Breath of Fire 4 - 0 Exp Part 8: Guardian Spirits (Umadap / Agiel / Azeus / Yeleb)
13Time for the last video before 2016 emerges! It's one of my most anticipated boss battles in the Breath of Fire 4 no experience playthrough!
Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c3ilm03NGBn_GGmnY7aukpm
Initially, I had a bad feeling about this battle. Taking place inside Ershin's mind (and henceforth without Ershin being able to participate; not that we really miss Ershin's presence with Scias being controllable again), it may not be a battle that you have much trouble with in a normal playthrough of the game - the spirits have 1,2K HP each and with the combos at your disposal it really doesn't take that much effort to clean up the field after executing a couple combos. Besides being much more flexible with offence (Nina must've learned Cyclone by now, able to cast superior fusion magic), you would also not care much about the damage dealt back to you - in this playthrough, we do care about it all too much...
There's actually more than one way to do this battle - the cheap one allows you to KO everyone in one single turn without taking any damage. No, it actually doesn't require Cray's Linked Pole or Scias's Render we got from farming fishing stamps either! Said 'cheesy' strategy is displayed at the end of the video.
Instead, I opt to do this the hard way. Scias could technically be Rainbow Trouted to max attack to dish out more damage with his Shining Blade special, but this takes both of his allies' actions. I choose to do something less predictable and start the fight with him in critical HP instead, triggering his Will Rakhasa - this makes Scias start the fight in auto-Last Resort mode, converting all his defence (which is relatively good at lv. 13 with okay armour equipped) into attack. Shining Blade off Biter's 30 atk x 2 hits now OHKOs each of the enemies here.
We should take a closer look at the opposition here. Each corresponds to one of the four elements found in the game (well, I guess there's also holy), which it absorbs and which it has two spells of in its arsenal, while at the same time being weak to the opposite element. Wind and earth are two opposites, as are fire and ice. The spirits' colour / appearance indicates very clearly which one is which.
What the colours fail to illustrate is what spells each foe uses at each stage, and what is triggered by destroying each of them:
fire:Umadap (kill - wind:Azeus loses regen; ice:Agiel - stronger Ice Blast)
ice:Agiel (kill - earth:Yeleb loses regen; fire:Umadap - AoE Fireblast)
wind:Azeus (kill - ice:Agiel loses regen; earth:Yeleb - ST Stone Pillar)
earth:Yeleb (kill - fire:Umadap loses regen; wind:Azeus - AoE Cyclone)
Something I made for myself to have a clearer idea of what threats open up upon killing one of the enemies here (which Scias does reliably enough, unless struck by a physical attack). In the brackets, I show which spirit loses HP regeneration when a turn ends when its ally is destroyed (the next one counting clockwise loses the regen every single time) and which spirit starts using generally more advanced and threatening magic (fire-ice and wind-earth are the relations here). As you can see, the icy spirit never really uses any AoE magic and is therefor the least threatening foe here.
The earth elemental boss, Yeleb, starts with AoE Rock Blast right off the bat before anyone actually dies so I make it my priority to SB it with Scias ASAP. Cray (one of the bulkier units right now, but he really needs maximum defence from armour + accessory to withstand a single physical blow from the bosses) uses a Vitamin on Scias, while Nina casts Icicle on the fire-elemental Umadap, 2HKOing in the first 2 turns.
The first turn can be quite risky for two main reasons. Firstly, everyone on the team is apprenticed under Rwolf, who inexplicably continues to provide characters with a first turn during most turns (and seems quite reliable in this function) so you see things like 0 agility Cray outspeeding the 35 agility spirits (Nina isn't much better with her 19 speed). If outsped, we are forced to try and survive attacks from four enemies at once, and those could be any attack directed at any unit. Secondly, Scias isn't quite healthy enough to survive physical blows after Rakhasa/Last Resort, getting OHKO'd by physicals should one target him (his dodgetanking is still pretty decent and comparable to Nina, yet nothing to be relied on). If Scias is dead, not only do we have to resurrect him with Ammonia and restore him back to full HP but he isn't OHKOing things anymore either.
(out of space; continued in the comments section)
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