The Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible Experience

i've always thought of last bible as one of the darkest corners of the megami tensei franchise in fact i wouldn't be surprised if many of you had no idea what it was the series is no small part of megaton history spanning multiple genres across a variety of platforms and yet despite that it is exceedingly unpopular i can probably count the amount of times i've seen someone identify themselves as the last bible fan on one hand as the audience for megami tensei grows wider by the day and fans find themselves discussing even its most inaccessible titles last bible has consistently fallen to the wayside even with one of its games officially released in the united states and the rest having full fan translations so what's the deal with these games getting the cold shoulder do they suck that much ass i mean come on even the name sounds like a bootleg version of final fantasy last bible the hell was wrong with the first one at a glance you wouldn't be mistaken for thinking that some of them looked like a game your grandma would pick up for you for like ten dollars at walgreens megami tensei is known for its largely modern world to tackle ideological problems and mature themes the only problem the last bible series looks like it's ready to tackle is how quickly it'll make me fall asleep sure the basic dna of the franchise is still here demon negotiation turn-based combat duels with powerful gods but the presentation is about as generic as it could be and the mechanics and storylines look simplified to put it lightly to me that sounds like a death sentence that strips away everything that makes the franchise unique but look at all this there must be something here that kept people coming back but what well that's exactly what we're gonna try and find out in this video we'll be starting our journey through each and every game in the last bible series to find out what if anything makes them worth checking out in the present in this episode we'll check out the first two entries in the numbered trilogy in the next one we'll cover two additional games a strategy game and a dungeon crawler that are standalone titles disconnected from the others finally the last episode will be devoted to last bible 3 the climax of the series which also happens to be the longest as a bonus i'm going to throw in some coverage of the incredibly obscure last bible new testament games and the potential future they hold for the series as always i'll be discussing the plot mechanics and general flow of each title heavy spoilers are going to emerge as we progress deeper consider using these videos to preview the opening chapters or gameplay of a particular entry you're interested in or feel free to join me all the way through to the end if you're so inclined my intention here is to provide an easily accessible resource for the entire series feel free to use it as you see fit we've got a long road in front of us so let's get to it and see what we can dig out the one that started it all was megami tensei gaiden last bible a top-down fantasy rpg that follows the story of a group of young apprentices training to become gaia masters naturally their day-to-day routines are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of demons from there it's up to you to explore the world conquer dungeons and build up an army of all kinds of horrific creatures to help you along when it comes to ports and re-releases last bible has more than you might think and the differences between them can be a little confusing it was originally released in japan in 1992 for the game boy featuring both a single player main quest and a multiplayer battle mode yeah that's right if you could get two people with copies of this game in the same room and you had a gameboy link cable you could pit your parties against one another that's pretty sick but i think having two last bible fans within 50 feet of each other is outlawed in most countries in 1994 last spibel received an upgraded release on the sega game gear which unfortunately dropped the multiplayer mode but added on improved graphics sound and more story content a worthy trade-off if you ask me interestingly enough in 1998 the game was ported to the game boy color with graphics nearly identical to the original except for well more color and none of the game gear content however perhaps as a consolation prize the battle mode came back this version would make it to the united states in 1999 and is the only last bible title ever to do so if you don't remember hearing about this one that might be because it was published with a completely different name revelations the demon slayer kind of like revelation's persona honestly the game boy color version gets weirder the more you think about it it came out years after a visually superior release of the game with more content already existed you'd think in that span of time they could have at least squeezed in the extra story bits if the graphics were a no-go i imagine this version came to be as an easy way to scoop up some of the hype generated by a little something called pokemon or maybe as a drop in the bucket for people bored of the latest square rpgs the game boy was way more popular than the game gear in the west as well so it made the platform a natural choice for bringing the series to an international market but it's regrettable that the only last bible game we ever got was in essence a low effort cash grab now believe it or not the ports don't stop here the game boy color version also got a japan exclusive release on the 3ds eshop in 2012 and in 2020 the game gear version made its triumphant return on the game gear micro this stupidly tiny gimmick handheld that boasts a screen width of 1.15 inches if you ever wanted to enjoy some classic atlas gaming on a screen the size of the average megaton fan's penis well the opportunities out there i know what you're thinking holy marshall we get it this game was printed more times than the actual bible but if you're gonna play it once it's good to know what options are on the table and my personal suggestion is to do it on the 1994 game gear release it looks good it sounds good and it's got a beefed up story that greatly enhances the game's final chapters leading directly into the sequel thanks to the wonders of the internet and the work of many dedicated fans all over the world it's all so easily playable today in english let's check it out so the first thing you see before you even hit the main menu is a pretty nice looking intro that gives us context for the universe we're about to delve into in the early years on the fifth planet from the sun beings that resembled humans arrive with an ancient life-giving substance called oracalcum possessing supernatural power known as gaia the beings used the aura calcum to cultivate the planet uh yeah that's it some real ancient aliens type click through the main menu start a new game and we have a good old-fashioned text crawl to keep the ball rolling presumably many thousands of years later the people who sprung up from the seeds planted by the ancients hold a yearly ritual in which every fourteen-year-old child is brought to a place called mount paulo where some are then chosen to become gaia masters our view switches right to the mountain as a sagely looking dude prepares to make his choices he orders those who feel the power of gaia within to state their names and it's time to get started with our main characters these guys have canon names but considering the entry screen is blank i'm just gonna make up my own as usual naturally i named the protagonist after myself for our male ally i decided to give nut grabbing charlie a break and go with akira original i know i spent about 12 hours trying to think of a cool name for the female partner but ultimately settled on rey the old standby another exciting text crawl explains that as the three began their gaia training the old masters gradually began to disappear and the world was heading down a dark path not exactly the best plot i've ever heard but hang on for a bit there are some pretty interesting turns to the story and the final act is actually quite remarkable so we get plopped on our ass in the town of moira in front of our teacher zodia he reminisces over the past two years we've spent training with him and urges us to head to the temple and receive an official proclamation of our new status as a gaia paragon yet another step on the way to becoming a fully fledged master the priest is all hyped up to give us our rank but also demands that we pledge eternal allegiance to god it just wouldn't be megami tensei game without that happening within the first five seconds of playing after making things official we get a cheap sword some fur armor and 100 bucks really fur armor what do i look like a caveman let's see if the shops have anything better than this so much for two years of my life outside some guy lets us know that while zodia is knowledgeable he doesn't really measure up to the likes of lucifer or michael who are the gaia masters that recently vanished well no that's like saying your mcdonald's manager isn't quite as iconic as jesus christ what do you expect so anyway moira is a pretty small town you got a handful of houses and a row of shops along the top from left to right we've got items armor and then weapons basically every town is going to have each of these as well as an inn to restore your party's health we can't buy much yet since things aren't supposed to get funky for a few more minutes but it can help to preview the stock you're going to want to upgrade your equipment asap because the fur armor might as well just be a fur coat and the sword hits like a rolled up piece of tin foil our protagonist is capable of using many types of weapons but i generally stuck with simple blades depending on what you choose you'll have different accuracy and power stats each human character has their own limitations on what they can use so it can be fun to experiment and see what works best for your party a handful of mana seeds from the item shop to restore your health will be pretty nice to have until you've got yourself a party with a dedicated healer as well feel free to poke around and talk to people for a bit if you want but otherwise we need to visit the training center this big building here and report back to zodia he says that this year we'll be the ones to escort the children to mount paulo until the screen has a seizure and a guy runs in screaming about a beast's invasion well guess we'll see if that training paid off zodia rushes off to the mountain alone to rescue those who are already on their way and we decide to head back to the priest the guy's kind of in disbelief about this attack and says that we should head to the nearby town of lemuria to see if their priest knows anything without michael and lucifer to protect everyone things aren't looking good and so our adventure begins about 95 of this game is traveling between towns grinding out battles and recruiting demons so we better get started while it may seem a bit daunting at first the overworld is actually quite small and generally pretty linear the geography tends to steer you exactly where you need to go and if there's a branching path or you have a choice of destinations in front of you you'll know pretty quick if you chose the wrong one because the enemies will either rip your out or you'll be missing a key or something it's very hard to get lost the battle system is simple and reminiscent of the two digital devil story titles or the first shin megami tensei considering last bible came right after those three i guess that makes a lot of sense it's a system that might have been getting stale at this point but i can't help but enjoy it your options are to fight set the battle to auto run talk manage your lineup and view your stats pressing fight allows you to assign orders to each of your team members whether that's just attacking with your equipped weapon casting a spell using an item or defending i'd recommend leaving auto battling off until you get a few levels under your belt because you can die in just a few hits once you got a good team established in some decent equipment however it's a godsend because while the battle system is all right it does get pretty repetitive managing your lineup is where you'll call demons in and out of battle if you have any and you can also move around the order that your party is standing in a good general rule is to keep the weaker guys at the back of the party but honestly i couldn't really tell if it made much of a difference as to how often they got hit can't hurt to stick with it though if you choose to speak and attempt to win demons over to your side you might find that the negotiation system sours part of the experience the format that negotiation takes in the last bible has every demon asking you a series of like four yes or no questions in a row and throughout my entire playthrough i only saw maybe 12 different possible questions just presented in a different order each time there hardly seems to be any logic to it and your success seems to be just determined by guessing what combination of yes and no that particular demon wants to hear once you've figured out that demon's combination provided you remember it you can recruit it again instantly if you ever lose it through fusion or on subsequent playthroughs you can also have recruited demons speak for you which foregoes the question and answer process and simply leaves things up to a dice roll either way be prepared for repeated failures it's not like other megami tensei games where you can barter with money or exploit personality specific questions or moon phases or something like that it's just trial and error with the same pulls of dialogue over and over this is one of the biggest problems of the game demon recruitment is a core part of the franchise's identity and considering the other aspects of last bible aren't as original as the mainline series you can see why the whole thing might start to feel bland after a while some may enjoy the guessing game of finding out each demon's secret code if you will but i much prefer the systems featured in other games even if they are more reliant on rng throwing in a wall until it sticks just isn't that fun to me as for demon fusion well that's hard to up the series staple of combining demons into a stronger one is as fun as any other injury though this time it's all done through a fusion spell learned by your male partner who isn't with us yet visiting some sort of building to do your fusions isn't a thing in this game so once you have the fusion spell you can pretty much do it whenever you want all in all the gameplay mechanics are kind of a mixed bag here and i think your enjoyment of them really comes down to how tolerant you are of repetition and trial and error i think we can all agree that the art is pretty damn cool though sure you got jizz puddles and angry lizards but you also got demonic quadrupeds that'll leach your eyes out and uh whatever this is it's different enough from other megami tensei games to make it feel somewhat fresh and i appreciate that also the music in battles and throughout the game is pretty solid so you got that to look forward to as well anyway hang out around the town get that money buy better equipment and try to recruit two or three demons to soak up some hits before going too far within 5 or 10 minutes you'll gain a handful of levels that'll make things easier your stats in this game are endurance wisdom strength speed and luck you can pretty much build your character however you want unlike other entries in this franchise your character can learn magic such as attack spells and one that lets you fast travel between towns so knock yourself out if that's your thing keeping your endurance and strength high is my recommendation so you can just tank hits and pound everything into a pulp but speed is useful too especially when it comes to healing before a boss can attack i don't really know what luck does but i'm a guy a master so i don't need that anyway lemuria can be found by heading east from moira then south it's the ones surrounded by trees the town's people mentioned that beasts have besieged the village of arrow which is like 10 feet to the east of la murray in a desert apparently the only thing that can save the place is the water of lette which can be gathered in an oasis deep into the region we also learned that some gaia masters are in town here belil bal and mephisto you're free to talk to them in their big meeting room they kind of just look like generic rogue dudes instead of well demons the three are considering handing over their piece of aura calcum to placate the beasts but that's stupid let's just go take care of the problem ourselves on the way out a kid mentions that akira had headed off to fight the beast as well in fact he lives in this town and his family is pretty worried about him looks like we'll be meeting up with our first human party member pretty soon from here i basically kicked major ass outside the town for about an hour straight see there's a sword in the shop here in lomaria the kintadu worth 6 000 maka you can't just tease me with such massive power this early in the game and expect me not to do it besides the road to the oasis is long and i wanted to be as prepared as possible it was really satisfying being able to one-shot most of the demons on the way but of course this isn't necessary as long as you get a filled out party and some sturdy armor you can reach the oasis by heading south from le maria and then taking the frustratingly linear windy path through the mountains for an oasis this place actually sucks it's filled with horrific monstrosities that will drain your health bar and likely knock out a few of your demons if you hang around for too long my least favorite encounter was the bees so annoying and usually always appearing in groups fortunately to get the water we need we just gotta touch the pond over here and then we're clear to get the hell out with the water in hand head on over to arrow but be sure you're rested up and have a healthy party as we touch the village a barrier preventing entry constructed by the beasts is dissolved inside we immediately see akira who's about to pass out after being defeated by a terrible creature so who is it what terrifying disgusting thing put this town and our friend in such a starry state this dork named java who looks like a goblin made of butter i killed him in two shots granted i had the beefed up sword but come on this was with no demons even if you didn't have a weapon at all he'd go down just as fast with a handful of demons assisting you what a letdown akira thanks us and heads back letting us know that the town should be returning to normal soon well the only thing truly notable about arrow is that it has a hospital if you head back to akira's house his mom gets pissed because he hasn't made it back yet and we kind of just left him on his own after being beaten within an inch of his life i mean it was his idea but i get it turns out he's back at the dock's place i love a little mandatory backtracking akira decides to join up with us after this which finally gives us access to the demon fusion spell be sure to make use of that consistently as you gather more and more of them it can be easy to forget sometimes considering it's just another spell on the list presented with zero fanfare after assuring his mom that everything is all good we're free to continue with our quest so the priests of le maria are in a back room behind the three gaia masters talking to them reveals that zodia has been wounded and help is needed at mount paulo we still don't know why all this is happening but at least we got some clear direction on what to do next mount paulo is just to the northwest of lemuria it actually looks more like a cave on the map run up the stairs and we find zodia who lamented the fact that he couldn't help the children the guy leaning over him asks us to defeat the monster that did this and steps aside this is essentially the first real dungeon of the game but it's really small and only has a few simple branching paths of course there are encounters out the ass to ensure that you're here for as long as possible but aside from that it's nothing to worry about you might as well try and nab whatever demons you can here too i managed to get one of these big satanic puppies and i was pretty happy about it when you reach the edge of this place you'll find a vampire hanging out on a ledge with the lost kids behind him he looks a lot more threatening than the first boss but again goes down in just a few turns there's no advice i can give other than to just use everything you have or maybe mash the a button when the vampire dies the kids each do a 360 ladder jump straight out of a call of duty montage and run back to town all in a day's work back at le maria belil bal and mephisto have some new dialogue where they all do their best to downplay your accomplishments these are the same guys who are about to give up their aura calcum because some weak demon named java asks them to gaia masters my ass the priests encourage you to continue investigating the source of the invasion and give you a permit needed to enter a nearby passageway before heading out briefly stay at the inn you'll see a vision from a goddess urging you not to pursue gaia interesting coincidentally some dude in a bed lets us know that zodia lived and is currently pursuing gaia thank you last bible that's some very subtle foreshadowing well let's go get some usage out of our new permit our destination is literally right next to mount paula the western shrine talk to the guard head on through and we're in a new section of the overworld immediately to the west is harappa this backwater filled with people and animals standing around in the mud we learn here that rey the final gaia master candidate that we train with has been kidnapped we may be able to learn more at the nearby city of vermou as rey happens to be the daughter of raphael its high priest also apparently the people there can talk to animals there's not really much else to do here yet though one of the houses inexplicably has a kangaroo inside of it and nothing else and that's pretty funny maybe we can chat him up later believe it or not you can actually wander into a base to the north housing the zord faction who are suspected of being involved with rey's kidnapping you can't really get far into the place because it's simply not time yet but the enemies do spawn there and offer a ton of xp if you can take them down to continue the story we've gotta head to maluha a town of the south here we find out that getting to ramu is as simple as passing through the hypnose shrine you can also pick up a few tidbits about the zord they're a group who goes around killing beasts and harnessing powerful gaia honestly sounds a bit like us but i suppose our mass demon slaughter is for a more righteous cause i mean at least we haven't kidnapped any women yet though we do bind sentient creatures to our eternal servitude to be used in repeated fights to the death just don't think about it too much yet another villager tells us about a dude named harda who is working to understand the beast on a deeper level finally we can also nab a couple of treasures from a house here one item of note is the magnetite now if you played a few games in this franchise you know magnetite is typically used as an energy source to summon demons lore wise it's kind of the same thing here but mechanically it couldn't be any more different and by that i mean this game just has you use it to trade for items at a handful of locations across the map granted some of these trades are integral to getting the game's best ending but that's about all it's used for no resource management or anything else like that to worry about so i was kinda under the impression that this hypnose shrine standing in our path to remove would be something like a dungeon so i got myself prepared for the worst new equipment several more level ups fusions all that good except it's not a dungeon at all it's just this little structure to the south or a dude teleports you to the next area well hold on to your dicks because we're in a whole new continent now nearby you got the village of jarawan another cookie cutter area where we can restock after that arduous 20 step journey one guy in this town includes us in that lucifer and the others were supposedly trying to create life with gaia before disappearing we can also finally meet harda the guy studying beasts he wants to help the creatures live longer lives better watch out man don't want to end up like lucifer right the fairy next to him has one line of dialogue and it simply says i'm afraid of dying what a hauntingly simple piece of character building from which to engage in meaningful existential contemplation anyway if we want to save the girl and talk to animals we better get to ramu so let's blow this hole and get on with it it's to the southeast of our position a bit of a lengthier walk than the past few places but the encounters shouldn't bother you too much predictably the place is in disarray raphael has gone alone to the tower of the dark eye to retrieve the town stolen oracalcum i mean rey's missing her dad's missing what a goose chase one step at a time i suppose before heading out to the tower you might notice there's a girl near the back of the town who claims she can talk to plants and there's a suspiciously tall tree next to her keep this in the back of your mind for a while the tower of the dark eyes sounds pretty scary but damn it it kind of sucks like all the rest the dungeons are so easy in this game and i'm not saying that as an exaggeration they're short like basically any puzzles or anything and just feel like minor obstacles at best the place is off to the east of remove it's just a handful of boring empty floors there's some treasure you can get on the third floor but it is placed so lazily out in the middle of the floor that i almost felt insulted taking it at least make me work for it a little come on actually aside from another magnetite to carry around you can also find a dragon bone here last bible has three special demons that can be created by collecting each of their bones you need to visit a special npc to do this which i'll show in a bit but as long as you're at least partially conscious while playing this i'm sure you'll find them all at the top of the tower you have to fight it oh my god are you serious a minotaur if this place had eight floors too i'd probably commit myself to a mental institution he's a bit beefy but i doubt it'll kill you unless you show up to the fight heavily injured at the opposite end of the room waits raphael who had been kept captive by the beast he and his assistant are shocked at how easily we brought it down you know i kind of like the idea that the last bible protagonist is just that cool nothing at all matters to this guy he's just a silent machine with that the day is saved the aura calcum is back the town can go back to normal it's a happy time back at the shrine and remove roth gives us the soul ring so we can talk to animals the world is now teeming with specks of additional lore and advice every animal is a potential source of information so remember that dump of a town that was filled with them let's hit that up and see where rey is this nice dodo bird tells us what i figured out about two hours ago the zord took rey to their cave to the north great well the bird gives us a cool key to get further into the place so let's check it out as you blast your way through the zord hideout be mindful that these guys are a bit tougher than your average mobs keep an eye on your health and if it comes down to it don't be afraid to throw out a buff spell or two to help yourself along grab up all the treasures beat back all the bandits and soon enough we find rey she's well less than happy about how we've been killing everything in our path not like we had much of a choice in the matter but okay she basically calls us murdering pieces of and runs off luckily she isn't far she's chilling at the kangaroos house back in the animal town rey calls us a gaia master fraud and asks if we enjoy all of the killing then decides to join up with us to monitor our activities my god pull that stick out of your ass well this is our last human party member rey boasts good recovery spells so enjoy the added safety net she provides to your team after assembling the full squad i headed back to ramu and told raphael we saved his daughter i figured he might want to know about that then i followed the natural curvature of the land and ended up in the town of tillman oh and for the record i killed a handful of monsters on the way so much for rey's watchful eye anyway as always this place has an issue only our dumbasses can fix the town priest's son triton supposedly plans to elope and he's left town and brought along a special magic staff with him not exactly our problem but these guys have a cool dolphin we can ride so we're gonna have to help if we want to use it you can find the dolphin right at the top of town you need a permit to use it so just head back to the priest and his wife tell them what's up and they let you use it to go find their son before heading out there are a couple neat things to take note of first this random ass dude mentions that he saw a guy named zodia leaving the weapons shop earlier and says that zodia is the leader of the zord what this that's a hell of a way to find out a pretty critical plot detail so yeah zodia's up to no good and abuses his gaia power we're definitely gonna be running into him again also just outside of town you can visit sage mountain this place is pretty useful if you got three the same variety of bone you can get yourself some pretty beefy demons here for free be sure to return here and grab those as soon as you do at the top of the mountain a sage will teach rey the recarom spell for free which offers you a way to revive fallen party members it actually doesn't work during battles and it has a chance of failing altogether but it's an alright recovery option for out in the field finally one sage will give you a crest and asks us to give it to zodia if we see him again when you're ready to save triton hop on the dolphin back in town and you'll be brought to orthrus cavern triton is camped out in the back and summons orthuris himself to fend us off thinking that we're zord members who've come to capture him so yeah the dude never eloped at all he was just being hunted down and apparently used that as an excuse orthrus hits hard but a few sustained turns of damage from a filled party is more than enough to bring him down if you're worried about losing your protagonist or something just have him defend and you'll be fine after nearly beating his dog to death triton begs us to help save it and you'll need a rune item to revive him you can find these in some shops but you probably already have one handy from looting treasure chests in return we get triton's staff which is equippable by rey and orthus joins us not too bad back in town shit's all peachy again and another dolphin is ready for us to ride to the next spot on our journey this little guy drives you straight into the belly of the beast it shits you out right at the docks in zord castle which is predictably crawling with soldiers and other formidable enemies guess it's time to give old zodia a visit make your way through and check every room for treasure amusingly the guards posted at some of the doors want you to go through and meet zodia and step aside without any issue if that's the case why don't you guys turn off the random encounters too after a while you'll run into the guy in a fairly average looking hallway and he marvels at how strong we've become he also casually drops the fact that rey's father the priest we talked to like 20 minutes ago has been killed after saying this he tells us to come find him and runs out of the room faster than a woman does when they find out you played this game alright zodia i'll play your little cat and mouse games suck my nuts blast through a hundred million encounters and there he is didn't get too far huh he tells us that the whole point of zord is to annihilate the beasts and says that gaia is the one and only thing people can trust in gotta have that raw power then we gotta fight morgan this majestic gold knight that 100 does not match the character's generic pirate sprite on the overworld his attacks are like orthuris nothing to scoff at but he just can't keep up with a full party you hardly need to buff or anything because it's just that unlikely that he'll out damage you random encounters are much much more threatening than most of these bosses because they can spawn in groups any time it's a one-on-one fight aka basically every boss in the game they just crumble impressed with our skill zodia says that another gaia master murdered raphael everyone that we've been looking up to as heroes the entire time are actually out to grab as much power as they can for themselves zodiac says we need to go to atlantis where we can witness the meeting of the gods and then exits where we can then pass through out to the overworld kind of a complicated guy honestly trying to murder us while also giving us the deep behind-the-scenes details on the leaders of the world okay atlantis it is then head west across the bridge and you'll end up in a big stretch of land with a lone inn waiting for us here we have another vision from the goddess who encourages us to seek out the harmonious power of force she says that true strength comes from realizing that gaia in force must be united i see ahead of here is a big forest filled with little caves that we can stop to trade in each of these caves house friendly monsters we can trade with this is where that magnetite comes into play you can get some generally useful items and trinkets for battle here but i'd honestly advise saving your magnetite for later unless your pockets are overflowing with it we're gonna need three pieces to trade with heart of the beast investigator later so keep that in mind one of these beasts explains that aura calcum is needed to keep them alive which means beasts and people would be just fine living together if they could just learn to share or some like that there are also actually some hidden caves you can find by walking into certain sections of the forest one towards the western end is the fairy cave where you can get a couple pieces of magnetite and a bit of brief dialogue another one the cerberus cave houses some treasure as well as a freely recruitable cerberus who's happy to see a friendly human further northwest is yet another inn oddly and a beast lair here harda asks for the three magnetite shards to help out his monster buddies give these over as soon as possible to get it over with in return he gives us the ability to speak with plants so at this point we can talk to every living thing in existence that might sound cool but seriously imagine how up that would be for a second you'll never have a moment's peace again for as long as you live birds grass trees all that just talking non-stop for all of eternity what a nightmare fortunately gameplay-wise we can actually only talk to a handful of big trees like the one in the upper left corner of this area this guy the tree of life gives a new spell to akira as a blessing from the goddess the smell is called ranka and deals heavy damage though it takes a while for him to cast it pretty cool nonetheless when you're finished here another hypnose shrine is to the north which takes us closer to atlantis the first place you're likely to run into is crotona which is about as run-of-the-mill as the town can get restock and upgrade and poke around with the npcs for a minute one guy claims that lucifer and ball are about as insane as the zord and that he's always hated them a couple of kids talk about hiram their father and the flying ship he's building his wife confirms that he's currently in atlantis so get hyped we'll have an airship soon on the way towards the next settlement i ran into a medusa out in the overworld and was surprised to see that she was completely naked i don't actually have anything else to say about that i just took a clip of it for some reason so i must have thought it was worth showing in the video i ran into her by going northeast immediately after exiting crotona atlantis is actually like six steps due east of the town and i just barely avoided seeing it because the screen didn't scroll far enough down so much for a long journey i could probably spit farther than the distance between these two townses yeah so if you thought atlantis would be some underwater city well it's not but it does have a sewer system we can explore i guess that's close enough in atlantis's shrine ball and balila are there and think it's ridiculous to assume that they would have killed raphael and together with the priests decide that zord needs to be killed off for good ball assures us that zodia has been lying and to be fair he is a little suspicious but i'm pretty sure the masters are just trying to keep us under control for the time being well we got no choice but to go along with it so let's keep looking around from a nearby locked door down the hall we can hear hirom's voice who insists that he's busy at the moment alrighty then outside a guy is all frantic about how beasts have invaded atlantis sewers to reach those we just gotta leave town through the top exit so let's put on our plumber and take a look blast away these anubises that jump you at the entrance then jump down into the poop pipe the stuff lurking around down here is actually pretty terrifying can you imagine seeing these in some drainage pipe my god there's some pretty decent treasure down here including a muramasa sword and some stat boosting charms so give it a good once over and make sure you don't miss out i guess it's fair to call this place a proper dungeon unlike those caves or the evil eye tower there's something of a gimmick here although it's pretty simple basically the entire underground is scattered with different little islands and staircases and you're bouncing around between them trying to find your way to the path forward on the surface i recommend just checking all possible routes anyway because it won't take long and you can come across another talking tree that gives akira a spell eventually you'll end up in a back room of the shrine and you can listen to a gaia master and some beasts talking about the oar calcum that had been stolen from raphael before he was killed so to nobody's surprise yes our supposedly noble and heroic leaders are actually scheming murderers the guy also reveals that lucifer ball and all the others created the beasts well moving on we end up in hirum's locked room except it's actually some zord guy who says that hirom has been imprisoned in a town called dallo since we kinda have him cornered he gives us the key to his cell guess that's our next destination so much for a meeting of the gods right atlantis was just one big letdown we're getting really close to the end game now which is coincidentally the coolest part of the entire thing so let's see what's up in dallow it's actually just west of cortona another short journey in the shrine the priests claim that the zord have already been beaten back out of the city and that only their boss zodia needs to be defeated to do away with them entirely well that was fast this might sound like good news until you remember that this is exactly what the gaia masters wanted i mean zodia isn't exactly the most noble guy and the group did resort to kidnapping and violence to keep ray away from the masters but they were about the only ones capable of putting up some resistance against them sure both sides were in it for the raw power but the zord were necessary for keeping the gaia masters occupied it's gonna be on us to see an end to each faction in the same room we can unlock hirom who explains that the zord had him building arcs for them he decides to head back to atlantis and offers to build us an ark and we're going to need that if we want to bring the world back to balance in the back of hiram cell a couple of zord guys ask us to save their headquarters which the priests and gaia masters have already left to destroy they give us an item called the bird which i don't know if it's actually a bird or what but apparently it'll get us into zord hq as for saving them i don't know guess we'll see when we get there first let's drop in on hiram's family back in crotona and let them know he's all good his wife offers us a lapis as thanks for helping out which can make ships fly the more you know stop by atlantis drop off the stone and hirom begins constructing us an ark he says it'll take a while and runs off so let's topple ourselves a faction in the meantime to the northeast of dallo in a snowy area you'll find a big circle of stones step in the center and your party raises the bird item to the sky which conjures up a tornado that brings you straight to the zord headquarters as you make your way past the place's beefy monsters you'll notice dead zord soldiers lying all over the place looks like we might be a bit too late one straggler shouts about how he saw the gaia masters bring all the roaming beasts with them and a few priests are scattered around seemingly confused about where the masters have gone and what they did with the orichalcum at the end of a massive hallway we find zodia who's accepted his defeat he vows to bring down lucifer and all the others somehow someday and as one final training session decides to challenge us to a battle to the death zodia hits like a truck and magic attacks seem to have little if any effect on him you'll want to buff up your physical attacks for this fight and ensure everyone is consistently topping off their hp while it is still hard for zodia to back you into a position you can't get out of he can surprise you and kill off party members who are sitting at about half capacity he can also hit you with some random status effects like sleep and poison though there aren't much to be concerned over when zodia falls he admires our power one final time and insists that we kill off the gaia masters who created the beast and sought to control the world with them then all of a sudden mephisto baleel and ball appear laughing at zodia's defeat they decide to kill us off too however the group makes a fatal mistake and decides to leave the job only to mephisto meaning it's another simple fight against a lone enemy if only all three attacked at once they might have had a better chance of getting away with their plan mephisto is even easier than zodia and falls within seconds he dies cursing our name and then we're back out in the snow alone the zord are gone the gaia masters have officially declared all-out war on us let's finish this up hirum is glad to present the ark to us after returning to atlantis declaring it a masterpiece before embarking on our final journey i decided to stay at the inn and ended up receiving a goddess vision she calls on us to rise seek out the power of force and receive michael's blessing you know i almost forgot about him could he be the one good guy a master outside the ship is ready and the whole world is now at our fingertips flying around you'll notice it's not very big fly for just a bit to one edge of the map and you'll quickly emerge on the other side sorry to any flat earthers out there essentially to find michael and complete the final bits of the game you're just going to want to fly around to any places you haven't been yet it's not as hard as it might sound in fact it's actually pretty fun because you're finally given some freedom to really explore your first order of business should be a return to sage mountain and finally assemble those bones you've been collecting these demons are strong as and have massive health pools my favorite was the dragon just because its health is so far above everything else these demons aren't a requirement or anything like that for completing the game but it does make the final stretch a bit more manageable and they're just fun to use afterwards we're off to find some new lands there's one big island you can reach that has a mountain range going down the middle of it there's no other way to get here except by flying and it's a good place to start the top structure on the left side is a sage shrine or a rogued man asks for a rune after giving it to him he says that mephisto had attacked him and now only the power force may be enough to defeat him the man tells us to seek the plants for more advice well we do know a few places with some talkative plants first let's check out the structure of the south then we'll get on that this one's another sage shrine where the guy just gives you a stat booster before suddenly being possessed by mephisto bruh we were just talking about you well let's see how tough this bastard is now mephisto's second form dodges attacks very frequently and puts out modest damage it was common for about half my team to just miss every round but he's not the sturdiest guy around so every attack you land is pretty serious and takes a lot off his health bar for all the effort he must have gone through to revive himself i have to say i thought he could do better all that's left after this is to check out the right side of the island where we have peter cavern come on seriously what kind of goofy ass name is that inside you got some treasures and a series of ladders leading downwards to a dark gathering of wizards most foul i'm not even around these guys will take the demons you built out a bone and give them skin making them even more op than they already were the dragon's health shoots up to 999 and the bonuses gained by the others are impressive as well finally one of these guys will give ray a spell that gives a guaranteed revive with full health nice alright now it's time to use our brains a bit where were all those talking trees well first off there was the one and hardest beast settlement near that big forest this tree passes along a message from michael turns out harder actually is michael who knows we're seeking the power of force he sends us to rammu to talk to that one tree i said to take note of way back when we first got there told you'd end up being a really important tree known as the fraxenous tree it blesses us with light dew which unlocks yet another somewhat cryptic area where we can meet michael to get to him you have to have the light due in your inventory and fly over this little island with a lake in the center where it begins to glow and whisks you away this shit's a bit goofy but i think it can kind of be forgiven because the world is just so small that it doesn't take long to figure out whether it's on purpose or by accident it feels like something out of an nes game but i'll take it over being railroaded along a tight path if only this game could have struck a better balance between way too much direction and not quite enough we end up in nova remove an almost heaven-like realm filled with animals and beasts harda aka michael stands waiting glad that we've made an effort to seek out harmony he teaches us the move stardust a damage spell a tree above him teaches akira yet another free spell which takes multiple rounds to conjure up but does insane damage inside of a structure nearby you can meet the demons solely on who if you're carrying around cerberus and arthuris will fuse with them and join your party inside the center room is the goddess herself who commends our efforts and teaches us at long last the force ability she again assures us that gaia is strength and forces peace and sends us on our way with the blessing of the universe hoping that we will bring the two forces together somehow nearby you can also find a force armor set naturally the best in the game okay so god's a woman we have the best demons weapons armor and spells in the entire game and we have the blessing of the universe to bring things to an end there's one area left we haven't visited deep in the mountains there's a zone with a weird eagle crest carved into the ground in the caves nearby one fairy explains that the masters decided to steal the aura calcum of ramu and murder raphael to ensure their beasts would live long lives another asks us to use that symbol outside called a geoglyph to head to the world of terra and defeat the masters fly your arc over the crest and this is where the game starts to get a little wacky in a really interesting way you're about to see just how powerful the last bible protagonist really is we end up hurtling through space with no control over the ship until another ship piloted by belial slams into us and immediately attacks on the first turn he put a few of my guys to sleep but i was able to keep up the offensive with my supremely powerful demons from earlier the leo has a pretty substantial amount of health so it'll take a minute or two to wear him down but honestly he's just a little warm up for what's coming next after he goes down you'll end up in a rocky mountainous place with the nearby cave it houses a very useful healing spring which is a free way to restore your entire party consider it the game's final checkpoint to the west is a strange almost alien-like structure known as luciferium the place is filled of course with challenging encounters from groups of powerful enemies as well as a series of ladders to climb around on as you climb your way to the top of this place you'll have to make your way through one more guy a master before we can meet the boss man ball he starts yelling at us about his desire to use beast to control the world and then challenges us how original ball has the ability to paralyze party members so keep an eye out for that otherwise just beat on him as hard as possible you don't really have to worry about burning through magic or anything because you're free to just head back out to the healing spring so have fun use your abilities to their fullest extent as he dies he starts maulding about how we don't know what it means to create life and says we could never relate to the joy it brought him well here we go at the top of luciferium is who else but lucifer he says that gaia is what made our planet livable it also created life and aura calcum is necessary to sustain that life he says that he can never abandon his beasts and launches into an attack alright the old classic on the first turn he one-shotted rey leaving me without a good healer this snowballed out of control gradually and i died not long after yeah the first boss in the entire game to actually kill me fortunately it's not a difficulty spike but it was unlucky the guy smacks just a bit harder than the others and has a slightly longer health bar doesn't this all seem a bit too easy i mean come on the final dungeon was a cave with wooden ladders and i said just a few minutes ago that this game was about to get crazy this isn't that interesting well watch this as lucifer dies he urges us to do for the beast what he couldn't on his own and then vanishes suddenly the auric alchemy had stolen begins flashing red and we get a cut scene of our party watching as the planet and space around it turn to red and then vaporize the goddess tells us that lucifer's power has resonated with your calcum and the history of the planet has come to an end however we're not going to die with it because we did all that extra earlier to help out michael and gain the power of force we will be the ones to rise to the task of creating a new history compare this to the gameboy version where after you beat lucifer you just return the orc calcum and the game ends that the goddess begins to enter a period of dormancy and quickly blesses us with a spell to be cast when the world's end is at its climax that spell is called uh kikido elkos bit of a weird name right i mean what the hell is that supposed to mean just keep it in mind for now our arc fades away and we've got no choice but to book it back in the direction of the healing spring touch the geoglyph and we seem to end up on the moon which has a single black monolith looming in the distance it brings us to a strange room floating in space and a voice welcomes us to the labyrinth of the monolith a castle which contains the record of everything in the universe who's talking well get this it's not just god like in every other smt game it's the lord of all creation the universal will the fabric of reality itself i mean this blew me away it's all rinky dink fantasy quest for eight hours and then we're in a room beyond the boundaries of space and time talking to what is arguably the single most powerful thing in any mega10 title you rarely get to interact with the great will in these games it's a concept mentioned but hardly ever serving any purpose other than background lore if you ask me this is some really neat it says that all gods dance in the palm of its hand and flat out says that we will not be allowed to create a new planet for ourselves what happened was written into the universe and cannot be undone unless of course this was all to lead us here and have us become the next lord of all creation it challenges us to complete the labyrinth and fight to determine who was better fit to be a leader and now it's time for one hell of a boss rush as you navigate the maze tons of beings warp in and give you brief tidbits about the foundation of the universe from zarathustra to odin to pazuzu to a new version of michael the archangel and even loki it really goes on for quite a while and is a fitting challenge to cap off the game with slowly but surely make your way through proving to each of the gods that you possess the courage knowledge and willpower to create a new universe until there's nothing left but well the universe itself as you approach the center of the labyrinth we meet a being named lassa bellic the voice who introduced us to the place and essentially a fragment of the universal will or a weaker more comprehensible version of it it explains that force was a great obstacle in building the universe and gaia was made to balance it out to no avail force continued to threaten the universal will as it could not be contained and so it decided to destroy our world yeah the gaia masters in training the youth and all that were a move by this thing to generate more gaia and suppress force but the further we got along in our journey the more we realize what the goddess is health that it could be a good thing that brings peace after defeating lucifer the most beefed up gaia in the world the universal will here essentially pressed the reset button on our ass afraid of what it couldn't control however since we're standing right here i guess even that wasn't enough let's show it what's up lassa bellic is a total joke almost certainly to drive home the fact that the worst is yet to come and that what we're up against is way out of our league this is only one small piece of something inconceivable and it wants you to know that as it slowly wears you down fight by fight when lasabella goes down a hooded figure begins warping all around us then another generic one emerges to speak with us talking about how weird it is that since everything is imbued with the energy of the universe it is essentially about to kill itself and has no idea what the outcome will be or if it even matters then it starts without a doubt one of the most badass fights in the entire franchise at first nothing works against the universal will at least until you remember those magic words from the goddess kikido elkos now what does that mean it really stumped me for a long time for months after i beat this game the word would just randomly pop into my head only by examining a future entry in the series did i manage to figure it out and i think it's pretty interesting in one of the last bible new testament games the protagonist learns an ability called wade amol which is crucial to getting them through a similarly desperate situation in english that translates to i think therefore i am now look at coquito elcos again and say it slow it kinda sounds like a butchered version of kogito ergo as in kogito air goes soon i think therefore i am that's so sick so cast the spell and at the cost of the protagonist's life the whole screen starts to glitch the out weakening this thing to the point that attacking it actually does something so yeah by sheer determination our guy makes the universal will manifest to the point of being harmed by physical weapons he goes out in a blaze of glory just to give your team a shot at reviving their planet you're fighting with a bit of a handicap here finally i can say it the universal will is a challenging boss you need to be on top of your game here and plan your moves carefully hopefully you brought some mp restoring items otherwise you want to conserve all of your energy for healing whenever possible it's a long fight individual blows to your team can deal hundreds of points of damage and if it's on your healers you can quickly get into a tricky position where a slow death is almost assured you'll be glad you have those high hp bone demons because having to heal every turn will prolong your victory for that much longer be damn sure you're buffed up for this one and hang in there for as long as possible always playing it safe after a while you'll beat the universal will who drops two dollars for some reason before sending the screen into another leptic fit it admits defeat but reminds us that this victory is not forever in the vast spin of eternity there will always be conflict and of course one day everything will fade away to nothingness it tells us to never forget that we are a part of it and that we will walk our new path until we inevitably meet ruin it bids akira and ray farewell confident it will see them again and they're dropped back on the moon the screen fades to black and our character starts talking to them from beyond death saying that fate has permitted them to live the two awaken on an unfamiliar shore confused akira asks where they are to which rey replies that they're on terra the third planet from the sun above they see the moon and say that everything has felt like a dream akira wonders if their homeland is still out there somewhere but rey is sure that it is not gazing out at a beautiful sunset the two realize this is their homeland now and the goddess encourages them to begin anew despite the tragedy they may endure and that's it so was it all an elaborate origin story for life on earth and why was that so similar to the end of evangelion i don't know but i gotta say it almost made that generic ass fantasy slog feel like it was worth it last bible is one of those games that's so frustratingly mediocre that it can be pretty hard to sell someone on playing it sure it's a competent enough rpg especially considering it was released on portable systems in the 90s but if you've ever so much just touched another game in that genre i think you'll inevitably find that it's below average overall it does absolutely nothing special beyond that final act it's a shame that the most original and interesting aspects of this plot are bonus content only found on one version of the game and it's not even the version we got in the us if it weren't for that extra content i'd have been a lot more negative on this game the fact that the entire story is just the universe repeatedly trying and failing to control primordial magic before essentially throwing its hands up in the air and fighting itself to decide what to do next is one knee twist and if i played the game boy version where things end immediately after lucifer i likely would have thrown this game out the window this is easily a d tier game for me when comparing it to the rest of the franchise but i do give it some credit for those shining moments it's not my intention to discourage you from playing this in fact if you're interested in the last bible trilogy you should at least try it out the next two games that follow build on the lore established in here in fresher more entertaining ways and it's pretty damn cool to see that universe grow and change as you make your way through it with the gameplay getting better each time just don't expect anything groundbreaking and this game can be an okay time waster oh yeah and the protagonist of last bible could solo any mainline protagonist feel free to leave an angry comment about that so i'm sure you're dying to know what's going to happen on terra next well you're in for a treat it's time for last bible 2. megami tensei gaiden last bible 2 was first released in 1993 on the gameboy and got an updated re-release on the gameboy color in 1999. each of these versions just like the first game feature both a story mode and a multiplayer battle mode the game was also brought to the 3dsc shop in 2012. unfortunately last bible 2 never received the game gear treatment like its predecessor and it never left japan making it feel kind of like a forgotten sibling and a family of already obscure titles when it comes to choosing which version to play i think the choice is obvious you're going to want to play the one that has color in it so is last bible 2 a worthy sequel to the original does it do anything better or is it just another mediocre storm with a few shining moments let's get down to it again and see whether or not this middle entry to the trilogy is worth playing when we start up a new game it's time to name some party members those of you that love canon names are gonna yourself here since the characters i made up for the first game have already finished their story including the one i named after myself i'm just gonna stick with what i get here so the main character's name is yuri and our female ally's name is sophia you know what i lied i'm gonna change one letter sophia rolls off the tongue way better finally our male allies name is esau from here we get some background on the world of tara and how this game picks up from the previous one the connection is kinda loose but it's there the text largely explains what you'll already know if you played the first game a long ass time ago life came to be on the fifth planet from the sun with the power of gaia they possessed the abilities of gods such as teleportation telepathy and more those who had mastered these powers were naturally known as gaia masters despite the impressive knowledge of the people of the fifth planet war with the planet's beasts eventually led to a disaster which forced the survivors to escape to terra the third planet to absolutely nobody's surprise things weren't much better on terra and conflict between man and beast continues today after this little setup sequence we're taken to the throne room in the kingdom of magoku a soldier rushes in and tells the king that someone named lord medoc has arrived medoc brings with him a grim prophecy soon a child and magoku will be born this child will be the reincarnation of griez the king of beasts an ancient being who ward with humans 2 000 years ago the king freaks the out and comes to the natural conclusion of having all newborn children executed then the game jumps 15 years into the future and we wake up in a forest surrounded by beasts that's right we're yuri reincarnation of king griez looks like those old missed a spot during their killing spree the game only flat out says that you're king griez at the very end and treats it like a massive spoiler but the secret is about as subtle as having your dick smashed with a bowling ball now i actually think the story has a hint of cleverness to it if you compare to the first last bible in the original game you're chosen to become a guy a master a hero to all and a leader of the people this game is essentially the exact opposite you're chosen to be a beast king who will lead a race reviled by humanity it's a neat idea to take basically the same backdrop for each game a planet locked in a beast versus human war but start you off closer to opposing factions in each one so here we are in our little safe grove with our beast pals you start off with jack your inventory before you even try to leave and find the first town be sure you pick this place clean one beast says that we should let mom know that we'll be heading out our adoptive mother is this kind being named soleon who has raised us since we were nearly killed as an infant another beast that looks like a pixie says that our friend larsa came by recently from the town ein that'll be our first destination once we're ready interestingly everyone in that town kinda hates us so who knows if we'll get a warm welcome at the top of this place you got two caves the open cave has a healing fountain where you can get a free refill on hp and mp this is a solid place to return to in the game's opening chapters the other is being blocked by soleon herself who asks if we're hungry saying yes has her offer us the money and weapon inside so that we can venture over to town for some food inside we find a simple cheap sword a robe and 100 bucks we're gonna want to switch this out soon but it's an okay start since the place is such a short walk away well let's get to it while this game looks and plays a lot like the first last bible i'm gonna let you in on a little secret it's better not like excellent but a noticeable improvement for sure combat is improved negotiation is a thousand times better moon phases exist now it's way more enjoyable your set of commands for combat function practically the same as the first last bible you can fight talk run set the fight to play out automatically view your stats and adjust your lineup fighting allows you to choose between physical and magical attacks as well as using an item or guarding magic is just as viable as weapons are so you'll often have a wide array of options at your disposal interestingly enough the guard ability actually works differently than in the first game now if you have multiple party members you can have someone guard another person and absorb hits for them i can say for a fact that it doesn't work like this in the game gear version at last 501 and it's a pretty great change that allows for additional strategy against bosses negotiation is far far better than before which is just a godsend the trial and error yes and no questions are gone replaced by a system resembling mainline shin megami tensei games demon dialogue has a bit more personality now and you can request items or gold from them in addition to having them join you enticing demons with money can affect the outcome of a conversation and the introduction of moon phases further enhances the experience with the position of the moon often greatly affecting your success a full moon means monsters will basically never join you while a dark moon gives you a much better chance specific monsters are even affected by half moons and timing your negotiations accordingly can be a fun way to efficiently build up a team there's even a time limit imposed on conversations meaning if you stay silent demons will notice and grow suspicious of you it's a pretty generous limit to be fair but it's yet another neat mechanic that makes the game feel much more immersive in comparison to the first to sum it all up they fixed negotiation it's good now what makes this game even better is that negotiation is only the beginning sure fusing your demons into better ones is still an option but now demons can use equipment that's sick as hell if you found the demon you really like its longevity can be stretched even further by equipping it with appropriate weapons and armor while they can't level up it's nonetheless an awesome addition that i wish more games in the franchise used finishing off the battle system viewing your stats functions exactly as it sounds you got endurance intelligence strength speed and luck there are no particular guidelines to follow with your character build yourself up according to what you want to do whether that's tanking hits hitting harder being better at casting acting quicker or um being luckier finally the lineup system works just like it did in the other game people near the top of the list take more hits and those in the back take less it seems to work much more consistently here than in the original last bible so that's good this menu is also where you'll switch demons in and out of the party really the only complaint i can come up with for this game's mechanics is that the text moves really slow by default and the menus take a bit longer than they should to click through the text speed can be changed in the options but the slowness of opening and closing the equipment menu seems to be unavoidable unfortunately once you've got a handle on the game's basic mechanics head on over to ein just to the southwest over a bridge the first guy you see immediately recognizes you is that kid who was raised by beasts as you'll find out the people who live here are racist as take a walk around and you'll find an equipment store an item shop and an inn as well as several houses a woman resting at the inn mentions that someone in the next room is searching for the legendary city of blantica where wishes are granted sure enough it's esau who doesn't say much for now but as we know is fated to go along on a journey with us poor guy over in the item shop you can find some who says i hope you're not offended by this but i hate beasts you know if the intent for this world terra the third planet from the sun was for it to resemble earth i'd say they got the amount of just right a guy across the table complains about some creature known as velg who steals the town's food supplies and lives in a cave to the northwest sounds like a prime spot for our first adventure but first let's follow up on what we learned from that pixie in the forest our friend larsa should be around here somewhere sure enough a villager tells us that larsa and his girlfriend media were just sucking face somewhere nearby this guy must be a stalker or some because media is actually in the house he's standing next to and she talks about having a surprise gift ready for larsa's birthday larsa is in the house just down the street yelling at his mom about how he hates this bum-ass town and wants to go on adventures he sees us awkwardly standing in the doorway and runs off well before catching up rob is house of valuables you can get a nice new shield and a spear the only place left to go in this town is the flower garden accessible through an exit at the north end there two people stand a girl named crowl and some quiet edge lord named zodia wait zodia i mean it's obviously not the same dude as the first game but i don't know maybe we should keep an eye on this one he basically white knights for the girl and tells us to back off from trying to talk to her but she thinks we're cool and explains that the two are on a journey to which zodia gets irritated and runs off before we can even react larsa runs up behind us and reveals that we have the same birthday though he didn't get us anything fortunately media saves the day and the three all share friendship pendants how sweet well with nothing better to do larsa joins up and we decide to head off in slave veil to save the town's food let's do this be sure to equip your weapons and armor stuck up on healing items and grab a demon if you can i brought a kobold along with me for some backup a pretty great thing about this game is that the bosses actually feel like a challenge instead of an a button mashing competition so you actually have to pay attention sometimes now unfortunately the dungeons are still pretty weak throughout but i'll take what i can get head west and then north from town and before long you'll see a cave tucked into the mountains it is like comically small and easy to navigate there is one branching path and it leads directly to a big egg this cute little guy asks us to protect him and if you summon him to your active party you'll notice he only has one hp so what are you supposed to do about this well every time someone takes a hit in place of the egg the amount of damage dealt to it is replenished protect the egg from enough attacks and soon it'll hatch into a strong beast there are a handful of these eggs to be found along your journey and it's always worth taking the time to hatch them if you ask me not only is it simple but they're extremely useful as well head down the other path to the stairs grab the spare mana lying around which can replenish your health in battle and then confront velg he's this big green bird and can take quite a beating before dying he has over 300 hp which is pretty steep if you haven't spent time upgrading your gear or assembling a full party magic works great against belg so if you've leveled up enough to learn some attack magic throw that at him for some good damage it's possible to beat him without any demons as you can see i tried to do it here before the egg even hatched but it's far simpler to just mess around with negotiation and gang up on him when velga goes down he promises to behave himself and runs out of the cave alarsa gets all excited about how nobody could stop him if he continued to train his gaia and then we get work back to iron looks like things have gotten busy since we left soldiers from the mugoku kingdom are here doing a recruitment drive along with medic who rants about griez coming to kill everyone it's a good thing he doesn't recognize that we're standing right in front of him larson decides to join up with magoku and honey's skills and medic tells him to head north and meet up with some other soldiers wait north like where our forest is oh by the time we arrive it's far too late the place is crawling with warriors who are driving all of the beasts away assuming that we're a new recruit they all are just to join their hunt slip into the cave previously guarded by soleon and a lone guard scolds us for interfering in his activities let's take him down and try to save our friends while he doesn't possess nearly as much endurance as velg did the fighter here doesn't take any damage from the magic we have at this point in the game so it's gonna come down to beating on him with weapons fortunately larsa has pretty high strength and will be a big help in that you know wouldn't this be considered treason for larsa considering he just joined this army whatever i appreciate the help nonetheless a good few turns of consistent damage is about all you need provided you have durable equipment as the guard dies we see some of our beast friends crying mom's been taken away as we leave larsa goes his separate ways remaining our friend but acknowledging that we now have different goals so what do we do now well you might recall seeing esau back in the town earlier we know he's important somehow so let's go see what he's up to you don't have to look for long because his ass is parked right at the town's entrance after our little stint was saving the place he's impressed with our abilities and wants to travel together as we learned previously esau is looking to have a wish granted at the lost city of blantica he believes finding this city is key to saving his family and will each have a better chance of getting what we want if we work together he tells us to head to the northwest and we're on our way just past velg's cave is an extremely tiny port village i don't know i think there's something really comfy about this place for whatever reason the world of last bible 2 appeals to me a lot more than the first it feels a bit more carefree and less dingy and i can't really put my finger on why there's an inn if you need to rest and that's about it the house over is totally empty the ship here takes us over to a place called lutz it's worth popping into this building right when you get there to grab a beast bone just like the first game you can collect these and construct a special demon once you have enough of the same type rather than doing this all at one place however this game features several shrines spread across the map dedicated to each beast during our usual once over of the town we learned that magogue's soldiers have headed northeast apparently in the direction of a pixie village heading east from this town is obviously where we want to go but if you take the western path you can find a secret cave with another bone in it there's actually quite a few of these invisible caves i'm not going to mention all of them because most of the time they aren't really that important but it's worth knowing that just because a path looks empty that doesn't mean there isn't anything there hit up the pixie village and just like back in the forest you'll find the place under siege to save the village we gotta take down another fighter but it's the same deal as before and with the help of esau and the experience we've gained since then the battle is a total joke the pixies are thankful yet concerned over the possibility of future attacks an optional side quest can be found in a house on the left here if you're interested to help protect the village you're asked to provide a powerful demon to help guard the place now if you just hand over a shitty worm or something like that you aren't going to get anything in return if the demon is level 10 or higher however returning to the village at the end of the game will give you a special reward in the form of an extremely powerful suit of armor definitely a long-term investment that requires you to not forget about this place about seven hours from now but well worth it just to the north of here is a cave quickly pass through and you come out near sedona a town that has some pretty critical namely a demon fusion building talk to the old fart here in the summoning circle and you're free to combine demons all you like at no cost if you've got any fusion needs you want to take care of it's best to do it now otherwise you'll have to walk back or take the time to warp with an item or a spell to my knowledge this is the only place in the game with a fusion area before acquiring the fusion spell in the back rooms some other guys are talking about sofia the rebellious rough around the edges apprentice who is off causing trouble somewhere there's also another port here making the town somewhat of a nexus between several locations before leaving town check out the guys gathered around the dock on the lower left their ship has been attacked by beasts looks like a good opportunity to boost up our stats a bit hop on with your freshly fused demons and make your way to the lower levels of the ship the encounters here are excellent for grinding if you have a few minutes to spare considering the inn is just outside if you need to recover the boss is two darkly demons they don't have any resistances to worry about but two moves per turn means you want to ensure you come prepared these guys can actually insta-kill you with a mudo spell though it never successfully landed on me i managed to put them asleep a couple of times with magic so if you got a demon with doramine be sure to use it back outside the sailors are happy that you've taken care of the infestation and get back to what they're doing before alright well you may notice there's another ship in the docks bound for bolton you can go here if you want and mess around with things for a bit but it's best to head out of town on foot for a while and take care of a few other things the neat thing about last bible 2 is that it's a little less linear than the first game you can actually complete some objectives in whatever order you desire with slightly different quest outcomes in a couple of cases what we're looking for is to the northeast esau lives in this area and has a whole ass base of operations set up here devoted to finding blantica that we can visit to progress the plot a bit further when we arrive esau has a conversation with one of his men right in front of the exit so we got a little bit of time to around from the people milling about we hear that esau's wife and child died a couple of years ago and that's why he adventures so much in hopes of getting them back somehow at the house on the right is a beast training school where you can leave behind one of your recruited demons in hopes of strengthening them if successful you can expect a better demon naturally with higher stats if it fails well they run away from the school kinda reminds me of the daycare centers from pokemon [Music] after you finish looking around esau will rejoin you at the big building at the far end of the settlement he urge us to head to a place called ebla castle if we like to find soleon which is to the west of here follow the fields wrap around some mountains and there it is ebola the biggest city on the entire continent there's a whole lot of stuff we can do in the big city in terms of rumors for one thing we can learn about a village called sipar to the south it's afflicted by a devastating paralysis sickness we can also grab an important item in a rather unassuming house lives an old man with a grandson who wants to learn about beasts he gives us a notebook to use during our travels so that we can do the same the notebook is essentially an analysis function that you might see in your average mainline smt or persona game it allows you to view stats and move lists for encountered demons pretty neat and easy to miss if you're just blowing your way through the main story and ignoring the houses just to the north of this place is a flower garden where crow and zodia can be found apparently the plants here are drying up the two want to stop the suffering of plants all across the world and ask us if we know anything about a lake with the power of the aqua element esau seems to know what this is but the conversation doesn't go much further than that we'll learn more about all this in a bit first let's finish up our business in the city it's worth visiting the castle for a bit of extra dialogue if you're interested essentially people are nice here it's not full of backwater racists like ein was and generally everyone including the king wants to create a world where beasts and humans live together nice okay that about wraps it up make a quick jaunt back to esau's base and his men mention that the aqua we're looking for can be found in an underground arbor they offer us a key that'll be useful for reaching this area and with that crowl and zodia join up with us eager to do their part to save nature crowl is a magic user and zodia is another physical attacker be sure to equip them with the best you can afford they kind of roll up in your party with dooky ass setups and they can honestly hold you back a bit considering they take up spaces in your party that would otherwise be occupied by demons slightly to the west of esau's base or to the east of ebla is a cave with a single locked door in it throw in the key we just got and we come out in a fresh zone with a few points of interest the entrance immediately to the north takes us to a monster trap where if you have magnetite you can plop some down wait around for a while and if you're lucky a free demon will be yours to recruit when you get back it's kind of a pointless little gimmick if i'm being honest because you can just as easily negotiate with a demon if you're desperate for more party members but hey it adds a bit more flavor to the world at least to the west is an entrance to the depths this is our next dungeon it's another incredibly simple layout though the place is bursting out the ass with treasure more beast bones a new shield some money and some stat boosting items reach the lake at the core of the depths and crowl utters some magic words and receives the aqua i'm assuming it's some kind of crystal anyway if we're lucky this will take care of the dried up trees nah actually this doesn't work at all so much for that exasperated crowl and zodiac stay in our party now on your way out of the city you'll notice a big group around the castle inside the king is losing his because he thinks some of his spies may have been captured in the nearby village of monae's he hires us to check in on them it why not we do have a few other places on the list but nothing wrong with a little tactical espionage action first right monets is south then to the west then all the way back north from ebla there's a little cave nearby where if you've got some magnetite you can trade for items there's no sign of those spies anywhere but we do hear about the poor working conditions that ordinary citizens working for magoku are subject to on a nearby island sounds like they're up to something big and they need all the workers they can get seems like a place for a spy to go unfortunately they're looking for more help a free job with no identification or drug test required the adventure let's just quit here and save up for retirement after signing up we get hauled off to the island it's a real of the cave filled with people who are feeling under the weather after some investigation the truth comes out people here are using metal mine from sitbar that town with a paralysis sickness we heard about from before and using it to construct strange figures from a goku so like it's a big ass slave mining operation and people are inhaling toxic chemicals something like that in one room of this place you can find a sampling of the work magoku has accomplished a small line of these statues known as grand marm according to a nearby soldier nobody here knows what they even do so it must be some big secret reserved for the top brass in the furthest reaches of this cave we find the two spies who complain about the place's toxic air one stands next to a particularly dangerous alloy which apparently turns people's skeletons to mush that would explain the paralysis in sibar the spies are just to inform the king about magoku's up plan and on the way out we're forced to take down a soldier who refuses to let us leave he is capable of using magic on you but since there's only one it's not a very hard fight you'll take moderate damage at most before he falls back at the city we continue our little investigation in this matter at the king's request this time he wants us to head further south the sit bar itself and see if we can learn anything else by the time this shit's all over the king is probably gonna owe me a few million dollars in medical damages because of all the toxic air he's making us breathe follow the mountain south pass through another cave and when you emerge you'll see siphar nestled comfortably in a rocky area if you thought things were bad in manaes you haven't seen anything yet this depressing little village is just filled with sick people even the kids are feeling like total ass we gotta shut this mining operation down for good thankfully we don't have to go very far to find the place yet another soldier blocks our path of the mines this is like the 700th time we've fought this exact battle at the back of the mine you find a pile of beckerel rocks and you confirm in person just in case the village full disease people wasn't enough that the air is indeed toxic i wonder if the protagonists really took the time to breathe in those tasty fumes you'd have to be in the head to get me to come down into this mine in the first place welp the lone soldier guarding the cave is now dead good work the king says that only the magareth can cure the sick and asks us if we're going to bolton to find them who the i mean clearly we have to say yes in order for the game to continue so yeah i guess we are i guess we'll find out what the hell he's talking about when we get there there's a ship headed straight there from sedona that i mentioned earlier hop on and what do you know it's another literally the place has been torn apart apparently the damages are from a girl who was quote causing a scene yeah i'll say sounds like they're talking about sophia it seems like she's been locked up in a tower outside the town we'll go break her out in a bit let's poke around for a second so we learned that the temple in this town is run by the aforementioned magreth who are a team of gaia researchers nice let them know about the situation in sitbar and they immediately know that only medak would be the kind of guy to have a poisoned slave mind one of them heads off to figure things out and we're momentarily free of our royal assignments in the back of the lab you can uncover more of medoc's plan a book details a process in which bones of beasts are removed then sealed into those statue things with becquerel mine from the earth then the power of aqua grants the statue's new flesh and the result is what they call a demon admittedly i've been saying demon instead of the proper term beast for like half this video but it's the same deal these ones just can't be reasoned with and well they're disgusting flesh golems in a room on the left a guy blocks the way but tells us about how medoc came back to magoku 15 years ago after he was kicked out for some reason i wonder if it had anything to do with the mass slaughter of countless infants well that's about all the lab has in store for us at the moment as we reach the door to go back outside a guy busts it down with freshly shat pants sophia has escaped her imprisonment damn she did the fun part for us let's go see if we can catch her before she gets too far the tower is literally pissing distance from the town so take two steps and we're in i don't know how this series manages to make grand towers of imprisonment boring but it's pretty good at it look these games don't have to have elaborate dungeons if they don't want to but then they should compensate for that somehow i don't know more story a simple puzzle or two something like that i feel like i've been beating a dead horse just saying finish the dungeon get the treasure but man that's just all there is it's a couple branching paths with some treasure and a demon bone you can collect i don't know about you but i want to be with i want this dungeon to warp me around the place poison me slap my ass a little bit i'm a guy that needs stimulation and if i have to write about one more overly simple dungeon i might just cry a little if you think this rant's coming out of nowhere that's just because it's been bubbling up for the past hour and i finally had to tell someone thanks for listening at the top sophia runs into us blowing past our party straight towards the stairs so much for climbing those two boring floors one of the oldsters from town stops her and says that she's too strong to go running around outside but she just ignores him and leaves well you can grab a few extra bonus treasures if you continue upstairs and the healing pixies here for some reason too don't mind if i do backtrack to the bottom and there's a whole ass intervention going on one of my goku's gaia soldiers are here a guy named ganzu he gets pissed off that we won't just stay in the tower and then suddenly the screen starts shaking and he just leaves the hell is all that about magoku's soldiers wouldn't just be here for nothing back at town that book we are reading about constructing demons titled the book of ball has been stolen now meddock has even more up knowledge about the creation of life at his disposal kind of a clever little reference to the events of the first game fortunately the book of belial is safe determined to help make things right sophia forces herself into the party eager to shock everyone with how capable she actually is alright well she can learn the fusion spell after gaining a few levels so once you got that there's nothing to stop you from immediately having a stronger team once you've done a bit of recruiting in any given area our next stop is to head to magoku itself the researchers give us the ability to teleport there so all we gotta do is stroll in and take care of business briefly a few of esau's men stop in and let him know that someone in a place called ceroon is looking for blantica he gets so excited that he leaves the party to head straight there no worries i kind of prefer working with beasts anyway so we can head there after him but i thought it'd be more interesting to tackle my goku first so let's do that actually as soon as you walk in you lose even more party members crawl and zodia rush off to find this town's giant tree hoping to see what kind of state it's in now it's just yuri and the new girl he can barely make eye contact with the people here are actually pretty chill magoku is like the epicenter of evil right maddox base of operations the place where the king decided to murder children all those years ago this is ground zero but it's not that dangerous at all i mean i guess there's no reason for the soldiers to rush out and kill us since well we tend not to leave any witnesses alive but i imagined more death spikes and lava pits gathering rumors as usual we can learn that others here have met solely on and that the king is still afraid of grias to this day apparently one child survived his slaughter yeah figured that out about as soon as i turned the game on funnily enough you can just stroll into the castle from the start of the game it's pretty goofy that someone who fears being murdered by an ancient demon king just leaves his doors unlocked even his men are convinced they're royally once grias arrives i mean maybe you could start by guarding the place instead of standing around in the break room in a room where gonzo hangs out with his squad one soldier seems excited that our old buddy larsa is going to kill medoc you know the guy they work for this whole place is hilarious the town's people and even the guards hate the ones in charge meaning those soldiers we fought earlier must be strict loyalists or maybe just forced to fight under threat of death it really felt like the game was hyping up this dangerous brutal kingdom as the ultimate enemy with medoc pulling the strings but as we can see his influence doesn't quite extend as far as he wants you to believe why don't they all just gang up on him instead of allowing him to build a demon army fueled by slave labor i guarantee you everyone in the castle could take him guess there wouldn't be much of a game in that case though anyway gonzo doesn't have much to say himself but we can roll up on larsa at the very top of the castle he's upset that medoc is in here and yeah even the king is absent from his throne room at least until they both suddenly warp in when we're leaving they don't even pay attention to us at first and head straight into the king's private room follow them in and well here they are sophia confronts medoc about the book of ball and demands he give us back soleon too he insists both are necessary to defeat grias and in growing impatient the king has us locked up in the dungeon we sit in ourselves for maybe one second before gonzo lets us free i guess locking up random innocent people was the straw on the camel's back that inspired him to truly switch sides the other guy he lets free is some old man who says that 15 years ago two children actually escaped from the king's death campaign we know one's me but hmm who could the other be could it be the one other hero in this game that shares our birthday and is going on a parallel adventure to ours probably but let's just play along and pretend we don't know that yet for now pass through a quick underground cave segment and we're free that's gotta be record time for the fastest most uneventful jailbreak ever well we're about to be a bit over halfway through the game don't worry the last few parts of the game fly by and are a tad more interesting than the rest so we gotta track down esau now the town he went to ceroon can be visited easily by just going to the sedone harbor and taking a ship it seems the talk of the town is a tower to the south that only appears when the moon is full additionally esau was here earlier but has since moved on following our only lead we pace around in an area to the south slaying beasts until the moon is full and sure as there's the dungeon now you're not gonna believe this i don't have to complain here it's different for once yeah there's a handful of warp points around the place including some that drop you back at the entrance now that's what i'm talking about the top of the dungeon has a boss bolvo this uh naked fairy that likes strong men she can take quite the beating and is immune to the geo line of spells aka electricity depending on when and how you do this quest esau will actually show up to the fight and help you but it didn't happen for me which i actually kind of liked i mean even some slightly different quest outcomes is much appreciated in a little game like this i think to make him show up you just have to chat up everyone in town and then come straight here so i must have missed an npc somewhere not a big deal though because the flight is perfectly manageable without him with this little arc taken care of in esau still mia we can head back to ebla and report all the stuff we've been up to to the king if you don't want to look for the tower i think you can just skip it and only do the mogoku prison stuff but i figured it was worth showing because it's finally a dungeon that isn't totally empty back at the castle surprise everyone's gone for some reason the one guy left says they've all gone to bolton the bolton temple has been turned into a miniature base of sorts where the king and his men explain that magoku is going to mount an invasion on a town called hypatia he asks if we'll check things out and also drop by their army's fortified base apparently soleon is being held captive there and maybe we can find that missing book too well this is the chance we've been waiting for the king says we can get to hypatia by boarding a ship from sedone and sailing to tyros you got it before setting sail i did construct an evil death golem of my own with my freshly gathered kieran bones i made this cool demon that carried me pretty efficiently for a while afterwards a hop and a skip through sedone and were in tyros aside from a brief run in with media there's not really much here you can find out from one of esau's guys here that he's in a nearby town called lykon and gonzo is here flirting with some random chick in the flower garden lycon is to the northwest their little mountain range guess what the dude just left me man aside from learning that there's one other thing to check out these kids are playing in the town square singing a pretty weird song that ends up being relevant later alpha and omega meet at dolmen omega drank the latte and forgot about alpha the four of them are friends they all come together to dance it's a pretty cryptic but don't worry they spell it out for us later for now try and piece together what that might mean so from what we can gather esau is in a cave or some i don't know where isn't this guy supposed to be there's a clearly visible cave to the east but there's also an invisible one you can find if you just wander around in the land to the west where you can find a handful of goodies chief amongst them a beast tag that's worth checking out before you head in esau is poking around in here because he wants gold to finance building a ship he decides to team up with us so we can help him out whatever you say just don't leave again i'm not going to go around the world again looking for you oddly enough this cave reminds me of the penultimate dungeon from the first last bible luciferium it's a series of pathways going up with treasure along the way the only difference here is that the treasure chests are screaming bloody murder the boss is this monster at the top who's keeping watch over all the gold and has locked up some innocent people along the way hence those uh screaming boxes yeah they're inside the treasure chests most magic doesn't hurt this guy unless it's the augie spells so it's more of a physical focused fight despite being a rock just beating on him with swords works fine so go at it and he'll fall before long he drops a gold nugget which he saw nabs and then leaves again listen we could have just bought the ship with you i swear to god alright we kind of got sidetracked with his ass again though it was necessary because a port that was previously closed back in tyros is now open you get dropped off at another port complete with even more ships that can take you to other places but our goal for now is still hypatia to the north navigate the windy path cross some bridges and there it is yeah everyone's dead looks like magoku beat us here in the castle you can find the king sprawled out on the floor who tells us to visit a nearby fortress and reclaim a stolen dragon egg yeah that sounds like a good idea the last thing medoc needs is a big ass drag and a compensate for his limp wizard dick be sure to loot the castle just step over the wounded and take their it's all good the fortress is a ways away it's far enough that the devs thought it necessary to place a random blown in on the path of the place you gotta venture to the north through a region filled with difficult enemies then through a cave with a beefy boss at the end the inn is a pretty sick spot to grind in if you haven't done so in a while if you happen to die you can just respawn right there so if you don't care about losing half your money each time you can literally just run around autoing battles until you die until you reach the level you want it's a little cheesy but why not a few extra levels never hurt anyone so just a few steps through this cave after the end and you're in a prison filled with beasts one says that soleon has been calling our name the whole time she's been here as we reach her cell larsa stands over her it's too late soleon's last words have her reminiscing over our childhood as she remembers the day she took larson us away from a goku yep the second child that escaped being killed back in the day was larsa the last thing she says kinda hits hard for some reason her sprite just disappears and the text box says there's no one to blame for this it's just fate damn after this we get a quick flashback of our childhood spent with larsa we get into a little disagreement playing out in the fields but soleon reminds us to play nice it's a pretty sweet little scene larso is distraught and says what i believe are the first swear words i've ever seen in a gameboy game as he vows revenge against humankind he vows to use his powerful guy to change the world well nothing good came of that in the last game but hey go off i guess in the next room over after larsa's rant we've got the boss two gozuki demons they can actually clap some cheek but they're pretty fragile just quickly out damage them and you should be okay i wouldn't even waste time with buffs or anything like that if you can help it just go all out for a couple of turns and get it over with as soon as possible as they fall medoc screams and causes demons useless trash i guess we're getting to the edgy portion of the story now he quickly raises two more demons a couple of mezuki's and makes it escape it's kind of the same deal as before they hit hard but don't have much endurance the agirama spell that yuri learns is pretty solid for this fight if you've thrown a couple points towards your magic stat by now it was doing over 150 per hit for me and it was enough to end the battle in like three or four turns bedok's naturally gone by now but you can't find the dragon egg that dying king was talking about and a few spies from ebela mention that some arena battles are taking place in the town of goku come on goku is it the tenkaichi budakai whatever it's the only lead we've got so it's what we're gonna do drag your ass all the way back to the port before hypatia hop on a ship and the globe trotting goose chase for meta continues in one of these houses be sure to talk to the arena receptionist handing out tickets also don't miss media who's still lurking around waiting for larsa to give up his violent worldwide conquest for power finally gonzo is still trying to get his dick wet and is considering quitting the army nice the arena actually isn't even here and it turns out we have to scale salem plateau to the north they really had to put this on top of a mountain when you get there everything is burnt down and there's half dead people lying around along with some fully dead skeletons this is starting to become a trend while this place is clearly no longer an arena in the traditional sense it does have like 3 million encounters per second so you'll be doing plenty of fighting get further into the place and you run across the magoku king and medoc up on a balcony shocked that anyone here is still alive medoc decides to throw out a few demons at us to clean up the mess he left behind so let's show him what's up this time we're up against a couple of big ogre guys they favor using ice spells so hitting back with fire is a good way to deal some damage these guys can inflict you with mute which stops you from casting spells but fortunately hitting them with a big stick is also an effective strategy hopefully by now your dragon egg is hatched the creature that comes out tiny gone was a favorite of mine as he boasts high health and decent damage output before long you'll emerge victorious you might have thought this was going to be some kind of boss gauntlet but it isn't meddock says the exact same line verbatim that he said last time we beat him and then leaves i sure hope we can catch this soon stopping for a rest back in goku we hear about a village called eradu to the south where everyone vanished head to the port hop on the ship headed for the place and well there are some people here but apparently a bunch of kids went down to a nearby forest and never came back the place is filled with decaying trees and there's even a small abandoned settlement down here crowl stands waiting in front of a well letting us know that all the kids are down in the bottom this literally looks like a murder setup like i'm gonna peek over the edge of this well and she's gonna club me in the back of the head fortunately she's not gonna murder us but according to zodia who stands guarding the children at the bottom something down here has been waiting for us how ominous the well then stretches out into a big ass cave with one hell of a boss at the end it's a manifestation of gaia itself gone mad with the desire to absorb more power wow just lurking down here leaching off the earth and some unassuming hole in the ground kind of creepy but hopefully beating it saves the trees and some of this messed up world's problems resolve themselves gaia's got some challenge i'll give it that most magic is ineffective towards it which makes sense considering it is magic so you likely find yourself relying on physical damage here you've got a pretty sizable pull of health to burn through so be sure you've got as much mp for healing as possible for the fight as you'll have to withstand attacks that hurt the entire group while you're wearing it down all the while you're just being stared at by this hammy face that looks like it wants to drop the world's biggest this might seem like a final boss or something but we've still got a bit longer to go before that once you've beaten down gaia it says the usual things that primordial evil beings say when they die in these games and reminds us that it'll always be back yadda yadda yadda craw has the realization that none of the world's problems have anything to do with the beast king grias and that actually it's just this corrupt energy permeating the planet maybe we should tell medoc that so i don't have to chase him down anymore very casually crowl says she's gonna head home to blantica and see if she can learn anything else you know blantica the lost legendary city of granted wishes the whole reason esau is alive yeah i guess she lives there that would have been nice to know like four hours ago climb out of the well then warp to a city close to esau's place and head on over there sophia and i explained the situation to him and he's super excited except we didn't follow crow home so we still don't know where it is you know we're pretty stupid on the bright side esau's ship is ready so at least we can hit the high seas and potentially find the place faster on the way out if you stop by the beast school you can grab a couple of free demons for the journey cerberus and orthrus nice to see some familiar faces from the other games with most of the overworld now at our fingertips we're rapidly approaching the end game kinda like in the first last survival you'll notice as you sail around the world that it isn't all that big you'll just want to search around for unfamiliar land there's quite a few places to find and i'll talk about most of them but as a good place to start you want to find bolton and then sail south from there you'll come across a place simply called small village where a shop sells a weapon called the star knuckles some of the villagers mention them it's not just a little suggestion for new equipment you're actually gonna need them at one point to progress so be sure you just scratch this off the list as soon as possible one guy also mentions a girl with a flying ship yeah we still got an airship to get and it's pretty strange that it comes immediately after finding the normal ship most games kind of pace the vehicles out like sailing is for mid game and flying is for late game but nah this time we'll just get one right after the other apparently this ship can be found far to the south near a place called salma sailing south and a bit to the east you can come across a pretty wild location with a huge reference to the first game before you reach salma check this out it's an island with two caves one is the agasha grotto there's a big boulder blocking the way so just go up and smash it a friendly beast says only someone with a strong gaia can do so so i'm not sure if it's tied to your level or if you have the star knuckles yet but it broke for me behind it is a room with a couple of books these two comprise the book of cries they seem to be written from the perspective of griez himself as he explains that the beasts are no different than humans and deserve to be defended something known as the black gaia has been behind the scenes of all human and beasts conflict over the years including those on the fifth planet which are the events of last bible one so it must be something that even the universal will couldn't detect a sort of corruption inherent within the energy of the universe itself something like that we've already fought something known as gaia earlier so that must have been a nascent form of something far more destructive the other cave is none other than luciferium i'm pretty sure it's intended to be the exact same place as the first game remember the place lucifer and the gaia masters fled to in that game was this planet before anything had settled on it thousands of years later it was the home of king griez and now it's just a random cave with some bees in it one pixie in here tells us that larsa had been here recently and there's some treasure we can pick up you know this little bit isn't much but i'm a sucker for some loose connections between games so i thought it was pretty neat especially because it's relatively subtle alright just a bit further south and we reach salmatia guess the guy that told us about salma couldn't remember the proper name there are more rumors of an airship to the south but the path out of town is blocked an old lady in one of the houses recognizes sophia commenting on how she's grown up she must have some history with the place another lady says our asses aren't allowed to go south a powerful spell called ron kane is sealed there and that's too dangerous to learn the we're gonna need that granny she randomly tells us to go to goku so okay gonzo still flirting with the locals asks if our friend media was larsa's girlfriend what do you mean was visit the port and we find out she's been captured by pirates how totally random why did that magical old woman know this i guess if anything it shows that larsa has become consumed in his power quest i mean you'd think he'd be around trying to save her or something whatever let's go slap some pirate ass gonzo joins up we hop on our ship and the pirate fortress is a good 10 feet away from the city on an island classic last bible first up a lookout stops us in our tracks he's got lightning magic and can tank a moderate amount of damage this guy doesn't even look like a pirate he's clearly a giant pink goblin next after entering the fortress proper we've got um a proper pirate if you're wondering why i'm not describing the dungeon just take a guess you'd have more fun imagining a pirate fortress in your head than actually exploring this one no puzzles extremely small you get the gist i guess these guys put all their budget into the lookout because this one goes down so fast it's almost funny like he stands up to fight us and just immediately gets his head ripped out of his ass finally we've got the chief looks like a blue walrus or something he's capable of using spells and can mute your team but otherwise it's a simple fight if he opts to hit you with just a standard physical attack you can usually consider that a wasted turn it hardly does anything at all behind the chief you can find a pendant one of those given to us and larsa by media at the start of the game to remind us of our friendship upstairs we find media lying down at herself she says that she got kidnapped because she hadn't seen larsa in so long that she wanted to make him worry about her then she stops talking is she dead did the devs run out of time to make a better way for us to realize that lars is a bad guy it just seems so hand-wavy and uninspired oh well in the midst of this emotional moment gonzo gets really angry at larsa and warps out back in goku we learned that he's been kidnapped by magoku come on really i'm about to go insane i'm seriously gonna rip my dick off and jump rope with it how many kidnappings and goose chases can this game throw at you like in a span of three seconds he got kidnapped okay well here we go again it's like the same thing we just did too instead of pirates kidnapping someone it's magoku the place you find the kidnapped person is a base on an island by itself that's right next to the city is the dungeon good well here's a better question are you stupid actually this one's worse than the pirate hideout can you believe that it's worse it's even smaller look at this room it's like i'm in someone's closet or something this is the magoku super mega evil fortress you kill the kernel in like three hits you find gonzo in a cell he's so mad he got captured that he challenges you to a 1v1 to prove that he isn't weak you literally fight him solo in his cell too it's not hard at all because you can heal and he can't so beat his ass a little bit and he's like well larsa is still stronger and he's going to use that power to form the underworld how do you even know that gonzo okay let's just take a second to calm down it's almost over there can't be any more of these random guy leaves your party and you have to go find him and then it happens again gimmicks right it's over back in magoku the castle is filled with demons and a bunch of soldiers stand around outside talking about it they're far stronger than anything we've fought in the past few minutes almost like the game was trying to trick you into letting your guard down by boring you to depth two a shogi are your initial obstacle hit them with fire bring them down before they can strike back at the very least if you die here you're literally in the town then when you hit the throne room you see meta can get mauled to death by two of his own demons he's dead dead too you don't even get to fight the guy who's been bothering you the entire game it would have cost the devs zero dollars to have a cool cheesy climactic fight with medoc in the throne room and they made him die in a cut scene that lasts three seconds god i guess i should have expected as much so yeah the only villain we've really seen at this point in the game is dead congrats guys we did it now as soon as i can find the address of the evil cosmic energy behind all this we'll be done the demons that killed medoc are even stronger than the ones downstairs don't bother with the buffing setup just go fast bring them down asap it's one of those big nasty slap fights to the death the king lays dying and larsa stands over him he thinks the murderous demons are a perfect reflection of true human nature in pities the world he lives in he lights the book of ball on fire and vows to gather the world's hatred to create a new one alrighty outside they make gonzo the king of magoku because he's pretty cool i guess i'm not even kidding if we want to stop larsa's underworld project we gotta know where it is thankfully if you sleep in an inn you'll have a dream in which she reveals its precise location it's pretty funny and unnaturally spoken like yeah hell is gonna be right here to the west of detroit come on by when you have the chance anyway it's south east of salvation as you arrive you'll find a tower that has a suspiciously boat-shaped interior it's filled with beasts to explain that surprise surprise it is a ship and it needs the lapis to be able to fly just like the first game you can also find the sealed spell roncain now as the southern exit of the town has been opened the old lady waits to give it to us also blessing us with some miscellaneous items including one that boosts all of your stats finding the lapis just comes down to searching for more unvisited land it's in a cave on an island near the small village you definitely need the star knuckles for this part crack open the boulder hovering in an underground lake and bam there's the stone we need bring it back to the airship and yeah we can fly even if it doesn't seem very exciting i'm sure you'll be happy the fact that random encounters on the overworld are essentially gone now thank god you'll want to start making your final preparations now search for any and all islands that are inaccessible by boat it's gonna be the ones that have really high borders powerful armor weapons a monster egg that hatches the sphinx and more are all waiting to be found and make the final encounter much easier one of these spots is a completely blank island that can only be reached by flying there's a secret cave here so be sure you're looking carefully for any spots you can land on across the world and check them out near the airship tower finally is blantica which is high above everything else it looks like any other town but esau is hyped to finally be here in the temple he begs the wise men to revive his family but they just won't do it it's against the ways of life and all that defying fate is something they will not participate in esau calls what they say quote sanctimonious and runs off man crowl and zodia chilling out here too discussing with the sages how to combat the approaching black gaia they explain that it is the tainted essence of gaia made corrupt by this world's sorrow and pain whereas larsa just wants to do away with everything and start over because of this maybe we can just beat the thing back and keep our world in a room behind zodia strangely you can find several other people identical to him a couple of sages reveal that they're called do and are soulless husks that follow only their master's orders the zodia is unique among them and shows crowl as his own master huh alright stay in an inn in blantica and you have a vision of a tower appearing just at the base of the massive land mass that it sits at the top of it's larsa the entrance to the underworld has appeared and he is ready to swallow the world hole let's check it out consider this our first little excursion into hell the encounters are appropriate for the name you want to be at your best shape in here take the time to fuse solid demons equip them with armor if you can and of course venture around to the shops and get the best stuff for the rest of your party crowd zodia and esau will soon be coming so remember to have enough money saved to take care of that the you can find laying around in caves is great but it's not quite enough to protect everyone so a bit of shopping is gonna be necessary the first part of the underworld is just a cave figures it does improve later so let's get the boring part out of the way larsa is standing at the end and pulls a gonzo on us challenging us to a 1v1 fight he doesn't quite live up to the rumors it's just a simple battle he will never out damage you and if the damage starts to add up well just throw out a healing spell and it should be over quick as he falls he seems regretful of the fact that he wasn't the reincarnation of griez this entire time he thought it was his destiny to be the king of the beast who starts a new world from scratch but now larsa realizes that it's us and not only that he realizes now that griez was actually not someone to be feared and that meddock's worries were for nothing he was actually a chill guy that was in tune with nature before we leave we can pick up another friendship pendant as well as ellsrod l is actually the canon name of the first last bible protagonist pretty cool honestly our boy found a way to help us out thousands of years later sophia seems to remember this thing too back at blantica even crowl remembers it but they don't know from where as they focus for a minute they suddenly realized that they were all friends in a past life and so we decided to gather up the others and share the news before we can leave a sage tells us that the revival of griez has actually been hidden in a song you remember that right yeah the song those kids were singing we'll get back to that in a second so gonzo remembers the staff and suddenly remembers being killed by the black gaia he knows his mission all those years ago was to defend the entire planet against evil and joins back up with us esau explains some of the meaning of the song to us when we arrive let's recap what that was for everyone sitting in the back alpha and omega meet at dolmen omega drank the latte and forgot about the alpha the four of them are friends they all come together to dance now you get it the four are sophia zodia gonzo and crowl we forgot our past and as esau says the dolmen mentioned in the song is a place surrounded by stones seek the stones then wherever that might be well in an area close to where the game starts at yuri's little forest there it is a big island surrounded by rocks with a clearing in the middle of a stone formation we all gather around and yuri officially remembers that he's king griez the entire party learns the force ability and the voice of ancient griez tells us to follow the advice of the trees back at esau's base we have a surprisingly tender little moment the tree says that life is not infinite but that's what makes it so precious it then tells us to let esau know that his wife and child will always be watching over him he heads outside and for one final time seizes family as they encourage him to press onward despite not being one of the original heroes from back in the day esau too learns the ability of force and joins us in our quest to finish off black gaia once and for all let's go back to the underworld and close that up there's like one final thing you can do before this if you don't feel ready if you got all three friendship pendants you can give them to a guy forging a legendary blade in the town of tyrus and he'll give you the force sword the second half of the underworld is much harder you got a handful of teleports to mess around with and obviously some of the game's toughest enemies i'd suggest stocking up on mp restoratives it'd suck to fight through all this only to reach the final boss and run out of magic halfway through its fight you'll know you're near the end when you reach a big path lined with boulders at the end a voice laments the past two thousand years it's spent in sorrow and pain not wasting time with any further words it appears gaia finally kinda like the universal will from last bible one this fight feels like the first that you actually might break a sweat during gaia is a heavy hitter and a lot of attacks just barely scratch its massive health bar the key to winning is to use the force ability granted to each of your party members force requires two party members to cast it in the same turn before it deals damage and it can only be used once by the party per turn so have two people prepare the spell and have the others focus on keeping them alive when or if they run out of mp switch their roles off to someone else even if your party starts to crumble hang in there you only technically need two alive to finish the game keep at it be patient and eventually gaia will fade away just like that and well the game's over you get some brief shots of each party member off living their own lives and that's it not much of an ending but a happy one nonetheless as the credits end you'll notice you can keep playing the game there's actually some post game you can do like return to luciferium and recruit lucifer himself you can grab some other big names too like michael and gabriel so if you're crazy enough to keep playing this game after it's over go for it as for me i'm good while last bible 2 is a pretty fun little game that offers remarkable improvements in combat and demon interaction over its predecessor it also has a pretty damn repetitive world and story structure which though it can be kind of endearing and relaxing in small bursts becomes annoying if you play the game for longer than like 20 minutes at a time i guess that makes it well suited to the game boy the mechanical upgrades are immediately noticeable if you're coming straight from the first game but the excitement wears off the further you get into the story like the first last bible it's another mixed bag there's some innovation here but it can be hard to appreciate unless you're really into megami tensei or you just really like generic fantasy rpgs ultimately while i like it better than the first blast bible i wouldn't rank it that much higher i'd give this one a d plus rather than just a flat d ranking alright that's two down just one more in the main trilogy but first we have side games to get through yeah you didn't think the pain would stop that quickly right and believe me it only gets worse from here way way worse [Music]

Channel: Marsh

Views: 354,183

Keywords: smt, shin megami tensei, smt guide, smt obscure games, most obscure smt game, shin megami tensei games, smt walkthroughs, marsh smt, smt experience, shin megami tensei experience, megami tensei gaiden, megami tensei gaiden last bible, last bible, last bible 2, last bible 3, last bible special, another bible, worst smt game, kill me

Id: WycgH8AJ04M

Length: 134min 10sec (8050 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022