sirsystemerror | FFL2 Solo Monster Part III

The Dragon Circuit provides yet another opportunity to increase Mamizou's DS-Level, this time as far as 9. To do that, I need to get through the Watchers with a monster that can be upped to DS-9. There's a couple of DS-8s on the track that I can take advantage of, at least. But Boulder can't do that, since it can't hit DS-8 from Adamant or Lamia.

BACK WE GO THROUGH THE PILLAR OF THE SKY. to eat a Medusa to become an Anaconda...only to realize once I get BACK to the circuit that type of monster can't take advantage either! So BACK AGAIN Mamizou goes again to Giant's World to eat a Fiend, which thankfully gives up its meat without too much trouble, to become a Mephisto again. Then it's BACK AGAIN.

Mamizou chooses the third-fastest Dragon, since it skips two fights that she needn't do (though could easily do) and nets her an extra Mana MAGI due to a bug in how the Race is coded to boot. Might come in handy down the line.

She first fights the Lamia to become a Gazer, a DS-8 Eye. She can get 1-4 of them at a time. She resets until she gets one, because even though she CAN take one more than that at once, why bother doing that? It's far less likely to kill her.

Then she goes eye-to-eye with the eye miniboss at the end, the Watcher. It was written in that Robot Guide on GameFAQs I mentioned when doing the robot party playthrough that you need four really good party members to stop four Watchers. Well, Mamizou is just one party member, and depending on what they use (anything but Beam and a successful StonGaze), she can take out a group of four with her own Beam, all by herself!

She becomes a Nymph from this, a DS-9 fairy and the third type of its species. Excellent monster to be, and the one that I want her to be for the foreseeable future.

Whirl is a fun ability. It rockets the enemies into the air, as if their planet needs them and they must go. It does heavy damage, and if they die from it, they don't come back down. Because of this, taking on the Hatamotos was easy. Adding EchigoYa into the mix didn't help them either, as Mamizou was able to cleanly take him out in a single round as well.

What was interesting about Edo Castle was that this was served up the first random encounter where Mamizou could not get away. I'm presuming that escaping in this game works much like in the third game. That is to say, these statues that I've been carrying around the whole game are fast at getting away. I mean, it's possible to fail to run, what other explanation can there be? These unrunnable encounters would be terrifying before and entail saving by them...but that was for the Mamizou of the past. The one of the present could use Whirl to wipe out anything here but a Ninja in a single hit.

The Sho-gun is usually an easy boss to deal with, and for the solo Mamizou this was no exception. He has only 2000HP which she can deplete in four attacks. From here on out, bosses have O-Change instead of O-Damage, so the elemental attacks of the fairy species are perfectly usable!

I had her take on a Dolphin too, because she could. It tended to stick to using Blitz several times which simply reduces agility. Mamizou did have to heal herself from time to time in this encounter, particularly to protect against their own dangerous Whirl, but got it done on the second try. It took too many resources that I forgot to buy though, so Mamizou saved beforehand and reset after claiming victory.

Now the Magnate is a very tough boss. He has a non-elemental Tornado attack that does just under 400 at most to Mamizou, a Vulcan Cannon that does just over 400, and more. First I tried fighting him with the Ice MAGI equipped, to protect against his Thunder attack. That's another bug, by the way: elemental MAGI is buggy. Fire and Poison boost all offensive magic (though not Cure), though give the proper elemental protection when equipped. Ice and Thunder boost the power of Fire attacks only, and instead, their protections are swapped.

The idea was to beat down Magnate, healing with Cure, and hoping he misses or uses Thunder a lot. This worked, until Mamizou ran out of Cure uses and died. Close, and certainly doable with repetition as I've proven in the past!

But then something from the remake came to mind. The Aegis MAGI in that version applies O-All to everyone for the remainder of the battle. Guides for this version that I've read claim it only applies for the turn it's being used. If it does work same as the remake though, even just for one party member...

My theory turned out to be correct! Check out the difference in damage. Now, Mamizou didn't have to heal every time she was struck by Magnate, and got Thunder protection to boot! Now all she had to fear was Tornado and turn order. I made sure she always had enough HP on hand to tank a Tornado if need be by healing when her HP was within kill range. That just left turn order to kill her off, which didn't happen.

That's one more river crossed. As for Nasty Dungeon? That's a paradise of equipment for just about anyone, but Mamizou lives free of materialistic needs. And it only now hit me that kind of fits the Buddhist-allied tanuki kind of works for our solo monster in that way.

Valhalla it is. Decided I may as well show this screen that I saw an awful lot, better late than never, since it's going to be the last time I get to see it. He'll even do it in the battle against him. With Odin's death, falling in battle simply kicks you back to the title screen. In other words, now I have to stop running through at 4x speed and actually save the game every now and then.

Odin is a tough fight. I need to get up an Aegis wall on the first turn. This thankfully blocks anything that they have to offer aside from Gungnir as it's being used. Getting speared by the Gungnir is instant death if Aegis is not up, and even with it up, it is incredibly painful. What needs to happen on the first three rounds is: Odin cannot use Gungnir at any point. It does too much damage to deal with before everything else is down, so he needs to use Lightng, Ice, or Cure instead. The underlings aren't too bad, but the Sleipnir using W-Kick too often can accumulate too much damage. Flame/Breath do no damage. OdinCrow can use Tornado, though I never saw it. Blind is nice to see from them, as it does not help their cause. But before said three rounds, the OdinCrows' Surprise can't trigger.

Mamizou will be using Whirl twice to dispose of the underlings. If she lives, no matter how low health she ends up with, she can then settle into a pattern against Odin, using her spells against the god, who feels he's existed for too long and last wish was to duel with the best and greatest warriors (or warrior?). She cannot be killed in one hit, so she needs to rely on him not using Gungnir twice in a row before she can heal. He has 3700HP to get through.

Oh, I forgot to mention, one more thing. Sleipnir has meat to drop. This will take whoever eats it DS-A. I want Mamizou to be at DS-A for what's coming up. In an act of what can only be described as mercy, this happened the very first time Mamizou defeated Odin, after 70 or so goes at the fight. Many of which died way too soon when Gungnir landed early or Sleipnir used W-Kick to deal too much damage.

And yes, to reiterate as Mamizou becomes a Moaner (a corruption of Mourn Blade) of the sword species, death is now game over. And since there are monsters who can Surprise around, I make sure to toss down some saves every now and then. Mamizou is reasonably well-protected with O-Damage and O-Change at present, but that's no reason to take any chances.

This seems like a good place to make our final page break. Only one world and the Central Shrine left. How will Mamizou fare in the endgame? The fourth and final part of this challenge report tells all!

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