Remember way back on Wednesday when I said I had a few more hours ahead of me in Phantom Brave to go? Well, it turns out a few more hours meant one hour because Wednesday night I beat the final boss and rolled the credits.

Here’s what happened. I took my squad through a few floors of Failure Dungeons to get leveled up. I brought a bottlemail unit who has a high chance of taking items with it when it’s turns are up so along the way I was able to pick up a few very high level items. This lasted all of a half hour or so. I took those items and used Failure Fusion to get some higher stats on Ash’s weapon and one of my Valkirye’s weapon.My plan was dip in to the last fight, see how much more damage my weapons were doing, and then quit out and continue to farm the Failure Dungeons for weapons and xp.

I also had an idea I wanted to test out. A little while back I had summoned an archer because it had a Failure title and never stored it away. Then I summoned it accidentally in a dungeon run andto my surprise, despite being level one, the archer was going second in the turn order. That’s because it has a passive called quick attack which lets her attack right after Marona when it’s summoned. So when I got back from the run, I looked for other units who also had this skill and I found the Fenrir which had quick attack and more movement speed than the archer.

The final boss fights have crystals that give the boss invincibility. So the priority is to kill the crystals as quick as possible before using strong units to engage the boss. I was doing this by summoning some of my middle of the road units who could kill the crystals but by the time Marona was up again most of them would be dead leaving my stronger units open to being targeted. The idea is to summon all three level one Fenrir, have them pick up the crystals, and run straight to the boss. Since the boss seems to attack the weakest and closest units to it I was hoping it would kill all 3 and in the process destroy the crystals for me.

Here’s how it all went down.

Spoilers ahead, this game is old enough to drive, but still.

Marona and Ash battle their way across the Island of Evil. After every battle they seem to be up against insurmountable odds but the people they’ve helped along the way show up to lend a hand. Eventually the gang ends up at the at Sulphur’s lair where they’re ready to fight and seal Sulphur away for eternity.

Until Sprout shows up and just fights Sulphur on his own. Honestly, I would have been satisfied with that ending, it would atleast be unique, the main character doesn’t have to kill the big, bad, world destroying monster for once. But this is a JRPG and there are rules!

It appears Sprout has defeated Sulphur but Sulphur has other plans. He takes over Sprouts body and the first fight begins.

I put my plan in to action and summoned the three Fenrirs A, B, and C (definitely not names of disposable units. Not at all.). They grabbed the three crystals providing stat boosts to Sprout and ran up to him. Sprout took the bait and killed all 3 on his next turn along with the crystals.

Giving my stronger units an extra turn really made a difference here. Ash and company did more damage with the upgraded weapons but it wasn’t significantly more. They did, however, get to go twice this time and make quick work of Sprout.

Cue the next cut scene.

After the fight, Sprout realizes the only way to stop Sulphur now is end his life and take Sulphur with him.

Except, that doesn’t work either. Sulphur comes back for his second phase and the next battle begins.

This fight has a similar setup to the last one but there are 4 crystals now providing invincibility. Sulphur also has some wicked long range AoE attacks. Again I summoned the three Fenrirs, picked up three of the crystals and ran right next to Sulphur. I would have to use the archer to get the fourth crystal when Marina could summon her again.

I fully expected Sulphur to wipe out the Fenrir’s on his next turn. Instead he walked over them and then did nothing. I summoned my archer, grabbed the fourth crystal and had her join the Fenrirs. Then Sulphur took his turn and did the same thing as last time. He walked a bit and then did nothing. At this point I thought maybe Sulphur wouldn’t attack units holding his magic crystals.

I summoned the rest of the crew just in case Marona didn’t get another turn. On Sulphur’s next turn, to my relief, he hit all four units holding the crystals and destroyed them all. At this point, all of my strongest units were up. Now the play was getting in as many hits as I could with each unit while also making sure they didn’t all clump up together. I still didn’t expect to win the fight but I had to try.

One by one Sulphur picked off each of my units. When it was only Ash left and Sulphur used a powerful spell I thought it was all over. But through those extra levels or sheer luck Ash held on with only a few hundred health left. It all came down to Ash, on his last turn, with Sulphur sitting at 2400 health. The great thing about Ash’s last turn is it gives him a significant damage boost. We’re talking a double damage or more kind of boost. I attacked with Pincushion, a skill that does 9 hits and then a big 10th hit, all of the 9 hits were over 200 damage so as long as the last hit was big enough I would defeat Sulphur. Lucky for me, it was just enough. The Stage Clear notification popped and we were back to the cut scenes.

Sulphur was once again gone and everything looked like it was wrapping up. I had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a third phase. And wouldn’t you know it, Sulphur came back yet again! There’s a moment where Ash is going to sacrifice himself (because that worked so well for Sprout) to seal Sulphur away and Marona tells him she can’t live without him. But our kind of rival Walnut, who has the same power Scarlet the Brave used to lock Sulphur away last time, comes in and finishes the job.

And that’s it! The credits roll, I went back to Phantom Island to save, and the game is over. Unexpected for sure but I’m glad I got to see the ending.

I’m on the “Final Episode” of Phantom Brave. Marona and Ash have fought there way through scores of battles on the Island of Evil with some help from the people they’ve met throughout the game. They’ve arrived of the big bad’s door step and all that’s left to do is take it on. Well, in theory. In reality, there’s a fair bit more game to go if I actually want to finish Phantom Brave. Why? Because I find my squad over leveled and under leveled all at the same time.

I’ve tried to take on the final scenario a few times. Without getting too spoilery, the final encounter is a two parter. I’m able to barely scrape by the first phase with Ash as long as I sacrifice my other party members and get one good damage spell off from my witch. The second part is where I’m really struggling. There are four crystals that give the boss invulnerability that need to be destroyed before I can start doing damage. All of the crystals are on opposite sides of the room. So the plan is to summon phantoms next to the invulnerability crystals, take them out, and attack the boss, all before it has a chance to pick off to many party members. There is just one problem, that fourth crystal is at the far end of the room and it will take at least 2 turns for Marona to get close enough to confine a phantom over there but that will also take her very close to the boss. No Marona, no more summoning party members. The other issue is that the boss uses very strong AoE spells so if there are too many party members standing next to each other it’s going to take them all out.

I have 3 party members (Ash, a Valkyrie, and a Witch) who can do reasonable damage to the boss per turn but I’m having trouble keeping all three alive long enough to get their shots in. Then there’s Marona who is a good 20 to 30 levels below the rest of the party so keeping her alive is a challenge.

Unlike Labyrinth of Refrain I can’t just lower the difficulty for the final boss so the question is where do I go from here? There are two options. Option one: Continue to play for a few more hours to get my party leveled up. Option two: Go watch the final scenes on Youtube and call it a day. I’ll probably go with option one, I’m still enjoying the game and watching cut scenes on Youtube just doesn’t hit the same.

After a little internet research the best way forward from here seems to be Failure Dungeons and Failure Fusion. I knew about Failure Dungeons before and have used them to get the party leveled up when I ran in to difficult scenarios.

The idea is to create a random dungeon that’s about three times your level and then use the Titlist to put a Failure title on the dungeon. This causes the enemy levels to be high but their stats are severely diminished and they don’t give XP for being killed. You might be wondering how leveling works if the enemies don’t give XP. Well, phantoms also gain XP based on the level of the item their confined in to. Since the items in the dungeon are the same level of the enemies you get a ton of XP for confining and then it’s very easy to pick off the weakened enemies. The only issue with this method is while the phantoms gain levels rather quickly, Marona get’s very little XP which has lead to my current situation of Maron being under leveled.

Failure Fusion is not something I’ve tried yet. The idea behind this method is to take a weapon whose stats you want to boost, put a Failure title on it, and fuse it with a much higher level weapon. The Failure title makes the primary weapon five times weaker and since stats through fusion are determined by the difference in primary and secondary weapon you get a massive stat boost for fusing and then even more when you take the Failure title off. The best way to get secondary weapons for this is the Failure Dungeons since the item levels will be much higher than anything I currently have. I’ll just either need a lot of mana or I’ll need to get my Fusionist leveled up more before I can do this.

I’ve got a little work ahead of me if I want to complete this one. Not to imply that it’s something I won’t enjoy. If I didn’t like the battle system and the story so much I would have shelved this game a few episodes ago when things started to get tough.