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

[holmen]

ahem.
Just as I got started on Symfonia I realized that Xenoblade Chronicles X actually was releasing in the EU as well and not only in the US so I bought a Wii-U and fell deep into a Xenoblade-shaped hole for quite some time..

Since I am closing in on 100 hours in XCX, I climbed up from that hole and played some Symfonia for a bit.

When I left symfonia I was just about to enter the fire temple..
Now I entered the fire temple, and my first encounter was with a Fake chest and to my surprise I was soundly defeated by that chest.
Well a quick reload and running back to the temple. This time avoiding that dangerous chest and completing the temple. Somehow the fight with that chest was harder than the boss fight in the temple.
One thing i noticed when I was defeated was that the chest did not have a lot of HP but i looked like it was immune to all physical attacks. So I Went back to desert city, stocked up on supplies and attacked the chest again. This time I applied fire stones to the weapons. And now that fight was fairly easy.

The journey continued, via a mountain trail and a small fishing camp to a coastal city on another continent.
Here in this city it felt like I missed one puzzle (?)
I had to get a special potion, and a boy had dropped a barrel with potions in the river. It looked like I should be able to help him and hopefully get a potion as thanks. But I Think I did something wrong and ended up having to buy a potion instead. Well, no problem,´this far in, money have been plenty.

Hunting after the impostors I went to hilltop. While doing some quests I was sometimes unsure where I was supposed to go and ended up running a couple of times between the coastal city and hilltop, and doing so I think I happened to accidentaly overlevel a bit since all random encounters are trivial (as well as taking on those desian guards in the city)

Right now I finally found where to go to retreive the statue to get the book back. And also to fight some desians when I find their slave camp - if I understand correctly it is on the other side of hilltop.

With my long XCX break I am now even further behind all others but its OK, I am really enjoying this game and happy to play it in my own pace..
The combat feels good and is actually deeper that I initially thought. This is also the first Tales Of game where none of the main characters are annoying.
All in all, this game has a chance to maybe end up being my fav game in the entire Tales of series