Screamed the dust speck.
Hmph.
Anyway, the Atelier Iris 2 campaign goes well in hand. Finally got the big bad empire on the run and got the whole party together, so it's time to take care of business and tear through something resembling a unique dungeon (to be fair, Vintavne is actually pretty flavorful and interesting to go through).
I've forgotten how much the challenge can get ramped up in the combat once you close in on the endgame. It's actually something kinda nasty, yet a pleasant surprise. You smack your way through Fort Zeyung and Riese Palace, tearing through a ton of imperial minions (Riese Palace alone gives you more encounters with enemy soldiers than most players would face from their Gesthalian counterparts throughout all of Final Fantasy VI, not counting Veldt rematches) and thwarting Theodore McTwit, and then you delve into some dungeons and the mooks knock you on your ass.
An then there are the bosses. They're some of the most flavorful and unique things I've seen in an RPG, and I'd really like to see more like them. You start facing a short series of clockwork magitek automata, with lots of flash and freaky moves and light shows; compared to the variations on the usual fantasy critters, they come out of nowhere and give this game some much needed character. The sad part is that they seem to have been made even more rare in the PS3 Atelier games; I never faced anything even close to this stuff in Rorona, and I've only had bare hints that anything shows up later.
They really help give the Atelier games a character of their own, and to be fair there are a decent bunch of regular enemies that are fairly unique and characterful in their own right, and even the variation on the usual suspects have their own flair. Ghost enemies are actually outright immune to normal physical attacks and like flinging freaky fireballs and hexes. You encounter poison-elemental dragons (that are green no less), and while they are palette-swaps of normal dragons, you see them among their firey brethren (along with zombie dragons), and in the same place you face swarms of Charmander ripoffs that also have stone/poison and ice conterparts in the same place. The dungeon in question is a cave full of magma and brimstone, where most RPG designers wouldn't even think of putting in non-fire critters, much less ice-elemental ones as regular encounters. And the evil totem poles are hilarious. They hoot snippets of tribal chants while they try to kill your party. The demons are about what you'd expect, except that you can turn them into Elvis jackets for some reason. The next time you bump into an impersonator, remember that their getup is made from pure evil!
Well, I'm off for some rest and then the Harvest begins anew.
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