Kid Icarus: Uprising -- #12. Chapter 10. The Wish Seed
0See, that wasn't TOO much of an intermission, now was it?
Make a wish:
twitter.com/yuugijoou
discord.gg/bKT9pRW
(Just don't expect it to be granted... unless your wish happens to be "more time to pester the queen!")
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I'm sure absolutely everyone would've been worried about where some of the minor and inconsequential googaws I got from Together mode came from or why my Treasure Hunt was suddenly way more filled in when it came specifically to some of the multiplayer aspects.
N-No? No one? So then we wasted all that time for nothing?!
... ... ...I sure didn't. I was too busy having fun shooting people. (And generally not winning.) Deal with it!
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I had originally intended to bring the Flintlock Staff to the previous chapter, but the Sacred Treasures took over there and showed us all a good time instead, so that had to be shelved for awhile. You might also have noticed it as being the weapon Dark Pit spawned in with in one of my Light vs. Dark battles in the intermission.
It has extreme power and long range with charged shots that travel nearly instantaneously, but possess no homing capacity whatsoever. It's literally a gun being held unsafely until it's time to fire. So it should come as no surprise that it's a dedicated sniping weapon, even among its weapon class.
It takes a really long time to charge up and its melee strikes are the weakest in the whole game.
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So anyway, we bookended that whole "Underworld Invasion" thing by beating Medusa and... ... ... oh, right. She got Ganon-banned by a surprisingly colorful lord of the underworld who decided NOW was the time to pull rank. I mean, it makes sense and all if we're leaning on the doorstep of certain mythologies as it is... but then where's he been all this time?
This is the second canonical game in this universe, and he waited through the entire first act of this one before making a power move? And don't tell me that he doesn't love the attention, because we got that message loud and clear within seconds of meeting him. Then again, who doesn't love a needlessly circuitous plan now and again to really pull the rug out from under everyone?
It just seems weird that two squabbling (seemingly?) minor goddesses would embroil the entirety of Underworld, Skyworld, AND the Overworld (that last one also known as "Earth" and "where the humans live") in their petty sibling rivalry when they're demonstrably not even principally important to the cosmology of this world.
Then again, given that we're borrowing from classical mythology anyway, maybe that's EXACTLY on point.
I mean, Poseidon is basically a footnote who came to rubberstamp a "you do all the work" plan while still managing to flex some unseen authority over Palutena and then not be seen or heard from except as a means to reach our next destination, and he's supposed to be one of the "big three" of his pantheon alongside Hades. Wait, where the Zeus IS everyone even now?
The gods must be lazy.
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Chapter 10: The Wish Seed
Except for Hades. Now that the man behind the curtain has seen fit to be paid attention, he's being way more proactive about things. That's exactly how we like our villains in works of fiction! (I'm not even going to crack open the old chestnut about more modern belief systems allegorizing death and afterlife gods as automatically evil. Literally worse than... ... ... who is... "Stan"?)
Anyway, we saved the world from Medusa or something, but there's no actual vacuum in leadership over the forces that were doing the troublemaking, so... let's have some wacky adventures! There apparently exists a well-known legendary wish-granting seed! We don't even have to collect seven of them or follow any arcane rules... just go get it! Before those bad guys do!
If you get caught up in the action, it's easy to miss the visualization of Hades's wish on the bottom screen.
I like how we basically get all the way there, and in the final few stretches, finally examine the overriding logic of it all. And then proceed to fall down about three flights of slippery slope towards no possibly good conclusion.
Good thing we solve all our problems by shooting them around here!
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BOSS: The Immortal PHOENIX
This guy is highly mobile and keen to fight from a distance. Except when he isn't. Remember the jump pad in the center, or you'll feel the heat!
So... a lingering side note here is that the Wish Seed is actually IN the battle, but it's a fake. And it WILL explode violently. That's not just a cutscene joke for afterwards, you can use it to your advantage in battle! You'll even get a little sidebar remark about it from our rather chatty group telepathy session... but I decided that the version you get for NOT messing with the Seed the whole time is probably less common and moderately more amusing.
Also, it's not always easy to get a hyper-mobile kind of boss like the Phoenix to cooperate with using it as a source of extra damage.