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This final session in my first attempt at the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge (2023!) was played on December 16, 2023.
As we planned, we started with Ozzie's Fort. It was... awfully quick. We literally beat Flea with a single attack.
Super Slash wasn't really harder.
Even the trio was pretty quick and easy. I didn't quite manage to take them all out in a single attack, but I enjoyed using Antipode 3 on them so much that I did it a second time for the screenshot.
Robo may as well have been talking to me; we didn't gain anything from doing this quest, really. Maybe a few consumables and a single Magic Tab. Oh well. It was fun.
We entered the Black Omen for the first time in 1000 A.D., which is the latest point you can enter it.
The thought here was just in case we wanted to do it repeatedly for levelling purposes or to gain whatever we could from it, would could move successively backward through time. However... you can only collect the treasures once, and even many of the encounters aren't repeatable. As well, we don't have nearly as much capacity to gain useful things like stat boosting tabs or Megaelixirs without Ayla in our party.
The mutant bosses were their usual, gimmicky selves, but frankly it was the random encounters that were scarier.
It took me a while to find a rhythm with Goons, for example, and the chaos status was an issue for me in a few fights. Luckily, save points are abundant and Lucca with Prism Specs can deal some pretty scary damage.
The Giga Mutant wasn't really any harder than the Mega Mutant.
We got access to a Haste Helm and I picked a setup for Robo with a Haste Helm (since he's the best all-around) and Nova Armor (to prevent status effects). It's quite a bit lower defense than using Moon Armor or a better helmet, but since most battles hinge on Robo I thought it made sense.
Our first battle with Ruminators was practically a demonstration of how can it can go, with two of our characters being eaten alive at different points. In later battles with Ruminators, I remembered that you can just sort of... stand around and let them eat each other, and then release one strong attack to finish the fight.
Unfortunately, we have a lot less to gain from this encounter than we would with Ayla around, since these are the dudes you can charm Megaelixirs from.
The TerraMutant might've been the hardest of the boss mutants. It didn't take me long to learn/remember that the top half is generally vulnerable and the bottom half has crazy defenses but the top will absorb health from it. If you destroy the top, the bottom is scripted to die shortly after. Not shortly enough, though! We ended this battle after the bottom countered Lucca and Robo both to 1 HP.
Against the Lavos Spawn that appears in the Black Omen, we just targetted its head. Throughout the Black Omen, I've been struggling to keep Robo's HP in a stable state with a nice, high last digit for the use of the Crisis Arm... and thus sometimes it made sense to have him heal or use a tackle rather than Uzzi Punch. The deal with this is that Robo Tackle's damage is unaffected by the equipped weapon, so it's fine if, say, Robo's hit points end with a 0. Uzzi Punch requires a higher final digit to do its best.
I said a few times that I should use the Terra Arm instead... but I kept forgetting and/or choosing not to do that.
Next up was Queen Zeal herself. Besides healing after Hallation, it was a pretty straightforward fight.
Unfortunately, she used Hallation immediately before we won, which leaves the party in quite a state for the next battle. Maybe the MegaElixir she dropped will help. In fact, maybe that's the point.
The Mammon Machine is a dumb fight. Do damage for a bit, survive retaliatory damage once, hit it a couple more times, win.
Queen Zeal in space was pretty good though. No shenanigans here, just single-target violence. Marle used Haste on Lucca to facilitate this, and in addition to contributions to combos Lucca occasionally used her Wondershot.
Next up... the Lavos Shell. Unlike approaching Lavos using some of the game's other methods, there's not even a way to leave when you come from the Black Omen. So here we go! I was really looking forward to revisiting some of the bosses who were meant to be dealt with using lightning attacks. First among those, I suppose was Masa & Mune.
Something that happened a lot more than my screenshots might suggest is Robo punching for 0 damage. Frankly, I don't usually use the Crisis Arm when I play, so I'm not super used to watching Robo's HP carefully before attacking. Besides Robo dealing 0 damage with punches, this was trivially easy. It usually is.
That said, I was also quite excited for revenge on Nizbel the first.
It did not take 38 minutes.
As we planned, we started with Ozzie's Fort. It was... awfully quick. We literally beat Flea with a single attack.
Super Slash wasn't really harder.
Even the trio was pretty quick and easy. I didn't quite manage to take them all out in a single attack, but I enjoyed using Antipode 3 on them so much that I did it a second time for the screenshot.
Robo may as well have been talking to me; we didn't gain anything from doing this quest, really. Maybe a few consumables and a single Magic Tab. Oh well. It was fun.
We entered the Black Omen for the first time in 1000 A.D., which is the latest point you can enter it.
The thought here was just in case we wanted to do it repeatedly for levelling purposes or to gain whatever we could from it, would could move successively backward through time. However... you can only collect the treasures once, and even many of the encounters aren't repeatable. As well, we don't have nearly as much capacity to gain useful things like stat boosting tabs or Megaelixirs without Ayla in our party.
The mutant bosses were their usual, gimmicky selves, but frankly it was the random encounters that were scarier.
It took me a while to find a rhythm with Goons, for example, and the chaos status was an issue for me in a few fights. Luckily, save points are abundant and Lucca with Prism Specs can deal some pretty scary damage.
The Giga Mutant wasn't really any harder than the Mega Mutant.
We got access to a Haste Helm and I picked a setup for Robo with a Haste Helm (since he's the best all-around) and Nova Armor (to prevent status effects). It's quite a bit lower defense than using Moon Armor or a better helmet, but since most battles hinge on Robo I thought it made sense.
Our first battle with Ruminators was practically a demonstration of how can it can go, with two of our characters being eaten alive at different points. In later battles with Ruminators, I remembered that you can just sort of... stand around and let them eat each other, and then release one strong attack to finish the fight.
Unfortunately, we have a lot less to gain from this encounter than we would with Ayla around, since these are the dudes you can charm Megaelixirs from.
The TerraMutant might've been the hardest of the boss mutants. It didn't take me long to learn/remember that the top half is generally vulnerable and the bottom half has crazy defenses but the top will absorb health from it. If you destroy the top, the bottom is scripted to die shortly after. Not shortly enough, though! We ended this battle after the bottom countered Lucca and Robo both to 1 HP.
Against the Lavos Spawn that appears in the Black Omen, we just targetted its head. Throughout the Black Omen, I've been struggling to keep Robo's HP in a stable state with a nice, high last digit for the use of the Crisis Arm... and thus sometimes it made sense to have him heal or use a tackle rather than Uzzi Punch. The deal with this is that Robo Tackle's damage is unaffected by the equipped weapon, so it's fine if, say, Robo's hit points end with a 0. Uzzi Punch requires a higher final digit to do its best.
I said a few times that I should use the Terra Arm instead... but I kept forgetting and/or choosing not to do that.
Next up was Queen Zeal herself. Besides healing after Hallation, it was a pretty straightforward fight.
Unfortunately, she used Hallation immediately before we won, which leaves the party in quite a state for the next battle. Maybe the MegaElixir she dropped will help. In fact, maybe that's the point.
The Mammon Machine is a dumb fight. Do damage for a bit, survive retaliatory damage once, hit it a couple more times, win.
Queen Zeal in space was pretty good though. No shenanigans here, just single-target violence. Marle used Haste on Lucca to facilitate this, and in addition to contributions to combos Lucca occasionally used her Wondershot.
Next up... the Lavos Shell. Unlike approaching Lavos using some of the game's other methods, there's not even a way to leave when you come from the Black Omen. So here we go! I was really looking forward to revisiting some of the bosses who were meant to be dealt with using lightning attacks. First among those, I suppose was Masa & Mune.
Something that happened a lot more than my screenshots might suggest is Robo punching for 0 damage. Frankly, I don't usually use the Crisis Arm when I play, so I'm not super used to watching Robo's HP carefully before attacking. Besides Robo dealing 0 damage with punches, this was trivially easy. It usually is.
That said, I was also quite excited for revenge on Nizbel the first.
It did not take 38 minutes.
After beating the Lavos Shell, including its final phase with destruction raining from the heavens, etc. I thought... I could probably just finish the game. But I didn't want to yet. So I left! I decided to fight Masa & Mune Spekkio again... and it was so, so much easier than it was the last time I tried, immediately after doing Death Peak.
For that we got some tabs! In fact, altogether today the team earned at least 5 Speed Tabs, which is an enormous difference.
We did the Black Omen a 2nd time in 600 A.D. This probably wasn't worth it; the treasures are gone, we can't charm anything, and some of the battles like the many battles with Boss Orb + Sidekicks are really boring. I liberally used fast-forward for the most boring parts.
This time we can skip the shell... so we proceeded to the inner Lavos battles. No, we are not doing the antiquity Black Omen.
We weathered the doors of doom and our damage seemed more than adequate here.
For that we got some tabs! In fact, altogether today the team earned at least 5 Speed Tabs, which is an enormous difference.
We did the Black Omen a 2nd time in 600 A.D. This probably wasn't worth it; the treasures are gone, we can't charm anything, and some of the battles like the many battles with Boss Orb + Sidekicks are really boring. I liberally used fast-forward for the most boring parts.
This time we can skip the shell... so we proceeded to the inner Lavos battles. No, we are not doing the antiquity Black Omen.
We weathered the doors of doom and our damage seemed more than adequate here.
The battle was generally stable. We didn't have status protection on everyone anymore, so there was some Heal item slinging for maybe the 2nd time in the entire game, but we kept up. I was wearing my "But... the future refused to change" t-shirt and I said, "I don't think I'm wearing the right shirt for the occasion, because we're going to change it!". It was all dramatic, you should've been there.
Strong attacks like Shadow Doom Blaze were scary and awesome-looking but the team was fine. Then we won.
This brought us to the Lavos Core proper. We started with applying Haste to everyone.
I planned to attack the centre, humanoid component to lower the defense of the right bit, which I knew was the "true" Lavos Core. This was pretty easy, and taking out the middle also allowed us to avoid most of the scariest attacks. I really leaned into offense once the right bit dropped its defense.
The Core's Active Life activated and the humanoid core was revived. The defense isn't restored immediately though, so we continued to press with offense. And before the right bit could restore its defense, we destroyed it.
I was honestly quite surprised that this was so quick and easy! I mean, I was reasonably well-prepared but I don't remember this going this well before. I'd rather use just about any other character than Marle, and honestly Lucca might be my 2nd last choice... but they sure showed me that they can deliver, given the chance.
This part of the ending actually felt a bit special; because of the script I used throughout the run, I literally used Marle, Lucca and Robo - in that order - in every single battle I did throughout the entire game. We've got Marle and Lucca here having their tearful goodbye with Robo while the total rando with the spiky red hair watches in the background.
This "Holiday Challenge" is one of the least challenging things named "challenge" I've ever heard of... but it sure was fun. We got to goof around with characters in the party that the game was never designed for, which pushes limits of how it's balanced and generally supposed to work. It's most interesting in the parts of the game that aren't based around 3-person parties, although it did tend to make those parts even easier.
As I said, on the whole I was impressed with my team's capabilities, particularly given Marle's generally-poor output. Combos like Ice Tackle, Fire Tackle, and Antipode 2 were so key through the 2nd half of the game. Despite the maybe-weak party composition, this still generally felt easier than my first few vanilla playthroughs. I guess I would attribute this to the three characters being used having higher levels, earlier access to good techs, and good equipment. The only truly challenging part, of course, was Nizbel the first.
I would be pleased to do this again sometime in the future.
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Strong attacks like Shadow Doom Blaze were scary and awesome-looking but the team was fine. Then we won.
This brought us to the Lavos Core proper. We started with applying Haste to everyone.
I planned to attack the centre, humanoid component to lower the defense of the right bit, which I knew was the "true" Lavos Core. This was pretty easy, and taking out the middle also allowed us to avoid most of the scariest attacks. I really leaned into offense once the right bit dropped its defense.
The Core's Active Life activated and the humanoid core was revived. The defense isn't restored immediately though, so we continued to press with offense. And before the right bit could restore its defense, we destroyed it.
I was honestly quite surprised that this was so quick and easy! I mean, I was reasonably well-prepared but I don't remember this going this well before. I'd rather use just about any other character than Marle, and honestly Lucca might be my 2nd last choice... but they sure showed me that they can deliver, given the chance.
This part of the ending actually felt a bit special; because of the script I used throughout the run, I literally used Marle, Lucca and Robo - in that order - in every single battle I did throughout the entire game. We've got Marle and Lucca here having their tearful goodbye with Robo while the total rando with the spiky red hair watches in the background.
This "Holiday Challenge" is one of the least challenging things named "challenge" I've ever heard of... but it sure was fun. We got to goof around with characters in the party that the game was never designed for, which pushes limits of how it's balanced and generally supposed to work. It's most interesting in the parts of the game that aren't based around 3-person parties, although it did tend to make those parts even easier.
As I said, on the whole I was impressed with my team's capabilities, particularly given Marle's generally-poor output. Combos like Ice Tackle, Fire Tackle, and Antipode 2 were so key through the 2nd half of the game. Despite the maybe-weak party composition, this still generally felt easier than my first few vanilla playthroughs. I guess I would attribute this to the three characters being used having higher levels, earlier access to good techs, and good equipment. The only truly challenging part, of course, was Nizbel the first.
I would be pleased to do this again sometime in the future.
<< First | < Previous | Index
