*huff, wheeze* Phew! *pant, pant* Finally! I finally killed that bloody Mephreyu!

FI-NA-LL-YYYY! Gawd, what a pain in the ass that final stage was. I must have tried it at least 10 times. At least. But it’s all good and nice, I finally managed to put that sucker away for good. Smug bastard, that last hit felt so, so good. Death and Destruction to the Mephreyus of this world! All hail! All hail!

Now then, there’s a famous quote attributed (most likely apocryphally) to Einstein that goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” By that definition, the final stage of Rondo of Swords must have sent me stark raving nuts, because I kept trying to use the same strategy and something kept going wrong. Then I’d try again, something would go wrong again. It wasn’t until I gave up and went all medieval on Mephreyu’s behind that I finally managed to beat him. But thinking back, the correct strategy was so obvious! All those wasted hours…

My failed strategy: Team: Altrius (Serdic), Alberich, Cotton, Ansom, Marie, Alhambra. Clear out mages with Ansom, clear out all other bad guys with rest of team. Slowly work way up to the top. Park Altrius and Alhambra at bottom of wide platform to lure reinforcements down and up. Place Cotton by one upper spawn point and Alberich by another. Slowly take out enemies on Mephreyu’s pyramid by having Ansom go up, shoot them and be rescued by Marie’s Holy Favor. Have Ansom take down Mephreyu’s MP by the same method until his MP is gone and half his HP is down. Have Alberich finish him off with OB level 3.

All well and nice, except either Ansom or Marie or Alberich would get themselves killed somehow. This often happened when the linesmen reinforcements refused to play nice by going up instead of down. Or when Ansom accidentally found himself out of range of Marie (my own carelessness, I know), and more than once Alberich’s Null ZOC failed him and he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on one occasion Altrius got himself critically countered, Game Overing me within a few turns. Even at level 54 he still failed to one-shot some of the level 45 linesmen on occasion, leaving me in a sticky position to say the least. Needless to say I kept him far, far away from Mephreyu.

My successful strategy: Same team as before, same strategy as before except for a few things. Firstly, I had Altrius take the fight to the linesman on the right, standing right on top of the stairs ready to take him out. I also had Alhambra hide in the corner on the top right, keeping the armored guy busy and frustrated. That was all by-the-by, the important thing was, Ansom got killed again. And this time I didn’t restart because I had an epiphany: Cotton. My Queen. Ansom had already cleared all the guys on the platform, and Cotton is strong as hell against magic attacks. If anyone could survive Mephreyu’s attacks it would be her. I’d already used her as a mage killer before, why couldn’t I do it again?

So I tried it, and it worked beautifully. Not only could she survive his attacks with ease (he hit her for 196. Pfft, she’s got over 450HP), but she could hit back as well with Fire Dragon. Hard. That meant she was double-draining his MP every round, all while parked in one spot instead of moving back and forth like Ansom did. She could even take a hit or two from the rogue sniper or linesman without breaking a sweat. AND she could refill her own HP and MP with her OB. I still had Marie standing some distance away using Cure Drop every once in a while, just to be on the safe side. I whittled down Mephy’s MP and then HP to half, then he used an item to refill his MP. Pfft, you’re only prolonging your suffering Mephreyu! Give it up, you can’t win!

At some point Marie wandered into the path of a stray sniper and got taken out, but by that point I’d taken the boss’s MP out completely, so I cornered him with Cotton and Alberich, hit him with Fire Dragon and followed it up with Alberich’s OB 3. Narrow Victory for the win.

So glad that’s over with. That was the most frustrating final boss fight I’ve ever faced, bar none. For all my troubles, the ending was surprisingly perfunctory. Marie becomes Queen, everyone takes off back to wherever they came from and Altrius goes adventuring in parts unknown for reasons unsaid. Roll credits, the end.

About the game itself, though… Once I got used to the Route Maneuver System it was surprisingly fun, and definitely strategic in its own way. I both liked and hated the way you couldn’t just rush into battle blindly but instead had to lure enemies down slowly and carefully. The main downside was that every battle took forever even with super-powered freaks like Ansom and Cotton in the house. My Serdic/Altrius was roided up from taking on all the bad guys in “Escape from Egvard” but after the first 15 chapters or so he was just like everybody else. I shudder to imagine how utterly worthless he would be without all that extra grinding. Worse than unpromoted Roy from Fire Emblem 6, I bet. In any case, this is one game I definitely won’t be whining “It was too easy!” about. Oh, and the music was good too. I say it was good because I must have heard the same themes about a thousand times and I still never turned the sound off. That qualifies as good in my books.

The problem with Rondo of Swords was the story, really. The lack of a story, I mean. Enemies invade, you run, you rally, you turn back and press your way back to your kingdom. At one point most of your allies desert you, then a few chapters later they’re back like nothing ever happened. The Grand Meir villains just invaded because they were evil, no other reason. And Mephreyu’s pissed off because Verona killed his friend, so supposedly he wants to… uhmm… release the Darkness so that…umm… You know, I’m really not clear on that part. Anyway, he was mad about something and wanted to release an ancient evil to solve it, but we stopped him and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Yeah, I’m not impressed either.

Now for Path B, the path where you kill Marie and Serdic becomes this awesome hardcore emperor dude. I made sure to get two saves when the choice came up, so I don’t have to replay from the start. I’m only two chapters into Path B, but I’m loving this no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Serdic. I can’t believe the milksop Altrius had this side to him, it’s so cool. It’s hard to get used to being weak again though. This could take a while.