Whelp, it's finally here. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch's North American release has finally come upon us. I didn't get quite as far as I had hoped in that time with this Liveblog... I kinda envisioned being done. ^_^;
I intend to continue this Liveblog up through to the end credits of the game, with one final update after that giving my impressions of Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi. I won't be tackling the postgame or attempting to go through this game’s quests afterwards on account of language barriers and a massive backlog of other games that I should be working through.
I also don't intend to liveblog Wrath of the White Witch. One of the the great advantages for me in Jet-Black Mage is that its battle structure is such that I can give blow-by-blow accounts of things as they happen... Which seeing as I don't have a video capture card for my PS 3, is less than feasible for me. ^_^; In addition, this liveblog was in the end an experiment, one that made me realize and appreciate the level of commitment that it takes to make one of these things and keep it alive. (Especially for you maniacs that somehow get in updates more than once every two weeks! :P) Unfortunately, I kinda need that energy for commitment for other pursuits... At least for the near future. But who knows? Maybe one day I’ll start up another of these moonrune liveblogs! I *do* have a copy of Tales of Hearts to get through eventually.
All and all, I'm glad that I've been at this for the last year, and hope that these last few updates are a good read for those who’ve been following.
Now... Let's get back to this rather chilly chapter of our quest for being able to enjoy homemade sandwiches once again...
The Imagines here can move kinda fast... We get ambushed by an ice tadpole, rabbit, and floating... Thing. They were all predictably weak against fire magic, so they didn't take long to deal with. Hrm... This chunk of the continent appears to be a dead end... :|
Oh well, back to the ship...
Alright, we were apparently supposed to land on the *southern* part of the arctic continent... Whatever, let's get moving. We run into some more ice Imagines... One of them appears to be some sort of robed snow sprite... Which we promptly barbecue. Really, the only real challenge to these guys is that you can't outrun them, and they eat your HP and MP little by little.
Eventually, we make our way to- Oh, it's apparently a town. There's a front gate with 2 guarding snowmen and some auroras in the skies in the distance. The party makes some comments about the local trappings... Before we are greeted by a Nana lookali- ... Oh wait, never mind, that's a guy. But he's got a pink parka on... Crossdressing Nana cosplayer?
Swaine makes some sort of comment afterwards that Oliver chimes in on... Possibly "Where's the stone, man?" There’s some text... It's unclear whether this is from our guide, or if we're reading it from the gate arch... And then things cut back to Oliver. Swaine gets in a few words, then our pink guide makes some comments... And heads into the village.
After some brief lines by Esther and Oliver, we get freed to progress. Oh, well that's convenient! The inn's right up front in between a fork in the- 700 G?! Forget THAT! There’s also an igloo in the same area right before the inn to the left... There's not much to look at there beyond some living quarters that are there for show. Alright... Let’s backtrack via teleportation to a REAL inn before we head in deeper...
One short pit stop later, and... Hrm... Let's check the left fork first... The next area has a couple of cosmetic igloos as well... One of them has a snowman head. There's actually NP Cs here, but they don't really have much to say. The igloo with the snowman head has a white and blue carrot in a barrel for you to take. Anyhow, moving further along this path...
The music switches to something more fast paced as the game automatically cuts to a guy in a brown parka behind a crate in a plaza... Which is apparently the next pl- Wait a minute... This is the same music that played when we took that piece of junk mark built off of the canal back in Motorville! ... Is there some sort of connection?
Whatever's going on, this is apparently the local item shop... (Doesn't seem really well stocked, if you ask me...) And then suddenly a purple rat scurries up and jumps on Oliver's back before running off. The game shifts focus to the rat and...
That purple little fuzzball has Mark's glasses and hair! O_o; (Geez, game, way to be harsh on him...) Uh... And... He can talk? He mentions some sort of red phrase consisting of 2 Katakana and 3 Hiragana characters... And then runs off...
... And then the music died. And was replaced with that one boss encounter theme... Esther and Drippy start to get concerned... Yell out Oliver's name a few times.
Oh... He seems to be having mommy issues right now... Congratulations, purple rat, you just broke our PC here!
And then the game cuts away to a nasty looking figure in a black cloak with teal designs and goat horns and ropy pink hair obscuring its face... Wait, this thing has a VA? Who is-
... Oh... So *this* is Jabo...
He’s sitting on a throne... With a figure in a white cape and a sword staring him down- OLIVER'S MOM?!
So the plot thickens... Momexpy is apparently called "Arishia"... I'm guessing that's supposed to be "Alicia".
Jabo puts some sort of cursed aura onto Alicia... And she collapses with a shriek as something glowing leaves her body and is absorbed by Jabo... Freaky... The scene ends with Jabo giving a villainous laugh...
And we cut to Oliver waking up in an igloo. There's a short back and forth between the party... And then a scruffy-looking cat-person with spectacles walks up. He talks with the party... First with Esther... Then with Swaine... Gives some exposition... Which seems to startle Esther...
Wait, we’re talking about Oliver here? What's-? Swaine wants out with whatever kitty here knows, I do too... Though the moonrunes goes over my head. There's a back and forth between the cat and Oliver... And he brings up a long red phrase with 9 characters consisting mostly of Katakana. (The kanji for "Person" is the 3rd one.) ... More exposition... And then another red phrase...
Whatever *that* one was, Oliver seemed to get a good start from it. ... Another red phrase... "Great"... ... I think that's "Ice"... "River"... (I think?) And something or other. Oliver asks something about this cold-sounding place... More talking...
And yet another red phrase... Consisting of 3 Kanji... Uh...
Oh! We got a blue parka!
Something about the "outside", "heart", "open"... Okay, hurry up, cat! And our party's outfit has transformed into something a bit more appropriate for the freezing weather. Everyone minus Drippy scored a parka- Oh wait, he got one too.
And now we are finally free to head out... Let's ignore the game for now and see where the right path leads us first... ... Past the bookstore... And the next part takes us to that plaza again... Kind of a small town here... Anyhow, let's follow that red arrow now... Into a large igloo with... Some red-capped dude in white.
Oh, he must be the village elder or something. There's a decent back and forth between him and Oliver... And then Esther chimes in... Something about opening a gate... And then we’re let out.
Oh... There’s the gate... Looked just like a normal fence earlier... (Though this raises the question of why we didn’t just hop the rickety old thing!) But anyhow, let's move on.
We wind up back on the overworld... With our destination appearing to be a cave in the north... Alright... Let's check this out...
Approaching the cave, we run into an icy maw-like entrance... Uh... Well that's inviting. Heading up to it is similarly uninviting, instead of music playing, an audio track of howling blizzard winds plays as our party draws near the mouth in whiteout conditions.
Oliver seems a bit taken aback at what we've found, with Esther and Swaine throwing in some comments of their own. Swaine's is apparently fairly reassuring, as Oliver manages to get a small chuckle afterwards. The game then free us to progress further.
The inside of the cave is a lot clearer and quieter. With our familiar buddy, the dungeon music kicking up. The first area is completely linear, which serves mostly as a way to play with the camera and show off the icy stalagmites and stalactites as we make our way into the second area, where the actual meat is.
After heading down a path, we reach a 4-way intersection with ways to progress west, south, and north... Let’s start south and work our way up. We run into some of the locals here. Which include white and gray horned gorrila-yeti things, those healer stingray things we saw back in Mordor, and those snow sprites from outside... We also learned something important... GET THE SPRITES FIRST! They apparently can use insta-death (if inaccurate) attacks!
The southern fork leads to a dead end. As does the western one (though that one has one of those "molten cheese rocks" in a red chest). Looks like we’re heading north, then.
On our way north, we run into some pink-capped purple and cream... Things. They're bipedal and have little arms with wands, but not sure what they’d count as beyond amorphous blobs. Unlike everything else we’ve run into so far (the skate excepted), they RESIST fire magic, and are weak against ice magic. (What are they doing in an icy cavern, then? :/)
Also, a few of our faces have been changing during our dungeon crawl. Totoko got an upgrade into a purple Imagine with a whiskery muzzle (chosen over a white form), while Felis wound up getting an all-black pelt like his initial form... Plus a boss golden eyepatch (over a more tabby-cat look). (If you’re wondering, I picked the forms primarily on stats.)
After seeing that Taillow is apparently in a poor mood again with that cloud of disappointment over his head, we fumble around in the Imagine birdcage of magicalness... And get nowhere beyond convincing him to scarf down a bowl of mint cream...
Yeah, let's break Rucci out for a while instead. Continuing down the path, we reach a landing with a MP crystal... And left and right paths heading up icy ramps. The left leads to a blue chest with a sword in it (remember to use Unlock to get at it!), while the right one goes further down this frigid rabbit hole, leading down a long and winding (but ultimately linear) path past a few scenic outlooks (or at least they would be scenic if there weren't a blizzard outside!) that leads to another 4-way intersection (west, east, and north).
This time, let's go in clockwise order to check the branches... That makes west first... It takes us to a 2-way intersection around a bend that forks into north and west... The north seems to go on a ways, and there's a MP crystal here on a landing beside a ramp that heads further north (convenient, as we were running low on MP for Kree, so will note its position). Hmm... Looks like we should probably backtrack to see the west fork first... ... Which brings us to a green chest with a cape in it... Hrm... We've made it to another intersection... Maybe we *should* have looked at those other forks before this one...
A swift backtracking reveals the north branch of the earlier intersection to dead-end at a red chest with an icy flower in it... The east... Leads to icicles. Well, now that we’ve got *that* out of the way... And stopped by an MP crystal... Let's go back to that intersection deeper down this cave.
The east fork dead-ends at a purple chest... Since all our attempts to open those in the past lead to failure, we’ll move on here. The north fork has a HP crystal... Which we don’t exactly *need* right now... Onto the west, then.
On the way, we also turned Phyco into a dark shade of purple and boosted his stats. (I have no idea if I’m shooting myself in the foot on these Imagine upgrades, just picking the ones with better raw stats and less annoying weaknesses.) And it looks like we must be getting close to a boss... We've run across a save point...
After healing our HP and MP, we decide to use Escape and then Teleport to backtrack to that little arctic village to pick up some healing items. After all, that’s how we survived our last boss fight... Gotta put that- Wait, 57000 G?! Huh... Those Imagines drop more cash than I thought...
10 cheeseburgers and 5 cups of coffee later (how on earth clogging your arteries is supposed to heal you is beyond me, these must be magical burgers), we head back to the ice cave.
And on the way back, we realize how we got so much money... These Imagines are dropping like 1000-2000 G per fight! This ice cave is a veritable treasure chest! On our way back, Bruce scores an upgrade of his own... Options are between 2 white bats... One with purple pointy ears that has some sort of line-affecting wind attack... One with sunglasses and marginally better HP and Defense with a one-cell attack... Let's be different this time and take the variant that can hit more things at once instead of the statistically better version.
Bruce is now white-headed... And has a purple lower body, ears, and lower wings to boot... His mouth also somehow took on a greenish color and those flat teeth in his mouth became fangs.
Okay, NOW let’s move onto that boss in the next room...
Eh? There’s an NPC on this map? Trudging in, we catch a short glimpse of a white-robed figure with a staff progressing deeper into the cave.
Oliver seems to think that it’s his mother... (To be fair, it did kinda look like that Alicia person we saw.) And predictably runs off ahead excitedly.
Esther runs up and asks Oliver what’s going on, which is met with what I presume is "I just found my mother!" Gyro and Drippy make a few comments, and Oliver dashes off, with Maru calling after him telling him to hold his horses.
... But alas, he's gone... And we just walked right into a trap, didn't we?
The form of a transparent boy appears in front of what's left of the party, giving them a good scare... ... This is a ghost?
Whatever it is, it’s a gray-haired boy... Named... "Siyounan". ... Interesting name...
He proceeds to tell the remaining party a couple things... Then walk off and vanish... Yep. Totally not suspicious here... The three remark among themselves, possibly about how dumb they were to let Oliver run off like that, and dash down the path.
Meanwhile... Oliver has run into the next area... Which is dead silent... And missing all maternal figures.
And yeeep, it was a trap. The boss music starts up and a green and white griffin swoops in. And this is why you don't run off like that, Oliver! Oliver gets kinda crabby about the bait and switch... Gee, don't we have bigger problems here right now?
Thankfully for Oliver, his friends pick now to burst in and keep him from being mauled by the griffin. They ask him if he's alright, and seem to be rapidly deflating his bubble about the prospects of finding his mom... Just what we needed to start a boss battle with!
Alright... Boss fight time... Looking at the griffin close up reveals that it’s kinda interesting in build... It seems to have a few canine features thrown into the mix for its design (mostly the hind legs and the tail). If you remember the "Griffy" that was being promoted as an Amazon pre-order bonus, it looks kinda like that. Except with bigger ears, green and green feathers and fur, feathers sprouting from its tail, and with some gold accents.
But down to the nitty-gritty: Let's set up with Rucci shielding Oliver have Kree flank, and scout elemental weaknesses with the latter two (ice and fire). And hope we don’t get murdered in the process. It seems to have been a worthy arrangement. We got in 180 damage from Kree and figured out this thing’s weakness, and threw in an additional neutral 79 damage from Oliver. Our arrangement also kept Oliver safe from what appears to be a "hit first target" ice spell. Rucci tanked that with about 30 HP damage... Kree... Ah... Closer to 60 HP. But at least we’re all still in good shape! Let’s go on the offensive next round, with Kree and Oliver providing suppressing fire (har har) from the back and Rucci hacking away with his sword.
We get in 168, 185, and 124 HP damage from Rucci, Kree, and Oliver respectively... With birdy here repeating his ice trick from last time. And I just realized that unlike the last boss, there’s no HP bar... And by extension, we won't know how close we are to winning until this thing starts to show fatigue... Given that Kree’s losing more than a third of his health per round, I think that we’ll switch him out for someone who resists water-elemental spells. Leaving Phyco, Felis, and Seba as choices. Hmm... Let’s try Phyco. He's definitely squishier than Rucci, but he resists that ice attack and seems to hit almost as hard. We’ll have him cover with direct attacks.
157, 57, 139... Those are our numbers this round... Phyco (the middle guy) was kinda useless for direct attack, but his main value is providing a third body to heal the Rucci and Oliver (first and last respectively), seeing as he's taking the same damage as Rucci (if from the back instead of the middle row). Also, birdcat here needs to learn to use some different moves already. Anyhow, again with the attacking! 158, 58, 121... And Rucci dodged an attempt by the griffin to pounce on him, which put him into limit break territory. Since we’ve been spamming elementally strong attacks on the birdcat, Oliver's also been building towards his limit break, which also crested. This is gonna be a fun turn~
Two limit breaks and an obligatory proverbial gloveslap later (okay, it was with flippers) for 578, 58, and 366 damage respectively from the usual suspects, and we have featherbutt under 25% health. (It's tottering.) Rucci finally ate a pounce for 45 HP, and is now running on less than half health. We’ll keep the heat up on the boss with Oliver and Rucci and have Phyco actually be useful as a medic in the next turn- Oh? He seems to have a healing spell... Let's try that instead of wasting a perfectly good burger.
Rucci and Oliver dish out 179 and 131 HP damage to the griffin, while it used its ice spam... Again. Phyco's healing spell appears to be well worth the 24 MP, as it fully restored Rucci’s health (it healed 159 HP). Alright, back to all-out attacking.
Oh. Rucci's attack boost wore off... And his attack missed as well. Oh well, between Oliver and Phyco, we got around 200 damage in. And once again, there was more ice, and more insignificant damage from the griffin. We'll have Rucci set up this turn, with the back row providing offensive cover.
This time, the griffin decided to make the first move, with a 47 HP pounce on Rucci again. Oliver and Phyco took off 128 and 62 HP respectively... And Oliver got a limit break... Again. Let's show off a little bit in the next round...
Phyco and Rucci will defend... And we’ll deep-fry this chicken-hound.
Griffins appear to be a spiteful lot, thing pounced on Oliver for 50 HP... And promptly proceeded to eat a 378 HP column of fire... Have its wings drop off (Uh... Is that normal, or are those clip-ons? ._.) and slump over before vanishing in a flash of light like most other defeated Imagines.
Esther and Oliver talk for a short bit, wondering what that was all about... And there appears to be more to this cave to see... So we'll backtrack and heal at the savepoint first...
After doing so and attempting to go on ahead, the game launches into a scene halfway towards the next room with Maru looking at a wall of... Wait... Is that glass? Or transparent ice?
Everyone goes to gawk, and ghost boy returns again... And drops a red phrase mentioning two something or others... Uh...
Well, it can’t possibly be good given Swaine's startled reaction. Oliver and ghost boy exchange a few words before the latter presses on and vanishes... Again.
Through the window, the white-robed figure appears... Wait, is this really Alicia? And Esther sees her fa- Okay, this can’t be real. Drippy makes some sort of comment about the two that catches Oliver off-guard... Swaine gets hit with some sort of unpleasant realization... That I fail to grasp...
There’s a little more talking, and then Alicia and Esther’s dad progress on... Leaving behind a tearful Oliver.
After a short bit, he recovers. And we are freed to continue.
Aaand, back to dungeon crawling again...
Ghost boy stops by again to interrupt us... Again. And launches into some sort of exposition... There’s something about "7 days and 7 nights"... And startling Swaine some more... And Oliver too! And the rest of the party!
... I'm taking it that that griffin wasn't the real boss, was it?
Ghost boy says a couple more words... And pulls off his vanishing trick again, leaving the rest of us behind.
Drippy attempts to run off onto a little alcove to nab a red chest... And finds an invisible wall. Ghost boy pops up again, presumably to explain the barriers, and then the game frees us to progress.
Grr... Looks like that isn’t just a little alcove either, it seems to go down a ways... Oh well, to the left path, then. If you keep going straight, you’ll pass a fork to the left... And run into a barrier. In other news the left fork allows one to reach that red chest from earlier, so... Yeah... Progression!
... Or not... There’s no way to progress from the area in the left either... Uh... Help me out here, guide.
Wait... We can go through WALLS?
Okay... Let’s get snooping here...
Oh. There's an unmapped passageway that’s hidden just to the right of the red chest. Your only clue is that the ice pattern on the floor seems to go *right* up to the wall unnaturally far... Good enough, I suppose.
You’ll stumble across a small square that shows up on the map. Pay attention to what appears to be a ledge in the upper left, it’s really just an illusion in the ice.
Illusionary edges abound everywhere around here, usually in close proximity to red chests.
There’s a HP crystal along a large path... But predictably, there's a barrier in front of it... If these descriptions are not terribly helpful... That's because they're kinda not. This dungeon is a real interface screw for those of you who are accustomed to being able to plow through everything with that top-screen map of yours, and the only real way around it is to try and see whether particularly eye-catching chunks of cave (Level-5 wasn't dickish enough to hide passageways on ordinary-looking walls... So far) are cave segments or passageways.
There’s a passageway that's hidden as a particularly bright-looking ice wall. Going through it and making your way to the left will take you to the HP crystal, and then continues on deeper heading right. Backtracking back to the light-colored wall reveals there’s not that much on the right, just a red chest and a glimpse of a MP crystal and a later part of this dungeon.
While we were skulking around, we scored an upgrade for Seba. One was a purple form with some nifty head feathers, better all-around stats, and a 32 MP wind spell... Along with a water resist and fire weakness. The other form was a more lilac color, had a wind resist, a water weakness and a cheaper 16 MP spell... Along with weaker round-the-board stats. Well that was an easy choice. Seba now has some neat head feathers, gold wings, and a white and green robe.
Heading down the path, we enter another room... And find a 4 way intersection along with a flute... Let’s take the easternmost branch... Since it looks like that might lead to that MP crystal, and our party’s running dangerously low here.
Huh. Well, we found one... Just not the one we saw earlier... That was fast.
... Aaand it looks like these three paths all loop in on each other... Uh... Well...
"You should soon find a HP crystal, some glass wall mazes, then a big off-limits lake. If you continue to the north, you'll reach a crossway, then find a flute. If you go south from there, you'll get to the lake. However, if you go THROUGH THE SOLID WALL at the north-east of the room, you should find your way. Go north, then save."
... Ah.
A bit of careful checking finds the save point in question... We save and get some much needed healing here... Given how much of a headache it was just to get here, I think we'll pass on finding that lake and just settle for "surviving this boss".
For our strategy, we'll attempt to start off with the same format we used with Kree, Rucci, and Oliver against the Naga of great annoyingness last time. With Kree drawing attacks to the best of his ability.
So let's go on... And kick destiny in the face!
The game cuts to a scene of Siyounan leading the party into an exposed place where the blizzard we encountered at the cave entrance is howling fiercely. We get led a short ways, and are brought before a purple wolf with an icy mane and spikes running along its back. Swaine gets understandably freaked from having to stare down an angry icy dire wolf. Siyounan attempts to talk to the wolf, and gets snarled at for his trouble.
And the game then plays a cutscene with wolfy here showing off some cryokinetic acrobatics before leaping at the screen, fangs bared.
Hmm... It's a wolf... With ice on it... I wonder what it could *possibly* be weak against...? Let’s have Oliver and Kree roast this mutt while Rucci boosts his attack.
Well, it's certainly not going to hit lightly. It did 24 damage to Kree in the back row, and he's the guy that RESISTS normal attacks. Kree got in 161 HP damage, Oliver got in 138, confirming the obvious suspicions. Let's All-Out-Attack as long as we possibly can before we need to start healing.
Round 1!
We deal 158, 169, and 159 from Rucci, Kree, and Oliver respectively... And learn that this guy is going to be annoying... He apparently can make an ice bomb that hits everyone on the field. (Kree and Oliver took around 40 HP damage a pop, Rucci took 13 HP damage).
Round 2!
The usual suspects do 165, 169, and 154 damage, in the same order as last time... And we find out that this thing REALLY hits hard. He nipped Rucci for 71 HP damage.
Whelp, I see frosty breath. I think that we can rule out pushing our luck for a 3rd round... Let’s have Kree attempt to draw attacks while Oliver and Rucci keep up the good fight.
Rucci deals 169 HP damage, Oliver does 152... And we find out that attempting to draw attacks was pointless in that case, it was one of those "hit the first target" attacks like that Griffin liked to use. Rucci ate around 25 HP damage, Kree... Closer to 55. We’ll have him patch himself up next turn with some food from a grease pit while Oliver and Rucci continue fighting.
... And... That turns out to have been... Interesting... We got in another 300-ish HP damage... And Oliver unlocked his limit break. But Rucci lost his attack boost... And the boss promptly zeroed in on Oliver... Who's now down to 44 HP. >.<
We'll have Oliver defend this turn, Rucci patch him up, and Kree serve as the team scapegoat to ensure that we don’t lose our mage here.
... Aand he boosted his defense while we licked our wounds. We’ll set up with Rucci, have Oliver use his special, and Kree support with fire as we hope for the best.
Kree gets in 122 HP damage, Oliver gets in 377, and we're now just over halfway through this boss... Unfortunately, it was a jerk and bit Oliver for 70 HP... Again. So we’ll have Rucci dish out more all beef patties as Oliver and Rucci focus on offense.
This time, the boss used a ice bomb which appeared to affect an entire row of movement cells... Namely Oliver's, which hit Kree and Oliver for 41 and 51 HP each. >_>
Fortunately, Kree's burger negated the whole problem we were facing there, and we got in around 250 HP damage... And I see that that HP bar barely budged... This is gonna be a long fight... >_>
Let’s all-out-attack again, since we’ve got everyone semi-healthy right now. (Rucci is at around half health... But with 125 HP, it’s unlikely he'll be done in anytime soon.)
Oliver and Kree dealt 145 and 125 HP damage each, while Rucci missed entirely... And that stupid mutt bit Oliver once again for 70 HP damage. Since the wolf appears to be priming that "hit the first target" attack again, let’s get a little risky and have Rucci meatshield for both Kree AND Oliver while being the sole attacker. The latter two will focus on stuffing burgers down Oliver and Rucci's gullets. (Kree technically has a limit break right now, but his is non-offensive, so we’ll save that for the next turn.)
We get in 229 damage... And Rucci, being the boss he is, eats that blizzard of doom for 34 HP. The wolf's at around 40% HP right now.
Now... Back to our normal attack pattern... We'll have Kree show off his party trick... Which I forget what it’s supposed to do. Oliver and Rucci will pick up the offensive slack for him.
Rucci and Oliver get in 184 and 122 HP smacks and burns respectively, while Kree becomes the boss' chew toy of the minute... His limit break is to boost... Uh... What is that green arrow supposed to do again? Defense?
Hmm... Well, let's have him bait this thing and find out!
Oliver and Rucci get in 181 and 133 HP damage... And the boss doesn't take the delicious bait, instead opting to boost his defense like a sly jerk. Oh well, 25% of the bar left to go. Also, Oliver scored another Limit Break.
Everyone seems to be doing well at the moment, let’s go nuts with offense here.
Rucci gets in 89 HP damage (whelp, there goes that attack boost), Kree gets in- 384 HP?! Okay, well that would explain what his limit break does... And Oliver's limit break gets in 339 HP damage.
Okay, new strategy: Oliver, you play field medic. Rucci, you set up. Kree, you switch places with Rucci and deep fry this hound.
We get in 331 HP damage... But in retrospect, that might have been needlessly risky a maneuver. Thanks to everyone getting hit by an ice bomb, Kree’s down to 59 HP. Let’s switch Rucci and Kree back, have them both attack. And Oliver patch Kree up with Cure.
That time, Rucci dealt 163 HP damage, Kree did 367. And Rucci got to be the chew toy and paid up 66 HP for the privilege of doing so.
Alright, seeing as that HP bar is about as thick as a paperclip now, let's go all-out on offense this round.
Rucci deals 175 HP damage... And Kree finally puts this dog down with a 373 HP plume of fire. Unlike the last few bosses, this one actually doesn’t dissolve/blip away into light. Wonder why?
For our trouble and nearly dying repeatedly, we got 10013 experience and 559 G. And a shiny golden orb once the game leaves the battle screen.
Back in the dungeon, we see a winded wolf sprawled out in the background with ghost boy gawking at it. Swaine, Esther, and Oliver gab a bit...
And some flute music suddenly pierces the howl of the blizzard. Mutty here seems to be taken aback, it seems to have done a good job dragging him back up to his feet.
And then, Siyounan starts to speak... As that one depressing track boots up in the background. He walks up to the wolf... And... Pets it? IT'S WAGGING ITS TAIL?
Hey, Casper! If you and this thing get along so well, couldn't you have done more to keep it from trying to bite our faces off earlier?!
Siyounan explains a few things to Oliver... "He's really nice when he's not pissy, see?" ... Okay, maybe a little more than that given how Esther got a bit surprised after one of his lines...
... And he’s gone again. Wait... That boss had a NAME? ... 'Angureiku'?
And then the screen whites out, and the wolf vanishes too, leaving behind a teal orb.
And then... The game cuts to black and asks if we want to save or not... Let’s opt to do so.
Afterwards, a teleport ring forms... Stepping on it takes us to... The cave entrance... Anyhow, let's save on the overworld and call that an update. (Plus it's a chance to flaunt some battle scars.)
Takeaway Points:
- The Layout of the Snowy Village. This one is kinda small... And circular
| Item Shop and Northern Gate | |
| Model Home Igloos | Bookshop |
| Inn | |
| Southern Gate | |
- General tips for making it through the ice cave:
- Have someone on hand who can use Ice magic to handle those pink-capped mages
- Have someone on hand who can use Fire magic to handle everyone else (except those stingray things, but they’re not terribly threatening on their own anyways)
- If you run into an enemy party with an ice sprite, FOCUS ON THE SPRITE FIRST. Unlike EVERYTHING ELSE in this cave, it is capable of using "I Can't Believe It's Not Mudo!" on your party members.
- Keep a good stock of cheap and expendable healing items on hand (e.x. bread loaves). You *will* burn through most of your party’s MP just fighting off Imagines and using Cure every so often while going from save point to save point even *with* the MP crystals, having something to help you stretch those blue bars a little bit will be a powerful asset.
- Surviving the Ambushing Chickenhound; TL:DR version: Remember that this miniboss just *loves* to spam a "strike the first target" ice move, which will carry on into its first target *in a column* of movement cells, so having one party member per column is an instant non-starter. Hide your frailer members behind your stronger (ideally water/ice-resistant) party members, spam fire attacks, and just remember to heal when needed! And you should find yourself cruising to victory without breaking a sweat.
- Surviving Chilly the Freezehound; TL:DR version: This boss is MUCH harder than the griffin miniboss, and stands a decent chance at eating you alive for a few reasons:
A: He hits significantly harder. B: He has much better turn priority / speed. He would *always* lead off every set of turns with an attack or a defense boost. C: He has more move variety than the griffin did, which offsets his easier to predict “hit first” move. That ice bomb of his appears to affect a contiguous block of 3 cells, and occurs without warning. His defense boost does exactly what you think it would.
Given that your Oliver is likely to have around 150-160 HP at this point if you've been fighting 90% of your battles, it means that you could theoretically lose him in 3 turns. The only truly safe way to ensure that Oliver simply won’t ever kick the bucket on the field is to make sure that his health *never* drops below 75-80 HP (preferably towards the higher end so as not to get screwed over by attack variance), and to heal whenever you get into that health range. Lobo’s most damaging attack that you cannot reliably block is his bite, which was taking off around 70 HP a nip in my battle. As such, if Oliver’s health ever gets below that level, it all boils down to whether or not you can draw attacks with an Imagine away from him, or failing that, defending and hoping the game's RNG decides not to be spiteful. The same strategy applies to the other party members that you have on the field, though ideally, you’ll pick ones that take more than 1-2 hits to get into a danger zone.
Assuming that you're watching your team’s health (and MP!) bars like a hawk, approaching Fluffy is really a matter of endurance. Heal when you have to, and spam fire magic and attacks to whittle down his health little by little. Eventually, victory will be yours for the taking.
- So we finally figured out that Kree's limit break is to make him an arcane god of war. Unfortunately, the limit break only affects the amount of *damage* you deal. He will still be blowing through his limited MP at an insane clip.
- It would appear that the game is shifting progressively from animated to rendered cutscenes as we continue lurching towards the final boss. It's respectable for a tiny screen, but still not quite as mesmerizing as good old-fashioned Ghibli animation.
Stats:
- Oliver: Level 30: 112(/158) HP / 93(/117) MP
- Kree: Level 33: 126(/187) HP / 13(/121) MP (Yes, you’re reading that right.)
- Rucci: Level 33: 129(/244) HP / 99(/135) MP*
- G: 78825.
- Play Time: 69 hours, 58 minutes, 02 seconds.
Next time, we will crest the 70 hour mark of gameplay and get the last of the three stone MacGuffins needed before pursuing the endgame and the Jet-Black Mage of Ni no Kuni.
Oh, and do go and buy a copy of Wrath of the White Witch if you can. It's a bit expensive, yes, and might not be portable or low-res like Jet-Black Mage... Or easily obtainable by PERFECTLY LEGAL MEANS. But it's a charming and colorful world that just begs for you to come along and get lost in it, and a way to tell Level-5 and Studio Ghibli that you want more of it.
