indigozeal

So we were all going off to this cabin to find something that Kalas's grandfather left behind for him when Giacomo and his goons showed up. This was a bit of a surprise, as a) Giacomo had a pretty conclusive death scene near the end of the whole Emperor Geldoblame business, b) Giacomo's role in the story was as the target of Kalas's vengeance for killing his grandfather and brother, and while that remains a great sin, that whole quest is now rather tainted through being part of Kalas's big backstabbing scheme, c) Giacomo's job for the Empire was to collect the End Magnus MacGuffins, which are now all in the Real Enemy's hands and no longer in play, and d) Giacomo's boss is long dead. In other words, Giacomo is no longer relevant in any way to this plot, so it was rather irritating to have the game trot him and his Disney-villain smirking out again and pretend that we should care. The game itself wasn't even entirely sure as to what Giacomo was even doing there: apparently, Kalas and his brother were the results of an experiment by his Imperial-engineer "grandfather" to tinker with the energy of the "Magnus" magical doohickeys of this world to create artificial life, in the hopes of finding the key to eternal life, apparently? And Kalas's brother apparently gave up his life to save Kalas in the aftermath of Giacomo's assassination attempt all those years ago, despite the fact that he seemed pretty beat up in that scene while Kalas didn't have a scratch on him, and so maybe Giacomo thinks that if he kills Kalas and somehow takes Little Brother's life-essence out of him, that he can live forever? Maybe? The game gives you a few cutscenes during Giacomo's monologuing but never really connects the dots on this or goes into detail on how exactly Giacomo thinks this will work, if this is indeed what he even thinks. Plus, during earlier confrontations, Giacomo claims a completely different reason for wanting to kill Kalas, saying that his corpse will lead him to the last End Magnus doohickey somehow, for reasons completely unknown. "For reasons completely unknown" might as well have been the theme for this entire encounter.

Anyhow, it was even more irritating when the battle didn't go well the first couple times. My fault - I hadn't prepared for a serious boss battle at that point (and was still overconfident, I suppose, from an encounter with the Big Bad Evil God that turned out not to be so big or so bad at all; he's a pushover, guys, why are you running about trying to collect a super-secret ultra weapon to use against him), and even after the first attempt, I didn't seriously reshuffle my deck or stock up enough healing cards. (I also was using the wrong party: Kalas and Mizuti had lazily-curated decks to begin with due to their disuse, and Savyna missed her last class-up item, alas, and was therefore was landing one less hit per turn than every other character at that point. I should've swapped in Xelha and Lyude - Kalas is mandatory here - but a strange inertia regarding party formation had gotten hold of me.) The problem is that it takes a good, long while to determine that the battle isn't going well, due to the showiness of Giacomo & co.'s attacks. Two members of his party frequently get double turns; the other's single turn consists of a nine-hit combo with an elaborate finisher; and Giacomo himself moves in and out to attack by using these rocket jets that may look smooth & cool the first few times but are so ridiculously slow - not an adjective you'd expect to apply to "rocket jets" - that Giacomo just takes forever to attack. Everyone on the enemy side just takes forever to attack. It doesn't help that they all have buffs and healing potions in this incarnation that just drag things out further. Each failed attempt took about thirty minutes of "oh, come ons" to go down in flames.

I finally did, though, manage to topple Giacomo the third time after a forty-five-minute brawl. Imagine my surprise, then, when upon the end of the battle, the game presented me with a cutscene of Kalas losing the fight I had struggled for almost two hours to win. See, just previous to the fight, Giacomo pulls out these gizmos that are supposed to interfere with a character's relationship to their "guardian spirit," i.e., the player. Since, as detailed in the manual, how well Kalas responds to your commands supposedly depends on the strength of your psychic bond with him, Giacomo's device would theoretically make Kalas and the others impossible to control. Due to a bug or me being just such a top-notch guardian spirit, though, that didn't happen, and I was given no indication that I was in a shoulda-been-scripted fight.

So in this cutscene, Giacomo stomps on Kalas's mechanical wing, which apparently doubles as his life-essence somehow, but the vibration of the stomp cracks open an angel statue on the mantel to reveals his "grandfather"'s gift, which is...another mechanical wing that appears to be no different from the first one. So we trekked to this remote cabin to get a replacement for a thing that wouldn't have been broken had never come here in the first place. Thanks, grandpa.

Anyhow, this renewal of faith led Kalas somehow to destroy the gizmos Giacomo had that never actually worked anyhow. This, to my utter and absolute horror after what I remind you was over two hours of the same dragged-out, frustrating boss battle, led into...another battle with Giacomo. Which is the real boss battle. Which is no different from the apparently fake boss battle that preceded it.

This development tried my patience to its utter end. I pulled through - not that there weren't some close shaves - but holy hell, if I had lost and was forced to go through that goddamn hour-long boss fight for a fourth time after through three wasted hours into it, you would not have heard the end of it. Why did you do this, Baten Kaitos? You've never shown such bad judgment before! Battlewise, I mean. We can talk about your ancillary voice acting later.

In any case, the whole incident ended as puzzlingly as it began. The lives of Giacomo's cronies were barely spared, but Giacomo himself was mortally wounded, and with his dying breath, he told his underlings to go on without him and protect the others back in the Empire and asked Kalas "[not to] let this world be destroyed" - a pragmatic wish but still an odd one coming from Giacomo, as he'd never shown a care for anything but himself before. (The genuine concern for his goons, though, and their reciprocated "you can't leave us!" grief and horror at their commander's death was more complicated than I'd expected out of these monsters.) Kalas decides to take the final request of his blood enemy seriously for some reason, even swearing to Giacomo that he won't let him down, and Xelha recites the same prayer for the dead that she did for her two fallen retainers at the beginning of the game. Putting aside Kalas's OoC newfound disposition toward honorable behavior for a second (he was never the best-behaved not-protagonist, even before the revelation of his prior true allegiances, always rolling his eyes and having to be strongarmed into helping others out; now he's merrily laying down his life to protect innocent villagers from errant attacks from the God of Evil), Giacomo has only gotten more muddled a character the more the game's tried to explain his motivations. For example, he's actually the son of Kalas's "grandfather"/creator, but they don't relate to each other on any level - he never shows any anger toward his father specifically for any perceived failings as a parent (for being derelict in his perceived duties to the Empire, sure, but not in his personal life), and grandfather never appeals to his son on a personal level in trying to change his behavior. The familial relationship might as well have never existed. What were Giacomo's personal motivations? What was he planning on doing with Kalas? And what was the deal with the rap battle theme of his? They give the character so much baggage, and he really doesn't fully work on any level except as an perpetual irritation. A role he fulfilled handily here, I'll give him that.

Anyhow, TL;DR: I spent three hours fighting a character who shouldn't have been there to get a plot development that was apparently recursive.

OK, so we are officially, really, truly in Fated Hour territory now, complete with "someone close to one of you needs help" quests. There's one that stands out, and I think you can guess whom it involves.

There is a ghost ship roaming LSD Land with its spectral inhabitants calling Lyude's name.

This is going to be the best quest.

.