After a 5 month delay, I'm back, never really got anywhere in The Belmont Legacy, thank you winter finals... and well, just lack of motivation. But now summer's here and I have nothing better to do apart from hopelessly pursue jobs and play games, so I'll probably be posting stuff somewhat regularly. Until I get the motivation to play Castlevania again (I'm predicting around mid-June), here's the first of many top 5 lists! First up, saddest boss battles ever.
These are the fights that really just make your eyes well up with tears and finishing them doesn't make you feel that good, you just leave it feeling like crap. Of course this list will entail some fairly heavy spoilers so thou art forewarned now!
5. FINAL FANTASY LEGEND III: Sol
Let's kick the list off with a game I played to death on Game Boy and finished twice (Friggin' Ballor). Final Fantasy Legend III is actually part of the SaGa series, but back in the early 90's, Square equated the Final Fantasy name with money in the US, so we got the title Final Fantasy Legend III instead of "The Ruler of Time and Space~SaGa 3 [The Final Chapter]" hooray for localization. You play as three children from the future and one village elder's daughter (Who tags along because, well, she has the hots for the male human, must be something about his 8-bit haircut, mmmmm Arthur). After a great and epic quest to save all of time, flying about in a time and space machine called the Talon, you go to a being called Xagor's palace to find a man named Sol who can help save the world from the Pureland Entity, which is currently flooding the planet. You battle your way through the castle, fighting a host of baddies and a few just sadistically difficult bosses (ballor...) all leading up to the pinnacle where you find Sol. He is possessed by Xagor, and begs you to kill him so Xagor can't be awakened and destroy the world. All the while, the saddest 8-bit music I've ever heard in my life is play as you simultaneously build up your party with your various status buffs and pummel this almost holy looking man with a spear with Excalibur and the Masamune. During this beating he begs you to do it quicker, saying that he can feel Xagor's power growing. Finally, after a number of turns Sol can't hold him in any more and with a final cry of "Hurry! He's waking up!!!" he is erased from existence, the final boss music boots that sad music out of here and you fight...
Oooooooooook then, ummmm, yeah... Sol kinda gets ripped apart by a tentacle demon and with the power of Excalibur, Masamune, two other swords nobody really cares about and your time machine you have to kill this... living hentai monster. I'm sorry but for the love of everything, look at this guy! If it wasn't for him beating the living crap out of me with above top level magic I wouldn't be able to stop laughing! You know what the worst part is? After you whack him around a bit he sprouts mouths all over his body! I love this game but between the difficulty curve shooting through the ceiling in the last dungeon (BAAAAAALLOOOOOOOR!!!!!) and the almost laughable monster design, I can't really complete this game now. That one wasn't that focused on the tragedy of the fight, but then again, when a Biblical looking character gets ripped open by a hentai monster, you can't wipe your tears for THAT long.
4. SUIKODEN II: Riou vs. Jowy
This fight I personally have not experienced, but I've read about it and saw an LP (Let's Play) on YouTube of it and while there's a happy feeling afterwards if you do things right, if not you'll feel like a bit of fecal matter. Throughout the whole game, your character (named Riou in the Japanese novelization) and your best friend, Jowy are pulled towards each other in a destructive war over a rune called the Rune of Beginning. You have the Bright Shield Rune and Jowy has the Black Sword Rune, and the rune desires to be as one again. Here's the rub, the only way they can be joined is if the other half is taken from the holder's dead body. After a long and bloody conflict between the Dunan Unification Army and the Highland Kingdom, it comes down to Riou and Jowy at the mark where their long journey began, a cliff by a waterfall. In the first 2 games, there are a number of one on one duels between the main character and some important antagonist. As Bastila Shan said in KotOR, "Nobody deserves to die, no matter what their crimes" and as such if you spare a great deal of these antagonists, you are typically rewarded. During these duels you have the options to do a basic attack, a desperate attack and a block. This works out in a rock paper scissors sort of motion, attacking breaks a block, desperate attacks overpower basic attacks, and blocks dodge and counter the desperate attack. In the duel against Jowy, in order to get the best ending you must simply defend against anything he throws at you, much like the fight against Cecil's shadow in Final Fantasy IV. What makes this fight tragic is what happens if you attack him just once, or if you defend, Jowy's begging for you to fight him just to end everything. It can go either way, but if you don't know what to do, you're in for one heluva downer ending...
3. CAVE STORY: Mutant Toroko
Cave Story is a fantastic little freeware/WiiWare platformer that is influenced by the Metroid series with its large world and run and gun style of gameplay, Castlevania with its multiple endings from the most minute of details, and a soundtrack inspired by the entire 8-bit generation. The plot revolves around you, a soldier who can't remember his past, waking up in a cave and encountering small rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas, who are being used by a sadistic Doctor. The Doctor (no not my namesake, he's probably pissed at this guy though) uses red flowers to corrupt the normally peaceful and, frankly, adorable Mimiga into horrifying monsters. The first Mimiga you befriend's name is Toroko, and she is one of the purest signs of innocence I've seen in my 15 years of gaming, so naturally she must die. About two or three hours in, the Doctor's two henchmen, Balrog and Misery capture Toroko and force feed her some red flowers, enraging her brother King, who hopelessly tries to fight and is brushed aside. After seeing this horror, you now must fight Toroko. The first time I did this fight, I was taken aback by what just happened for just the right amount of time for her to defeat me. Once you defeat her, there's no happy feeling, just a sinking feeling that you killed something pure.
2. CRISIS CORE: FINAL FANTASY VII: Zack Fair's Last Stand
Ah, Final Fantasy, such a heartless series of games, with characters possessing some of the worst backstories known to humankind, and this one's not even in the main series! Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII takes place in the years before the original game, as you assume the identity of Zack Fair, SOLDIER 2nd Class, and eventually 1st Class. Those who have played FFVII may remember Zack as "that guy who Cloud thought he was" and "Aerith's old boyfriend." Much like that one guy in the cantina scene in "A New Hope," Zack has a 30-40 hour adventure about his adventures and yet another retelling of the Nibelheim massacre at the hands of Sephiroth. The most memorable scene involving Zack was him desperately trying to get back to Midgar four years later with a near comatose Cloud, still being chased by the ShinRa security force. In FFVII, the scene is very simple, pretty much just Zack noticing they're right behind them and promptly being gunned down, giving me the impression (when I first saw it at least) that he was some sort of weakling. Upon reaching the scene I thought I was just in for a single cutscene of watching this hero I've built up in level for 28 hours get gunned down in an instant by a grunt who I probably could've taken out at level one. Boy was I wrong. Zack, fighting for his life takes on just about an entire army of ShinRa soldiers, all the while his DMW (Digital Mind Wave, a representation of his friends helping him even in the heat of battle) is slowly fading as his once perfect uniform gets riddled with bullets. Finally, you get to his last thoughts, of Cloud and finally his love, Aerith, and as he struggles to strike down just one more soldier to defend his right to live and Cloud's barely conscious body offscreen, I found myself holding back tears as I saw him finally collapse and a soldier coming up to him and dealing the final blow. I knew this moment was coming the whole game, but it couldn't prepare me for what happened. Some time later, Cloud, still somewhat groggy, wakes up and finds Zack's body with his iconic Buster Sword next to him. Zack hands him his sword, gives him as good a hug as he can muster and tells Cloud to live. Live for the both of them. Cloud, still in shock, takes this in a different way then Zack meant and steals his identity. He drags the Buster Sword into Midgar and after the credits roll, you see him jumping onto the train at the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, introducing himself as Cloud Strife, SOLDIER: 1st Class.
1. FINAL FANTASY VII: Jenova LIFE
This fight almost needs no introduction, but then again, there may be some people out there who have yet to play Final Fantasy VII, or read about it, or watch an LP of it on YouTube. At the end of Disc 1, your team chases Sephiroth to the top of the world, into the City of the Ancients, a forgotten race that party member Aerith/Aeris is the last of. She leaves the party in the middle of the night saying that she can take care of everything. You run through the city, finally finding her at the center, praying. Cloud, ever the spiky-haired bit of Silly-Putty that he is, is controlled by Sephiroth into nearly killing Aerith. He resists the momma's boy's influence and Sephiroth descends from who knows where and deals with her himself, stabbing her with his impossibly long sword. As her "useless" Materia that she keeps in her ribbon bounces off her body and falls off the pedestal, Aerith's theme begins playing, almost heart-breaking to hear now as Cloud holds her body and Sephiroth rants about how he'll do whatever he wants to do involving Jenova, Cloud has had enough. In a textbook Crowning Moment of Awesome, he interrupts Sephiroth MID TEXTBOX with "Shut up." He tells of how she'll never laugh, get angry, or do anything that made her human ever again, because of Sephiroth. He taunts Cloud and flies off, leaving a Jenova beast to fight, this one representing the LIFE stage, in comparison to BIRTH, fought on the ship, DEATH, fought at the crater, and SYNTHESIS, fought in the planet's core. During this somewhat difficult boss fight, Aerith's theme is still playing, and I remember when I first played, I was still reeling, partly because I was 8 and it was a bit much for me to handle, but mostly because in the right context, Aerith's theme is really friggin' sad! Even now I'm tearing up at the thought of fighting this fight, purely because of that bloody song.
There it is, 5 tragic fights, and all of them have but one thing in common, the music. Some people tend to write music off when looking at a game, thinking "It's just a game, there's more important things, like graphics! Screw sound quality, I want to be able to see every freakin' bit of stubble on Captain Price's face!" I heartily disagree, there's nothing that can influence the pace of a game, or the overall tone of any one scene more then the music that plays during a game. Without Aerith's theme playing during the fight with Jenova LIFE, it'd just be another battle with that blaring guitar filled boss theme, but with that melancholy piano it becomes one of the most memorable fights of all time. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to listen to Aerith's theme and bawl like Toby Maguire in "Spider-Man 3!"
(That one guy in the cantina scene in "A New Hope?" His name's BoShek and he's Force-Sensitive)
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