MOTHER 3 (Hard Mode) - Boss 21: Masked Man #1 (+ Pigmask Colonel & Majors)
5Pigmask Colonel & Majors battle starts at 0:57, Masked Man battle starts at 5:44
Basically a two-part battle, since you get no breaks between the Pigmasks and the Masked Man.
The Colonel starts with a Shield, but on the first turn tends to use a PSI Shield Device to give everyone one of those. Shield types can't be stacked, dummy. The Majors tend to be bigger trouble though, being able to stick time bombs to a character, or possibly numbing them with a joint strike. They also deal a lot of damage with beams. The Colonel on the other hand only has one weak attack.
As for the Masked Man... this one's a doozy. First things first, well, he attacks twice per turn. That's bad! Set up buffs and debuffs, however you can ignore Shields and Counters, since at certain points, he will use the Shield Killer to get rid of that. His beam att- action also ignores buffs/debuffs for 80 damage unshielded. Also, if you are healing around the first time he uses the Shield Killer, let your HP scroll up, as he is about to use PK Love Gamma! It does around 160-190 damage, which is a lot, even for this point in the game. He can also use the Alpha and Beta versions, but Gamma is guaranteed after the first Shield Killer usage, so you WILL have to take the full brunt of it.
Make sure that Lucas has Lifeup Omega to restore everyone's HP by this point. Which you should probably have if you were up to 45 for the Barrier Trio, since Lucas learns Lifeup Omega at level 50. Not only that, but Heftyheads in the cave right before this place have a 3% chance of dropping Lucas's Mystical Stick, which I am obviously grinding for on Hard Mode, so you should hit level 50 easily here.
The Masked Man can also use a heavily damaging Thunder attack to deal 100 damage to 3 random party members, however if any Thunder attack hits Lucas now, it'll be reflected back. You can still get unlucky and have everyone be targeted but him.
Lastly, he has one of the hardest themes in the game to combo, the infamous 29/16 time signature "Strong One (Masked Man)". Don't feel bad for not getting a high combo if you can't do it. It's way harder than the original "Strong One" than it sounds.
Download the fan translation patch here: https://mother3.fobby.net/
Patch it yourself with a ROM of Mother 3. The patch download comes bundled in with the patcher.
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