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Originally recorded: December 13, 2024
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Funny enough, this is actually the first time I've ever streamed on a Friday. Usually I'm busy with other stuff but not this time. So I took the opportunity to come up with this episode's title in advance. It's not like anything really unexpected happened.

In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't try to power through to the end on Thursday. While the last bit of dungeon crawling didn't take me all that long, I did need to backtrack to the sixth floor to open the gate to the final floor. On the plus side, that gave me the opportunity to complete one of the puzzles I'd missed due to not having the right item on me. In the end, this ended up being a real game changer -- since I finished the game with the requisite 90 points to get the good ending. In other words, if I hadn't needed to back track, I would've finished the game with 89. Truly a heart-breaking scenario.

The final boss fight, on the other hand, was truly harrowing. I somehow discovered an exploit for the boss's second form that caused it to disappear, thereby making it incapable of attacking me -- and all it cost me was the Egg Bomb that was taking up space in my inventory. However, from my perspective, this seemed to make the final form invincible... and still fully capable of attacking me. But then, I made a startling discovery: Diacute stacks*. That was the *REAL game-changer. The only reason I died after that was because I was slacking on defense and healing.

The secret boss fight gave me way less trouble, especially when I discovered that you could use items to avoid his "life leech" attack. I do wish that I'd realized sooner that you could actually fight him with Camus, though. The escape sequence was a nice touch too, though I was a bit worried that I couldn't save the game after beating "the Dark Prince".

All in all, I'd call this another game that I "don't regret playing": a prime example of a 7/10 for me. The dungeon crawling aspect was annoying, the random encounters made things ten times worse, but the unique combat system and the Puyo Puyo charm made things palatable. Unfortunately, it looks like the other versions of this game -- as well as all versions of the sequels -- utilize a more traditional turn-based combat system... so I can't really say that I have much of an inclination to seek them out. The Super Famicom reimagining does have a third-person perspective for the actual dungeon-crawling aspect of the game, though.

With that in mind, I think I'll stick to following Arle's adventures via the Puyo Puyo series instead. Compile Heart did recently announce a new game in the series with Sega's blessing that looked kind of interesting though. Maybe I'll check that out someday...