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Poison Pink: Harshu's/Ashley's Tale
That took me a while. I sort of stalled before the final stratum and then again before the final boss. I have an explanation only for the final boss. Anyway, spoilers for the entirety of Harshu's/Ashley's side of the story. ... I don't think I spend much time talking about the story itself though, as usual. Still, I'm sure I've casually spoiled one or two things, so it's best to assume this is literally a detailed plot summary as far as spoilers go.
Ashley is such an amazing character, man. Tanking things when she shouldn't be tanking, doing way more damage than Reyna or Glynne regardless of if we're doing magic or punching... and I mean this is at the very beginning of the game too, so it's not like she's overlevelled from having boatloads of heals or anything (yet). But yeah, Reyna is Dudu the Floatie. This means I can't hear him without thinking about a blow-up manatee beach toy. ALSO THESE MAGIQUARIUS ENEMIES. I forgot about them. They are like fucking shark Patamons attached to furless dogs or something. With shark tails.
So on the first stratum boss stage, I didn't see the little torch enemies at all at first. Oops. Speaking of this stage, I had to restart it twice because I kept messing up. The first time, the ugly stupid floating armors who take ages to walk towards you in their attack animation (animations off time, babe) ganged up on Glynne and killed him. I need Glynne to break Otakuphant's (GOING WITH ATLUS'S NAME BECAUSE WTF IS OTTAKUUFAN) Demon Aura. On the second try Glynne actually got fractured by the second torch and then killed by the armors again.
Now, that third time. I sniped those tiny torches expertly with Reyna (Palflamma or whatever) and Nina (Palgred or whatever... what is pal) before proceeding forth. Except Harshu and Glynne both got inflicted with Bleed anyway. Fuckers. I just stood around playing with the boss with Reyna and Nina while I waited for that to wear off. Also jeez, I had to tank out his heals so much. At least the Reyna+Glynne combo overkilled him. I'd be super mad if it didn't after all that.
Recruited Ares after that! Team complete time. Sort of. I thought that maybe recruiting someone like Irina might be nice for the extra heals since Harshu does have all these other cool things she could be doing instead of healing a bunch of failures (and by failures I really just mean Glynne -- Reyna surpassed Ashley's level in like the second stage, Ares proved her worth in my previous playthrough of Ashley's story, and Nina's just real nice to have around when you have no dark if you can keep her level up).
Man, Shapeshifter. I wanted to kill him with Ares since she's hard to level up early on but gets so amazing later, but true to my memories everyone chooses to attack her over anything else. This is only a good thing once she gets her evades. What's that, Shapeshifter? Nina's right in your face? Time to wander around her and kill Ares! So Nina killed him instead because he killed Ares. Decided right here that yeah, I did want another healer.
I had decided before even starting Olifen's story that I'd be doing Desert with Ashley's team. And ugh, this first stage was so bad. I failed to overkill a bee and all three goatjerks, and the friggin' Cancer Gigases decided it'd be a good idea to inflict Fracture on 3/4 characters I had left by that point. Ugh. I did get all the chests though, and only failed to overkill those four enemies. Reyna classchange get! I was only waiting on Glynne's at this point, and unrelated I was in desperate need of a secondary healer with Cura Aqua. Just in time, I got to a level where Ashley could equip this staff I had sold from Olifen's route that had Cura Aqua on it. f yeah.
Friggin' Cancer Gigas haxing the height limitations. Seriously weird. He goes up half on this 5h thing from 3h, punches Nina on the 5h, and looking at his movement range he can't get further onto the 5h no matter what. That's just weird. So... I put Ares over there so he wouldn't leave, since I didn't want to have to go around and smack him with Harshu. But then he ran away backwards anyway. :(
Like you have no idea how much I hate these Desert stages and their special requirements. I still got that Cancer Gigas despite him running off, but that was the stage where you have to capture/kill ONLY the two Cancer Gigas. That's just scary. I mean it's way easier with Harshu than with Olifen... in fact it was actually pretty easy and I probably could have overkilled all the enemies if I was careful (couldn't do that with Olifen). But it's just scary, because it's so easy to mess up here.
Sooo yeah, Terranus... Hilarious. Ares bleedattacks him (fails to inflict but oh well). He counters... I totally expect the counterattack to be a headslash but then he seems to linger there with his butt in her face, and then his horse kicks her out of nowhere. Derp. Failing with Bleed Attack didn't really matter anyway, he was a pretty easy overkill even without it.
I kind of like Ignis's boss stage requirements. I can handle capturing one of every enemy, yo. In fact I only messed up on overkilling one of the three Araneas, so f yeah me. But that Gem Phantasma I never got to capture. :( I'll never forget you!
Ignis time is excitement time because Ignis is a good song. I'm glad it played for Dahlia Regina too. It seemed to fit really well. I don't really get my attachment to this song but it is there. I still hate Ignis's Demon Aura though. Have to hit her with a slash attack, a strike attack, and a pierce attack. Who has time for that? Not me, that's who! So I inflicted Bleed on her after breaking it. She's so vulnerable to it I don't even have to try hard to inflict it. Mede Aqua was doing 222 damage anyway.
DEUS GURGES TIME. GURGLE GURGLE. 'cept it's Gergus I guess but gurugesu, man. This started out a bit rough, with at least four enemies on you at all times. At least they were all melee aside from the god awful bees. Stupid bees! Near the end they messed with me hard, because there were 3 left and they were all one square away from each other so I couldn't move anywhere and they took forever to die and constantly paralyzed people. Why does negstatus get to cancel posstatus but posstatus can't cancel negstatus? :(
I also freaked out a bit after I overkilled Deus Gergus because I did it right between the two pillars, so it was impossible to get past him... so I looked to the left for a path around and flipped a table because there is no path, just lava. Since I only had one side of him to access I couldn't capture him... or so I thought. But thankfully there is, in fact, a path around to the right. Phew.
So fighting Persona... Most of my dudes died pretty early because Reyna and Glynne got confused AND I forgot until after ending her very last turn that Nina could cure mental status. So I one man armied it with Harshu. I figured this was probably a good idea anyways since I had to eventually overkill Doom Shade and that's the hardest boss to overkill (though a very easy boss in general). Also, man, Harshu's story is really structured a lot more like a normal JRPG would be. You have your initial quest, which is GO SAVE LETO. Once you find Leto and shit goes down and he dies, we come up with an excuse to keep going from revelations here. ... which is to SAVE LETO WITH PERFECT PERFUME or something but whatever you get the point.
Stats after that last between-stratum boss:
Harshu - Lv.23
Reyna - Lv.18
Glynne - Lv.17
Irina - Lv.11
Nina - Lv.11
Vivian - Lv.11
Ares - Lv.15 (I don't get why she's last on this list)
Oh my gosh. These enemies are suuuch a jerk. I inflict Bleed on like three enemies, and they're ready to be overkilled. I target the flame jerk first because he has Release AND THEN THE STUPID HEEFLER GOES AND EXECUTES HIM. MY GOD. CAN I NEVER ESCAPE THE ASSHOLERY OF ENEMIES THAT MESS WITH BOUND ENEMIES.
And more jerkery happens later. I can stop this Thiefler from getting to this chest, so I get in that position and smack him with Ashley... and miss. Fuck. Okay, her next turn is my last chance. I completely overkill it with her special attack, so that's good. EXCEPT THEN THE FUCKING. LANTERNA GOES UP AND RELEASES IT AND IT GETS ITS TURN BEFORE ANY OF MY DUDES DO AND IT GETS THE CHEST ;~;
Less tears, more derp. I went through all this caution and stuff on this stage before Doom Shade... I overkilled an Arma Machina specifically so one of the Lapis Cures would use Release and be incapable of using it again, so I could then first overkill the Lapis Cure that still had Release so I'd be safe... because I thought I had to capture both Lapis Cures. Oops. I didn't even get to engage with the Ec Araneas... and I wanted to Ashleybuff for ages for more Doom Shade insurance.
That insurance was not necessary, though. I went into the Death Falx/Doom Shade (AND YES THE DER FALX TYPO IS STILL THERE GOOD JOB GUYZ) with 296 Attack at Level 28. Alright. The initial Punishment from the front did 377 damage... that's good but it also means I probably have to be real close to 1, right? Alright. Holy Attack from the side did 365 which was nice to know. I was really tiptoey about this, even shooting him twice with Irina for 18 damage to get him down to 19 health and then I was like, okay. I need to get him out of this corner and bash his skull in from behind. But he wouldn't let me and then I gave up and used Punishment from the side and did 433 damage. Um. Okay. It's not like I had levelled up or anything either. Eat that, Death Falx.
Leo Rex! That's totally King Bellion's original name. It's like T-Rex but a lion. At this point I had been up like all day and was too sleepy to care about anything anymore, let alone overkilling a boss I'd be fighting at least once more in a different route. Somehow accidentally overkilled him anyway. All that HP for nothing. Poor Leorex. He'll never be notable.
Before final battle stats:
Harshu - Lv.29
Reyna - Lv.20
Glynne - Lv.20
Irina - Lv.14
Nina - Lv.12
Vivian - Lv.12
Ares - Lv.19
Now... the reason for the delay... I actually had every intention of beating the game the same day I killed King Bellion despite the tired, because it's not like the final battle takes much thought, right? Besides, Reproduction is still a fucking amazing song. But just as cleared through all the normal enemies and was about to go after the final boss himself, the game froze on me while trying to load the battle animation. ARE YOU SERIOUS I MEAN REALLY. This is still not as bad as when it froze on me in English just before I killed the finalfinal boss (like she had some flimsy 300 or something health left, and the fight itself is like ten million times longer to begin with). But still, ugh.
So today I finally went back and punched him out with Harshu. And by that I mean a bunch of people died so I summoned an Ec Aranea and a Lapis Cure and beat the carp out of him and his friends so EAT THAT BRO. This boss is just not geared towards Harshu's team. Resists strike and pierce, man. And Ares was one of the people who died so I lost muh slashbro. Good thing I was prepared with a beloved vaginaspider.
And the time on my clear data save was... 13:37. Aww yeah.
Ashley is such an amazing character, man. Tanking things when she shouldn't be tanking, doing way more damage than Reyna or Glynne regardless of if we're doing magic or punching... and I mean this is at the very beginning of the game too, so it's not like she's overlevelled from having boatloads of heals or anything (yet). But yeah, Reyna is Dudu the Floatie. This means I can't hear him without thinking about a blow-up manatee beach toy. ALSO THESE MAGIQUARIUS ENEMIES. I forgot about them. They are like fucking shark Patamons attached to furless dogs or something. With shark tails.
So on the first stratum boss stage, I didn't see the little torch enemies at all at first. Oops. Speaking of this stage, I had to restart it twice because I kept messing up. The first time, the ugly stupid floating armors who take ages to walk towards you in their attack animation (animations off time, babe) ganged up on Glynne and killed him. I need Glynne to break Otakuphant's (GOING WITH ATLUS'S NAME BECAUSE WTF IS OTTAKUUFAN) Demon Aura. On the second try Glynne actually got fractured by the second torch and then killed by the armors again.
Now, that third time. I sniped those tiny torches expertly with Reyna (Palflamma or whatever) and Nina (Palgred or whatever... what is pal) before proceeding forth. Except Harshu and Glynne both got inflicted with Bleed anyway. Fuckers. I just stood around playing with the boss with Reyna and Nina while I waited for that to wear off. Also jeez, I had to tank out his heals so much. At least the Reyna+Glynne combo overkilled him. I'd be super mad if it didn't after all that.
Recruited Ares after that! Team complete time. Sort of. I thought that maybe recruiting someone like Irina might be nice for the extra heals since Harshu does have all these other cool things she could be doing instead of healing a bunch of failures (and by failures I really just mean Glynne -- Reyna surpassed Ashley's level in like the second stage, Ares proved her worth in my previous playthrough of Ashley's story, and Nina's just real nice to have around when you have no dark if you can keep her level up).
Man, Shapeshifter. I wanted to kill him with Ares since she's hard to level up early on but gets so amazing later, but true to my memories everyone chooses to attack her over anything else. This is only a good thing once she gets her evades. What's that, Shapeshifter? Nina's right in your face? Time to wander around her and kill Ares! So Nina killed him instead because he killed Ares. Decided right here that yeah, I did want another healer.
I had decided before even starting Olifen's story that I'd be doing Desert with Ashley's team. And ugh, this first stage was so bad. I failed to overkill a bee and all three goatjerks, and the friggin' Cancer Gigases decided it'd be a good idea to inflict Fracture on 3/4 characters I had left by that point. Ugh. I did get all the chests though, and only failed to overkill those four enemies. Reyna classchange get! I was only waiting on Glynne's at this point, and unrelated I was in desperate need of a secondary healer with Cura Aqua. Just in time, I got to a level where Ashley could equip this staff I had sold from Olifen's route that had Cura Aqua on it. f yeah.
Friggin' Cancer Gigas haxing the height limitations. Seriously weird. He goes up half on this 5h thing from 3h, punches Nina on the 5h, and looking at his movement range he can't get further onto the 5h no matter what. That's just weird. So... I put Ares over there so he wouldn't leave, since I didn't want to have to go around and smack him with Harshu. But then he ran away backwards anyway. :(
Like you have no idea how much I hate these Desert stages and their special requirements. I still got that Cancer Gigas despite him running off, but that was the stage where you have to capture/kill ONLY the two Cancer Gigas. That's just scary. I mean it's way easier with Harshu than with Olifen... in fact it was actually pretty easy and I probably could have overkilled all the enemies if I was careful (couldn't do that with Olifen). But it's just scary, because it's so easy to mess up here.
Sooo yeah, Terranus... Hilarious. Ares bleedattacks him (fails to inflict but oh well). He counters... I totally expect the counterattack to be a headslash but then he seems to linger there with his butt in her face, and then his horse kicks her out of nowhere. Derp. Failing with Bleed Attack didn't really matter anyway, he was a pretty easy overkill even without it.
I kind of like Ignis's boss stage requirements. I can handle capturing one of every enemy, yo. In fact I only messed up on overkilling one of the three Araneas, so f yeah me. But that Gem Phantasma I never got to capture. :( I'll never forget you!
Ignis time is excitement time because Ignis is a good song. I'm glad it played for Dahlia Regina too. It seemed to fit really well. I don't really get my attachment to this song but it is there. I still hate Ignis's Demon Aura though. Have to hit her with a slash attack, a strike attack, and a pierce attack. Who has time for that? Not me, that's who! So I inflicted Bleed on her after breaking it. She's so vulnerable to it I don't even have to try hard to inflict it. Mede Aqua was doing 222 damage anyway.
DEUS GURGES TIME. GURGLE GURGLE. 'cept it's Gergus I guess but gurugesu, man. This started out a bit rough, with at least four enemies on you at all times. At least they were all melee aside from the god awful bees. Stupid bees! Near the end they messed with me hard, because there were 3 left and they were all one square away from each other so I couldn't move anywhere and they took forever to die and constantly paralyzed people. Why does negstatus get to cancel posstatus but posstatus can't cancel negstatus? :(
I also freaked out a bit after I overkilled Deus Gergus because I did it right between the two pillars, so it was impossible to get past him... so I looked to the left for a path around and flipped a table because there is no path, just lava. Since I only had one side of him to access I couldn't capture him... or so I thought. But thankfully there is, in fact, a path around to the right. Phew.
So fighting Persona... Most of my dudes died pretty early because Reyna and Glynne got confused AND I forgot until after ending her very last turn that Nina could cure mental status. So I one man armied it with Harshu. I figured this was probably a good idea anyways since I had to eventually overkill Doom Shade and that's the hardest boss to overkill (though a very easy boss in general). Also, man, Harshu's story is really structured a lot more like a normal JRPG would be. You have your initial quest, which is GO SAVE LETO. Once you find Leto and shit goes down and he dies, we come up with an excuse to keep going from revelations here. ... which is to SAVE LETO WITH PERFECT PERFUME or something but whatever you get the point.
Stats after that last between-stratum boss:
Harshu - Lv.23
Reyna - Lv.18
Glynne - Lv.17
Irina - Lv.11
Nina - Lv.11
Vivian - Lv.11
Ares - Lv.15 (I don't get why she's last on this list)
Oh my gosh. These enemies are suuuch a jerk. I inflict Bleed on like three enemies, and they're ready to be overkilled. I target the flame jerk first because he has Release AND THEN THE STUPID HEEFLER GOES AND EXECUTES HIM. MY GOD. CAN I NEVER ESCAPE THE ASSHOLERY OF ENEMIES THAT MESS WITH BOUND ENEMIES.
And more jerkery happens later. I can stop this Thiefler from getting to this chest, so I get in that position and smack him with Ashley... and miss. Fuck. Okay, her next turn is my last chance. I completely overkill it with her special attack, so that's good. EXCEPT THEN THE FUCKING. LANTERNA GOES UP AND RELEASES IT AND IT GETS ITS TURN BEFORE ANY OF MY DUDES DO AND IT GETS THE CHEST ;~;
Less tears, more derp. I went through all this caution and stuff on this stage before Doom Shade... I overkilled an Arma Machina specifically so one of the Lapis Cures would use Release and be incapable of using it again, so I could then first overkill the Lapis Cure that still had Release so I'd be safe... because I thought I had to capture both Lapis Cures. Oops. I didn't even get to engage with the Ec Araneas... and I wanted to Ashleybuff for ages for more Doom Shade insurance.
That insurance was not necessary, though. I went into the Death Falx/Doom Shade (AND YES THE DER FALX TYPO IS STILL THERE GOOD JOB GUYZ) with 296 Attack at Level 28. Alright. The initial Punishment from the front did 377 damage... that's good but it also means I probably have to be real close to 1, right? Alright. Holy Attack from the side did 365 which was nice to know. I was really tiptoey about this, even shooting him twice with Irina for 18 damage to get him down to 19 health and then I was like, okay. I need to get him out of this corner and bash his skull in from behind. But he wouldn't let me and then I gave up and used Punishment from the side and did 433 damage. Um. Okay. It's not like I had levelled up or anything either. Eat that, Death Falx.
Leo Rex! That's totally King Bellion's original name. It's like T-Rex but a lion. At this point I had been up like all day and was too sleepy to care about anything anymore, let alone overkilling a boss I'd be fighting at least once more in a different route. Somehow accidentally overkilled him anyway. All that HP for nothing. Poor Leorex. He'll never be notable.
Before final battle stats:
Harshu - Lv.29
Reyna - Lv.20
Glynne - Lv.20
Irina - Lv.14
Nina - Lv.12
Vivian - Lv.12
Ares - Lv.19
Now... the reason for the delay... I actually had every intention of beating the game the same day I killed King Bellion despite the tired, because it's not like the final battle takes much thought, right? Besides, Reproduction is still a fucking amazing song. But just as cleared through all the normal enemies and was about to go after the final boss himself, the game froze on me while trying to load the battle animation. ARE YOU SERIOUS I MEAN REALLY. This is still not as bad as when it froze on me in English just before I killed the finalfinal boss (like she had some flimsy 300 or something health left, and the fight itself is like ten million times longer to begin with). But still, ugh.
So today I finally went back and punched him out with Harshu. And by that I mean a bunch of people died so I summoned an Ec Aranea and a Lapis Cure and beat the carp out of him and his friends so EAT THAT BRO. This boss is just not geared towards Harshu's team. Resists strike and pierce, man. And Ares was one of the people who died so I lost muh slashbro. Good thing I was prepared with a beloved vaginaspider.
And the time on my clear data save was... 13:37. Aww yeah.