LogFAQs > #962516149

Our first bosses are Duvalie and Bleublanc. Laura and Duvalie have a catty (for Laura's standards) conversation so I suppose Laura is Duvalie's special somebody? I guess Duvalie hates the Arseid's and the lance maiden is linked to Legram with that castle, so there's probably some deep lore there.

The fight was surprisingly tough as they go, but that's only because I entered with 0 cp on Laura so she was unable to one shot everything. But Duvalie and Bleublanc both use a lot of status effects and are generally pretty powerful. I was in a spot where everyone but Sara was dead and she literally only had 200 hp left, which normally would prompt a retry but I ain't no bitch so I used Grail Burst to give her 3 turns in a row, revived everyone with items then had Rean use Seraphic Ring to get everyone back to full and was able to win the fight from there. That was pretty neat! Too bad moments like that are normally ruined by Laura dealing 200k at the start of the fight and winning it for free. I really hope CS3 is balanced better.

In the post battle cutscene, Duvalie has a minor breakdown and goes super Saiyan and starts fucking us up, but Olivier and Toval come out of the woodwork to rescue us and fight them off so we can continue up the tower. Duvalie gets mad and says that Vander should be here to present a real threat if they wanted to fight, so Olivier's like, yea we brought him but we can take you without him so we left him outside. Lmao some great trash talk. It flashes outside to show Vander out there fighting the magic knights and Neithardt shows up as well. That's a good dynamic duo. Too bad his friend isn't someone from Sky, but what can you do. Sky is criminally underused throughout CS so far I would say. Crossbell had Estelle and Joshua showing up somewhat prominently, but in this series there's very little out of Liberl. At least we've got Ricky and Anton. I'm not really sure who they could've brought in though, Zin would be unlikely since he's in Calvard with Kilika, right? And Estelle or Joshua coming back here would require too much fanfare. Maybe Agate would've been good, but then they would've had to bring Tita too so that'd be weird. Actually Schera would've been perfect here. Oh well. Maybe they didn't want to confuse the newbies.

Anyway, Vander and Neithardt have a bro scene where they make a bet on who can kill more magic knights. Nice lol. Vander sucked in 3 so my money's on Neithardt.

As we proceed up to the second stratum, Duvalie has another mental breakdown at us getting past her. I love her.

The second stratum is designed a bit more interestingly than the first, there's even a hidden interaction you can hit towards the end to get an extra treasure chest with a Zeram powder. It's a shiny thing hidden on a statue you have to angle the camera weird to see. It's like I'm playing Resident Evil! Beautiful. At the end there's a giant Zephyr logo painted on the door and Celine's like, I think I've seen that logo in the files! REALLY trying to hint to the player that it's time to put Fie in. I'll take the hint. I'll just take Laura out, fuck it. The last boss fight was interesting when she's not there to one shot everything so lets try that again and see how this goes.

Xeno and Leo reveal to Fie that the reason she was abandoned was because their boss asked them to do so if he ever died. That if he weren't there to protect her, he wanted Fie out of the corps. That hits hard man. Poor girl. Millium says that fits what she knows of him based on his file, and Sara is upset that she got played by him, since her finding Fie on the battlefield was then part of his plan to have her watched after. What a guy.

Fie has a cool speech about how she's tired of relying on others and wants to get stronger for her own sake. It was a pretty good speech. Machias quips that despite all that she just said, she's still the girl who naps on benches out of sheer boredom. Lmao I wish that they had Fie respond to that because that's pretty good. I guess they assumed nobody would include Machias in their party. RIP

Anyway the battle starts and, unfortunately, my wish was not granted because the fight was stupidly easy. They don't do any status effects like BB/Duvalie did, they were vulnerable to random status effects that I threw out with my orbments on a 20% chance, barely did any damage and had no tricks up their sleeves whatsoever. If Laura were here, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have had more than two turns between them. Oh well, I tried.

In the post battle cutscene Millium's all, 'Wow, I can see why they're rated as a threat level 5 now!' which I personally choose to interpret as lying on an out of 100 scale. They also "power up" as Duvalie did though in a much less believable fashion, as Claire and Sharon this time show up to 'rescue' us. Ostensibly it's to rescue us, but in my head it's because Claire and Sharon are still 60 levels beneath us from when they left the party in act 1, which puts them on an even playing field with Xeno and Leo. Gotta let the fodder fight our battles for us. (I don't mean it, I'll use you next game Claire and Sharon, I promise. If you're in it. Which you better be.) Man I really hope they get past all this Class VII shit next game, all the supporting cast is better in general, it'd be better to not have to drag Elliot and Gaius around, you know?

Anyway I just so happened to have the perfect cast for Claire/Sharon showing up lol. Alisa gets shocked and starts stuttering about why Sharon is here, Millium gets super excited to see Claire, and Sara says, 'Oh look, it's my two FAVORITE people.' which got a chuckle out of me. As we run up the stairs, Xeno and Leo yell out to Fie that the rest of Zephyr isn't here because they're figuring out how they're going to bring back their boss, which is ? what? A bit of a last minute twist. So he's not actually dead? Is he fake dead like Osbourne or are they trying to get some zombie revival black magic going? The second would be a lot cooler but I have a feeling it's the first. Nobody ever dies in trails.

Anyway moving on to the third stratum, standard stuff. At the top of this one, not really sure who's left...Mick wasn't accounted for yet so I guess it's him, though I was hoping he'd be saved for later games to make clear a gigantic difference in their current power level. He's the only one I can think of though. Let's see...

Turns out that's it. Rean calls him out by his full name, McBurn the Almighty Conflagration. That's a mouthful. Sara gives a sigh right before he appears, so she's not feeling too good about this one. If this were Crossbell this would be their chance to make a really cool, 95% unwinnable fight that you get bonus AP for beating...but we're not in Crossbell anymore. Lol right before the fight starts everyone gives their one line in standard JRPG fashion and Mick says, let's knock it off with the tired one liners and get down to business. Dammit Falcom why you gotta make Mick so likable?

He has a paltry 500k HP, so he shouldn't be much of a problem. Lol when he casts his mystic arte he says, 'This ones a scorcher!' Definitely a reference to that Sears commercial. It does like 20k to everyone, but luckily I had Alisa's double HP lost arte so it wasn't able to get any kills. Another easy fight for the history books.

After the fight he name drops Loewe and says that we might be worth something after all, then unleashes his demon form that was 'hinted at' earlier. His name finally appears on screen in white text for the first time as McBurn, Enforcer I. He transforms and gets white/blonde looking hair, and some edgy tattoos. Why doesn't Rean look this cool? Maybe he has to progress his demon powers some more. But the name appearing on screen like that as he transforms for the first time is pretty badass, not gonna lie. I said it before and I'll say it again, Falcom has a gift at using their text boxes to great effect.