Current Events > GF: I'm coming over, you'd better not be the Orb of Canopy

(+) Yeah! (+)

My stupid ass:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5b11fa6f.jpg

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It's this thing:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5b11fa6f.jpg

This thing is an absolute motherfucker.

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No.

It's worse.

In all seriousness though, let me try to explain this in a way that'll make sense to people who haven't played the game (which I presume is "all of you")

The Orb of Canopy is a part of a trio of golden orbs (alongside the Orb of Forward Time and the Orb of Reverse Time) from the hit video game "Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree".

The golden orbs fight is among the worst in the game.

-Reverse Time is the damage dealer. It's very powerful and will likely decimate your entire party if not taken out quickly.
-Forward Time is the tank. With about as much health as the other two orbs combined, it can take a beating, and if it's the last one standing, it will revive Reverse Time and Canopy.
-Canopy is the healer. You can probably already see where this is going. It can also buff Defense and Mind (essentially Magic Defense) of all 3 orbs.

The idea is you take out EITHER Reverse Time or Canopy first, then Forward Time, then the other one of Canopy or Reverse Time. You can only leave Forward Time alive last if you can kill it before it gets its next turn, which, given it has about twice as much health as its partners in crime, is VERY unlikely. So I opted to take down Reverse Time first because it basically slaughtered half my party in its first few turns.

This was a mistake.

Canopy would then proceed to heal the Orb of Forward Time for approximately 131,000 HP (It has nearly 400,000, for reference) nearly every time it got a turn. When it didn't, it would instead buff DEF/MND.

This turned into a battle of attrition that lasted about 30 minutes before I BARELY managed to kill Forward Time before Canopy got its next turn.

After that Canopy went down pretty easily... once I recharged my MP, anyway.
FUCK this fight.

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It kind of is. You've got a party of 12 (out of a total of 56 characters) but only 4 are "active" (often referred to as "frontliners") at a time. You can swap who's active and who's in reserve whenever you get a turn, but if all 4 active characters fall, then it's game over, even if you have some characters in the back.

It also utilizes ATB kinda like some Final Fantasy games, though thankfully it pauses whenever someone gets their turn.

Each character has a unique playstyle, further compounded by skills they can learn with SP they earn via leveling up. For example, one character only has one Spell Card (a special attack that costs MP), but after learning one of her skills, she can use the Spell Cards of any character that is currently on the front line with her, albeit at an increased cost.

All that to say, it's a lot to think about at any given moment, and I personally usually hate games like that. I'm not very smart so a lot of times overcomplicating mechanics just makes them fly right over my head. But something about this game just felt right to me, from the very beginning. I highly recommend the game, but only if you can manage to get it all to "click" with you, so to speak.

Getting Chrono Trigger vibes