Game, set, and match!

This took forever because of the silly final equipment nonsense.

The Glass Desert isn't too bad except for the Shadow Master's and Death Machines. The DM love to hit my group with a party hitting Defense Down spell and the SM loves to hit me with one of Hawkeye's Lv.3 techs that is pretty devastating. The bad thing is that the SM is the enemy guaranteed to drop the Weapon/Armor seeds I need for my group, and the only way to guarantee he'll be the enemy to drop loot is to kill them last.

I actually encountered Zabre Fahr before I thought I would. For sheer sadism, the boss is just before the save point. They were a nasty piece of work and a large part of why most people tend to go Light Class with Duran to get Holy Sabre. She hits really hard with two heads spamming magic and the other hitting me melee. Was not a fun battle and I feel I won on the skin of my teeth.

After that, I farmed the items I needed for my team but as usual, I could not get Kevin's Armor to drop and it took me way longer than I intended to get it. I was about Lv. 58 by the time I finally got it to drop today. From there I entered Dragon Hole and had my final battle with the Darkshine Knight who went all Darth Vader on Duran though it wasn't like the game really kept his identity a secret. He ended up being a real bitch to fight despite having the best gear and high levels just because he loves to spam techs and has way more health than I would care for. With his death he thanks Duran for setting him free and we have an emotional moment before we head into the dungeon proper.

This place was really twisty and turny with its layout. Real easy to get lost, and like the Mana fortress, it is filled with upgraded former bosses. The one that made me the happiest was the rematch with the first crab boss, who is now Holy elemental and is the second boss that makes Dark Sabre useful. With the bosses down, I run into Koren the Crimson Wizard and finally get to meet the Dragon Lord. The Dragon Lord absorbs the power of the Mana Sword, now filled with the combined powers of the eight God Beasts, but just as he begins to fee;l his ascent to godhood is assured, the Mana Goddess tries to put a stop to him, resulting in the DL leaving to finish her off and my team gets to finally have our rematch with Koren.

I am not going to lie, he killed me the first time because I let my health go below 300hp and then discovered he has Ancient which is basically the Meteor spell from FF and Angela's best spell in her Magus class. Spell can pretty much shave off half my parties health on its own and since I don't have any real access to buffs or debuffs, it was a party wipe. Second attempt was better because I discovered I had an item in my inventory that casts Mind Down so that nipped his magic a bit. I really wish I had farmed some Tomanga Oil while I was hunting down the Wood God Beast, that item casts a party wide Reflect spell that trivializes this boss fight. Even with the use of the debuff and some buff items I also found, this fight was still a bit too close for my comfort.

With his defeat Korne laments how he sold his soul to the Dragon Lord to gain magic because he was much like Angela and had no magic talent when he lived in Altia. He uses the last of his magic to end his life and the party is able to rescue Angela's mother who turns out was under Koren's magic influence and doesn't remember trying to sacrifice Angela in her intro. With the dungeon finished, we buy up some supplies and save before heading back to the Mana Holyland.

The place is now overun with Shadow Zero's that love to copy other creatures. the Dark Blue ones are okay because they just cycle through various monsters, but the gray ones are a pain in the ass because they'll take your party's form and have access to all their skills and stats. Not helped that they love to hit whichever character they copy with a debuff spell that lowers all of their stats. I reach the Dragon Lord who has destroyed the Mana Tree/Goddess which at this point is a series tradition as I can't think of a Mana game that doesn't have the Mana Tree destroyed before the game ends until the World of Mana entries. The Fairy is not happy about this circumstances, especially since her life line is the tree and attack the DL only to be smacked away before revealing his true form as a giant mother smurfing Dragon. He blows the party away but then the Fairy uses the last of her power to restore the team and tells them to believe they can win. From here the fight starts.

This guy is a pain in the ass. He likes to cycle through the elements and will only take damage from its opposite. He has access to all magic and has some pretty brutal melee options as well. He also has like five times the health of anything I fought in the final dungeon. He also took me down the first attempt when he did what all Dragons do and used his breath attack to incinerate my team that was at half health at the time. I lack any debuff spells or items, but I did discover I also have an item that works like the heal spell and even better, can be multi-targeted. This helped tremendously as well as the fact the boss kept switching to his Holy Form which made Dark Sabre my MVP spell of the fight. Still it was an uphill battle and he was able to cast Ancient a few times to a few close calls. I was actually surprised when I finally took him down.

The ending was pretty bittersweet, which is typical of the franchise and we got an individual ending for each party member. After that was a cool sequence where we got to watch Flammie travel around the world not too dissimilar to watching the Falcon do the same in VI's ending. I was honestly impressed with the graphics for this sequence. Moving up to 32 Mbits over VI's 24Mbits shows a lot you can do.

Overall, I really liked this game, it's got some issues that I'm grateful the remake fixed and I can see how this game was kind of passed over due to a lot of bugs it has, but honestly I had a blast overall and I'm happy I finally got to finish a game that has taunted me for years. While I will always have a certain nostalgia for SoM, I can see why a lot of people do prefer this entry. A lot of the technical changes between the two entries are certainly for the better in this game. You can hold more items in your menu ring, better replay value, great cast of characters, three really interesting scenarios, generally better boss fights, music is on par with SoM's, and the game is gorgeous. I still plan on picking up the remake to see all the changes, though I have no idea when that will be. I think for the next scenario, I'll do a team that is Hawkeye, Riesz, and Charlotte.

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