy apple tango, and I no longer care. Fireworks for 2021 just went off, so let’s keep 2020 in 2020. The following cutscenes are from videos on YouTube.
A very weakened Fairy reappears and tells us she ported Elliot back home. Fairy continues to float poorly until she transforms into the new Mana Goddess. This is the goal of every fairy. She promises to restore the Mana to our world, but it will take centuries. If our descendants need her help in 1000 years, she’ll be there. Our characters say goodbye, thank you, and return home.
Most of these I got from the remake, so forgive me if something is off.
First, we return to Valsena. Durran says hello to the family he wouldn’t let us see before seeing the King. The Hero King says Loki, Durren’s dad, is within us and is proud. He then promises to follow whatever we, the new Golden Knights, have planned.
Angela returns home and reconnects with her mom. It turns out she was brainwashed the whole time and has no memory of anything that happened. She returns to her fair and loving self.
Riesz finally meets up with Elliot, who tells her of his weird dream. He saw his parents, and they told him to help his sister rebuild his country and to be more independent and less reliant on her all the time. Riesz then climbs the Heavensway and promises her parents everything will be fine.
The scene cuts to the Mana Tree, where several fairies float around, with a new sprout rising from the old roots.
Flammie then passes through several geological locations: a mountain range, a desert, and an archipelago, before crossing over Viscay. The camera pans up to space as leaves enter the scene, and the words "The End" appear on screen.
Moratorium tomorrow.
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