Previously on Batman’s Big Nightmare, Batman found out that he was a special unique snowflake because he’s half-human, half-alien now and Beer’s kind of freaked out about that. We also met Santa Claus and tamed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Dragon.
Today, we’re going to learn about GANDAMU.
Let’s go back to the Earth.
Did I mention that this stuff was cool before? Because it’s pretty cool.
This isn’t where we came from. I could have sworn we left at a point near Mysidia. You see, I’m bringing this up because most of the time when you take the Big Whale between heavenly bodies, you cannot choose where you end up. You usually end up at the last place you were on the planet/moon.
Golbez is going to hack into our ship. I know that blue anywhere!
So she’s literally saying, “Scream”? At least go with “arrrrgh!” or something. This just looks stupid.
Oh, Batman screwed up again?
I’m no longer surprised.
Giant of Bab-il? But we’ve never seen anything like that when we were in the tower at all! We did explore every single floor in it, right?
Mobile Fighter G Gundam – Flying in the Sky
A Gundam? Golbez’s goal in this entire game was to complete his Gundam collection? Well, that’s not too bad!
(Something something the Amano art Giant looks a lot like Alexander something something)
The whole “watch the world burn” thing is not so good, but hey! Golbez has a Gundam now. We only have a shitty whale ship. I think Gundam > Shitty Whale Ship.
Well, you know, it’s not the nicest-looking Gundam, but we can make it better. We have the money and technology to do it!
Who cares? Golbez deserves this after he put the hard work into stealing the crystals from us and winning every time. Let the man have his Gundam.
Red Wings
Eh? What in the world? (You all saw this coming.)
How did you get here?! How did you move your tanks from below the surface to above ground? Aren’t those things super-heavy? I don’t even think the hook we attached to the Enterprise could even hold one of those.
But… But… Dwarves + KARATE = !!!!!!
That could simply render any Gundam useless.
Who else is here? No other country has airships, right?
Now this is just overkill. Dwarf Beard Power + KARATE + Engineer Beard Power? At least let Golbez have
some fun with his Gundam.
…does this mean that the Elder could have un-petrified the twins at any time he wanted? So why did he decide not to? Like I said before, he probably wanted both of them dead. But since this is supposed to be a touchy-feely moment of friendship, he had to bring the twins along otherwise people would’ve been pissed.
Yeah, no one cares about you. Also, you’re hiding behind a young lady again. Remember the time your girlfriend protected you from arrows and she died?
I have to say that I thought this scene was incredibly heartwarming and ended up being such a freaking cool thing.
…how the hell does Cena know about this technological mumbo-jumbo?
Within the Giant
Guys? How can they even
talk to each other? How can Haddock hear us? We’re stuck in a huge ship where no one can hear us! They don’t even have radio!
Regardless, this is what comradery looks like. Your group doesn’t consist of a bunch of dudes working together; you’re all friends. I think this sort of comradery was something I missed in FF13.
Yeah, Haddock’s the one with a brain asking questions. Santa don’t care and gives Haddock the business. “My beard is bigger than yours and you must do what I say! NOW.”
I thought the last pic was pretty awesome.
So basically you’re thrown into the mouth of the Gundam. Or head. Whatever. They don’t say. I think when I was little, I liked this dungeon because every single part of the dungeon is named after a body part. I was really into those stories/games/movies where you explore the human body for some reason. Some mistook this for me wanting to be a doctor. *shrug* I
was pre-med for a while until I realized that I hated everything about it.
I think we’ve landed on the tongue. There’re no villi here.
See what I mean?
Phantasy Star Online 2 Open Beta – Big Varder
I almost wish the Within the Giant theme seeped into the battles. It would’ve been cool.
As for the monsters:
Searchers like to tattle on you if you hit them and they’ll summon other enemies into battle if there’s room for them. Therefore, it’s best to smack them around first before getting rid of other enemies it comes with. In other versions, you’d beat them up because they drop Sirens which helps if you want to hunt tails.
Machines are weak against Lit-3. When you cast lightning spells at it for some reason it starts attacking its party members instead of you.
SPECIAL BEAM CANNONS only use Beam which takes off 10% of your max HP, but you can get rid of them with whatever you want. Lit, Levia, Nuke, etc. For some reason it starts hitting on its allies when you cast Lightning on it. Centaurions are unremarkable as well. Cast whatever you want at it.
MacGiants escaped from McDonald’s and came to the Giant because they wanted to show how much HP they have. They’re also relatively unremarkable. One of them dropped an axe for me, but you know what I think of axes in this version of the game already.
Sometimes I just said “fuck this” and used a summon. And you guys know how much I adore using summons in Final Fantasy. They take so long to work, and in later games they take so long to actually do something. Screw summons. Summons are terrible. I don’t even use them in FFX unless I have to (and that’s the only game I can see them being used in a decent way).
Oh, by the way, Beer has finished learning all of her spells:
In this version, we don’t get Dispel, Shell, or Protect, so Beer is done. If I wanted to, I could kill her off and we can level up Clair a bit.
There’s no such body part called the Passage. This must be either: the urethra, the intestine, or the butt.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Howl of the Gathered
This was an enemy in a treasure chest. It likes to Peep on your party members and then cast Stop on you for reasons. Best to Nuke it before it has a chance to Stop you all. Um, I don’t think this is in the DS version. I heard you can encounter it via hax because the data’s still on the cart, but you can’t encounter it via normal means.
From the butt to the lung. That makes sense.
Also we get blue filter in the middle of the room, so that means Evil is here!
This sounds like what Sailor Senshi would say. Honestly, though… why does everyone need to say something?
Is there a need for this? I mean, really. They’re basically acknowledging that outside of Rubicant, all of the fiends are interchangeable at this point.
But Rubicant took the South Park “I learned something today” and noted that since he beat up John Cena in a 1-on-1 death match, he should attempt to wage a Battle Royal match against Cena and the party instead by teaming up with the other Fiends.
Good ol’ Rubicant~
Hyadain – Four Fiends
Alright, there are two ways to defeat the Four Fiends. One of them involves a glitch.
Method 1: Second Form Glitch
Remember way back when this LP started I mentioned that you could defeat the Mombomb in its first form but I didn’t do it because we didn’t have the means and I didn’t want to grind that much? And then I tried to do it for the Astos (Dark Elf) boss but it didn’t work out well because I only had one mage on my side and he was terrible? Well, I can actually do it now because my party doesn’t suck.
The second form glitch is pretty easy to duplicate. You see, there’s a counter that takes effect whenever you directly attack an enemy. As you keep attacking the enemy and take down its HP, it’ll count down to when it needs to swap forms. If we cast Wall on some of our party members and use spells on them, it’ll reflect onto the enemy. This damage does not have an effect on that counter, so you can comfortably defeat a boss in its first form with its lower HP and prevent it from going into its second form.
This glitch was fixed in the GBA version, iirc.
Method 2: Legitimately
This battle is more of a way to show the player how much they’ve grown since the first time they’ve fought one of the fiends (because you can basically dominate them this time around with 9999-hit spells). Oh, and funny trivia: the way they’re ordered this time is the order in which you fight the fiends in Final Fantasy I. The DS remake decided to say “NO FUN ALLOWED” and put them in the order in which you fought them in Final Fantasy IV.
So I usually like to whack at them with black magic. I don’t like wasting Beer’s Cure 4 spells on something as petty as Milon. Milon’s weak against Fire, so Fire-3 attacks will work against him. He seems to like casting Curse on your party, which isn’t cool because it limits a lot of the stuff you can do.
Rubicante doesn’t give a shit about his cape anymore and displays his legs in full glory. Cast Ice-3 and Levia at him.
Kainazzo doesn’t hide in his shell anymore. Cast Lit-3 and Blitz at it.
Valvalis is boring. Use Lit-3 against her. Seriously, she’s actually weak against Lit-3 because I suppose they didn’t fix a bug where she shares Kainazzo’s weakness.
Yeah, this battle is very little trouble if you’re fighting against them in a regular manner. Abusing the Second Form Glitch is actually somewhat harder because you can’t gang up against the elements like you would here.
This whole “everyone gets something to say” thing is outright
weird to me. Even Rubicant—who seems like he’d be able to say a lengthy speech with decent prose—is reduced to saying something dumb.
By the way, doesn’t this look cool? It reminds me so much of Quintet.
God, I miss Quintet. Oh, by the way…
Persona 4: Golden – Time to Make History
In all of my years playing the SNES version of FF4, I’ve only encountered the D.Machin three times. I didn’t encounter it here. You’ll find it around this very passage I was complimenting. I suppose it’s supposed to be a callback to the Warmech, because that was very hard to encounter in FF1.
In other versions, this enemy’s hard as hell. In this version, it isn’t so bad because it’s weak against Lit-3. It hits really hard, though. You can also use Stop on it so it would stop attacking you for a while.
So… we went from the butt to the lung to the CPU. I’m going to guess this is the Heart. I’d call my CPU “the Brain”, but whatever.
Everything in this Gundam is anatomically correct, right? Right?!
Well, Cena, Hearts are generally the size of your fist.
You know, I think I would have gotten a lot out of this dungeon if it were more organic. Kinda like that one Devil May Cry 3 dungeon.
Phantasy Star Online 2 Open Beta – Dark Ragne (Final Phase)
I vaguely remember having issues with this boss when I was little and playing this for the first time. But it’s an easy battle. It has 30K HP, and it’s supported by the Attacker and Defender bits. The CPU will cast Wall on itself (and you don’t have Dispel in this version so tough shit), so it’s best to use the Dart command at attack it with Shurikens or weapons, or use the Fight command and tough it out. You
could cast Wall on one of your party members and use a spell against them, but you can’t control where the reflected spell is going to go.
Get rid of the Attacker bit and the CPU will start attacking with Globe199. Globe 199 will take your characters out because it deals 9999 damage. There is no “break HP limit” in this so you’re going to have to deal with it using the attack twice. It’s best to take the Defender out first and let the Attacker stay there until the end of the battle.
I’ve also seen it counter physicals with Globe199 so perhaps your best bet is to use a multidamage spell like Quake or Meteo.
I say this but…
I stopped giving a shit a while ago and started attacking it with Rudolph. Because Dragons are bad-ass.
Did we actually accomplish something of
value? :O
More important question:
Where the fuck did Tommy come from? He seems very happy about us winning the boss battle even though he’s on Golbez’s side and he’s not even
here!
Holy shit, we actually did something! Golbez is gloriously pissed that we wrecked his Gundam.
You’ve been a
naughty child! You shall get coal in your stocking this Christmas!
Golbez killed Santa somehow.
…I think Golbez won.
The Lunarians
Wait, nononono, you’re supposed to
finish him.
Santa’s a psychologist now. Yeah, I think we’ve predicted what comes next.
Fuck you, Batman. You are so terrible at your job and you admire Golbez so much that you’ve decided to make The Great Golbez-sama your brother. Pathetic. How the hell does this change them wanting to fight each other to the death, again? There
are stories out there with brother-conflict, even if one of them wasn’t in the right frame of mind at the moment. One brother has his convictions and other has… well, the other’s an idiot, but whatever.
This shit reads like a terrible Soap Opera.
So… midi-chlorians?
GET OVER IT.
Now we’re going in circles. METAL GEAR?! Honestly, if this were voiced, it would be incredibly terrible and people would cry and moan at how bad the dialogue is.
And then you would have been a better character for it. You would, really. Your story of redemption wouldn’t feel as half-assed either.
I feel like this could have been decent character development for both Batman and Golbez, but the conversation doesn’t even go anywhere. Honestly, with the discussion about souls being stained with evil and hatred leading into Judeo-Christian philosophy, they could have done something decent in terms of allusion but nothing comes out of this.
What this means is that even though every person has a will and capacity to frame their own destiny, what they’re saying is that Batman was always going on the path of Light, while Golbez was going down the evil path anyway. Batman hated the genocidal stuff he was doing because he was never ever destined to be a DKnight, and Golbez… well, we won’t know his backstory until we play FF4 DS and The After Years but no one cares about that, right?
I dunno. This entire thing feels incomplete to me. It would have been better if they concentrated on the contrast between the two in terms of a character-driven plot, but instead they go into this “four more crystals, underground!, path of the dark side, GO TO THE MOON” bullshit for the entire game and leave character development in the dust. After a life-changing event in Kain/Edward/Cecil’s lives, the character don’t even grow after that, and that’s a huge problem. I find it interesting that people consider FF4 to have a ton of character development when we’ve seen that it barely has any outside of a life-changing event or a change in a character’s physical appearance.
Even the events that led up to this brother revelation don’t foreshadow it and it comes off as being something that you should simply take at face value. Now if they left all the post-Paladin bullshit out of the story and focused more on how Cecil deals with the changes and how he sought and found his redemption (and it truly should have been harder for him post-Mysidia, imo—you should never ever be easily forgiven for what Cecil did even though you’re all sparkly and blessed with light) and how he deals with his failures, maybe I would have reflected on FF4 more positively, but I can’t. The story really comes off as hackneyed and silly in the end, no matter which version I play.
I think it’s a shame. The first part of the game is actually good, seems partially politically-focused, focuses on Cecil as a character seeking redemption and struggling with his beliefs, and coming in close contact with the people he’s hurt the most (shit, I don’t even know why Rosa unwaveringly sticks with him—she should have some internal battles of her own). After Cecil gets shipwrecked, my desire to play the game wanes because it stops dealing with the stuff I kind of like about the game. Then we get into this brother revelation and they start talking about ethics and stuff and I have to ask “why now, when the game hasn’t come close to talking about this stuff for
hours?”
Feels like a huge hole. If they’d focused on every person’s internal struggles coupled with the source of Evil drawing every kingdom into a world war, then maybe I would like the game a little more.
Golbez getting shit done unlike
someone.
And recruiting people like it’s nobody’s business
because he’s getting shit done.
“Why can’t I be as cool as my brother? I’ve just decided to make him my brother in my dying dream and yet people still think he’s cooler than I am!”
What the hell kind of corny dialogue is this? This is some forced nonsense. Yet again, I feel as though if this were voiced, it would come off as incredibly contrived.
Run!
Behind you where Golbez and Santa went through, maybe?! Are these people blind?
Aw shiet.
Yeah, it isn’t the time for soul-searching and yelling at Tommy for being the traitorous Green Ranger again.
And that’s the end of Golbez’s Gandamu.
Next Time: An awkward romantic scene which isn’t romantic at all.
