Game 10 - 3x3 Eyes Seima Korinden Part 2 (Final)

This game ends in failure, which is perhaps the best it deserves. But let's go through the steps anyway.

The last post left off with me heading to Mexico to find the remaining keys to sealing off the pillar of light. The primary location in Mexico is Teotihuacan, where you have to visit the temples of the Sun and Moon in order to gain the favor of the gods -- essentially the same story as in Greece.

The dungeon is very long, and the encounters aren't very interesting. Some of them are from the early parts of the game, but no matter what the encounter is you can beat it by using Yakumo's Tuchao magic, one of Pai's summons, and an attack from Jake. This is true for basically the rest of the game -- even the strongest monsters in the final dungeon fall to a single spell from Yakumo or Pai. Sometimes when you first get to a dungeon the monsters will be faster than you and be able to get in one attack, but since you regain HP on level up you don't even really have to heal.

Eventually we reach the first bosses of the game, over halfway through the game:

The game's first boss

These are three Inca or Mayan priests of some sort. On my first try I got killed before I got a turn, so I had to do a bit of grinding to be able to survive. Once you can survive one turn you're fine because you can heal whoever got hurt. This is actually the hardest boss fight in the game with the exception of the final boss. Once the priests go down, you get the 4th key, and find the 5th key in a chest. Now we can seal off the holy land.

The holy land itself is another very long dungeon. You have to go to five separate areas and find five statues, who question you about their element and its relation to the human body. Once you find all five you can proceed to the last area.

One of the five statues

There are no chests in this dungeon. This is fairly common in the game; probably half or more of the dungeons have no chests. Items and equipment are not very important -- weapons help, but armor really doesn't do that much. The amount of defense you get from a piece of armor is equivalent to about one level up, and the later game equipment is annoying to get. You have to spend not only money, but jewels as well, which requires going around to shops in the various countries and buying them. It's not worth the trouble. You also don't really need items since you can create anything you need using those blank papers you buy for 10 dollars.

Finally we reach the center of the holy land and take on Taisoei.

Taisoei

He went down in two attacks. That seems weak for such a major enemy -- I wonder if they made a mistake in his HP?

Now that we've completed this major goal, Ling Ling has another job for us. It seems rather anticlimactic but since they're following the manga (which hadn't ended at the time this game was made), it's not going to have a real plot arc. Jake leaves the party and Haan joins, which is unwelcome. Haan's HP are low, and there's some sort of glitch or mistake with his XP. Normally you need about 500-600 for each level, but Haan needs 8000 for the first level. I think this is because they set his level but then set his total XP to the wrong value.

You suck Haan

After getting a few new summons for Yakumo, the next task is to go to Greece again to help Haan look for magic books. With a new labyrinth key we can open up a dungeon and find a couple of magic books and a good weapon for Pai. Then it's off to Tibet, where a demon named Nauthiz is causing problems in the Himalayas. There's another large dungeon where you have to blow up 9 statues to get stone fragments, and then place them in 9 altars at the end. The door then opens up and you can face Nauthiz.

Nauthiz, the next boss

Nauthiz will kill Haan in one hit, which is a game over. So you basically have two options -- grind levels until Haan can survive a hit, or just try the fight a few times and hope he doesn't attack Haan. This is what I did (using save states). It would be annoying on a real console because the dungeon is long. Unfortunately you have to fight a second boss, who can also kill Haan in one hit. Both bosses go down very quickly as long as you use 99 power spells, you just have to hope for luck.

Chokai

Once you beat these, there's a long story sequence. Pai is upset because she thinks all the fighting is because of her. On the flight home, a magician named Guptar attacks the plane, capturing Pai to try to capture the secret of immortality.

Lots of plane flights in this game

You fight Guptar:

A doomed battle

This is a story loss, though, and the plane goes down, killing everyone. Yakumo can't die, of course, and Haan gets away through magic. Pai is captured by Guptar. Yakumo then goes searching for Pai at Aberdeen (Hong Kong, not Scotland). I don't know what happens if your HP reach 0 during this part, since it's only Yakumo. It's unlikely to happen anyway. In a laboratory at Aberdeen, Yakumo defeats Guptar and then learns the secret of her clan:

Guptar's race inside capsules

She needs the immortality power to keep her clan from dying off. After a quick boss fight, Guptar runs away and we head back to India to find Pai. She's being held by Galga, the final foe of this game. After going to a treasury for a key, it's off to the final dungeon. Here we recover Pai, and then fight Galga, who goes down pretty quickly.

Galga, the final boss?

But no, this isn't quite it. Galga is trying to fuse with a devil statue to become Gasshin Galga, who will be the true final boss. Unfortunately, Guptar joins. Here's her stat screen:

Utterly absurd

As you can see, she needs 17000 XP to move up a level. The final boss uses an attack that does 300 damage to everyone, so you'll need to raise Guptar at least one level to survive. It will take over 100 battles to do this, possibly as many as 130 or 150. I tried to use a cheat code to increase XP after a battle but it didn't work. This game is not worth grinding that much XP, so this is where my playthrough will end.

(Incidentally, if you're playing without save states you also have to deal with random enemies that can do the 300 damage fire breath as well. If they get a surprise attack and use that, all your hard work is gone. This is a low probability, but it can happen.)

Gasshin Galga, you win this round. Or really, bad game design wins.

So that's 3x3 Eyes. It joins Light Fantasy in the "unplayable" category. But thankfully I'm done with this "5 kusoge in a row" sequence and I can move on to some games that should actually be good. Review to follow in a few days.

(EDIT: I discovered there's a bug where if you successfully run from the final boss it counts as defeating him. Since the last boss doesn't always do the 300 damage fire breath, this means I can use save states to "beat" him. I may do this to see the ending, so if so I'll post that along with the review.)