Demon Gaze: Boss rush, solo style (2)

Here's the sequel to my boss rush, fellow gamers! (Spoilers are included, so reader discretion is advised.) That's four new boss fights for the road, fights that were mostly cinches but interesting and entertaining nonetheless. Things are getting a trifle more complex, to my utter delight: it is now mandatory to consider carefully which demons must be taken along in battles, and I found myself using a buff for the first time in my playthrough. Without further ado, enjoy the plats du jour! 

—Venus: Beauty demon Venus is the undisputed queen of status effect spells, as well as an excellent healer with sky-high agility that allows her to escape blows more often than not. She is also the first demon that summons several rows of protective seeds at once, so actually landing a hit on her is a rare and elusive feat. Despite these hindrances, I managed to beat her on my first try, and quite promptly at that. I had determined during my first encounter with her that her physical attacks only slightly dented my HP bar; my strategy was thus to cast Heal Shower 2 at the beginning of the fight to take care of healing matters, and then to open Mars and to use my newly gained Slash 2 skill to dispose of the numerous rows of seeds. However, things didn't go exactly as planned: Venus repeteadly Confused and Poisoned me, preventing me from attacking the seeds—or herself, for that matter. Mars was left shouldering the important task of disposing of the seeds, and although she was doing a great job at it, she was also suffering a lot of damage in the process, and I feared that she would pass out before the end of the fight. That wasn't meant to be, though. What happened instead was that the Demon Gauge fell down to zero, sending Mars into Rage Mode with a refilled HP bar. I feared this would seal the end of the fight if Mars ever hit me, which she obviously did; but to my utter surprise, blows from enraged Mars only ate a fraction of my HP—nothing that the Heal Shower couldn't take care of. Mars then turned her ire towards Venus, who was fortunately left seedless at that very moment, and proceeded to pummel her into oblivion with massive blows that took away up to 3000 HP. Poor Venus didn't stand a chance and passed out before she could even heal or summon a row of seeds. The process took no more than two or three turns, leaving me gaping at the screen in sheer incredulity—like, is it over already? Although I'm not too proud of my minor involvement in this fight—Mars basically did all the job while I was frenetically gobbling Antidotes—at least it was a sleek and smooth affair that hardly made me sweat.

—Astro: The 'magical maijin' and second male demon of the game is basically the king of all things spells. He also has stellar healing abilities, and just like Venus, he can generate several rows of seeds to protect himself. Worse, these seeds can heal themselves and heal him as well. And yet, Astro was even easier to beat than Venus, despite the fact that I had virtually no abilities at hand to protect myself from his spells. My only option to reduce spell damage was to set Venus as a passive demon, along with Chronos, and hope for the best. Mars was my open demon of choice for this battle, and together we did a great job getting rid of the seeds. Then, as soon as Astro was left seedless, I decided to reproduce the trick that had proved so successful during my fight with Venus, only in a more controlled way. I thus unleashed the Demon Rage skill to send Mars into rage mode, after which she basically pummeled Astro to death in a couple of turns. Neat and easy fight, in which everything went according to plan. Next please!

—Lord Shark: As I foreboded, I had to dispose of the misnamed Lord Shark, who turned out to be a replica on steroids of the Skull Lord in terms of fighting tactics. He churned out a new row of minions nearly every turn, so I decided to focus solely on him while letting my demon foil doing whatever they saw fit. Emboldened by my easy fight with Astro, I decided to experiment a little bit and summoned Venus to fight alongside me; unfortunately, she passed out after a couple of turns, pummeled into oblivion by the many rows of rays. I then summoned Mars, who did a great job at eliminating these pests while I was focusing on Lord Shark. He passed out eventually, leaving us free to dispose of the remaining rows of minions. That was another easy fight, despite the small mishap with Venus, and I didn't even have to use the Demon Rage skill.

—Luna: The Clock Tower fight with Luna, that is. My first brawl with her in Red City was hardly memorable, since it was over in two turns; however, this second encounter stung a bit harder. My first two tries were massive failures: I went into battle with Chronos and Venus as passive demons and Mars as my open demon, only to get wiped out after a mere couple of turns, pummeled into oblivion by the massive blows of Luna and her seeds. Luna hit like a BEAST, and so did her seeds, while my own attacks dealt little damage, taking no more than 80-100 HP from them. Since newly enrolled Astro can boost spell power, I started fearing that maybe Luna was nearly immune to physical attacks and could only be taken down with spells, which would have put me in a serious bind. But before jumping to conclusions and starting to despair, I made a third attempt at beating her, with Neptune as a passive demon instead of Venus. I cast Heal Shower 2 as soon as the fight started, then Multi-hit on myself and Mars; then, as soon as Luna was seedless, I unleashed the Demon Rage skill once again. This was too much for Luna, who admitted defeat and retreated after two turns—or was it one?—spent enduring Mars' hugely damaging blows. I'm not done with Luna, of course, and I guess I will have to dispose of her for good later. On a more general note, I don't know what to think of that fight. My first two tries and the third one were so drastically different that I have a hard time figuring out if Luna was a tough cookie or not. Could there actually be some kind of perfect strategy for each and every boss fight, a flawless combination of passive and active demons, buffs, gear and attack patterns that would ensure an easy victory? That would explain why some players struggle with some bosses while other players have it easy. I'm even more smitten with Demon Gaze's boss fights now that their deeply strategic quality is slowly revealing itself, and this gives me a lot of confidence for the fights to come.

My boss rush stops here for now, as I have only two more demons to enroll and a handful of dungeons left to explore. The Dungeon—Venus' hideout, that it—was rather refreshing, while Endless Road was a bit of a hassle due to all the backtracking involved and the fact that some parts of the dungeon had to be accessed through hidden doors located in nondescript areas. I think I will start having Comet with me while exploring dungeons for the first time, because re-examining every wall to find hidden doors is a huge pain in the butt, especially since dungeons keep getting larger. I wish the game would stop being stingy and grant me a fourth Demon slot; I'm at Lv. 51 now, and I feel that I deserve a more substantial reward for my dutiful leveling-up than the regular stats and HP increase. And since I'm mentioning this, I discovered lately that increasing the Vitality stat when gaining a level gives much more HP than increasing any of the other stats. Lovely! The story is taking a more sinister turn, as Lulu implied that something nasty would happen to me after I enroll all the demons and that Fran knew about it. That pint-sized traitor may be lying, but she may be telling the truth. I'm getting wary of Fran—who indeed turned out to be a dragon!—since she steadily refuses to answer my questions regarding Lulu's claims and deviously pretends to be angry at me and sulking to avoid talking to me. Oh, well; I'll find out the truth sooner or later, I guess. And now... On to the next dungeon! Brace yourselves, Uranus and Pluto—and whoever else dare standing in my way! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!