The End Is In Sight! VGC Let's Play: Tales Of Symphonia!

[Platina]

S. Chapter | [1]  [2]  [3: Clumsy Assassin]   

Overpowered Techs Already?!
Here, Kratos teaches us a really important skill: Guardian, Force Field, etc. This move uses up 10% of your max TP but basically guards against anything; significantly lowering damage during the whole duration while it is active. Raine also joins us now. A dedicated healer with light spells is really handy. Well, with this handy skill learnt as well as a healer, time to tackle this first dungeon. Another straightforward dungeon, split into 3 parts and you use your sorcerer’s ring to light candles to raise platforms. There is a mimic chest that can only be damaged by magics, so it is a bit tricky to beat it, but since I have good techs, it went down rather quickly. Here also has a missable chest, so I made sure I got it (missed it on my previous run) and couldn’t get the title :/


Exploitable Weakness!
The boss is rather simple, make sure Genis only uses Aqua Laser and it pierces through enemies and being weak to water, they don’t stand a chance when I have Kratos and Lloyd locking them down to prevent them from casting spells. After the battle, Colette gets wings and learns Angel Feathers. She also gains better hearing but losses the ability to sleep.

 
Colette saves the day!
Now onto Ossa Trail to Izoold! Upon entering we meet an assassin aiming to kill the Chosen, but luckily, the assassin falls down a pitfall due to Colette’s clumsiness. We scale Ossa Trail to the top and save and traverse back to down to fight against the assassin, as she was unscathed from falling from such a height. Why can’t we just jump down the pitfall too then, to save time? This boss battle is a bit tricky, as she has a guardian with her so I had Kratos focus on the guardian and Lloyd fight against the assassin. Raine and Genis does their thing and after the battle she runs away!

 
Scary Skull..
Exploring inside the cave, we grab a few more chests and face against the Swords Dancer. A really powerful foe, as the sword slashes takes a lot of damage and physical damage against it isn’t very effective. But if he gets too close, all of the mage casters will be easy pickings to a horizontal sweep. That means Lloyd has to tough it out and try to survive while Genis casts Prism Sword and Raine with Photon when she is not healing. Normally I would not have these techs, but this makes it a LOT easier due to the Sword Dancer Light weakness. Genis can only cast about twice before he runs out of TP so I stocked up on Orange gels to fight this formidable foe.


After we leave Ossa Trail, we learn how to do Unison Attacks! Really useful especially for bosses, but I will cover that another time.. To Izoold and to Palmacosta!

Recap:
We unlock the Fire Seal and Colette gets wings! We then meet a dangerous assassin and fight the optional Sword Dancer but it stands no chance against the power of the Prism Sword!

Duration: ~ 1 hour

Favourite Song: Fatalize

Main Character Used: Genis

Button Binding
B: Spark Wave*
Side-B: Flame Lance
Down-B: Cyclone
Up-B: Indignation
Up-C: Atlas
Down-C: Fire Ball

*Varies depending on boss/enemies

Note: Genis has a compound EX skill: Lvl 1 Tough + Lvl 3 Rhythm = Randomizer
This skill makes Genis’ casting time completely random, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter and even sometimes set to 0. Therefore, a trick used is by setting the block button to L and setting the Arte to b. Then by buttonmashing L and b to cast and cancel, we can sometimes have Genis cast the spell right away. This requires luck, but during lucky streaks, I had Genis cast a level 3 Arte consecutively 3-4 times in a row.

Raine also has a similar EX skill so sometimes that is used with Nurse or Photon   

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