TheHeroOfLight

There is one last story segment we need to tackle before pretty much all the end game content unlocks, and that is Ka Dingel. There are a pair of super bosses that we can find deeper within that requires Jack's final item, one has appeared in the arena when we pack up and leave, and then we can mess around with the teleporters to find the biggest, baddest one of all. The bad part is that since I've beaten Angol Moa already, all of the prep work for handling him has made me far stronger than I need to be here, so the story content is a cake walk while we work our way to the optional battles. Just a word of warning.

Max does not need to protect a unit here, instead able to steam roll Drake, provided he does it within the time limit. The good news here is that your land force is more than enough to destroy Drake's. Your naval force is pretty good too, but you need to do the proper ambushes and play around the reefs and fog to easily sink Drake's group. Overall, I find this to be the easiest of the set, and you can kind of see why.

Like Sami, Andy also has a unit he must protect, this time being a missile (for some reason?). The easy way to do this is to load the missile into a lander and send them north, hopping to the reefs until time runs out. If you stay near the starting area, the Battleships will show up and destroy it. Your other naval forces are essentially sacrifices here to stall as long as possible to give the landers a lead. Your ground forces are able to survive, and it is best to smash the blockade he has on the bridge, then race inland as quickly as possible to stop the Battleships from turning on them. You could sacrifice everything here for the win, but if you want a good score, you need to be careful.

This is one of the more annoying missions in the game, where we have to play protect the unit while the unit is critical to mission success. In this instance, it is a lander that we need to use to ferry our ground forces across the sea. Since you don't know where Drake's forces are, there are numerous instances where he can instantly win here, making this one of the maps that requires some foreknowledge of things to come. There are three peninsula areas that you can use to make your landing, and it is better to do it away from the middle. I sometimes like to drop something on the middle to serve as a decoy of sorts as a mech in a captured city can put out a lot of resistance while the other forces move around it. Ultimately, once our route is secured, I land on the east side and try to force my way there to get the victory you find here.

I believe this was the mission needed to get Olaf to show up for the Final Battle, but I largely avoid it since Olaf's snow harms everyone. We have a Tcopter we can use to send an infantry over to the enemy HQ if you want, but with some careful planning and a little luck, you can smash his forces and not even need it. The trick is going to be in the first couple turns to hide well enough to get the jump on him and obliterate his navy. From there, you just need to make your way to land and finish off the forces there for a quick and easy win.

We have hit the stretch of the game where we will start fighting the secret bosses, and this might be a bad one to start against. Angol Moa does have the power to murder my team with me not having any recourse, but he did not sink into that pattern, allowing me to crush him. He is relatively squishy for the firepower he possesses, and the condition to fighting him helps you bridge the power gap between you and him. You can find this guy in the Ancient Arena, which is where I ended up grinding the Duplicators needed to even access him since I had no luck trying to steal them on the island. By spamming the arena battles, my team powered up immensely, and I am going in here with a maxed Phaser for Rudy. Basically, our damage is there, but not quite our durability. As for fighting him, you need a large number of Duplicators and the Glove for Rudy to smash the mirror and access the rest of the arena. Open the sealed doors and you can take on the first of the nasty super bosses.

I rarely bother with this map, since I don't like the premise. If you would prefer, you could bring Andy instead, but it is probably faster with Max if you know where all of the enemy units are. Basically, Olaf has a giant navy that will instantly sink yours. Then exploiting how bad the naval units are in the game, you walk around the land, taking the north bridge to bypass all of them and seize the HQ for the win. If you ask me, this map perfectly encapsulates why the naval units need a massive buff in the series and why Tiny Metal never bothered to make any naval units.

Unlike the others, Max does not need to capture property, which is good since Tsunami/Squall affects him more than the others. Instead, you just need to power through the fog and smash Drake's navy, which is fairly simple as your units are stronger than his. Your biggest threat comes from the Battleships that have more range than yours, but if you use your Subs correctly, you have more than enough power here to sink everything. I think this map is faster on a rout than HQ cap, so make sure you are the last man standing (or swimming) for the win.

Like Sami, Andy also have a capture mission. He is going up second as you needed to play as him on all of the Green Earth maps to recruit Drake on GBA. Since we don't have to worry about that here, it is up to you on the route you want to take. The good news here is that if you can get Hyper Repair, just hold onto it to offset the Tsunami/Squall and you can usually hit him back a lot harder than he hit you. Andy counters Drake pretty hard in this game, especially since Drake's naval units are all neutral power (like Andy). Overall, a fairly easy map to kick things off with. Just make sure to grab the middle island and corners for the victory.

The game opens up a bit when we hit Green Earth. Each character has their own unique map here, but it will always follow the same pattern of enemies. I went with the Sami route for all of my fights here since that mirrors what I did for the GBA version, but I will show everything. The last time we played as Sami, it was a property race, and that is what is waiting for us here. Luckily, Sami's capture boost offsets the chip damage from Drake's Tsunami/Squall so you should still be able to capture most things in two turns. Sadly, there is no way to heal your naval units for the majority of the map, so make your shots count. Your goal is to use the bottleneck in the woods to set a trap, shred his forces, and then take the properties you need to win. The most important detail here is to block the western port, either by using a Battleship to shoot the capturing infantry or parking a submerged Sub on it after the Cruisers have been sunk. If you cycle the Subs, he cannot take that property and you do not have to worry about naval units from him for the most part.

I've been holding off on uploading these until the preceding videos were uploaded onto my channel on Rumble. Now that we have caught up over there, I am going to release the final Wild Arms videos and bring the tale to a close. With the Dispellado, we are able to reveal the Illusion Temple where Jack gets to put one of his regrets to the past. Sadly, we cannot find her anywhere in the world, and I don't think they reference her or him in the fifth game either. What ultimately happens to them is up to you to decide. Afterward, we head to Baskar Village to sacrifice the Dragon Idol to get the Hope Rune. There are no boss fights for these, but they are sidequests we can knock out before wrapping up the game entirely.

Here is the chapter where we finally learn about Harvey's plot, but we cannot settle things with him just yet. We get to explore the depths of the library, and having already watched Full Metal Alchemist, it was very much a scene of deja vu. Overall, this is probably one of the better chapters with a better balance of dungeon, story, and then the chapter closing fights. My only complaint is with the stupid black fire/burn status. I recorded this long enough ago that I can't remember if there is a way to remove it or if you have to let it time out, but I am fairly sure that you cannot prevent it.

A short level and kind of the reverse of Grit's intro mission in the second game. An infantry is making its way to your HQ and you need to drop everything and race off to intercept it. I don't really care to play this mission at all, so even if the AI were the same as the GBA, I am not sure about the best way to go about exploiting it. What's worse is that by hitting the vulnerable units, you give Grit his power so the distant ones now can target you.

The final Sonja mission, where Andy gets his turn to play in the fog. You need to work on your ambush skills here as Sonja has more than enough force here to overwhelm you. To get a good score, you will need to know in advance where to find her indirects that are camping in the woods, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Depending on what you do with the western most peninsula, you can either go for a rout by seizing it or sneak the HQ by ignoring it and going around. Find what works for you and bring your time in Yellow/Gold Comet to an end.

Even though the title claims Max is striking, this is if we ignore him and stick to Andy, which I believe was required to get Olaf to show up for the final battle in the old games, which I do not recommend. This is still effectively a tutorial mission where you get to use subs to torpedo Olaf's navy while your ground forces trample his. Once you have control of the sea, your battleship can help in the bombardment to bring this to a close. And if you're wondering from the beginning, I have completed the entire first game already and had to go through these missions to unlock Rivals. I will be uploading these alongside the Sonja missions, but I will take a break for Green Earth, for reasons you will see when you get there.

This is the only required Scent of Commerce to my knowledge as we will need the ship to wrap up some of the final chapters, such as Partitio's. You will need money to complete it, and it turns out you can hire someone to negotiate on your behalf to save some money, which I did not know. There are reports of people getting the ship for free since they got a lucky roll with a specific NPC. It will be a little while before we strike out to sea as there are a couple nasty enemies out there and I have a few axes to grind before we take them on.

The Sonja missions continue, this time with Sami at the helm. Ironically, since Sami sucks with everything other than infantry and indirects, she is almost at Sonja's level with the direct units when her bad luck strikes. However, we are in a pretty good situation to use the indirects we have, and while Sonja can see through reefs, she has to find subs the old fashioned way. The objective here is a property capture race with a middle island that is pretty important for getting your numbers. You need to force the units there off, and then chase off the indirects to stop you from capturing it. Sonja will attempt to send reinforcements though, so you will need to pop her landers periodically to deter them from coming. Just be aware her AI has changed from the GBA version so she will venture out a bit more which can mess with your predictions if you're familiar with the old style.

We get to the center of Jack's arc here, translation error included, as we explore the fallen castle. Harken is here too and she wants to throw down with Jack for one final time. Seeing as we've pretty much just toyed with her through all of our encounters, you should be able to imagine how things play out. However, the story between the two is not completely over yet as you will see in a later sidequest...

This is an optional area, but it is necessary to get Rudy's ultimate weapon and I forgot the other piece of ultimate gear here, but there is another. Sadly, neither can be accessed just yet. This is a decent grinding spot, but surviving it is a little difficult where we are currently. Overall, I had a lot more success farming Duplicators here than trying to steal them or get them as drops from the alien enemies. You can also get Secret Signs among other things here, so make sure to exploit things to their fullest here. I will get Magnum Fang down to a low cost eventually by using this, and the remainder of the Duplicators I need will be coming from here as well. It will break the balance of the game somewhat as I will be leaving here considerably stronger than needed for almost the remainder of the game. It will only be the optional bosses that pose any degree of danger to me.

Jack's ultimate weapon is still a little ways away, but we can get him something sooner if you don't mind the luck penalty (don't use luck moves with it). Returning to Saint Centour, you will find in the corner of the town that a blind woman is living there. Since the place is still overrun with monsters, she cannot survive there alone. When we look into who is taking care of her, the flag is triggered and Zed is waiting for us when we leave. Upon beating him, Jack gets his sword, and you get the choice on whether to let him live or die. In the remake, if you let him live, he will join you. Here, it doesn't affect anything anyway. In the end, we go the heroic route as expected since someone is counting on him.

Once you're able to fly over mountains, you can access this boss, who is just like the leviathan in that you need to find him in the desert. There are rumors that you need to read the sign first that warns you about a discarded golem here, but I could not find anything concrete. Just like the previous video, you get some footage of me wandering the desert (farming revive items no less) until we manage to find this bot. Like Leviathan, it is fairly tame for this stage of the game, and also like Leviathan, it drops gear for Cecilia, this time her ultimate weapon. It will take a little while before we can get the weapons for the guys, and their bosses are much more difficult than these, but Cecilia is decked out for the rest of the game with these two equips and the Necronomicon. Expect to see her vaporize stuff in the videos to come.

In order to fight the Leviathan that sunk the Sweet Candy, you must first get the Sweet Candy restored. If you've been rebuilding Adlehyde as you played, eventually there will be a familiar sailor that moves in and gives you the restored ship. From there, you just need to find the sucker in the ocean. It took me a long time to do so, and I've edited in the parts where I was talking about previous games. The boss is fairly easy for this stage of the game, and your reward for sinking this golem is Cecilia's ultimate armor, the Pret-a-porte. I don't know why they chose that name as it means "ready to wear" as in the term used to describe clothes you can just buy off a store shelf. Probably something else lost in translation.

Even though the title claims Max is striking, this is if we ignore him and stick to Andy, which I believe was required to get Olaf to show up for the final battle in the old games, which I do not recommend. This is still effectively a tutorial mission where you get to use subs to torpedo Olaf's navy while your ground forces trample his. Once you have control of the sea, your battleship can help in the bombardment to bring this to a close. And if you're wondering from the beginning, I have completed the entire first game already and had to go through these missions to unlock Rivals. I will be uploading these alongside the Sonja missions, but I will take a break for Green Earth, for reasons you will see when you get there.

The Sonja missions continue, this time with Sami at the helm. Ironically, since Sami sucks with everything other than infantry and indirects, she is almost at Sonja's level with the direct units when her bad luck strikes. However, we are in a pretty good situation to use the indirects we have, and while Sonja can see through reefs, she has to find subs the old fashioned way. The objective here is a property capture race with a middle island that is pretty important for getting your numbers. You need to force the units there off, and then chase off the indirects to stop you from capturing it. Sonja will attempt to send reinforcements though, so you will need to pop her landers periodically to deter them from coming. Just be aware her AI has changed from the GBA version so she will venture out a bit more which can mess with your predictions if you're familiar with the old style.

With our ability to cross mountains now, there are new enemy strongholds we have access to, and we kick things off with Pandemonium. I think this is the last time the group gets separated and has to operate independently, throwing switches and such to allow them to converge before forcing their way out. There are a few bosses we have to crush in our attempt to stop the enemy's plan to unleash the Darkness Tear. If all goes according to plan, we will be sending them back to the drawing board for their next plot...