Trails To Azure (Geofront Patch): Final Boss+Ending
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Nightmare First Playthrough
Setups shown in the beginning and explained below.
Note: I did end up swapping one of the Passionate Rogues out on Randy for True Gladiator Belt because the Mariabell fight takes too long without it.
From Zero to Azure, the journey ends.
I've been putting off recording this for a long time (a year! How time flies!) and for good reason. This was a beast of a video to record and splice together. I wish I had done this shortly after beating the game like I did with Zero; I felt proud for solving each of these fights then and my run of them would have definitely been cleaner with the game being fresher. I say 'solving' because each of these 3 final battles on this difficulty presents its own unique problem that has to be tackled right. The fights are very deliberate in their challenge, which is somewhat problematic in that nothing else in the game is remotely so demanding, save for winning Sigmund's timed fight but that's optional. However, it does make the final boss truly unforgettable and I think the feeling you get of overcoming the barrier this fight presents is worth the polarizing jump in difficulty.
With Zero getting an official release in a couple months and Azure coming next year, I hope more people come to enjoy this duology. Enormous thanks to Falcom for making this great game in the first place and to the Geofront team for both the translation and for making an XSEED quality release of it.
To be continued...into Reverie.
Timestamps & Strategy
20:27 Mariabell: Having good sources of physical and artes damage is important in these fights specifically because of this boss. On my first run, what had become my standard party of Elie, Lloyd, Tio, and Wazy got stonewalled because it was so ATS dependent. Mariabell has high magic resistance, high speed, summons a shitton of adds that will make a mess of the already unconventional battlefield, and can shuffle your position. So, Randy comes off the bench to complete the classic SSS roster. He has one job in this fight and one job only, nuke the hell out of the opposition with Berserker, war cry, and do it again. You want to maximize his STR with Force, Ruby Gem, and a Passionate Rogue and to give him the True Gladiator Belt to get to 200CP more readily. Use Stamina Steak or your casters to buff his STR and SPD and keep him healthy (unlike what I did where I still attempted offensive casting, which, when buffed, does OKAY damage but nothing compared to what Randy can dish). Also, deploy Zero Field earlier than I did (thankfully they made her S craft survivable since it attacks the entire field). Giving Lloyd Axe lets him contribute on the physical side with crit damage and allows you to use its master arte to boost Randy's damage even more, though it does make him a sitting duck as casting negates evasion. A good strategy is to use it, S-break with Randy, then S-break with Lloyd to cancel his casting. Mariabell and her summons have little to pierce Lloyd's evasion here so him taking aggro is ideal. Aura Rain 2 is your panic button if things go south.
40:42 Azure Demiourgos Phase 1: The Azure Arbitrator. In this phase, its health is relatively low, but that's because if any of its minions are left alive it will turn back time and heal itself proportional to the number that survived, respawn them, and repeat the process. So the minions have to be killed before it can. Once you figure this out, winning isn't too difficult. Abuse raging spin and crash bomb and follow with S Crafts. Note: The minions will recast their barriers if you don't kill them quickly and if they get a turn on low health they'll be absorbed which will cause the boss to turn back time when their HP drops to 0. Unfortunate that Berserker came JUST short of wiping all 4, but it does show that effect off.
51:46 Azure Demiourgos Phase 2: Used too many items on my first run, hence the cut. So, you have 4 new summons to deal with, the boss instantly vanishes you if you deal too much damage to it at once, and each of its moves are wide-hitting, high dmg AOEs, how do you win this? Well, there is one move it has that isn't so deadly. If anyone is casting during its turn, Demiourgos will spend its turn canceling your artes instead of actually attacking. As long as you have an accessory that blocks mute, you can split your casters apart and still get your spells off since it can only cancel a set radius while neutering its arsenal. Learning this method of manipulating the AI was so gratifying, like a good SMT3 or DDS boss. Also, getting vanished can be worth the burst damage of a buffed S Craft. Sometimes it will cast Argent Ark, which is why the party wide A-Reflect can be useful for massive return damage that it can't vanish counter. Sadly, it didn't happen here. As the background gets red it's preparing a move that will full vanish your party and instantly end the fight, when that happens that's your cue to pop burst and put an end to the azure deity.
Thank you for this video, I couldn’t beat the final boss after so many hours. I raged quit and don’t wanna touch this game again, but had to know the ending. Lol
hearing that you all actually died was crazy af
i just finished Reverie and after the real final boss i wanted to check this last and ending scene again because i had forgotten the details about it, felt lazy to do Azure all over again so thanks for this, might play it again when i get the time, i really like the Trails series.
The 1st time i finished this game was years ago with the Geofront patch aswell.
Oh wow trail series really comes along way
Azure arbitrator was one of the nastiest boss i had ever fight. To the point that i almost rage quitted. But if i learned something about this game is that most of the time it was luck based. I just kept trying until an opportunity appeared on the insta kill attack and got it. My god i was happy after that at 4am lol
Thank you for this. I also play the PC Geofront Patch version, but it's so effin buggy. I was up to the finale after defeating Azure Demiourgos and in the middle of meeting Guy in KeA's Zero Field when suddenly the game crashed to desktop. Ugh! I had no desire to redo the Demiourgos fight, so I searched youtube and found this clip. Just exactly what I need.
Damn, I always hate Mariabell so much!!!
The way they just let her off like that is such bullshit (also dumb how they back out of her killing off Grimwood but there's a lot of things that aggravate me about the last fifth or so of this game)
@@21stCenturyBoy- Yeah the last chunk of this game kinda soured Trails in general for me. I was gonna jump right into Cold Steel but Azure exhausted me. Grimwood just being in a state of suspended animation or whatever was what ultimately broke me. It's like....please could something of consequence happen in these games that doesn't end up getting saved or reverted? Lol.
I feel very conflicted about Azure, because yeah in the end it seemed like they were just scared of killing characters (which imo is even disrespectful to Sky).
This game is still a gem and, for me, the end of Trails (although I'm willing to give Kuro a chance); but I like to think of an alternative and darker timeline where some characters who were in REALLY dire situations didn't make it.
Sorry for rambling and being vague Idk why I'm trying to post a spoiler-free comment in a final boss video.
@@xhoidlostblade3856 By the “end of Trails” do you mean you didn’t play Cold Steel? Because that’s kinda where I’m at. I just can’t get into CS1.
I’ve heard Kuro isn’t scared to kill people off as much, so I am hopeful for it.
@@gasparguruoftime5475 I finished CS1 and there were parts which I honestly really enjoyed, like Nord Highlands.
But the whole high school vibe just doesn't go well with me, and I guess I didn't get to care enough for the characters (they went too hard on anime stereotypes imo). I don't get how characters like Crow and Fie are fan favorites.
But the thing which completely threw me off was the ending... I REALLY didn't like how CS1 ending was handled.
Maybe it was because I was continuously comparing it to Sky, plot elements and characters. Also, gameplaywise I'd rather have a main character who starts off weak as Estelle (although she never gets too much better than mediocre compared to the rest of the cast) than Rean who is absolutely broken and trivializes the game with seal and AT delay.
So... after finishing CS1 I took some time off and eventually I started CS2. It was "alright", but right at the start of act 2 (where things are getting interesting) I realized I didn't really care about the arc or characters. I could've tried and go on, but the thing is that I never feel that way with the Sky games. Even though they are slower, I don't think there was a single point in those games I felt it was like a "drag" in my first playthrough.
I uninstalled CS 2 and never thought of playing it again.
Sometime after that I found the Geofront translations for Zero and Ao and I decided to play those... I was absolutely delighted with the Crossbel arc and, together with the Liberl arc, these 5 games together are probably my top 1 story-heavy gaming experience ever. But yeah, you can see how the style slowly shifted (fan service increasing with each game) which together with the stuff we already commented left me with a bitter taste.