Let's Play Riviera: Chapter 8

I like Eins, but now, it's about risks.

Anyway, everyone just says positive things about how they'll totally still be alive tomorrow. How positive of them.

Oh thanks I wasn't really sure.

See what I mean? By using The Promised Land to fake people out for the last chapter, they pretty much blew it for having a cool final chapter subtitle.

And it turns out the Maze of Shadows is a palette swap of Chapter 1. Effort! Okay so not all of it is but it still seems pretty lazy to me.

There are a bunch of chained rocks you can look at to somehow trigger conversations about how Ein realizes he was a moron the first time he came here.

There, Fia being motivational. Is that good enough for you?

Now back to screenshotting just about every instance of this Lina portrait in the game. (So yeah, there are apparently earthquakes for some reason.)

Then we get attacked by a BOMBER KID who uses an ATOMIC BOMB Break Out. Uh, what. After the battle, the ground shakes really badly and we fall.

Do we really not know what a bomb is? I swear there were Bomber Kids earlier, or maybe that's just because they look identical to all the other dwarf guy enemies.

So anyway, we have to be careful not to activate his Break Out to proceed.

Which is to say, you want that round thing OUT of your face.

So after going up some stairs and winding paths, we actually get to the Maze of Shadows proper in... the fourth area? This chapter might be shorter than I remember.

Hi there.

That's a pretty great answer. Oh and she gave up HER FUTURE to become a Grim Angel, whatever that means. Ultimately, it's just an excuse for her to be dumb and follow Hector. For which we shall beat her up.

But after the battle, she runs away. Geez.

Now we're in this Ruby Tier place with creepy music.

No, you're really not.

We find some black feathers and realize that hey those black feathers in Yggdrasil might have been Malice's, not Ledah's. But I'm not sure how that's significant at all.

What is this, a Mega Man game?! Yeah, so we're pretty much refighting the Accursed in the Ruby, Emerald, and Sapphire Tiers, except now they're called Dark Progenitors.

Rose is gonna be pissed when she finds out cats can't write.

So really, what the frick IS a Dark Progenitor?

Well, I didn't actually care, but thanks anyway Ein.

After the Sapphire Tier, we loop back to the Ruby Tier and have to maze around to find the rest of the Dark Projerkators. And by maze around, I mean take random warps until you find all of them.

Along the way, each of our party members gets all sentimental, but evidently the only one I cared about enough to show was Rose. Oh well.

Soon after we defeat Dark Death...

OH NO I DID NOT THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN (also, please shake monitor)

Never heard that one before.

The gods don't care about pixel people. And for that, we must battle.

Man, when was the last time I took a battle screenshot? Anyway, mystery HP is never a good sign.

(Actually, it's more lazy coding than anything - it shows the real value once it goes below 10000. And his HP is only slightly more than that.)

As for the battle, he pretty much just has a changing element gimmick, which is really annoying because it makes Lina's extremely broken Stardust attack not be effective most of the time.

You've been extremely bad about that lately, yes.

Oh. Well, nuts. I thought I had a pretty good chance, but according to Malice, she already won. How'd I let that happen?

Uh. What?

EXTREMELY GRAPHIC SCENE REMOVED

And Malice dies somehow.

INSERT SUMMONING HERE

Maybe you shouldn't have killed Lina then, she was like my most powerful member. :C

Also this guy is a jerk, who's surprised.

So now it's time for the final battle with Ultima Jerk. Come on, crew, let's -

...:<

She's pretty much the same deal as Hector but with more HP, different music, and less annoying elemental forms. (And NOT LINA. And also I was running out of weapon uses.)

That's right. You fade out dramatically while screaming weirdly.

And so on. Seth-Rah doesn't exactly admit we're cool before disappearing forever, but hey, what can you expect.

Not with that picture (and this crazy music), it's not. Yes, Seth-Rah was a load-bearing boss. Although, technically, I guess it was just Seth. But then we get warped out or something.

Oh right, you. Wait, did I actually make a promise or did I just say I'd save Riviera a lot?

OH GOD GHOST LINA DON'T HAUNT ME

(Yeah, Ursula just revived her and that's taken in the middle of her fading in from white. But can you even imagine what kind of antics Ghost Lina would entail?)

So Ursula is kind of disappearing because Seth disappeared. Not sure how that works, but that's rough.