Bippo Ernesti | Mystic Ark - Final Battle & Ending @BippoErnesti | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated December 09 2022
English translation by Aeon Genesis. In the likely event you aren't interested in seeing the various stats and items, skip the first chapter or to about 1:12 in the video.

It's hard to really do anything unique in this fight without significantly prolonging it due to attack spells being vastly outclassed by physical attacks. Really, the only things that matter are Power buffs and physical attacks. I put Deathguards up just in case the boss would throw a death spell I hadn't seen before.

If you've never listened to this game's legendary soundtrack, I implore you to give it a go. It's some of the best video game music I know, composed by the late Akihiko Mori.

Oh hey, you're actually reading the description, thanks for being a cool person. You can stop reading at this point; the rest is going to be just scattered ramblings about the game.

Never figured out if Wood and Water did anything beyond VERY slowly restoring MP and HP respectively, even after checking guides which posit falsehoods about them providing defensive benefits on armor. You still take the same amount of damage regardless of Water infusion and you're still equally susceptible to ailments with Wood infusion. I also never fully figured out whether Powerwave only deals damage based on current HP or whether it also incorporates the Power stat in the calculations. I didn't use Fire or Thunder Arks because I felt like they might rely on the Magic stat even though I never confirmed it.

Lured in by the phenomenal soundtrack, I had intended to play this game way back in 2008ish, but I couldn't find a full translation of the game at the time, so it's been on my to-do list all this time. Having played it now, I have to say it's one of the easier RPGs I've played, which I don't necessarily mind, but it's way too padded. The vast majority of the non-combat gameplay involves arbitrary back-and-forth trekking between various locations -- especially later on where it becomes plain spiteful toward the player. It took me just shy of 65 hours to finish this game. On the plus side, you'll likely never need to grind for anything due to the sheer number of battles you'll be practically forced into.

Throughout the game, I tried cycling the various characters as I played, but I'd almost always wind up with a Tokio/Meisia or Tokio/Miriene combo due to Tokio's Illusion Strike blending every boss into a fine paste and the healing/(de)buff spells from either mage being too good to pass up. Reeshine is really powerful, but she can never land her hits. I didn't really dig Lux's HP cost attacks, and while Kamiwoo had some decent stuff with Threaten and Breath, he wasn't close enough to reaching the others in usefulness.

Chapters
00:00 Inventory/Stats display
01:12 Confrontation
01:48 Final battle
10:32 Ending